The Great Sage

A lady in a grocery store once told me “your garden is a reflection of your heart.” How could I know I would, in the cereal isle, meet one of the great sages of our day? Well, of course I wanted to have a beautiful heart so ever since I have been devoted to my garden, turning up the hardened rocky soil, the thorny weeds, and the disarray and replacing them with a supple grass, grapes, tomatoes, plums, peaches, strawberries, bright flowers, and figs. (In a side note I always stayed away from the lemons and limes – nobody could accuse me of a sour heart) I even tore down the apple tree when it refused, on threat of death, to produce a sweet fruit.

So you can understand my embarrassment for my neighbor who has more of a barren wasteland than a garden. What a sad sad glimpse into the poor man’s heart. I could bore you with the details of his life, bemoan you with the reasons why he has turned into such a miserable and slovenly man. Instead I will merely give you a glimpse of his garden and allow you to see all that for yourself. Do you see the way his only tree, some wild oak that was standing when he bought the place, has a mold growing on the north side? It’s that greenish-blue hue. The fallen branches lying on the ground like forgotten soldiers. Dandelion springs shooting up like metaphors in a short story. I walked out this morning and saw three tumbleweeds lying about, as if attracted to this mess and needing to be a part of it. I have no doubt that they rolled there on their own free will.

My kingdom for a brick! Or at least a stack of bricks that could separate me from this abomination. Bricks and maybe some cement to glue them together. And some guy (or gal) willing to form those bricks into a wall.

Instead the chain link fence allows me perfect view into his heart of hearts. Take this morning for example. I walk out into my garden and he’s out there with his dog (I won’t go into details about what his dog adds to his garden) and a Frisbee. I’m pruning and shearing and picking and weeding. He’s jumping and laughing and playing and the dog is running and jumping and chasing.

“Hay Richard!” I shout over the fence. I’ll use “Richard” because I want to protect his identity, cause his actual name is Dick.

“What’s up, my man?” he stops what he is doing and walks over to the fence.

He’s never listened to me about this before but I try and try again. “The yard is looking a little bit ratty today. Starting a Tumbleweed collection?” I figure humor may be the best route.

“No, man,” he says, “but ain’t they cool look’n? All round and brown and ready to roll. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have some extra plums, would ya?” I hand him a basket from over the fence that has a little bit of everything. Maybe it will inspire him. “Hay man, I’m super surprised that you don’t own a dog.”

I’d never owned a dog. I told him so.

“But a dog completes you man. A dog is what can make a person whole.”

I ran these words through my head. A…dog…completes…you. I’d never thought about it before. I had a great heart but I knew I was missing something.

Suddenly I was bitter, resentful, and envious. Here was my neighbor, who had been complete this whole time, even if he had such an ugly heart, and there I was, next to him, incomplete, not even a whole man. I felt ashamed.

Nobody would be able to accuse me of being incomplete. The great sage has spoken. It was time to get a dog.

-Steven Mast

Drunk Neighbor Rick

By Marcy

It was early, I was grumpy, and there was my loud, usually drunk neighbor. This morning he looked like Hangover Man, the archnemesis of Party Dude. But I had to ask just to make sure my apartment wasn’t an isolated incident.

“Hey Rick – you have hot water this morning?”

Rick shrugged at me as he ambled to his dirty pickup. “Didn’t check. I shower at night.”

I know, because the pipes squeal and keep me awake. And usually he’s hammered, and can’t hold onto shampoo bottles. They fall from his soapy hands to the tub floor with hollow thuds at regular intervals. Or at least, I’m guessing what the noise is as I lie in bed below his apartment. I’ve never been in the shower with Rick. UGH - I shudder to think about it.

Rick threw a garbage bag into the back of his truck and nodded in my direction. “You should call the landlord if your hot water’s out.”

Thank you, State The Obvious Man. “Yeah, if it’s not fixed by the time I get home from work, I will.” I opened my car door and retrieved my coffee from the roof where I’d set it. At least it was a gorgeous spring day. I could eat my lunch outside, with a book, and no-one would bother me except bugs. And it might even be too early for bugs.

Rick opened his truck door and it creaked with a metallic groan. Some rust fell off of the hinges and clinked onto the pavement. “Wellp, have a good day there, Chad.” He hopped in and turned the motor over, and the door slammed with the falling of more rust.

My name isn’t Chad. It’d Brad. Stupid moron.

His truck backed out of the parking spot and nearly hit my Honda. I thought about yelling for him to watch it but he threw the car into drive just in time and pulled away, peeling out of the parking lot like he was at the start of a drag race. The garbage bag rolled out of the open truck bed and fell to the ground in a cloud of muffler smoke, and a female arm dangled from the opening.

I puked. And then I called the cops. And then I called work to tell them I’d be late.

The cops stayed at our building until it was dark and had sent out an APB on Rick’s truck. They think when he got to wherever he was going to dump her he realized the bag was gone, and he had skipped town. They didn’t think he’d come back – likely set up in another town and start over there. They’d have to wait until he started leaving another trail – apparently they’d been looking for a serial killer who had been dumping women’s bodies in garbage bags all around the city.

