Posted on by ajbrown · 1 Comment

Ally’s Story

Ally sat on the floor in the bathroom between the bathtub and the toilet. She had moved the trash can before sitting down, knocking it over in her hurry. Tissues lay scattered on the floor around it, along with a used tube of toothpaste and a couple of toilet paper rolls. Her mascara made black streaks down her cheeks from the tears that fell from her eyes. Her knees were pulled to her chest. She gripped the gun her father gave her before he died in both hands. It was heavy in her tired hands. 

If she would have stayed calm when Barry showed up, she would have grabbed her cell phone. She didn’t and it sat on the kitchen table where she had been sitting when the first knock came. The knock didn’t scare her, even though it was heavy handed and sounded like thunder. It was the voice that came with it, the voice that told her Barry was there and things were about to get ugly fast. 

“Open up, Ally,” he said. Though he tried to sound cordial, maybe even nice, she knew better. “We need to talk about this.”

The second mistake she made was not grabbing her phone. In hindsight, it was probably her first mistake. She could have—should have—called the police as soon as he showed up. Instead, she stood from where she sat at her kitchen table and went into the living room. She didn’t quite get to the couch, which was new, as was the television and the nice chair that sat a few feet from the couch. A coffee table sat between the couch and the television (with a fashion magazine and local music paper sitting on it along with a blue and white coaster that stated the name of a local band one of her friends were in, Government Poptarts). The light in the living room was off, but a lamp that sat on a small end table near the door was on and lit up the front door and the window beside it well enough she could see Barry’s shadow beyond the curtain.

Her real mistake—first, second or third didn’t matter—was replying to Barry’s “Open up, Ally. We need to talk about this,” comment.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Barry. Go away.” She tried to sound tough, but deep down inside she was scared. In truth, she was terrified of him and had a hard time thinking right then. It’s not that Barry had been a bad husband—until a year ago they were great together, spent two years dating, nine years married and had a little girl, Amber. 

That was then.

So much can change in a year, and everything had, starting with Amber’s death and the initial legal issues Barry faced because of it. If he had just held her hand when crossing the street instead of texting a friend of his, then Amber wouldn’t have run out into the road and been hit by a car. At first it was a tragedy, one Barry argued was the driver’s fault. He even told Ally that. 

“The man was speeding, Amber,” he said from his side of the plexiglass booth, a blue phone receiver to his ear. And she believed him. Why wouldn’t she? “I barely kept from getting hit. I tried to grab Amber, but …”

Ally shook her head as she stared at the door. She had opened her mouth. She had spoken to him and now he knew she was home. At some point, she crossed the room and now only stood ten or so feet from the door.

“Ally, open the door.”

“No. Go away or I’ll call the police.” Her heart beat hard and her mouth felt dry. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” His tone changed. The cordial sound was gone. His voice was no longer begging, but calm and angry at the same time.

“Barry, please leave.”

“I’m not leaving until we talk.”

She yelled next. “We’re done, Barry. Go away. I’m calling the cops.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll go away.”

She thought it was over. She thought he would leave. She waited a minute, then another. When there were no more knocks on the door, no more Barry talking on the other side, she went to the window, moved the curtain just enough to see if he were gone. 

A rock struck the window. It, along with broken glass, struck her in the face. She stumbled backward, fell over the armrest of the couch, and landed between it and the coffee table. The pain above her right eye was sudden and intense and accompanied by blood spilling from several spots on her face. 

“Open the door, Ally,” Barry yelled, this time it wasn’t muffled through the door. It was clear and through the broken window.

Ally got to her knees and looked back. Barry had an arm in the window and was trying to unlock the deadbolt, something she had a friend install when she filed for divorce and a restraining order. His hand found it but couldn’t quite unlock it.

Get up! her mind screamed. She stood. Her world spun for several seconds before she staggered away from the door, the couch and the chair. She didn’t think about her phone on the kitchen table or calling the police. All she thought about was running and hiding.

By the time she reached the hall, she heard the door open. She was almost to the bedroom when Barry kicked the door in and the chain at the top snapped. The door slammed against the wall and Barry yelled her name. She looked back in time to see him enter the house. 

Though her world spun, and she bumped into the wall, she managed to get the bedroom door closed and locked. 

That’s not going to hold, she thought. Then, her brain thought of her father, of the gun he gave her, and the fact she had put it in the dresser on the other side of the bed shortly after Barry was escorted out of the house by the police after refusing to leave. 

She rounded the bed and opened the drawer. By the time she had the gun in hand, Barry was at the bedroom door. He didn’t knock gently, but pounded on the door, demanding she open up and “talk about this like grown adults.” 

Ally didn’t respond. Instead, she ran to the bathroom, thinking she could crawl through the window. She slammed the door shut and locked it. Her stomach sank right along with her hopes—the window was above the toilet and entirely too small for someone other than a little child to fit through. She thought of Amber—she could have fit through it if needed. She had only been five at the time of her death and Barry’s negligence and …

Amber’s death was the beginning of the end, but wasn’t the sole reason for Ally filing for divorce. The police told a different story than Barry did, but that could have been his word versus the driver of the vehicle. The three witnesses who vouched for the driver didn’t help his cause, but even then, they were married, and Amber’s death was an accident, and she was going to stand by her man like a loyal wife and …

It was the text that ended their marriage. Barry wasn’t arrested right away. That happened the day after Amber’s death. Neither of them thought to get his phone from off the bedside table. The driver and the three witnesses told the truth, but there was so much more to it than just a friend texting a friend. It wasn’t until she checked his phone a few days after the accident—just a day after her daughter was buried—that she found out who the friend was. 

It was four in the morning when his text notification went off. Ally was tired but sleep was the furthest thing from happening. She picked up his phone, typed in his password and checked the message. Ally didn’t know who Kristin was, but a scroll through the text messages told her Barry had been talking with her for a while and having an affair for almost as long. The text with this Kristin the day before wasn’t just a distraction that led to his daughter’s death, but was him setting up their next hook up.    

