You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'FICTION' category.
He’d had one job, in high school, though if he were honest he’d admit that it was his dream. He was an ice cream man. He never really understood how he got the job, but he scooped and drove and rang the bell like no other. On the job, he proudly wore a vintage suit he’d found at Goodwill for five dollars. He felt as though this is a how an ice cream man should be—well dressed, kind, benevolent, and jolly. The kids used to come running down the block to line up for him and he’d play games with them in the baking summer months as the melted cream ran down their sticky faces. He remembered all their birthdays.
Once, he had come down his usual corner and no kids were running toward him.
“Stevie! John! Xander!” he had yelled his favorite’s names and rung his bell.
Xander and Stevie walked out from behind one of the houses and invited him back. It turned out that Stevie’s family from China–her entire family–were visiting and there was a huge party in their backyard.
He’d gone back, eaten way too many crab legs, and just listened to the fast paced Chinese being spoken around him. Of course he couldn’t understand a word, but somehow the jokes were still funny and the stories still sad, and he’d sat there just absorbing the energy and the sounds.
Then he started getting too popular, and kids from the surrounding neighborhoods would come to his route. They told him stories of the other ice cream men, who were cruel and sharp tongued and had once, Billy told him with real tears in his eyes, ran over his cat and laughed. He didn’t believe this, because he believed in ice cream man honor, and he knew that young children sometimes made up stories and forgot that they weren’t real.
However, his views on his fellow ice cream men began changing one morning when he came to the ice cream truck warehouse to unplug his car and get started. Someone had unplugged his electric cord, the one that kept the ice cream cold and hard.
“What the fuck!” he’d yelled.
“Hah, looks like da guys are playing tricks on ya. Did y’do anything to piss ‘em off?” the manager inquired.
He’d brushed it off as a one-time episode but that entire day he couldn’t help noticing the vicious glares from the other ice cream men as they passed each other on the intersections. Images of Billy’s dead cat flashed in his mind.
The next morning as he was pulling out of the warehouse he felt a firm tug on his truck. Upon inspection, he’d found that the electric chord was tied around his tailgate.
“That coulda killed ya!” the manager had exclaimed from the dark shadows. “If that snapped you woulda been fried! The entire trucks metal. Death trap.”
He’d lived his life upon the virtue of ice cream man honor. He’d had faith in the ice cream man honor. But an ice cream man had nearly killed him.
He was almost murdered by an ice cream man.
So he left and never came back.
“Once, a very long time ago, I found a journal on the bus. It was sitting on the very last row by the window, and I didn’t notice it until I had sat down and situated myself. The cover shiny and unblemished, but it looked used and possibly loved. Most of the pages were written on, they flipped easily and I noticed sketches and neat, box-like handwriting. The very back of the last page had the words, “Tell me how it finishes,” written in all capitals on it.
As the bus let people off at the last stop before it entered the Pali, people streamed out the doors and I settled down in my seat. Alone, just me and the bus driver, the journal vibrated as it perched on my lap. It seemed to be emitting a warm electrical current.
Regarding the journal, I mostly wondered about the author…why they left it on the bus, where they were headed, what they were thinking. I was eager to start reading their inner most thoughts and emotions. But at the same time, in the back of my mind I was sure that I’d be zapped by some all powerful journal God if I violated its sacred secrecy. I remember actually chuckling aloud at that thought.
I opened it anyway, just as the bus shuddered around the Pali hair pin turn. I slowly lifted the hard bound cover.
Before I could realize what happened, the pages started fluttering wildly and a hot wind blew fiercely into my face. As the tempestuous wind gained strength, the bus was bursting at its seams, and the doors were flapping loudly. I held tightly to the journal with one hand, and with the other I grasp at one of the metal stability bars.
“Ahh!” said the driver.
“Ahh!” I said.
The driver soon lost control of the bus and hurtled over the Pali ledge. My body flew up with the momentum and slowly my eyeballs worked their way through my soft grey brain tissue until my cerebral cortex was completely penetrated. Due to gravity and the force of the fall, my own eyes were as effective as bullets at destroying my brain. However, my heart was still beating. That is, until the bus crashed and a particularly pointy pine rammed itself through the center of my body. Then I was completely dead.”
The shimmering light finished its tale matter-of-factly and seemed to regard me with indignation.
“That, young girl,” said the ghostly spectre, “is my tale. HEED IT OR PERISH.”
**
“Ahh!” I said outloud and realized with a start that I had been having a nightmare. There was a long drool mark against the window of the bus, and that journal I’d found at the bus stop was still balanced on my lap.
Looking up through the window, I realized that we were just about to hit the hair pin turn. Creepy, I thought, I’d just been dreaming about that.
I picked up the journal in my hands, and with a slight flip of my stomach, I opened the black, hard bound cover page.
