Stranger, Then Fiction

Katherine Maillet

CK — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:07:50 +0000

       Kat was on the verge. Her girlfriend of two years had just ejected her from their mutual apartment; she couldn’t move back in with her parents, good God-fearing Christians, because of the aforementioned girlfriend. She would have to pawn all her belongings to afford a hotel room for long enough to find more permanent lodgings. Except Rachelle was holding all of her things hostage; she believed Kat had cheated on her. Kat had been faithful. She was beginning to suspect Rachelle’s paranoia was symptomatic of some undiagnosed mental illness. It would have been a relief to be away from her had it not been for the homelessness.
       Kat had friends, but she loathed to be an imposition. Besides, Rachelle had probably already contacted most of them to air her accusations. After two years, it was difficult to tell their friends apart – though their breakup would be a good Litmus test.
       Rachelle had always been the more charming half of the couple. Kat knew she could be abrasive, but that hadn’t seemed to matter when she had a significant other around. Rachelle was good at maintaining appearances, balancing champagne flutes between her fingers and holding forth on a variety of topics, from Aristotle to the latest episode of American Idol. She was a social chameleon and butterfly. Kat was unable and unwilling to shape-shift to please others; otherwise she might have had a family to return to.
       She should have cheated on her. Then, at least, she would have someplace to go.

PHOTO BY WHO-IS-DU, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Nevin Hudson

CK — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:17:13 +0000

       Nevin Hudson knew everything there was to know about himself by the age of fifteen. He was pretty straight-forward, as far as people go. He had a deficiency of attention, but he made it work – he got shit done, son. Not school projects, yeah, whatever, negligible, but he could cook like a banshee.
       He’d spend a minute whisking the egg yolks, then, bing!, the garlic bread in the oven would need to be pulled out, lickety-split, then the spaghetti he’d been al denteing would need to be attended to, and he’d have the vegetable crisper on the go and fish frying in a pan to flip, onions to dice, mozzarella cheese to be grated, and truffles to be shaved. A dash of this, a pinch of that – say what you want about his attendance record, nobody but nobody could say Nevin couldn’t make a mean meal. His speciality was the risotto.
       He was going to be a chef, he knew that. His parents had high hopes. He was reaching for the four stars.
       He also knew that he was no good at board games, that cat dander made his nose run, that he was prone to breaking his collar bone, that winter was his favourite season and snow was his favourite type of precipitation, that the only movie he could sit through more than once was Die Hard, that geometry seriously frustrated him, that he could beat any Mario game ever, that he was, according to his sixth grade teacher, “charming”, and that he was going to buy a pet iguana as soon as he moved out on his own and he was going to name him ‘Jiminy’.
       The one thing he didn’t know was that the man he thought was his father really wasn’t.

PHOTO BY LITTLEWING77, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Hayley Klein

CK — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:12:08 +0000

       Hayley’s father was an anti-Semitic drunk. He wasn’t an alcoholic, per se - he drank more than most parents, but less than some. And he wasn’t an anti-Semite by day, but when a couple of bottles of beer hit his bloodstream, it was “dirty Jew” this and “filthy kike” that. She supposed it could be worse. He never beat her or her mother, or even yelled at them. He was not an angry man by nature, which is why these plastered prejudices were so discrepant in her mind. It was like she had two fathers. No - one and a half, no - one and a quarter men.
      It was tough to reconcile. What was she meant to do? Her mother overlooked it. This, at least, was congruent with her mother’s personality. She was passive, and, flip-side, extremely forgiving, something Hayley became very grateful for during her adolescence.
      Her friend Leslie slept over on their couch for three days when her parents kicked her out of her home for skipping science to smoke pot one too many times. The second of those three nights Hayley was struggling with a bout of insomnia and came down to check up on Leslie. She did not turn on the light. She sat down on an armchair opposite her friend, counting, instead of sheep, Leslie’s breaths. She noticed a blemish on the arm that clutched the blanket to her friend’s frail frame. A mulberry bruise, not the size and shape of a fist, but of an object thrown close range. Leslie did not stir from her steady sleep as Hayley traced a fingertip around its perimeter, imaging vases, telephones, books.
       Leslie moved away and they kept in touch then eventually lost contact. She was okay, she was fine; so fine, in fact, that hearing her talk about her life was dull, a contributing factor to the loss of touch. Hayley would run into her on the street, later, and it would be strange, it would be awkward, and one of them would remark on how awkward it was, and they would both laugh and smile, and it would be strange. Hayley would catch herself searching for scars on Leslie’s arm, revealed by the summer heat, but there would be nothing to see there except for skin.

