Stories that occurred to me - By Mr. Notch

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Re: Stories that occurred to me - By Mr. Notch

Postby Matthew Notch » Mon Apr 24, 2017 5:32 am

Thanatopses


The Old Friends

As he unlocked his apartment and stepped inside, Jay realized that it had been years since he knew someone was in his house, waiting for him. He set the bag of groceries with the expected baguette sticking out the top down on the arm of the couch, reached under his coffee table for that secret cubby holding the old service revolver he kept for sentimental reasons, and with a wry grin he walked into the kitchen.

"Hey there, Jay."

"David, how're you doin', champ?"

David shrugged. "You know how it goes. You go to work, you come home, you clean up... it's what guys like us do." David was sitting at Jay's little dining room table, relaxed, with a scarlet carnation lying there in front of him. Some of Jay's leftover grilled chicken from the diner was on a plate before him, a fork and knife laying just so on a napkin beside it.

"Work... man, I thought you'd retired by now." Jay had to grin and shake his head. He sat down at the table and laid the revolver down on the placemat.

"Oh... I mean I had meant to. Every time I'd get a call, I'd tell myself this is the last one, you know? And then I'd get it done and it just wouldn't be the same. I think I keep taking these jobs because there's something missing." David chuckled a little, just a hint of bitterness behind it. "Wish I knew what, though."

Jay lowered his eyes, just for a second. "Dave, you don't have to tell me about it. I already know. Believe me on that."

David smiled, and reached down for another bite of Jay's chicken. "Oh, you don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not Dave. What's mine is yours, of course. Though I have to admit, I'm pretty surprised to see you here."

"Yeah, I know. Meant to be long gone by now. You know, after you quit, my life got a whole lot easier. And a whole lot more complicated."

Jay blinked. "How's that?"

David looked his friend in the eye, a twinkle from the light fixture overhead dancing off his eyeball. "I mean besides the fact that for some reason, we always seemed to have the same contract? Or that someone mysteriously always put you in front of the guy I was after? No no, man, things got simpler for sure."

"Well I know that. I mean how'd they get more complicated?"

"I just mean that it got too easy, I think, so I just took on more work than any one man needs. Nothin' more than that, I s'pose." He took the last bite of chicken and patted his mouth with the napkin. Jay just watched him, a little amused. "Sometimes I still take on two in a day."

"Two in a day? Goodness, man." Jay shook his head. "I was doing well if I got one done in a week."

"Oh I know. This definitely is a young man's game."

Jay's smile went away for a bit. "So I see this pretty flower."

"Oh yeah. I brought it for you."

"I figured as much. Any, um, particular reason why that might be?"

"Jay. I think you can probably guess as well as anyone could."

Jay was quiet for a long time while David took the plate to the sink, leaving the utensils and the napkin in place. He stood back up slowly and walked to the window for a bit, looking out at his flowerbox. "My daisies are blooming."

"Time of year for that."

"I know, but still. They always make me think of Gertie."

David sat back down at his place at Jay's table. "She did have a way, didn't she."

"Oh yes. She could grow a grapevine in tile grout. That's just what she did."

"You miss her, don't you?"

Jay shook his head and walked back from the window. "Well hell, that's a given, isn't it? We were married 42 years when she passed."

"You know I'm sorry, Jay. I know it's hard."

"Oh yeah. Well, and that's why I was so surprised when I got home. I don't think anybody's been here to greet me since Gertie died."

"There was Elmer."

"Ha! You heard about that, did ya? Ah, that poor bastard. Never did find out who sent him, either."

"Hehe, well it wasn't me, sir."

"No, I believe it wasn't." Jay smiled at David, and then his smile faded again. "You know Dave..."

"Jay, don't. You really don't need to."

"No no, I really do. I really do. Listen to me Dave. Look at me, huh? Now... I know it means almost nothin', and I don't expect to change your mind or put you off or whatever, but I just, I just want you to know, it wasn't a personal thing."

"Hell, Jay, you think I don't know that?"

"I'm just sayin', now. I took a job, you know. I didn't know what the job was gonna be. Hell, I didn't know who you were either. It wasn't personal. And believe me, if I'd known then what I know now..."

"Then what, Jay? I mean what do you want me to say? Hmm? It's all water under the bridge? Hmm? Look man, I'd like that. I really would. It would mean the world to me. But I haven't been able to shake this feeling for... damn man, 24 years now. You were married 42 when you lost Gertie. I'd been married to Viola 24. You know we were one year off of our silver anniversary. One year, Jay." David looked up at Jay, less with anger and more with a sort of pleading gaze. "That's not the sort of thing one expects to just walk away from."