This is an article I wrote for the school newspaper’s April Fools edition. It was published in the Sports section. I’m writing it from the point of view of someone who hates sports.
I was planning on spending a couple of hours writing a response to Satre’s Humanism of Existentialism, but I put it aside when an unnamed sports fan insisted that this may be the last chance to attend what he referred to as a “championship”. I was not eager; I confess I don’t know balls. I am no a sports fan.
I went with him to this game for two reasons only: 1) to shove the most convenient form of high glucose corn syrup I can find into any/all open orifices and 2) to seek out the clandestine contrast between brown and pale skin on the upper thigh. After seeing the teenage boy’s short shorts in Basketball Diaries, I was determined to seek out the illustrious Tan Line. I find the line between tan and ghostly white on the thigh area very fascinating. To me, it is the highest form of avant garde art.
Balls. What are balls any ways? Think about it. Balls sum up the Great Human Condition. They go one way across the field, only to be pushed back to the other side. There are no exits for the balls. They must remain in the game forever. It’s Tragic. I wept bitter tears over my ketchup-smeared hot dog. “The balls! The balls! The horror!” I muttered.
As I was sitting there in the stands weeping like a senior that has just received their first rejection letter, an enthused fan ignited the crowd with something called “The Wave”. For those of you unfamiliar with “The Wave”, it is a cult-minded movement of the body, where people raise there arms and gyrate their hips in synchronicity. It all happened so fast that I was left sitting alone in a forest of swaying, fleshy limbs and sensible shoes. “NO!” I cried. It quickly became clear to me that I was in the midst of fascist anarchy at its purest mob-mentality form. Hallucinations that I doubt the most pitiful LSD victim ever saw flooded my senses; swastikas swirled and “Hiel Hitler!” echoed in my ears.
Then it hit me: what I should really be afraid of are the losers. These people may all be on some Spectators High now, but later they will have come to the Championship as Princes only to leave as Toads. That, I have now learned, is when the Fear hits. The Fear can be seen in the deep black pits of the losing side’s eyes. Soon the black pits become satanically red. This is when the Fear grips the observer like a cold, spiny hand around the neck. The Fear’s slow thighs follow you, even the next day, even to the concession stand.
But let’s not worry about the Fear now. I have come to the grand Sports Ring to see SPORTS, not bawl hysterically over balls and break out in nervous sweat because of the Fear. No one can be expected to handle a situation like That.
Let’s get back to some semblance of sanity. Tan Lines. The Tan Line is a sacred thing. To outline the brief history, the first recorded Tan Line was in 369 B.C., during an interglacial period (also known as global warming). The Neanderthals drew elaborate pictures on the cave walls of hunched men with toga-like tan lines on their shoulders and calves. The Tan Line took a quick break during the first Olympics, where the players went nude. It was a happy one for the nudists and voyeurs but a very, very sad day for the Tan Line.
But what these boys—or should I say men?—wore went below my lowest expectations, literally. My ideal, The Great American Shorts, are supposed to come up to the athlete’s upper thigh, showing off the contrast of white to brown. These shorts shocked my system beyond recognition, coming down to the fool’s MID CALF! How am I supposed to observe the Tan Line? How dare you suck out all the joy and happiness from this reporter’s life. Yes, you. I know where you live. This covering of thigh brought out the raging feminist in me. This isn’t the 1800’s, for God’s sake. I really am not offended by seeing some ankle.
Sitting there in the stands, I contemplated my situation. This “game” had been going on for what seemed like days. Was I merely waiting on these ridiculous elevated benches for something that would never come to an end?
And then it came. The purely sublime end buzzer.
Oh yeah, the score was 75-43.
Note: This screen play is in response to the different African-American and female stereotypes that were completely false, and yet widely accepted as fact.
Scene 1: The Morning
Girl (Kat) is sleeping in bed, sleeping lightly. The lights are on, and her computer’s alarm is going off (it’s playing the Beatles “It’s a Hard Days Night”). A woman (Mom) is looking at her.
Mom: Kat! Wake up. You’re going to miss your bus and I’m leaving for work any minute. Are you sick? You look pale.
Kat (yawning): Ahh, I’m getting up. Don’t worry. I feel a lot better today.
Mom: Ok, hurry up! You have ten minutes.
Scene 2: American Literature
Kat is running up the stairs of Pauahi, trying to get to class on time. Her teacher is standing at the head of the class, talking about MLA citations.
Kat: Hi, sorry!
Teacher continues with the lesson. Kat sits down. Scene cuts into later in the class. They are discussing black stereotypes in the 1800’s.
Teacher: So, we talked about all the black stereotypes. The one that we’re going to focus on today is the “Nanny”. The “Nanny” was a plump black woman. She was the one who cleaned, cooked, and organized all the household affairs. She was in control of the family members, and very strong.