PHOTO BY TAFO, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Charles Theroux

CK — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:50:57 +0000

       When he was little, Charles’ favourite question was, ‘How does this work?’ Well, factually, it was still his favourite question – it was always his favourite thing to ask.
       There was a drawer in the kitchen where things that had no other home would go. There was drawer for cutlery and one for batteries and appliance manuals and then there was this one, a miscellaneous drawer. In the miscellaneous drawer Charles found a small black-handled screwdriver. His mother did not notice his discovery, he ensured this; he smuggled it upstairs to his room hidden in the crook of his arm.
       He disassembled everything. Well, everything that could be disassembled with only the removal of screws and the fingers of a six-year-old boy. His mother walked in on him before he could get to the re-assembling bit of his plan. Her reaction was, apparently, to fetch the camera, as she now had a photo of the incident displayed in a frame on her bed-side table. A boy sitting on a shag carpet in the midst of pieces of toys; guilt conspicuously absent from his face.
       As he grew, Charles became pre-occupied with the concept of gears, cogs churning. He liked microchips, yes, wires, that sort of thing, but it was old-fashioned machinery that compelled him. The complex simplicity of it, a chain of action and reaction, this flowing from that, movement begetting movement, ad infinitum. Gears pleased him, aesthetically. Especially exposed ones. You could see the inner-workings of the object, what made it tick tick-ticking along, its machinations transparent. The answer, apparent. No disassembly required.

PHOTO BY HYPPOTOMATUS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Robert Mann

CK — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:19:31 +0000

       Rob had been going places, and he’d been going to them while juggling a ball between his feet. He wasn’t just being cocky when he said he was good; his coach agreed, and soon the scouts did too. Bearing down on the ball, he felt like a demigod. Watching it sail into the top corner of the net, he was a downright deity.
       Okay, so he was a little cocky. But that didn’t change the fact that the scouts wanted him on their teams.
       But then he came along. Kyle Perry, that dodgy bastard. He had talent, but he was known for stirring up shit - getting into afters with goalies and argy-bargy with the refs. He was infamous. So when he “accidentally” tripped Rob, nobody was too surprised. It was the stomping on Rob’s knee that really shocked everyone. The noise it made was particularly disturbing.
       What the fuck I ever do to you?, Rob asked, maybe out loud, maybe in his head. The sharpness of the pain in his knee made everything else dull and blurred in comparison. They carried him away on a stretcher. They pumped him full of painkillers.
       Surgery couldn’t solve everything. His knees were already crocked from all the years of playing and practicing; the stomp just sped up the inevitable by about a decade. Rob’s career was over. The satisfaction that Kyle’s was too wasn’t enough – throughout the rehabilition process, Rob nursed a grudge as well as his aching joints.
       This grew into elaborate revenge fantasies. He never committed them to paper, just in case a police officer ever showed up on his doorstep (there was a suspicious amount of painkillers in his bathroom), but he harboured them in the back of his mind. On his darkest days, some of his plans seemed frighteningly possible.
       Kyle happened to show up on one of those days. This was the first time Rob had really seen him since the game. Kyle had never apologized, a fact that fueled some of Rob’s fantasies.
       Kyle was a mess. He looked as if the last time he’d gotten any sleep had been a nap on a hard bench about a week ago. His hair, which had always been slicked back with gel, flopped in his face and lacked lustre. He looked Rob in the eyes and told him he was sorry. He looked on the verge of tears, though tired people tend to constantly look like they’re going to cry. Rob invited him in and offered him a beer.

PHOTO BY JDIPIERRO, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Leena Rhodes