Everything’s a lie, she thought.

Ally sat on the floor in the bathroom, the bathtub to her right, the toilet to her left. He could smell the soap she had used to take a shower not two hours earlier. She could smell the Clorox cleaner that hung on the inside lip of the toilet. She could smell sweat on her body. They were all scents that didn’t seem to go together. 

Her heart crashed hard in her chest; tears fell from her eyes, smearing mascara. Her stomach was in knots and her arms and hands shook. She didn’t think too much about what led to her current situation, to Barry’s breaking into the house they once shared during happier times, at least for her. All she thought about was Barry being outside the bathroom door, beating on it with his fist, yelling at her to come out as if he were the big bad wolf about to blow down her house of straw. And when he did, she had no doubts he would hurt her or worse. Though he never had before, Barry had become increasingly aggressive and angry and had left a message once on her cell stating, “if I can’t have you, no one can.” Until then, she never thought him capable of hurting her. Then again, she never thought he would have an affair either and he had. If she had to bet money on it, she thought he might have had more than one, that this Kristin chick was just his latest fling. The message led to the restraining order, one that didn’t seem to matter to him.

“Ally, I’m only going to ask you one more time to open the door.”

She swallowed hard. Her hands were sweaty. Her elbows were on her knees and her arms extended toward the door. She tried to keep her hands from shaking, but they still did. Her right pointer finger was on the trigger and the safety was off. She didn’t have to check to know it was loaded—she made sure of that right after the threatening message. 

“Please, go away,” she said, her voice shaky. 

“Not until we talk this over.”

She shook her head. There was nothing to talk about. She thought about her phone, how she should have grabbed it when he knocked on the door. She thought about her opening her big mouth and telling him to go home, there was nothing to talk about. She should have just called the police the moment he called out to her. There was a restraining order for crying out loud. She thought about the message he left her, how menacing and threatening it sounded.

“Please …” 

Barry hit the door hard. It shook in its frame. She thought he kicked it.

“Open the door!”

She didn’t get a chance to respond. He kicked the door again. She screamed. A third kick and the door jamb started to give way. On the fourth kick, the door slammed open and struck the wall by the sink. She barely saw the redness of his face, the anger in his eyes, the scowl on his face. 

Ally pulled the trigger. The sound of the gun going off was deafening in the small bathroom. She pulled it again and again and again until there were no more bullets and the gun only clicked when she squeezed the trigger. 

It was over in less than three seconds.

Barry didn’t fall forward into the bathroom. He fell backward. At that moment, her brain didn’t register the blood that soaked the front of his shirt before he hit the floor or the fact that three bullets struck him in the chest, one in the arm and one in the hip. The other one hit the wall to his left. 

Ally sat there between the bathtub and the toilet, her elbows on her knees, arms extended, the gun in both hands. She stared at Barry’s body, not really seeing it, her mind in a thick fog that prevented her from thinking. Eventually, she would have to stand and leave the bathroom. She would have to step over his body and try not to step in his blood. She would have to call the police if someone else hadn’t by the time she mustered the strength to move. She didn’t do any of those things right then. Instead, she dropped the gun on the floor between her legs and put her face in her hands.

AJB

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14 of 52

Shelter From the Rain

Let me preface this story. I wrote the original version of this story in 1995. It was one of the first pieces I wrote—not the first, but one of them. In 2021, I reread this story and thought it could use a massive facelift, something that could make the story have a more satisfying feel to it. It only took me a couple of hours to rewrite it and I’m happy with the way it turned out. 

The original title was also called Shelter in the Rain, but really Shelter From the Rain makes more sense.

I hope you enjoy.

A.J.

***

Rain falls hard on the world. Lightning streaks across the sky. Thunder rumbles, loud and angry. Wind whips through trees, snapping branches, pulling leaves free. The moon hides behind storm clouds, content to sleep the night away. Trees line both sides of the road and sway side to side 

She walks slowly, her head down, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of a coat pulled tight around her. Her umbrella is somewhere behind her, torn from her hands by a strong gust of wind. Her pants cling to her legs. Her shoes squish and squeak with each step she takes. At first she tried to avoid the puddles along the side of the road, but now … now it doesn’t matter and she no longer cares about getting wet; she’s drenched from head to toe.

Damn car, she thinks. Good time to let me down.

She tried her cell phone, but out here, in the middle of Heaven knows where, but she doesn’t, there is no cell reception. She doesn’t think the overhead clouds and nasty weather help matters. 

It doesn’t matter, she thinks. It’s not like I have anyone to call. 

Tears tug at the corners of her eyes. No one to call became a thing earlier that night when she and her longtime boyfriend parted ways, not because she wanted to but because a man with a mistress is not something she wants to be a part of. Especially when she found out she was the mistress. 

How did I not know? It’s a question she has asked herself over and over since leaving him just hours earlier. She pulls her arms in closer to her body, shivers from the chill of the cold rain and walks on.

***

He sits. 

Watches. 

Perched on a tall oak’s highest limb, he follows her. Eyes like small green peas against a backdrop of darkness. He takes in her every move, from the time she pulled onto the shoulder of the two-lane road a mile or so back to her kicking a tire out of frustration, to her walking, first with an umbrella, then with her head down, hands in her coat pockets. 

Misery loves company.

He steps off the branch, unfolds his arms and swoops down toward the ground. Then he rises toward the sky. Leathery wings carry him through the night air, rain and northern winds. He flies ahead of her, searching, searching … until …

There!

Off to the side of the road stands an old wooden shack, desolate and empty. Its windows are missing, its door lays on the warped flooring of what used to be its front porch. One of the wooden planks that make up the five steps to the porch is missing. A tin roof covers it and there is a steady chorus of pings as thousands, if not millions, of raindrops strike it.

He smiles. It’s what she needs, what she is looking for. A shelter from the rain.