Kat: But wait, if the “Nanny” was a powerful and strong woman, doesn’t that go against the typical “woman” stereotype? Isn’t that the exact opposite of what a woman should be back then? And why was the woman so fat and old?
Teacher: Exactly. The “Nanny” was the anti-thesis of the stereotypical white woman. White men liked the stupid helplessness of the white woman, which was part of her sex appeal to them. If the black women were anything like the white women it would go against the purpose of the bad stereotype. They had to make it so the white woman was NOTHING like the black woman. The black woman had to be someone that would follow orders, but still have control of the tasks assigned. It’s sad because often times the black woman was raped and sexually abused by the white male slave owner. But that was, of course, never spoken of.
Teacher (after taking a quick pause): Songs, novels, paintings, and comedians perpetrated these ideas of blacks being inferior to whites. The image of a black person as big lipped, fat, stupid, happy, and subservient was a “common knowledge” type things.
Kat (whispered): I still don’t understand how they could be put down in this way.
Scene 3: A “Dream”
Kat is in the Pauahi Bridge, where she usually hangs out. She is feeling really tired and a bit sick again. She decides to lie down.
Voice over (sleepy voice): It’s ridiculous how pop culture and stereotypes start with one big truth wanting to be made into one big lie. The white population was must have been desperately afraid of the black population. I guess all oppressors are secretly afraid of the ones they oppress.
Camera fades to black as she falls asleep on the carpeted ground.
Kat: What’s that noise?
Kat wakes up on a moving bus. There is a black woman in front of her, quietly sitting while a white man yells at her.
James Blake: Y’all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.
The woman didn’t stand up.
James Blake: Why don’t you stand up?
Rosa Parks: I don’t think I should have to stand up.
James Blake: If you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police.
Rosa Parks: You may do that.
White man sitting in the front: You stubborn nigger! Don’t you know the Jim Crow laws require you to get your fat black ass off of the good seats and move to the back if a white man wants to sit there? Don’t play dumb with me.
Rosa Parks: We all have a right to sit on this seat if we want to. I was here first, sir.
Kat: She was there first. Let her stay.
James Blake (shoots a hateful glance a Kat): Excuse me miss, but this isn’t exactly the place for a woman to make a decision. You go back to your sewing and don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.
Kat gets off the bus and walks down the street. There is a large demonstration going on and there is lots of cheering.
Martin Luther King Jr. : But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
Kat (yelling with the crowd): Stereotypes must be broken, and we must do the shattering.
Scene 4: A disease
Kat is seen cheering for Martin Luther King Jr. and then suddenly she is standing alone in a cotton field with black field workers around her. The date is 1789.
Kat: I know where this is.
Field worker #1: How ya doin’ miss? Whatch you doin?
Kat: I’m sorry to bother you, but is this the South?
FW #2: I think you shod go on ova to the big house, right der. Talk to dem white folks.
Kat: Ok, thanks.
White woman (southern accent): Pardon me, miss, who are you?
Kat: I’m Katherine.
White woman: My name is Katherine too! Where are you from? Do you have parents young lady? Or maybe a husband?
Kat: Yes, sorry. Can I ask you a couple questions though?
Katherine: Why, yes, I suppose you can.
Kat: Do you have a black woman as a house slave?
Katherine: Of course I do. Everyone has one of those around.
Kat: Can I meet her?
Katherine (looking disgruntled and confused): I suppose I could take a couple of minutes to show you. Then I have to get back to the sewing.
They walk to the house and into the kitchen where a black woman is slaving over a boiling pot. It’s extremely hot in the kitchen, but she’s still wearing a full house dress that seems to be improperly put on. She’s very pretty. She has a young face, slim waste, clear face, and bright eyes. Her hair has fallen out of a bun.
Katherine: This is our house slave, Tamera.
Kat: Hi Tamera.
Tamera (very shyly): Hello, miss.
A strange noise comes from the cupboard. Kat walks over and opens it.
Kat: What the hell?!
A white man falls out of the cupboard, his pants are down.
White man: I was just looking for some barley.
Katherine (rushed): I have to go finish sewing.
Katherine rushes from the room, very upset. Man starts grabbing Tamera by the hair and swinging her around, hitting her. She is very bloody and her arm looks broken.
Kat: STOP IT! STOP! Tamera, wake up, girl! You don’t have to take this, run away! Be free! WAKE UP!
Scene 5: The Wake
The scene fades into the Pauahi Bridge again. Kat is sleeping on the floor, drooling a little.
Mr. Mindich: Kat, wake up!
Kat (mumbling): Run away… don’t’ hit her… stop…
Mr. Mindich (nudging Kat): Kat, we have class in here, you need to pack it up.
Kat: What? Oh, sorry. I’m ready.
