Suzanne Moratorium

The sleet falls like sugar in a tin pan, spilling on God's kitchen floor and sending the city's vermin scattering in to its darkest alleys. Red and blue lights splash through the window and jump off my desk as I send a shot of bourbon down to meet the other four. It's cheaper than heating and easier than counseling, and with my lack of clientele lately it's prudent to watch the books.

The sign on the door says "Moratorium Investigations," and I feel like the letterer missed an "on" in there somewhere. Not a damn soul is coming in here at this time of night. I think about getting a cab home, but with the state of this city I'd just as likely wake up in a short crate on a long boat to Shanghai.

A shadow darkens my door. I'm not too sloshed to grip the revolver on my desk and point in the vague direction of its head.

The door opens, letting in a walking puddle -- five foot eleven of beige overcoat and hypothermia draped over a man that looked like he could throw a bum through a railcar and still be home in time for dinner. He shakes the slush out of his messy brown hair, looks at me and says, "Walter Moratorium?"

I stare at him for a minute and send down another shot to join the party. "He's dead. I'm Suzie. Whatd'ya want?"

His face starts to go into full on "condolences" mode, so I cut him off right there. "Look, either tell me what you want or get out."

I'm startin' to understand I why I have so few clients.

He looks at me grimly. He says, "I'm sorry. I'm looking for a man named Augustus Briton."

Sobriety hits me like a prize fighter in a semi. My eyes tighten, my nostrils flare, my revolver finds itself loaded and holstered, and I'm standing.

"Go on."

Concentrate, pt. 1

My mother says, "Close your eyes." She waits a moment, then adds, "Push it to the top of your mouth, and exhale slowly."

I do.

She says, "Let your mind relax."

I try. I drown out the clinking of glasses, taking of orders. The couple two tables to the right just got engaged. The guy at the bar buying a round just got promoted.

Drown them out.

Another moment, and she says, "Now tell me."

I concentrate, moving the lump of food to the left, to the right. Images zoom past, a memory zoetrope, herbal rolodex, and...

I tell her, "Salt, obviously. Black pepper. Cumin, oregano, and vinegar." She says, "And?"

I inhale slightly, a few more images popping up. "Onions and garlic? No, it's milder than that. Shallots. And scallion."

"Keep going."

"Um... Something lemony. Not sweet enough to be the juice, not flowery enough to be lemongrass. Lemon oil?"

"Close."

I move the food a millimeter backwards. My tastebuds pick up on the bitterness. "Lemon peel."

I hear her thinking; the sound of an inked nib slicing checkmarks into a sheet of parchment. She asks me, "How?"

I've exhausted this forkful, so I swallow it and procure another. "Concentrate, " she say, in that nagging authoritative tone. I move small pockets of air back and forth through my nostrils, trying to discern everything that happened to every ingredient, every thought of the chef. The way my mother talks about it, you'd think you could tell a person's life -- past, present, and future -- through taste alone. Something mystical.

It finally hits. The slight scent of smoke. "Faintest hint of carmelization. He cut the peel, flexed it to release the oil, and fried it with the shallots and scallions." A moment later, I add, "In sesame oil."

She says nothing for a while, so I open my eyes, and ask, "Can I enjoy my meal now?"

She smiles and says, "Not yet. But you're getting closer. Now dig in."

Antagony

Agony, contesting.
Antagony, competing.

Two words, related, negated. Two words of the same coin. Agonize and antagonize.

It's Thursday, and it's raining, and you haven't called. A desire to see you, but why? Get soaked in freezing rain when I know you aren't home? Call when I know you won't answer? Pine when I know you're with her?

Vodka drips angrily from the overturned bottle, sleek puddle devouring the hotel ever so slowly. My mind and the television buzz, on but not showing anything. Agony, antagony. Nose so close to the floor, smelling the solvents in the carpet, watching the dust settle, I imagine her hands on you and choke.

If only she were me.
If only she weren't.

Internal Monologue

"Paul, come in, sit down."

Come on come on come on come on. Gimme the job. Gimme the job. Come on.

"We've been reviewing your application..."

And you'd love to extend the position to me?

"...very strong credentials, very strong. You came so highly recommended..."

That you'd gladly fire the entire board and give me all of their salaries?

"...from your professors at Lehigh, I had to..."

Explode in your pants and hire me immediately?

"...pass your resumé along to a couple alum here. They said if Professor Gellert was commending you..."

My balls must be gigantic enough to earn six figures and pay off my student loans pretty please?

"...I should hire you immediately. So Paul, I'd love to extend this opportunity for you to--"

"Bend this company over and fuck it so hard it vomits money?"

"..."

Shit. Shit!

"When can you start?"

Bildungsroman

I was fifteen when I died.

She came to me, radiant gossamer beauty, and gave me a choice. And because I was afraid, I said no. She didn't say anything, but Her disappointment killed me as I watched Her smile, and fade to nothingness, leaving me alone in the wood brown living room of my parent's house.

I didn't know it then, but that's when I died.

I soon saw the others on the news. Champions, they said. Righting wrongs, striving for good. I shit you not -- one of them actually pulled a cat out of a gaddamn tree. And as the years went on, sixteen, seventeen, I admit, I became jealous. Jealous of the attention they received, the spotlight I walked away from.