It will do.

***

She almost misses it. Her head is still down and her jaw trembles as goosebumps swim across her skin. She stops. 

What was that? her mind asks.

Just the wind, she responds.

But is it? 

Of course, it is.

It sounded like …

Just your mind playing tricks on you.

Maybe.

She doesn’t go far before she stops again. A break in the trees to her right reveals a dilapidated house, its windows missing, the door laying on the porch. A steady drumroll of raindrops beats down on the roof. The darkness oozing from it doesn’t feel inviting. She shivers, maybe from being cold, but more likely from the oppressive presence coming from the house. 

I wonder if someone’s home.

She shakes her head at the thought. No one is home. No one has probably lived there for many years. 

She looks at the sky. Rain pelts her face. The sound, she hears it again. 

Wings, she thinks.

Your imagination, her mind counters.

Her chest tightens. The night couldn’t get much worse. Breaking up with her boyfriend was bad, the car breaking down in the middle of nowhere in a storm was bad. Hating herself for not realizing her relationship had been built on lies was far worse than her walking in a downpour. But maybe being afraid of noises is not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s a better feeling than the one she has been dealing with. 

She looks back at the house. 

At least you could get some shelter from the rain, she thinks.

***

He watches her from the depths of darkness inside the house. He doesn’t have to play this game, but there is something about willing victims he prefers over those who are not so willing. He licks his lips and steps into the doorway, giving her a glimpse at nothing more than a shadow—one that shouldn’t be there given the circumstances.

When she sees him, he whispers. Come to me. 

***

She sees the shadow appear in the door. A frown forms on her lips and in her eyes. The grip on her chest increases and her breath catches for a moment before releasing.

Come to me.

She cocks her head slightly to the side. Her eyes narrow. The shadow in the doorway motions to her, a simple come here gesture. She shakes her head.

No, she thinks.

The voice comes again. Come to me.

She takes a step back. The rain and the wind are nonexistent, the water sloshing over her shoes seems to disappear. 

It’s all in your head, she thinks. 

Come to me.

There’s nothing there.

Then why am I so scared?

Because you’re alone. Out here. In a storm.

As if on cue, lightning flashes across the sky. The loudest thunder she’s ever heard follows, shaking the ground. The rain becomes heavier, not quite obscuring the house and the figure in the doorway but making it difficult to see much else. Her wet hair whips around her face. The wind pushes her sideways a few steps. 

Come to me.

***

He’s not going to lose her. He knows this. He also knows she might not come willingly. 

Come to me.

No.

Come to me.

She backs away. 

No, he thinks. You’re not getting away that easily.

He turns his eyes to the sky. Lightning streaks from black clouds. Thunderclaps, shake the world with its rumble. The rain picks up, as does the wind.

She staggers sideways.

Come to me.

***

Her first steps are tentative, like an unsure baby. The wind and rain batter her, knocking her off balance. She catches herself before she can fall and slowly trudges toward the house.

Let me be your shelter from the rain.

Shelter? she thinks. That’s really all she wants right now. A place out of the wind and rain that can protect her until the storm breaks and daylight comes. 

When she reaches the steps to the house, she looks up. There is no shadow in the doorway, no voice beckoning her to him.

Just your imagination, her brain reminds her.

I guess so.

She doesn’t realize she is going up the spongy steps or walking across the porch. She eases around the fallen door and stands in the entrance. 

And he is there, his eyes like bright green lights, his lips inviting, the rest of him … nonexistent. 

He extends a hand that wasn’t there seconds before. Come, let me be your shelter.

She takes the hand, willingly. It is cold. The fingers are long and thin. He pulls her to him and embraces her in a hug like none she has ever felt. It’s comforting. She melts into him. For the first time since early that evening, she doesn’t feel alone or scared and nothing else matters except for that embrace. 

***

She is warm. He feels her heat radiating off her as he holds her close to him. He turns his head, lowers it to her neck and kisses gently. He breathes in the sweetness of the blood pumping just below the skin. His mouth opens and the tips of his fangs brush against her neck. He bites. 

A rush of blood fills his mouth.

***

She feels his lips on her skin but doesn’t pull away. She knows something is wrong—has to be—but she also knows she is not scared and there is comfort in that moment. There is a prick of pain in her neck, then it is gone, much like her loneliness and fear. She becomes lightheaded and tired. She wants to stay there in his arms and rest, maybe even sleep against his chest. Is that too much to ask after the day she had?

She sighs, a sound of complete contentment, then closes her eyes. Her world fades and she feels like she could sleep forever. He pulls her closer to him and her legs weaken. Her arms slide from around him, going limp as all of her energy drains from her. 

***

He drinks of her blood, of her very life until her body sags in his arms. Then he drinks a little more. He wants to take the essence of her, take all of her, but stops before he can. Instead, he lowers her to the dusty floor, among the broken glass of the windows and leaves that blew in over time. He doesn’t look back as he steps through the door and into the dying storm. 

Goodbye, he whispers and disappears into the night on leathery wings.

***

And she lays there, her heart barely beating, her breaths shallow and too far apart. As the storm ebbs outside, so too, does her life. Then, there is nothing.

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13 of 52

Daddy Cursed the Wind

Caitlyn was seven the first time she heard her dad swear for what seemed like no reason. He had been digging a hole in the backyard—that’s something she didn’t get right then either. Gray clouds hung low. A storm was coming, but he was out there in his work pants and a tank top with spaghetti sauce spilled on the front. Wind had begun to pick up earlier and was starting to gust when he went out, shovel in hand.

He sank the spade into the ground near the back fence. It went in easy enough. For several minutes, he scooped dirt from an ever-expanding hole. Then a strong gust struck him, knocking him off balance and sending dirt swirling in the air around him. 

“Damn the wind,” he yelled. He got back to his feet, picked the shovel up and continued to dig.

