Brushing Sand
Answer number one: it was beautiful, and then it was dust, and then it was both.
I remember seeing the rover for the first time. I almost didn’t want to touch it, like it was holy, a bone from a saint. Then I stepped back and saw my bootprint next to it, and I knew, fully, where we were.
The four of us had studied Mars exhaustively for years and viewed every image, still or moving, dozens or hundreds of times. We had felt the sand that first sample-return drone recovered: a box of precious nothingness, 10 centimeters square, every grain analyzed and formulated by celebrated scientists. They learned so little from it. But what we felt, we chosen four who immersed tentative fingers within it, let it rest in the grooves of our fingerprints...
Full story newly published by NewMyths here: https://sites.google.com/newmyths.com/newmyths-com-issue-66/issue-66-stories/brushing-sand
Years ago, the early draft of this story appeared for a brief time on Prose. The response was favorable, and also included some criticism that helped me realize the story could be better. After a great deal of reworking, I am very proud to share the final, published version with my Prose friends. Thanks to all who commented on that early draft, but especially to TheWolfeDen, whose challenge inspired the story, and JD4, whose criticism was sharpest and therefore the most helpful.
Firelight
“I suppose I did
love her,” Braelyn said.
A log crackled, spit
glowing flecks against
the dark. She might have
had more to say, but
not to us.
I sat with Ashley in
tree-broken moonlight
watching her sister,
drinking. Ashley leaned
close, shared my jacket
while the fire fell. We
cooked nothing and told
no stories. We sat with
Braelyn, watching embers
fade to ash.
March 11, 2024
Servant of the Servants of God
The angry ground stopped the prelate’s quill. He had no means of protecting himself and hugged his scroll to the lectern while the earth shook. Each seated man leapt from his chair except Pope Formosus, whose long-dead corpse slid to the basilica’s stone—an indignity that wrenched the prelate’s heart, but His Holiness would denounce any man who rushed to Formosus. The violent shaking jolted the former Pope over the floor, leaving putrid smudges of black on the marble.
A roar impelled the prelate to turn, and he saw fragments explode from the last of the nave’s roof, smashing against the pews and the floor. Then blocks of wall ripped free until whole sections tumbled onto debris...
Full story available here: https://sites.google.com/view/sundial-magazine/short-stories/servant-of-the-servants-of-god - Many thanks to the Ashley Murphy of Sundial Magazine for publishing the piece. Hope you enjoy it, everyone - the Cadaver Synod is far too crazy a tale for me to have made up.
Character is Everything
"Do you swear in your writing?" is not really the apt question. It is more illuminating to ask, "Do my characters swear?"
Some do. Some don't.
My story "Rideshare" follows an angry, shallow, and lonely young corporate type . Here he is, drunkenly offering his Uber driver money to hang out with him:
“Look… Luis—glad your fucking nametag’s there—Luis, Bill Murray is the coolest guy in the world. Hands down. There’s this night out in LA, Bill Murray is going to a club or a movie or wherever the fuck a Bill Murray goes, and he takes this cab and the driver says he plays the saxophone, but Bill Murray talks to him and learns that he never gets the time to play. So Bill Murray says, drive to your apartment and get your fucking saxophone, and then they drove to a parking lot someplace and Bill Murray pays this guy for a whole night so he can just listen to him fucking play the saxophone on the hood of the cab. Now I’m not as cool as fucking Bill Murray, but I got some cash, man. How much you make in a night?”
He's glib. He's boastful. He makes a show of how impressive and manly he is because he tries, desperately, not to reveal what he really feels. (Full story here: https://www.sleetmagazine.com/selected/love_v13n2.html) He swears the way a child would, peppering his speech with an excess of profanity that does not make him as tough as he thinks. The Uber driver never swears once. He is a family man, empathetic and grounded. They are different people; if they are to be real, they need to talk differently.
By way of contrast, here's William Mumler in my yet-unpublished novel, justifying his practice of photographing people with deceased spirits:
Mumler watched the flame, coming forth steadily from the brass.
“Jonah told as destined. He gave the people the message they needed from the Lord,” Mumler said. “The Almighty knows all: my sins, your sins, what will become of us, what would become of Jonah and the Ninevites. Though He knew He would spare the city, He suffered Jonah to spread the message of its destruction. A small untruth in service of a greater truth.”
He appealed to Guay’s unmoving face. “Prophets must serve the truth. That is what I have learned. One cannot choose to be a prophet, Mr. Guay. One cannot choose even the details of the message. The truth chooses the prophet. There are spirits, manifesting in this new age. We must serve that truth, or we will be swallowed.”
If a profane syllable left that man's tongue, his entire character would crumble like a clay-footed statue. In a moment of crisis that could destroy everything he holds dear, my Mumler might use the word "damn," though if anyone heard, he would feel shame.
The character, the narrative, the style determine the language I use in my writing. I am perfectly content to write an academic analysis, or to drop an f-bomb if it makes a joke funnier. I'll write that businessman out on a bender or that photographer who reads his Bible nightly. My task is to write them true.
Coda
Cockroaches survived, and some people, who are cockroaches plus presumption, but not much else. Grass burned or grew unnibbled; forests decayed; oceans lolled to and fro, breakerless.