CK — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:10:21 +0000

       Leena’s older sister Naomi was always in trouble. She was stubborn and her feelings were fiercer than anyone’s Leena knew. Home was a battlefield, and she always refused to concede any ground; her shouts were detonations. Just dug in the heels of her black combat boots.
       Leena was a conscientious objector. Though her parents and sister called her to arms, asked her to pick up her weapons to fight for their cause, she just shook her head. She retreated into the storage room in the basement, where there was an old armchair mom kept meaning to get re-upholstered, and she would huddle there until there was a victor.
       It was nice. She brought her iPod, and sometimes a book or two. It was her underground bunker. When she was there, it was her time. Leena time. She got a lot of reading done. She slogged through the classics. When her parents found out her sister was flunking Spanish and Biology and might not graduate, she got most of the way through War and Peace. When Naomi started dating Paul, six years her elder, Leena finished Nabokov’s Lolita.  She felt accomplished, educated.
       She could have taken advantage of her parents. They were so consumed with Naomi’s needs that Leena could have done almost anything she wanted, as long as it wasn’t worse than what Naomi was doing. As long as she kept her grades up, she could have starting smoking pot and making out with boys at parties every weekend, and they probably wouldn’t have noticed.
       She didn’t. Sure, there were a couple of… incidents, where she did things she wasn’t particularly proud of. (Getting tipsy and letting Tony Baker touch her breasts. Failing two calculus tests because she didn’t study. Shoplifting a makeup compact.) But all these things paled in comparison to the stuff Naomi got up to, and so she slid by without chastisement. And she learned her lessons by herself – she soberly realized that Tony Baker was a pervert, that she had to pass calculus if she wanted to get into the architecture program, that brand of makeup gave her a rash on her face – and she didn’t repeat her mistakes.
        But she learned things from Naomi, too. She pursued her passions and decided to go into English, rather than architectural design. She learned there are some wars you need to win at all costs - she learned that from the look on Paul’s face as he watched her sister, his bride, walk down the aisle.

PHOTO BY BITTERSWEETVENOM, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Luther Thomas

CK — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:52:11 +0000

       Luther was born in the water. Literally – his mother opted for a water birth; but figuratively, too. He could tread water before he could form sentences. Other kids were scared of getting water in their eyes and ears but Luther submerged. He liked the way things looked from beneath the surface, the way the light cut through the pool. He even liked the way chlorine felt in his nose, a smoldering sensation. He never worried about drowning, but his parents did, sometimes.
       He signed up for swimming lessons. He learned the breaststroke and the butterfly. The other kids looked like they were getting in fights with the water. His instructor, Rene, skipped him ahead a couple levels. “He’s like a fish,” she told his mother. This seemed like the best compliment you could ever receive, to Luther.
       The first time he attempted a flip-turn he broke open his lip. Somehow the ledge of the pool had gotten between his face and the water, and it just split right down the middle. It looked worse than it was – the blood mixed with the water and spread. The lifeguard blew his whistle, three sharp blasts. Rene lifted him out of the pool. “You okay?” she said. Luther’s cheeks were wet but he wasn’t crying. He nodded. “I think you should go home until that heals up, though. Just in case.” She ruffled the hair near his ear.
       This was the first time, sitting on the slick deck near a puddle of his own diluted blood, that he noticed the curves in her swimsuit. The way strands of her hair plastered to the side of her face. He nodded, yes, not knowing what he was agreeing to.

Sierra Smith

CK — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:35:00 +0000

       “If you get any skinnier, I’ll stop loving you,” he said with his arms around her. She imagined he could feel her ribs poking through her skin, jabbing him in the forearms. This thought excited her.
       “Yeah?” she wiggled, stab stab stab. “So what?”
       “What do you mean, ‘so what’? So I’ll stop loving you. You’ll be unloved.” He was smiling a little though, now, because he couldn’t stay mad at her. Not when she was in his arms, wearing his sweater like that. He thought she was so effing cute, and she knew it. She didn’t know why he thought that, with her jaundiced fingernails and grotty knees, but she used it like a weapon, a sword sharper than any of her bones could ever be.
       “I could weigh five pounds and you’d still love me, you liar,” she prodded. Five pounds. She wanted to weigh five less pounds, then she’d be perfect. If he thought she was cute now, just wait for five fewer pounds.
       “You couldn’t weigh five pounds. You’d be dead.” He’d stopped moving. She hadn’t realized he’d been squirming, but his stillness came about abruptly. It was like his lungs had stopped pumped air, his heart pumping blood. As if he’d ceased metabolizing. Then his bodily functions turned back on again, and she felt him breathe on the back of her neck. “If you get too skinny, you’ll die.”
       “I’m not some malnourished African infant, all right? It’s not for you to decide when and what I eat, okay?” she said, irate now. She began to twist in his arms, doing a dance of wanting to be let go. He let her out of his embrace.
       “It’s not the eating I’m worried about,” he said softly. “It’s the throwing up.”
       She hadn’t wanted him to know about this. Not only because it was gross, but because she could tell it made him sad; for example like she could tell it in his tone right now.
       “Besides,” she refuted, ”you’d still love me if I was dead.”
       He put his hand on her back, touching her spine. “Not if it’s you that kills you.”