By the time he finished, it was almost dark. The clouds gave way to black ones and lightning streaked the air. Her dad went into his tool shed and came back out with something long wrapped in a gray tarp slung over his shoulder. He reached the hole, then tossed the tarp and whatever was inside in it. He took a few deep breaths, his chest heaving with each one. He wiped hair from his eyes, then buried filled in the hole, even as the wind whipped around him and the rain began, slow at first, then becoming a downpour.

Caitlyn watched all of this from the screened in back porch. It’s not that she was fascinated with what her dad was doing. She was just happy his focus was on something besides his anger with his mother and her. As he tamped down the mound that was no longer a hole with the spade end of the shovel, Caitlyn went inside. 

“Where have you been?” her mother asked. She chopped carrots at the counter for the night’s stew.

“Watching Daddy dig holes.”

Her mother looked up.

“Daddy cursed the wind,” Caitlyn said, matter-of-factly.

“Did your daddy put something in the hole?” 

“Yes.”

Her mother nodded. “Probably just your uncle Fred. He had it coming.”

Caitlyn didn’t know what this meant and didn’t ask. Uncle Fred had come by that morning, but Daddy and him left a short while later. She never saw her uncle Fred again, so there was that. 

This happened twice more over the next three years, each time with Daddy cursing something. If not the wind, then the roots of a nearby tree. If not that, then Caitlyn’s mother for making him do it, damn it.

Caitlyn was thirteen when her dad dug another hole—the final one. By then, she had a feeling where her mother had run off to and that she would not have approved of the woman Daddy brought home not long after he dug the previous hole. If she remembered correctly, Mommy and Daddy argued the night she last saw her mother. The next day, he dug a hole and Mommy … 

Like then, Daddy’s newish woman had argued with him that night. Then there was silence.

And Daddy was digging again. This time, he cursed the cold and how it made the ground hard. 

She didn’t wait for him to finish digging to find out what she thought to be true. She made her way to the toolshed, eased through the door and stared at the blue tarp on the floor. She peeled back part of it, to see the top of the woman’s head. There was blood in her hair. Though Caitlyn didn’t care about her, she knew what had happened and she was now convinced her mother was in one of the three spots he dug at before. 

She ducked out of the toolshed and hid. She waited for Daddy to go get the woman she never liked. When he did, she ran and grabbed the shovel, then hid in the bushes not too far away. 

He left the toolshed with the body slung over his shoulder. He carried it to what Caitlyn now knew was a grave, then dumped her in like she was trash being tossed away. Anger—raw and pure—swept over her as she thought of him dumping her mother in a similar hole in the same manner. 

There was no scream of rage as she left the bushes, the shovel lifted above her head. Daddy searched the ground for the shovel, cursing the dark as he did so. She brought it down as hard as her arms allowed her to. The clang of steel on the back of his head sent slivers of pain into her palms and elbows. Daddy pitched forward and tumbled into the hole, his head split open. He landed on his side with his eyes open wide. His body shook violently, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Foam spilled from his mouth. Then he stilled. 

Caitlyn cursed her father as she filled the hole in.

***

Back in 2010, Paramore released a song titled, The Only Exception. The second lyric is “And curse at the wind.” Though I’ve only recently heard of the song (within the last two years), that lyric stood out. The image of a man digging a hole in the dark while a little girl looked on came to mind. Later that day, I wrote the very short piece you just read.

A.J.

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12 of 52

Bill

Bill pulled up to the bus depot in his beat-up white van. It was early, the sun still not quite up, but enough so that the world was gray instead of dark. He sat for a moment, the headlights cutting a swath in the dying darkness. The station had seen better days. Those days were also some of the worst ones in Bill’s life. 

A picture was taped to the dash, one of two white kids before life took a bad turn. A dark-haired boy had his arm around a smaller boy, one with a cow lick that jutted from the side of his head. Bill touched the right side of his skull. Though at least fifty years had passed since that picture was taken, the eternal cowlick remained. A smudge of dirt was on the older boy’s face. They both wore mischievous smiles. Bill touched the image and took a deep breath. He killed the headlights, shut off the van and got out. His legs ached and his back hurt. The arthritis in his hands would flare up before he made it back home that afternoon but that didn’t matter. The people here, those in need, they are what mattered to Bill. 

He went to the back door, pulled the handle up and opened the right side. Though he could smell the food while in the cab, it always had a richer aroma from the side or the back. He pressed a latch on the left door, releasing it. He pulled a folding table from the left side, set it on the ground before unfolding its legs and setting it upright. 

By then, the chatter had started, voices in the darkness. Among those were whispers of “He’s here.”

He pulled the table further from the back of the van and closed the double doors. The side door came next. He pulled tin trays of eggs and bacon, toast and grits, nothing special, but something to the homeless who used the bus depot and the outlying areas as places to rest their heads or hunker down against the rain. Some of those people were full families of three or four or five. Orange juice and water and sweet tea went on the tables, along with paper plates and cups and plastic utensil packs. 

Lastly, he closed the van’s side door and walked to the table where he opened the first package of plates. When he looked up, a man around who could have been a couple years older than him—late sixties, maybe very early seventies—stood at the table. He barely looked at Bill, averting his eyes, possibly from shame and embarrassment. 

“Good morning,” Bill said.

“Morning, sir,” the other man replied, keeping his eyes diverted.

“Bill. Just Bill.” He smiled, trying to show warmth. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Yes, si … yes, Bill.”

He made the man a plate, handed it over and told him to get something to drink and a pack of utensils, then he added, “Have a good day.”

“Thank you, Bill,” the man said and walked off, his head down, plate in both hands. Bill watched him go with a touch of sadness pulling at his heart. 

“You’re welcome.”

For the next two hours, Bill did the same thing for every person who came to the table. As each person walked off, he repeated the same thing he said to the first man. “Have a good day.”

After the last of the homeless came through, he packed up. The rest of the food would go to a local shelter. By then, the sun was out and traffic along the lower part of downtown had picked up considerably. Most of the homeless people had moved on to other spots. With everything back in the van, he closed the back door and started for the driver’s door.