Twelve months after, a crab came to shore. The news reported that, and then another, another, so it could not be a fluke, and so the people came. These survivors tented on beaches for weeks or months, and if they were very good or very lucky or prayed enough to their gods, a crab might scuttle ashore. The watchers would hush. They would hoist the few children to see. They would gaze on the claws and bead eyes, weep, remember the world.
7-Eleven Cighartha
Buddha downed his Big Gulp in
two mighty sips as I, cretinous
creature of line end, dug madly
for crumpled bills and change,
change, and the Buddha said,
“The trouble with you is,”
and he snapped into his
Slim Jim for dramatic emphasis,
no doubt, leaving me—
who had so recently struggled,
cosmically, with forces so great as
Starbucks and the Arizona Iced
Tea Company and their warring armies of
flavors—leaving me
to madlib his profundity with troubles
(stupidity, sloth, an
indifferent God, parking violations)
too many to name, hanging
on his words while the
register ceased to ring and the
Slurpees ceased to melt, until,
“the trouble with you is,
you think you have time,”
the Buddha said, smiling
beatifically, paunch sagging free,
“motherfucker, time has you.”
Ivermectin
“My guinea pig has lice,”
she says, which means
a veterinarian and an
ivermectin prescription,
Google says, which means
a drive too long for the
ailing minivan, the
check engine light says,
which means the mechanic
again and time off work and
a loan, my account balance says,
but she held him close
when COVID closed the world
and she could not hug
friends, this warm little creature
cooing on her chest, nibbling
hay as she Zoomed with
her teacher who would die,
so many would die,
“I’m sorry,” I say,
“we’ll help him.”
Barstool Tale
A bikini strap crept from beneath her terrycloth robe sometimes at lunch. 10:30, every day. We’d eat sandwiches, she’d put the dishes in the sink, kiss me, then shut herself in her office until 3:00. A lot of her regulars popped on during lunch breaks.
She had told me she was a cam girl long before, and when I told her I didn’t care, I meant it—yeah, that’d be great, IPA—I meant it, mostly. But day after day, sitting just on the other side of the wall—no, fresh glass, thanks—I thought about it more and more. Wouldn't you?
After I moved in four months back, I asked if I could sit in the corner while she cammed. She giggled sweetly and said, “no.” She didn’t giggle when I asked the second time or the third.
I brought up the popping sounds, in a cute jokey way. She smiled but said nothing. Then she bought me a pair of Beats. Noise cancelling.
I kept thinking about it, more near the end. Reading sleep study data is a boring fucking job, in case you didn’t know, even if your girlfriend isn’t undressing next door. I thought she had to be lying about something, if I couldn’t watch. This morning I finally did it: I logged in. Don’t fucking look at me like that, I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. I changed my screen name to “Looner666” to fit in.
And there she was, on my screen, just like she’d said. And there was her bikini, small, but fully on and not crazy small; it was the one she wore to the beach when she rented a house for my birthday.
And there were the balloons.
She was grinding on a huge purple one. It popped, and as she tumbled onto the bed and laughed the chat went wild, I mean, she was getting tips left and right. She got a small green one, I think left over from my nephew’s birthday. She knelt and stuck her butt toward the camera and laid the green balloon on her calves. “I don’t know, boys,” she said into my noise-cancelling Beats, “I might be too much for this one.”
I shut my laptop and eyes. I couldn’t stop seeing it, though, her ass descending toward the balloon. Yeah, go ahead, laugh, but I wasn’t laughing, and I no longer gave a damn if Patient 10347 had sleep apnea, so I went for a walk. I ended up at the liquor store. Then I ended up at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
I had martini in hand when her terrycloth robe stepped out of her office. She saw me in the jacket and tie first, I think, and the new exercise ball beside the sofa second. “Bounce for me,” I told her.
She clammed up. She came back five minutes later in a sweatshirt to tell me she didn’t like my tone. She said to leave the key on the counter by Monday.
Women.
Today, The Pogues [repost]
Shane MacGowan died this morning. As a small nod in his honor, I wanted to repost this piece about my favorite song that he wrote, which I originally posted on St. Patrick's Day in 2021.
My Irish bloodline is more personal trivia than heritage. My forebears sailed across the sea to farm in Pennsylvania nearly two centuries before my birth and roughly a generation before the Potato Famine, all of which is to say, there’s a great deal of distance there. Ireland is an abstraction, and my connection to it is ancestral rather than lived.
I never experience that connection more strongly than when I listen to The Pogues, “Thousands Are Sailing.” That song encapsulates anything I’ve ever read, seen, heard, or felt of my Irish heritage. There’s a push and a pull, grief and love, genuflection and spit, grit and pride. It’s a great song.
I’m putting a YouTube link with the very-much-still-relevant lyrics below. By all means, wear the green plastic hat, drink the Shamrock Shake, tell the kids the leprechaun left a chocolate gold coin, and down some Guinness and Jameson alongside your corned beef. But if you can spare five minutes and twenty odd seconds this St. Patrick’s Day, give them to The Pogues and think of the Irish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27iJsZpQn3A