Wren Caldwell

CK — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:45:55 +0000

       There was a loose board in Wren’s basement. She got down on her hands and knees. She wanted to lift it up, but was scared of what she might find underneath; decomposing bodies, maybe. She had a bit of a morbid streak. To be fair, people didn’t often find very positive things hidden in their basements. Nobody ever hid their teddy bear collection in their crawl space.
       She tried to pry it open, scrabbling at it with her stubby fingernails. She’d just cut them yesterday. Wren found that whenever she cut her nails she suddenly found she needed them, to open pop cans or individually wrapped slices of swiss cheese. She thought of asking her mom where they kept the crowbar, then thought better of it. Her mom would realize she was up to something then she’d sit her down for a serious chat about drug use and sexual promiscuity.
       Her mom was very paranoid about teenagers. She cut out advice columns about raising teens and squirreled them away in her purse, ready to thrust the applicable clipping on Wren should she show the slightest sign of problem behaviour. Wren had received an editorial on binge drinking after she was caught sipping a mocktail at her cousin Murphy’s birthday party. Wren had posted the piece of paper on her corkboard, beside an old photo of her dog as a puppy. She nearly lapsed into hysterics every time she passed it.
       And thus, Wren began to grow out her fingernails. She found herself staring at them, trying to chart their growth each morning. Progress was imperceptible. After about two weeks, they finally reached the proper height to be able to leverage the board upward. Success! And instead of a human skull, Wren was rewarded with the sight of a plain brown shoebox.
       Inside were folded letters. They were discoloured at the edges. At first she assumed they belonged to her parents and thought, ‘Oh, how enchanting’; but they were addressed in an unfamiliar cursive script to “Dearest Seymour”. Had Seymour lived here before her family, and had he left these missives under the floorboards? That didn’t strike Wren as a very male thing to do. Had they been returned to sender, then? Or was she being sexist? Reading them didn’t answer her questions, though she learned some sundry details about Seymour and his love, Sam, which could have either been short-form for Samantha or a homosexual. Seymour & Samantha. Sam n’ Seymour.
       She thought about writing her own letter and adding it to the collection, to show she’d seen it, to show that she was here. She decided against it, returning the box full of love letters to its rightful place. She sat there a moment, her legs tucked beneath her. Then she went and got her mom to paint her nails for her.

Ginny Strong

CK — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:38:25 +0000

      Ginny was sure she’d been wearing shoes when she arrived. Yes, she thought with some certainty, she’d been wearing the checkered ones. They went well with her scarf, and they were much more comfortable than the heels she’d been considering. But now, they’d disappeared off someplace. No, that wasn’t true. She’d put them somewhere. She’d misplaced her shoes.
       ”Has anyone seen my shoes?” she asked. Everyone’s attention was on fire sparklers someone had brought out. They were too busy spelling their names and profanities out in the air to pay her plight any mind. She felt a stirring of ill will towards these drunkards. Sober, they were little more than her acquaintances. This hadn’t seemed to matter before because she had four wine coolers in her system. Now, though, in her time of need, she realized they weren’t her true friends.
       No, that was harsh. She was just in a bad mood because her toes were chilly. Once she found her footwear, everything would be fine. When she had her shoes back on, she would properly appreciate the joys of fire sparklers.
       She got to her feet. Her legs were less wobbly than she’d feared. “Good, good,” she said. She began to walk in a more-or-less straight line. Everybody started to seem like her friends again, now that she was putting one foot in front of the other.
       Then she stepped on a pointy beer cap.

Stranger, Then Fiction

Katherine Maillet

PHOTO BY WHO-IS-DU, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Nevin Hudson

PHOTO BY LITTLEWING77, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Hayley Klein

PHOTO BY TAFO, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Charles Theroux

PHOTO BY HYPPOTOMATUS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Robert Mann

PHOTO BY JDIPIERRO, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Leena Rhodes

PHOTO BY BITTERSWEETVENOM, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Luther Thomas

PHOTO BY LITTLEWING77, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Sierra Smith

PHOTO BY TOMMYTHEGIRL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Wren Caldwell

PHOTO BY LESLEY-JADE, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

Ginny Strong

PHOTO BY CRAZYTOB, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE STORY ABOVE IS FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.