“Excuse me, Sir.”

He turned. An older black lady with a slight hunch in her back stood at the entrance to the bus depot. Her hair was short, almost nonexistent. Grooves cut into her face from a long life or maybe a hard one. She stepped outside and let the door close behind her. She approached with an easy stride that didn’t match her appearance. 

“Can I help you, Ma’am?”

“No, sir, but I would like to help you.”

“Help me?”

She nodded and held out an envelope. “I see you out here three times a week all by yourself. You bring food to the homeless. You are one of those people who are good for the world. I just want to help pay for some of the food you give.”

Bill smiled and put his hand up. He shook his head. “That’s not necessary.”

“Maybe not, but I’d like to help.”

“If you want to help, give that money to one of the local shelters. They’re in need of a lot more than food. As for me …” Bill looked around as memories traced his way across his mind. “My parents died before I turned twelve. My brother and I had no family, no place to stay and no food to eat. I spent many nights here with my brother on one of the benches or around back where the terminals are. I always said if I was able to make something of myself, I would come back and feed the people and give back to the community. This … this … I enjoy doing this. I enjoy helping people. So, thank you, but give that money to any of the local shelters. I’m sure they would appreciate it.”

The woman nodded. “You’re an angel, Mister.”

Bill almost laughed at this. “I’m no angel but thank you.”

Bill got into the van. Before he left, he looked at the picture of the two white boys. He touched the image of his brother, Robert. Though he left Bill’s life when he was nineteen, Bill missed him more and more each day. He backed out of the spot he had occupied for nearly three hours and turned the van toward the parking lot’s exit. A glance in the rearview mirror showed him the backdoor windows. The first person he had fed that day stood leaning against the window jam, his arms crossed over his chest. 

The man waved. Bill’s eyes widened. 

“Robert.”

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11 of 52

A Time To Remember

We sat on the ground near the Thomas family grave site. The grass was still short for that time of year when winter was waving goodbye and spring was taking her own sweet time arriving. It was mid-afternoon. The sun had begun its slow decent and would be gone in a couple of hours. A soft breeze blew through the cemetery, ruffling my hair and sending a chill into my arms. I pulled my legs close to my chest and hugged them tight. My head hurt. It always hurts.

Jerry sat to my left. His appearance was a complete contrast to mine. I wore jeans and sneakers and a light coat with plastic sunglasses sitting on the bridge of my nose. He wore a black suit with a white button-down shirt beneath the blazer. His black shoes were as shiny as the day they came off the shelf at the Pic and Pay in the next town over. My hair was a tangled mess, and I hadn’t washed it in a few days. His was neatly combed with a part on the right side. I always wanted a part, but my hair didn’t seem to think it was a good idea. 

“The sun’s going down,” he said in his always soft voice.  

“It is,” was all I could think to say. We both knew what it meant, but I wasn’t ready to do anything more than acknowledge it.

“Remember when we were little, your dad used to take us fishing?”

“Yes,” I said. “How could I forget?” 

Truthfully, I had forgotten. But I remembered Dad, his Popeye arms, dark hair, and stubbled face always in need of a shave. Even after Mom barked at him once and said he had more whiskers than a dog, he still only shaved occasionally. 

“Do you remember riding in his boat with those horrible orange life jackets strapped on?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Those were the worst.”

“And the bomb islands. I loved going there. Remember when we found the blown-out shell casing of one bomb? Your dad yelled at you when you picked it up. It didn’t matter that there was a hole in it you could see right through. He yelled all the same.” Jerry raised a fist in the air like an angry old man. “Adam, don’t move!”

“He was afraid I would drop it and it would go off.”

“He ran at us like his hair was on fire that day.”

I laughed. Yeah, I remembered that, but only vaguely. A surge of pain ripped through the right side of my head. I took a deep breath and let it out. I blinked several times, hoping to push the pain away with no luck.

The sun dipped lower and lower. The sky wasn’t quite bright, but more of a fading yellow and orange color, as if someone took a paintbrush and ran it along the skyline. 

“Dad never took us back there,” I said.

“I haven’t been back since,” Jerry said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

I looked at him. He wasn’t facing me. His hands were behind him in the grass, his legs stretched out in front of him. His eyes faced the sun and there was so much sadness in them. 

Neither of us spoke for a while after that. We stared at the dying sun. The sky was less purple and orange and more gray. On the horizon where Earth met the sky was a sliver of intense orange that should have hurt my eyes but didn’t. Still, the pain in my head increased. It felt like my skull was splitting into two.

Jerry licked his lips. “Your dad …” He shook his head. “Man, he liked to drink.”

“Yeah, he did. All the time.”

Jerry let out a deep breath. “I wish he hadn’t been drinking that day.”

I nodded. “I wish he never drank at all.”

“If he hadn’t been drinking …” he shrugged. “Maybe things would be different.”

“Maybe.”

“It started raining on the way back. Do you remember that, Adam?”

“I do,” I said, and that was the truth. I did remember. A storm came out of nowhere. The sky had darkened with black clouds that blocked out the sun. Lightning streaked across the sky and brought loud booms of thunder with it. And we were on the water in a metal johnboat.  The wind had picked up and the waves had become choppy. The boat skipped along the water like a flat rock tossed from a little kid’s hand. I remembered that well.

“He was going too fast as he rounded Charlie’s Cove. Way too fast.”

The pain in my head made things fuzzy, but I could recall the fear I felt as I sat in the bottom of the boat with my hands clutched to its sides. 

“He hit that wave … he hit that wave and we went sideways.”

I remembered. He didn’t need to say anymore. The last thing I recalled while being alive was being flung from the boat and landing, headfirst in the water. Then I ended up here.