I was nineteen. I didn't know it then, but that's when I met my wife, Virginia, blond pigtails and green plaid skirt bouncing to the pop stand. Of course, it'd be two years till we sat next to each other in the lecture hall at university that she'd even know I existed. It'd be a year after that, when I comforted her after that asshole Eric dumped her for Kathy Ferguson, that she'd start to have feelings for me. It'd be another year till after graduation, when we'd sit on the hood of my beat up '75 Camaro, when we'd consider a life together. All the while, feeling hollow and unfulfilled, useless. I learned how to fake a good enough smile, and -- God bless her -- Ginny never questioned why I'd leave the room when the Champions were on the 6 o'clock news.

In another year, when I was twenty-four, the Forty Year War would break out. The Champions were on the news again, but broken, bloodied. Beaten again and again as Malevolence spread. Month after month, Ginny's belly grew under an advancing cloud of fear. Year after year, the Champions -- those that remained -- fought to keep our family safe. Year after year, fewer Champions, more Malevolence, and Ginny still never knew how close she had come to seeing me in the papers. Instead of fear, I felt regret. The Champions were losing, and y'know, you wonder, "Would I have made a difference? Just one more?" Regret turned to shame pretty quickly. Ginny would worry and ask, and blame herself, and I couldn't even lift a finger to comfort her.

When the last Champion was shown this morning, limp body broken over the rubble in what was left of Rotterdam, searching for more blood to leak, and the world's nations grew silent to hear the words of Malevolence, I was in the living room. That same damn living room I'd inherited from my parents, chambering a .38 round. I knew then, finally, at sixty-four, that I had indeed died when I was fifteen. I decided it was time to make that feeling a reality. I was so far gone I couldn't even hear Ginny screaming for me to stop as I jammed the barrel deeper under my chin, finger slipping on the trigger as the tears fell hard and fast. I couldn't hear her as I pulled the trigger.

I couldn't hear the click. Or the bang, or the sound of bone fragments raining down on the polyester sofa. I couldn't feel the bullet pierce my skull, or the recoil yank my arms down.

Come to think of it, I couldn't feel the gun in my hand any more. I could only feel a warmth that I had only known some fifty-nine years before. She came back to me, standing exactly where She first stood. Poor Ginny must've been kickin' her jaw it'dve dropped so far. Standing there, She gave me the same choice now. This arthritic, defeated, sixty-four year old shell, She gives the same choice. Become an instrument of good, of light. Become strong. Be what this world needs.

What the fuck do you think I said?

Greasy Spoon

"To or from?"
Kate looked at the time-worn man behind the counter. "Hmm?" she replied.
"You runnin' to, or from?"
She laughed half-heartedly. "From. Maybe to. How did you know?"
The man -- Ed, his shirt said, if it was his shirt -- said, "I always tell people, this ain't a town, it's a waystation. People only come here when their runnin' to or from somethin'. Nobody lives here."
Kate said, "Well don't you live here, Ed?"
The man laughed (or coughed, she wasn't really sure) and said, "Name's Greg, hon. And I doubt anyone could call what I do livin'."

A Proposition

He said, "Do you want to sleep with me?" and she said, "Excuse me?"

He said again, "Do you want to sleep with me, " this time more as a statement than a question, and exasperated, she replied "What kind of woman do you think I am, exactly?"

He sat next to her on the empty subway seat and said, "The kind of woman that likes to keep things simple. The kind of woman that's tired of complications, missed calls, duplicitous intent, cheating, backstabbing, and everything else that comes with men. The kind of woman that has entertained this thought before, because she didn't immediately say 'No.' And the kind of woman that wants to know what it is about me that makes me able to walk up to a stranger on the morning commute and ask if they want to sleep together, fully confident in the knowledge that it will be well worth the time. So I'll ask you again -- do you want to sleep with me?"

And blushing, a "yes" leaves her lips before she has time to stop it. As she turns an even deeper shade of crimson, he smiles and says, "Well now that that's out of the way, do you want to get some coffee?"

Welcome

So at some point between the present and the past, I began to enjoy writing fiction. Short stories -- sometimes as short as a paragraph. But also, longer works -- a book I've been working on called Matryoshka, and a TV series I've been working on with Johnny. I do get writer's block sometimes, and when that happens I write a little "excerpt from." A scene from a story somewhere else in space (some-when else in time...). There'll be no real setup, and it's not really going anywhere, but it helps, and I think they're interesting enough to post here. Thus the title.

This isn't a "stuff happened in my life" blog. If you want to know what's going on in my life, well, we evolved mouths for a reason, and I'd much rather catch you up over coffee. This is for posting some of my writings, and getting critiques. So yeah, comments are welcome. I'd go as far as to say that they are mandatory, but as I have no real way of enforcing that, I'll just be polite about it.

I'll be posting two excerpts immediately after this post, and then placing a link to this blog on my facebook. Maybe I'll twitter my myspace, and google the blagosphere, and collapse into a coma suffering from severe web 2.0 overdose.

Today's quote:
"The fact of twilight does not mean you cannot tell day from night." ~Samuel Johnson (Thanks, Natalie!)