"You know they used me, you know, to get at you. Trying to get your head back in the game."

"Oh I know. Listen, Jay. There really ain't no amount of explaining things that's bound to change my mind on this. Now you and me, we take jobs--well you took them in the past, at any rate--and we intentionally keep ourselves from knowing too much about who they are or what they did. It's the only way to stay sane in this business. And see, knowing that, I could have even forgiven you if it weren't for Benny."

Jay got a sour look on his face. "Oh now, that's not fair David--"

"Benny didn't have any damn idea what we do. What I did. Back then I might as well have been working on the railroad all the live long day. He didn't have to see it. He didn't have to."

"Those were the orders as they came, boss. They said make an example."

"Jay, you and I both know it's not like they stuck a camera on you to make sure you did that. I know you, man, and you don't work like that."

"You don't know me as well as you think you do."

"Well, be that as it may, I know that you've fudged some orders because something just didn't sit right with your conscience."

"Well that's not how I used to be! I changed, you know."

"Not soon enough, Jay. I'm sorry. You know Benny, he's still in bedlam dealing with that. How long ago even was that, man? My only son."

Jay sucked in air through the sides of his lips. His eyes wandered to the service revolver and then back to David, who just sat calmly, still looking up at Jay like he wanted something.

"All right Dave. All right. You win. And I'm sorry. For whatever that means to ya. But I do want you to know that I changed. I changed and I like to think that matters for something in this world."

"I suppose it does, then, after all."

"So David, what are you planning to do next?"

At this David lost all semblance that the former conversation had even started, smiling warmly again. "Well that depends, Jay. What you planning to do next?"

Jay smiled, still standing beside the dining room table, and picked up the service revolver. David chuckled a little bit.

"Attaboy. What's one more, for old time's sake?"

"Old times, huh. You know, sometimes I think that's all we ever have anymore. Old times."

"Well that's all we are, Jay."

"You betcha." At that Jay stepped back, leveled the revolver at David, and fired three shots. David, however, had kicked the table up, caught the sides with his hands, and effectively using the table as a shield, he charged. Jay was pushed back until one of the windows was shattered from the impact, but he braced a knee on the table and thrust the whole mess back. Dave stumbled and dropped the table with a loud crash. Jay had dropped the revolver, but surely as anything he had it back in his hands again, and was about to pull the trigger when David caught him right in the throat with the knife he'd been eating the chicken with.

Jay had enough momentum and adrenaline pumping to play through that one and shoot David dead, but instead he dropped the gun, fell to his knees, and grinned openmouthed, blood starting to spill over his teeth. He pulled the knife out of his gullet with a wince, seemed to mouth the words "Thank you", and then his spinal cord was severed and he fell on his face and died.

David took a moment catching his breath. That last push from Jay had really winded him. He said, quietly, "That's for you, Viola." But after a moment, he decided that he didn't really mean it. He supposed he didn't know exactly who it was for, after all, and wondered if he'd figure it out before it was his time to die too.




The Things He Carried

The last of his family filed out the front door, waving goodbye to him and promising to visit again soon. It had been a good day. He didn't consider himself an old man by any means, but he'd lived long enough to see a generation after a generation, and a good lot of those people had been at his house all day, eating and drinking and watching TV and telling old stories and revitalizing the place. Growing up, he never would have imagined himself the sort of person to enjoy a big, extended family, but he'd settled into the position of family patriarch admirably, and even though he spent most of his days in quiet, pleasant solitude, occasionally a day like this was something to relish.

He shut the door behind his youngest grandchild and smiled wanly. It was a little daunting to consider that tonight would be the night he would die.

He never told the family about his trip to the doctor's office, or about the tumor growing in his stomach, or about the last couple months which were all the time he was given to live by the oncologist. He didn't want to worry them. Part of him still held on to that tendency from his childhood to just tell his family what he felt they needed to hear.

People live longer than these projections all the time, Dad, they'd say. Just hang in there, they'd say. He didn't want them to say those things because he knew they wouldn't mean them. They'd be saying them because that's what they would be expected to say, by social convention. They would go home and be distressed and it would weigh on their minds and when he finally did give in and die, it would be more of a relief to them than anything. The relief wasn't what he wanted to spare his family from, of course, but all that buildup could really wreck a person. He'd seen it before with his own father, which didn't even seem that long ago.