I looked at Jerry. He looked older than I remembered. We had barely reached our teens when the accident happened. I looked back at me, at the old jeans I wore, the coat and sneakers. The sunglasses on my head had been there when I died. He was a young man, still grieving a friend who had died years prior. I was the friend.

The sun had finally set. In a little while the moon would come up with its calming white, glowing face. Maybe it would bring some stars with it. Maybe …

Jerry stood and wiped his bottom with his hands. He took a deep breath, then a few steps. He stopped at a headstone that was new compared to so many others in the cemetery. He patted the stone. “I miss you, Adam.”

He wiped at his eyes, shoved his hands into his pockets and walked off, his head down. All I could do was watch him go. Eventually, I stood and went to the headstone. I read my name, my age, the Gone Too Soon, inscription. And my headache was gone.

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10 of 52

This Place

Chet sat alone in a blue chair that might have been meant for a beach, but instead was around a metal firepit with chairs of the same type. A slight breeze blew through his hair. A car went by, a song he didn’t know blaring from it until it was off in the distance. There were too many people, mostly younger than him.

He didn’t know this place, had never been there until that day, but he knew he didn’t like it. It was too busy, with its crowded streets, loud music and people, and stores, stores, stores. Everything about that place screamed commercialism. He wanted to be home, away from the noise and the people, where trees dominated the landscape instead of concrete buildings, where animals roamed the countryside instead of cars zooming by on roads, where the sounds you heard were leaves rustling in the same breeze he felt right then, birds chirping and bees buzzing from flower to flower.

Instead, he sat, uncomfortably, as a group of young men set up instruments on a stage at the end of the building. There was a cover over the stage meant to protect anyone playing from the elements of weather; the sun, rain, the cold—the last of those he had his doubts about. Based on the long sleeves the five men wore, they had theirs, too.

After several quiet minutes to himself, his wife, Allie, came to her seat next to him. She had a beer in one hand—bottled not draft. He smiled at this. She wasn’t a country girl by any stretch of the imagination, but with her hair pulled into a ponytail and a bottled beer in hand, he thought she pulled off the look quite well. 

“When are they going on?” she asked and sat down.

Chet looked at his watch—not a digital deal, and not a phone, but an honest to goodness analogue watch with ticking hands and lines for minutes. “In about ten minutes, I reckon.”

“Are you excited to see them play?”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen ‘em play plenty of times.”

“Watching your brothers play at home or church is one thing, but they’re getting paid to play here.”

“They’ve been paid before …” he said and looked around. “… just not in a place like this.”

“You mean not in the city?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

“You don’t like it here, do you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Why?”

“It’s too …” He shook his head, looking for the words.

“Busy?” Allie interjected.

“Nope. That’s not the word I’m looking for. It’s too fast. People hurrying by like there’s no tomorrow, like, I don’t know, they don’t have the time to stop and smell the roses, or in this case, the exhaust fumes.”

Allie laughed at this, took a drink of her beer. “I guess this means you don’t want to move to the city?”

Chet frowned at this. He knew by being here that question would come up. “If you want to move back—and I know you do—I’ll do it. If that’s what’ll make you happy, then I’ll do what I need to.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming?”

He took a deep breath. “But this place … this isn’t for a country boy like me. I feel about as out of place as vegetarian at an all meat buffet.”

For half a minute they sat in silence. Then Chet spoke the most honest words he could think to say. “I know you want to move back home. I also know you won’t ask me to do that. Just know if you want to come home … to this place …” He waved one hand in the air, motioning their surroundings. “… then I’ll move the earth and moon to make it happen. As long as we’re together …”

Allie didn’t respond, but he saw the smile on her face. She reached for his hand as The Bluegrass Brothers began their first song. At the end of the song, she released his hand. 

“It’s just a place,” she said. 

He nodded. “Yup.”

AJB

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8 of 52

Passing Clouds

He sat in the hospital room alone. It was the first time since his heart attack that someone wasn’t in there. Even at night when he was asleep—or trying to sleep if the nurses would just stay out of there—someone had been sleeping on the couch. The first two nights it was Evelyn. Last night his son, John, stayed over. He was as restless as Norvell was, but probably because he was too tall for the loveseat the hospital called a couch. It didn’t look all that comfortable.

But right then, no one was there. Evelyn was at the house. John stepped out to make a phone call and the nurse—Cruella, he thought of her as with that white streak in her otherwise black hair and the stern tone to her voice—had done her morning rounds. He thought he might have ten or fifteen minutes of peace. 

The clock on the wall to the right of his bed was nothing more than a cheap dollar store battery operated thing. The second hand tick ticked away. It read seventeen minutes after three in the afternoon. Norvell stared out the window. Gray clouds rolled by. Earlier John said a storm was on the way. With the way the clouds moved, Norvell thought it might be a doozy. Black clouds began taking the place of the gray ones as he watched. He thought they moved a little faster than they should. He frowned. Yup, a doozy indeed.

“I see a face,” he said. His voice cracked and sounded tired, almost breathless. He shook his head slowly. He raised his hands.. They were thin and wrinkly and there were several liver spots on them. HIs wrists looked too thin for his liking.  “When did I get so old?”

The face in the clouds rushed by, replaced by gray and black and the occasional puff of white that looked like the only clean spot on an otherwise dirty sky. As the clouds moved along, a swirl of white clung to the underside of a dark one.

“That looks like a cinnamon roll.”

Norvell smiled at this. 

A laugh came from his right. When he looked, a kid stood there in brown pants, a tan button-down shirt and brown suspenders. His feet were bare and his face was smudged with dirt. 

“Hey, Ed,” he said. The kid smiled, showing he was missing two teeth.

“Hey, Norvell, Ed said, then added, “That does look like a cinnamon roll. Remember Grams’ cinnamon rolls?”

Norvell nodded. Grams was his grandmother and she baked the best cinnamon rolls. She put them in the open window of her kitchen to cool before scooping them out of the pan.  “They were the best.”

“Yeah, they were.”