That night I curled up in my bed and couldn’t sleep. The fear that Rick would return and come after me for blowing him in was too great. One undercover guy, on lookout, was supposedly parked out front of our building. It didn’t reassure me. But somehow I managed to drift off to sleep, weary from the shock and fear of the day.

I awoke, hours later, to squealing pipes and intermittent hollow thumps from the apartment above me.

Last day

Sorry for the departure from the assignment. I had thoroughly intended to follow it. But this story came out. I think it's because I'm writing full-time again, so Existential Bryan reared his ugly, confusing head.
By Bryan
On the last day of your life, the world moves with you. Thump thump. Sometimes it has to catch up.
The guy next door goes for his paper. Yours is already on the table, spewing stock quotes and personal injury ads in one dusty breath staring dead at the burnt-out kitchen light. The phone rings. Pops. Leave it. Thump thump.
On the last day of your life, seven forks are left in your drawer. You will use four. Drop one on the floor thump thump. You will use three.
The song on the radio has played at the same time every day for the past week but there's an extra note this time, somewhere between losing the love and getting her back. Thump thump.
You lost an argument in your head once, something about washing your feet in the shower and debating the merits and abilities of the washwater to adequately perform its function solo, or does it need the cloth? The vice presidency of bathroom politics is lost to you on the last day of thump thump your life.
And it is then, pausing rigid with spatula under the heat lamp of the stove as your eggs fog over, that you begin to doubt the most-improved singer award from chorus you earned was really yours to own. Pity is fickle, which worked in your favor, but talents need definition or else you'd still be proud you learned to blow smoke rings in college. All this you'd learn in a week but it is the last day of your life and the eggs need salt.
Thump thump. A brick comes through the window. It has two words on the small sides: One is written in a different language and you shouldn't understand it but you can; the other is "hint." And your fork drops because all the blood in your body hurries to your brain where everyone's working overtime; your brain is opening up and someone's in there flipping switches. And it makes sense, that poem you read in 11th grade written by the old dead dude. It was rather insightful but you could write it much better now.
Thump thump. A brick comes through the window. That's the third time this week, but the offending vaulters' parents don't care. You speak in non sequitirs to no one who'll listen. On the last day of your life the parents don't care. Much like yesterday, neither do you.
Thump.
Th

The face of change

Philip grabbed his chipped Caribou mug from his night stand and jabbed it under Mr. Coffee’s nasal drip without bothering to wash out yesterday’s black ring. The mindless drip grew into a weak stream that felt like a mocking indictment, as if it were his life’s blood leaking through the beans - being strained of any value. Phil was not a fan on Mondays.

He didn’t hold it against the Mondays, it wasn’t their fault that they were followed by four other mind numbing week days, just like it wasn’t his fault that he was always followed around by four mind numbing nitwits who called themselves CPAs, but probably couldn’t spell it. King Philip the 1st, emperor of a raindrop called the auditing department of Logicons R&D division.

Oooh-rah.

Mr. Coffee gave a last wet gasp and Phil pulled out his cup wondering if its stimulating effect might be heightened by skipping the part where he dumped it down his throat and simply poured it down his pants. Could he get disability for that and stay home? Phil knew he needed a change.

Attempting to button up his white collar with one hand, Phil wondered if change was possible; real change, not just changing from Dentine to Juicy Fruit, but genuine, paradigm shifting, earth shattering change. Hand slipping, Phil sloshed a wave of coffee onto his clean-ish white shirt.

At least I get to change my shirt; he thought bitterly and began the process of one hand unbuttoning. The coffee stayed in the hand, it was a rule.

Phil was about half way to work before he realized that his neighbor Ron had clearly possessed two heads. Not like, a mannequin head under one arm or some kind of two faced makeup, but genuinely had two heads, each just off center of the top of his torso, each with its own neck, each with its own goatee.

It was not until Phil raced into his office to share this startling observation with his newly two-headed coworkers that Phil felt deep down in his soul that change, real change, was possible. Holy crap.

-Brihack

Song of the Sea Serpent

By Marcy

I wrecked my car, and it’s all that sea serpent’s fault.

I was driving to the beach, north of Salem. The sun was bright off the water and my sunglasses weren’t cutting it. Last time I buy aqua-tinted lenses just to match one outfit. It’s all about polarized lenses for me from now on.

Anyway, I was reaching up to adjust the visor when I saw it. It looked like a dragon – but with no wings. Just a huge scaly body, the color of basalt and ocean glass, its eyes as bright and yellow-white as the sun that was reflecting off the water behind it. Steam churned from its nostrils and rose from its back. It arced into the sky, the bottom half of it still submerged.

And it sang.

I will never forget the sound of its voice. It was clear, crystalline, pure. It sang to the sun, wavering there above the surface, treading water with a hidden tail. Its voice rang through the summer air, swirling in the clouds and drifting on the salty ocean breeze. I closed my eyes and fell into the melody.

I awoke, my car halfway submerged in the tide, tire tracks stretching behind me through the sand back to the road. The serpent was gone, replaced by flashing lights and freaked-out beachgoers.

And I hummed the song the serpent sang all the way to the asylum.