No, this was better. He'd been given a cocktail of drugs to take to try and stave off death, but he got rid of everything but the painkillers almost immediately. It was his time, and there wasn't any point in trying to fight time.

He thought back, at that notion, to a time when he'd gone back in time and had seen the dinosaurs roaming the Earth. No one else had even come close to understanding that time machine; few understood his genius back then. He supposed no one understood it now, either. Not even him. He chuckled a bit, and with that thought in mind decided it was time to go through some old boxes.

He trudged into the basement, taking each step with confidence even though he really wasn't sure he wanted to be there. He hadn't been in the basement in quite a while. A silly thing, really; he never quite got over that idea that something was lurking in the basement, ready to snatch him up and eat him. He knew it was silly, of course, but that feeling never died in him, so he decided that even though it was perfectly safe to go down there, why bother doing it if it makes you feel badly? So instead his life was lived mostly upstairs, in reasonable amounts of light. But now he knew it was time to go down there. There were a few things he needed to get. Things he needed to pass on, before he himself passed on.

Most of that stuff, it could just stay downstairs. He took a magic marker and labeled the various boxes according to the family member he planned to hand them down to. Dishes, small appliances, books, photo albums--he knew who would want what. Looking back over one of the albums, he found a few pictures from when he was a kid. He laughed at loud--he never could sit still long enough to have a decent picture taken. He made faces into the camera, and he remembered the faces his own dad made everytime, in exasperation. He supposed his father thought he was ruining memories, but as it turns out, these memories were special in their own way.

He had a yearbook from his senior year of high school in that box too, and he couldn't help cracking it open. The pages were full of people doing whatever it is people did. He didn't care about most of them then and he didn't care now. He knew right where he was headed, though. And there she was. It was a picture of Susie. It was funny, really: they never could figure each other out, even after they dated, even after they married, and even after they divorced some time later. They had been good friends until she died of an aneurysm a couple years ago. He suddenly caught a surprise sob in this throat; he realized that his children had lost their mother so recently, and now they would lose their father. He set the yearbook down quickly, wondering if he ought to call his oldest and tell her that he was dying and probably wouldn't survive the night and that he loved her and hoped she would be okay. But by the time he called she would be halfway to the city, possibly even at the airport. He just couldn't face seeing her again. He hoped she would understand.

All right, he said. One last box. This one I'm taking upstairs.

Although he was not short-handed when it came to buying his friends and family gifts, he wasn't known for sharing the things he himself owned. Truthfully, he didn't own that many things, and it just wasn't his nature after all. This box hadn't been opened in quite a while, he thought. It was marked, simply, "JUNK". He knew what was really in there, though. He'd kept it there all his life, refusing to part with it but also unsure of what to do with it. Things change so much when you grow up, but just the right sorts of things to really complicate your life are what stay the same, every time. He took a deep breath and cut open the tape.

There was one of his first books. He hadn't been a big reader as a kid, but he loved this book. It had full color photographs and graphic descriptions of parasites, insects, arachnids, and all sorts of creeping things. Here was a little dart gun. He'd lost all but one of the suction cup tipped darts over the years, and the one that was left really didn't stick anymore. He didn't know of anyone else who would want this, but he would pass it on to his son and see what he thought. That boy was always the most sentimental. Here was a little toy flying saucer. He remembered the days running around with this thing in his hands, making humming noises and crashing down the stairs. His youngest grandson loved watching shows with aliens, and even though most kids just don't play with toys anymore, he had a feeling the boy would love this.

A small carving of a sparrow... he had actually bought this when he was about 15. He had remembered, back when he was much younger, sitting under a tree with his friend, looking at the birds flying overhead. Earlier that day he had seen a dead bird lying on the ground, a sparrow, probably from flying into a window. He and his friend had agreed that things like death and dying would make more sense when they grew up. Of course those things never did, and to his mind they weren't things that were supposed to make more sense anyway. He had forgotten all about that day until he was 15, in a gift shop in some random part of the country, and there was this carving. It struck him all at once, and he felt six years old again, and bought the carving then and there. It was just one of those things that sat on a shelf, gathering dust, until it was time to box some things up during the divorce, and when he picked it back up the memories of that day with the birds and the trees came rushing back to him, and he couldn't just throw it away or sell it in the yard sale. After some thinking he decided that he would have this buried with him. He set it on the file cabinet next to the bed and prepared himself for what was next.