They sat in silence for a minute, then Ed pointed with one long finger at the clouds. “Is that a cat?”

Norvell shook his head. “No. That’s a lion.”

“I guess so. Remember how we used to lay in the field out behind the house when were kids?”

“I do,”

“We watched the clouds go by with our hands behind our heads.”

“And we chased the rainbows after storms.”

Ed nodded. “Those were good times.”

“The best times.”

Another minute passed. Norvell didn’t look back at his older brother who died when he was only thirteen thanks to a clumsy fall off a wall and a busted skull. “It’s time, isn’t it?” he asked.

“We can watch the clouds a little longer,” Ed said. “Whenever you’re ready, just close your eyes and the clouds will stop moving.”

Norvell nodded. He thought of Evelyn, of how hard his health issues have been for her. He thought of John, of the many times he took off from work or left his own family to take him to the doctor or the hospital and the many nights he slept on too short and uncomfortable  couches like the one in the room he was in. 

He looked at the clock on the wall again. The hands had stopped moving and it read nineteen minutes after three. Norvell’s lips turned up slightly, then he looked back out the window. 

“What do those look like?” Ed asked and pointed to the window where white clouds tried to overtake the gray and black ones. A flash of lightning was followed by a rumble of thunder. 

“Angels,” he whispered as the clouds continued to move along briskly. “I’m ready.” Norvell closed his eyes … 

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7 of 52

She was a pretty woman. At least, Arlo thought she was. In truth, he had never seen her from the front, just from the back and only when passing the display window of the department store on Main Street, U.S.A. She set up the displays and almost always had her back to the people passing by. 

She was short with long dark hair and always wore jeans and a nice top, usually of the tee variety. He thought she wore sneakers but wasn’t too certain. It would be a lie to say he never checked her figure out, but after the first two or three times, he didn’t notice her body so much as he noticed her lack of concern for anyone walking by. Or maybe it was confidence in herself that made her appealing. Or maybe it was how gracefully she moved. 

He wondered what her voice sounded like, what she thought when she looked at an empty display. Did she have an idea of what she would create? Did she view it as a blank canvas for her to create art on, or as just a job she was paid to do? He didn’t know any of these things. He had never spoken to her. Never actually seen her face (which, in his opinion, if her backside looked nice, then her front surely did). He never even waved at her. 

He almost waved once—it was the lone time he thought she was about to turn around. He walked by the window and looked. She was there, her hands on her hips. He noticed no ring on the left hand. She took a step forward, then started to turn. Arlo stopped. His hand came out of his pocket, got halfway up, then dropped to his side. She didn’t turn to look out the glass. She walked around the display she had been working on and disappeared in an opening off to the left.

Arlo’s shoulders sagged that day. 

Just go in and talk to her, he told himself.

That would be awfully bold, he argued.

At least you would get to meet her.


What if she doesn’t like me?

You’ll never know if—

I know. I know. I’ll never know if I don’t try.

He didn’t try. Not that day and not any day since. 

Maybe today, he thought as he approached the department store. It was on his right as he headed to the parking garage nearly two blocks from where he worked. At the end of the block, he would make a right, step into a doorway, get on an elevator and go up to the sixth floor where his car was parked, like most days.

She’s not going to be there.

Resigned to the thought, he tucked his hands into his pockets. He crossed the street when the little white walking man appeared. A robotic voice proclaimed, “Walk sign is on. Walk sign is on.” Before he could get across the street that same voice began to count down from ten. He reached the other side of the road by seven. On the sidewalk, he lowered his head, intent on not looking at the window. If he didn’t see her, he wouldn’t feel shame for not …

But she was there in light blue jeans and a white top that was tucked in neatly. A black belt held her pants up and yes, she was wearing sneakers. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was standing, not with her back to the window, but to the side. 

Arlo stopped. His mouth dropped open slightly. His heart sped up. She wore no makeup. Arlo didn’t think she needed any. Her face was round, cheeks a natural pink, lips thin, eyes like almonds, in shape and color. 

His hand went up slowly. He couldn’t stop it if he wanted to. He gave a slight wave that caught her attention. She looked at him, smiled and lifted her hand in response.  

Heat filled Arlo’s face and neck and his stomach soured. His world spun for a second. Then his feet pulled him away and he hurried off, trying to reach the corner where he would run to the garage and up the steps—forget the elevator—and too his car. His heart would probably explode before getting there, but he didn’t care. The woman in the window was more than pretty, she was gorgeous, and she had smiled and waved at him. 

Before he reached the corner, he heard a female voice behind him. “Hey. Don’t run away.”

Arlo stopped. He looked back. The woman was no longer in the display window but walking toward him. She stopped about ten feet in front of him, the smile on her face warm and welcoming.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to make a move.”

“Make a move?” Arlo asked.

“You pass by here every day. I’ve seen you looking at me.”

Heat rose in his cheeks. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’m sorry. I … just … you’re …”

She laughed. “It’s okay. I’m not creeped out by you. I’ve never had someone admire me from afar like that.”

“I … umm …” No words came. He thought he would pass out. 

Then she stuck out her hand. “I’m Carolyn. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

He took her hand. It was warm and soft. “My name is Arlo.”

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5 of 52

My brother and I were never the best of friends. He lied. A lot. He stole. A lot. He cheated. A lot. He did a lot of things I never thought good people would do. I never thought he was a good person. 

He was three years older than me and far meaner than I would ever become. He beat me up more than a few times.

I was eleven when my grandfather broke up a particularly nasty argument that had me lash out and punch Bart as hard as I could. He saw the punch, not what led to it. He sent Bart in the house for some ice and some good old-fashioned consoling from our grandmother. I imagined he would twist this into some lie, and I would get the blame for it somehow. I was right, but that’s not what this is about.

Granddad pulled me aside and said, “Do you want to play marbles?”

I was confused. Was this a calm before the storm?

He nodded. “Sure, you do.”

He went to the porch and grabbed my marbles off the swing. They were in a purple Crown Royal bag my dad gave me. He came back to where I stood, still unsure of what was happening. He knelt, wiped dirt away with his palm and drew a circle with a stick in the clearing he had made. The marbles went into the circle and we each picked out a shooter, his a plain green one, mine a shiny purple one with white speckles. 

We only played for a few minutes. At one point, I took my shot and knocked a yellow and white swirled marble from the circle. Before I could pick it up, he did. 

“That’s mine,” I said.

He looked at it. “It is.” Then he reached into the circle and picked out another yellow and white swirled marble. He held his hand out, the two marbles side by side on his palm. Then he closed his hands.

He spoke in the way only he could, calm, soothing and wise. “Brett this circle is your world, your surroundings. These marbles …” He pointed to the ones within the circle. “… are the members of your family. These two …” He held up the two yellow and white swirled marbles, one between each pointer finger and thumb. “… are you and your brother.”

Grandad dropped one marble inside the circle. “This one is you.” He dropped the other one on the outside of the circle. “This one is your brother.”

He paused, as if thinking of what to say next. “Sometimes, you will not like your family. Sometimes they will do things that make you mad and you will not want to be around them. But they will always be your family.” He picked up the marble representing my brother. “You may not like him, but Bart is your brother and one day … one day you will wish you kept him in your circle.”

Grandad set the marble back in the circle, stood and went inside the house. I stared at it for a moment or two, then scooped them all up and placed them back in the bag. At some point, I lost track of that bag of marbles.

Life went on and Bart and I never really got along again. 

Twenty years have passed since that day. I found the bag of marbles the other day as I helped clean my grandparents’ house. It had been sitting empty since Grandad’s death a year ago. The bag was at the bottom of one dresser in the room I slept in when I was a kid. I opened it up and dumped the marbles out. Among them were two white and yellow swirled ones—my brother and I. 

I stared at it for a long while …

…

…

Now, here I stand, at my brother’s grave. It’s been four years since drugs took him in the form of an overdose. When I leave, I will go visit Grandad and tell him he was right—I wish I would have kept Bart in my circle. For now, I will stand here a little longer, silent and in thought. Before I leave, I will set one of the two yellow marbles on his head stone. I will never have him back in the circle, but maybe … maybe this will wash away some of the guilt and pain I feel. I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot.

***

Before anyone asks, the only thing true in this story is the game of marbles and the conversation my grandfather and I had when I was a kid. Yes, it did come after a moment of fighting between me and my real brother, but it never escalated to the point of the two brothers in this story—thankfully.

AJB

Posted on by ajbrown

2 of 52

Before you read this piece, let me state up front, it is an odd story, mostly told in reverse. For the most part, you can read it from the first paragraph, like a normal story, and read it to the end, or you can start from the end and work your way to the top. It’s very much an experimental piece that was difficult to write, especially in so few words. 

I hope you enjoy the story and don’t get too confused. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Maryjo

A.J. Brown

The light was on in the lone room on the third floor. That’s where Maryjo lived before she died. She had been smoking a cigarette in the bed and fell asleep. The cigarette started a fire on her blanket and the bed went up in flames. She was 43 when she died. And there was a light on in her room.

The second floor window on the east side had a hole in it. Maryjo lived in that room for a while before moving to the third floor. A not so lovelorn guy tossed a brick through it. The brick held a love letter on a piece of paper wrapped in rubber bands to hold it in place. Marry me, Maryjo, was written in black marker on the paper. It creeped Maryjo out and she moved to the third floor. She was 38 then. The window was never fixed.

There’s another window with a hole in it on the west side of the house. A brick didn’t break this one. A rock did. Smaller and easier to throw. It struck Maryjo in her blonde curly-haired head. It left a nasty gash, lump, and painful bruise. It gave her a concussion that caused severe headaches and nausea. She moved to the East side room on the second floor after that, hoping with it not being on the open side of the house, nothing like that would happen again. She was 31 then.

On the first floor of the old Victorian house are three bedrooms. East room number two is on the backside of the house. A door next to the room opens to the outside if you are inside and to the inside if you are outside. At first, she didn’t mind being next to the door. She could come and go as she wanted with neither parent wise to her, well, coming and going. Then came the random knocking at all hours of the night. It started as soft taps and gradually grew to angered thumps then heavy kicks until the door jamb split one night. Dad didn’t hear the soft taps or even the knocks, but he heard the angered thumps and the kick that broke the door. He ran off the person—someone dressed in black who was never identified. That scared her enough to make her move to the second floor. She was 25 then.

East room one wasn’t really on the East side of the house but more towards the West side. Maryjo liked this room more than the others with its high ceilings and lone window that faced out at the field behind the house. There were trees beyond the field and on the other side of those trees is where Clint Hall and his family once lived. 

Maryjo loved Clint and dreamed of marrying him one day. He often came through those trees and across the field to see her. She watched him approach on his way there, then on his way home. 

Clint and his family died long before Maryjo did in a similar way. Unlike with Maryjo, a cigarette didn’t burn just her and her bed up, it ended up taking the entire house, Clint, and his family as well.

Heartbroken, Maryjo moved to East room number two so she could no longer look out at the field for who was never to come that way again. She was 20.

The West room sat closest to the front of the house. Maryjo lived in that room the longest, from birth until she moved to East room one. There were no pink walls or unicorn posters. It was just a room, almost like a place of waiting … waiting for another room to open for her. She hated the West room more than any room in the house. She was sixteen when she left the West room behind, choosing to leave bad memories alone and start anew in East room one. She never returned to the West room, where a monster lurked in the shadows and where sleep was often interrupted.

Once upon a time, she had a brother. He smoked cigarettes before he was twelve and liked Uncle Billy’s moonshine. He was sent away for doing things to little girls. No one has seen him since. He was nineteen when he vacated East room one and she moved in. 

Maryjo didn’t smoke. 

AJB