Underneath all the other little knickknacks and doohickeys collected over the years was a layer of brown paper, and as he pulled away the paper, there it was. It was good sized, so he'd had to kind of shove it in there, and looking at it all twisted up at the bottom of this box suddenly made him very sad. He pulled out the stuffed tiger and looked it in its eyes.

A memory came to him, then: he had been playing in the forest with the tiger when he found a raccoon, lying sick under a tree. His mother had come to take it and put it in a box with water and food, in hopes that it would be nursed back to health. Of course years later he understood that she already knew the raccoon was going to die, and she had only taken it back for his sake. But then again, she may have also wanted this poor little thing to be comfortable in its last day of life. He always said you don't get to be Mom if you can't fix everything just right.

He realized that, in its way, that moment had prepared him for tonight. He knew he was going to die, but he had to think of the mental well-being of his family. And yet, it seemed more and more to him like his desire to hide this from them was more out of his own need to not have to face them crying--crying over him. He couldn't bear the thought of his family weeping over him. He began to cry softly just thinking about it. Why couldn't he just live a little bit longer?

"I didn't expect you to be so disappointed to see me."

"I-who..." It was the tiger, now standing upright, looking down at him with a look that betrayed his affection for the man--for his old friend.

"Are you going to be okay?"

"I have to tell *sniff* tell them that I'm going to die."

"I know."

"I just don't know what to do. I don't know how to make it right."

"Talk to your friend."

So he talked to the tiger. And when he was done, he opened his eyes and the tiger was stuffed again. Through the tears he smiled; everyone dies alone, he thought. He took the tiger in hand, hobbled up the stairs, and set him on the front table with a note: "To Melissa". Perhaps she would be able to bring the tiger back to life again, as he always did when he was her age.

The family found Calvin the following day. His daughter had forgotten some sort of something at the house and was back that morning, after staying in a hotel because she felt like she ought to see her father again for some reason. She was right, and of course when she saw him, lying in his bed, his mouth agape with faint traces of saliva on the edges of his blue lips, she knew that he was not just taking a deep nap. She called the siblings and their relations and they were soon all at the house, crying and laughing and celebrating and mourning as people do when it has become evident that the part of their lives in which even a little of them are dictated by their forefathers has finally ended. The family was sorting through the boxes downstairs, impressed that Calvin had kept his attention to a single task long enough to label all the boxes and dust off the cobwebs. But his oldest daughter was upstairs, in her father's room, and she saw something she'd only seen once, before he'd hidden it away from any of his other children. She didn't know why he'd done it; at first she thought he was embarrassed to still have a stuffed animal, and then when she got older she assumed he hadn't wanted her siblings to ruin it, before her theory circled back around and settled on her initial assessment. But there he was, lying on the pillow next to where her father had lain, and sitting on him was a note, the top half written in the neat ornate scribble of her father, and the bottom written as a child would:

To Melissa
Hobbes




He Falls Off the Scaffold

Certainly the bank could have waited till Monday, he thought with a grumble. Surely this crack in the stucco that was not even on the streetside wouldn't have allowed in too much moisture on this hot, miserably dry day, and damaged the inner workings of the building. Surely there was no reason to call him in on a Saturday, on the day he promised to take his mother fishing. Nobody ever took his mother seriously when she called herself a "fisherwoman". But he did because she caught fantastic specimens that would have fed a family of ten. She just always let them go, and refused to be photographed either with or without them. She always believed that a photograph was only possible because the camera obscura stole a person's soul, and she wanted her soul intact, thank you very much. His mind wandered through these routines and back to his annoyance at the job at hand, because there was the insurance adjustor taking pictures of the damage even as he was fixing it. The bank would never collect their payout on this because the damage was frankly not even big enough to sweat through the deductible. He wondered if the adjustor knew this too, and turned to face the woman pointing a camera at him. She scowled a little at him, motivating him to turn back around; guess she didn't want him jimming the camera. He sighed, and dipped his knife into the plaster once again. She was not unattractive, he thought. He wondered if she was still there, and maybe she wouldn't be so annoyed if just took a peek. He just craned his neck 75 degrees to the right, and he did see just the tail of her walking behind a tall hedgerow on her way to her car. He thought maybe she might look even better from behind, so he waited until she was clear and leaned a little toward the crossbar of the scaffold, straining his eyes to get a good look at her magnificent bottom.
  • 3

It's Dangerous to Go Alone


"I desperately want Jiggery Pokery now."-- Pikajew

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