Kat walks away to AP U.S. History. She later learns that all the things she dreamed about were reality at one point for many women. She then learns about the feminist movement, the cult of domesticity, and the civil rights movement.
this weekend. But I got through it, and these things helped me survive:
Much love and good vibes to all.
Your words make me cry. When the moon rises and the soft glow lights my room, I see your face behind the pixelated ink. I fall in love with your words, and yours, and yours, and you. So elegantly they rise in the fall of the world, the fall onto gray cement. Cement that has plowed through mountains, giant trees, and tumbling rivers. But they forgot the foothills. You didn’t. You wander in foothills, covering yourself in daisies and misty dew.
When we finally meet, I predict 75% humidity at 32 degrees Celsius. We will sit Indian style across from each other and paint secret symbols on our patches of bare skin.
I’ll never meet you because it would ruin the surprise. I’ll never talk to you because it’s better to imagine.
She had yellow, wrinkled skin now. It was strange for her to feel Death so close. The barriers she had left behind years ago allowed her to accept Death. Instead of constantly blocking it out, she breathed it in with every flick of the lighter, or hiss of the match, and cigarette burning, took a deep breath. Youth and Death and her met side by side, each made up of flickering memories.
Lying on the hospital bed
(20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-now 2 days left)
she could remember when her skin was silky pale–like the star light, and her eyes a sharp contrast of black on white.
The first time she was in love,
she was going with her friends to see a boy’s band play. Her boy. The boy she had known from afar since she turned into a women; when her innate feminine had given her grace and softness and smell and attraction. Watching him in the darkened room, with sweat and something all over her body,
his gaze into her eyes felt like heat; and his voice into her ears felt like liquid.
She didn’t feel the overbearing warmth of the club until he placed his hands on his guitar strings and the room stopping moving. She stumbled outside to the stair case that lead to the parking lot out back. Here the air was cold and fresh, like the breath of the moon. Black and white dots sparkled her vision as the blood rushed back into her body. She didn’t see him come out onto the landing until
he was inches from her face, until
he had snaked his hand around her waist, so d el i cate ly,
and pulled his genuinely male body towards her. It happened in an instant, when
his
lips
touched
hers
and his strange adrenaline poured into her. He tasted like her favorite book–Wuthering Heights–smelled if it were smoldering in Helios’s fire. Smokey, passionate. His lips were dry and hers were wet. After words, their bodies still spoke and spoke until nothing was left to say, and she smelled like his gently smoldering cigarette.
When she had to go away that fall for school, she missed his taste, and she craved it like chocolate. She remembered how he used to blow smoke into the night air out back on the stair case after he had played a set; how it had looked like his spirit rising into heaven.
When she came back home for winter, she learned that he had followed his smoke up into the night sky. He was gone, but she was not alone. She had found his scent, she had found him.
She delicately took a deep breath of gray heat and let his spirit drift into her and then out her open mouth. It floated into the ceiling, as she lay in the hot bath. His firey smoke made her lips feel like gold.
She breathed him now, and when she stopped, her mouth tasted like he smelled if he were with her now. If his sweat and warmth could envelope her like that first time. If his music could swim in her ears and if her eyes could feel heat.
Now her eyes were numb, like the rest of her. All her whites were yellow and she wasn’t silk, more like the bark on the trees, closer to the ground, closer to Death. Her heart wasn’t frozen, just slowly
dying
like the tree outside her window–
poisoned.
When the doctors showed her the x-ray, while she was lying on the whitest sheets she had ever seen, she looked at the black spots. They said it was the smoke, though
she knew it was his smell. The parts of his spirit that didn’t escape into the sky.
Those parts that her body had snatched and kept. The parts that didn’t elegantly exude their presence from her delicate, wet mouth.
And in the end, she knew that when her and Death stood together at last, none of her spirit would remain, and she would finally float into the night sky too.
disclaimer: this is fiction
She gets up at twelve every day. She wakes up just enough to go out with friends. She comes home. She sleeps. She wakes up the next morning and attempts to do some cleaning around the house but gives up and then goes to hang out with friends some more. She spends money. She doesn’t work. Even for money. She throws her clothes into her closet and it’s messy. She works out three times a week. Her ultra-conscience tells her to do something and she doesn’t obey. Her indulgent-conscience tells her to have a fun time and not to worry. She listens. She ignores and ignores. Ultra-conscience shuts up.
She is now dead.
Figures.
There are many trees on this campus. And from what I’m told, none of them are poisonous. There aren’t even any snakes, or lions; nothing to fear in the dark. The soil looks very fertile also. I’ll bet I could plant lots of Kentucky Wonderbeans here. I’ll bet I could grow anything Father wanted me to grow here. I don’t know if Father ever could, I think Father will stick to the Bethlehem soil from now on. It was God, not Father, who planted the Garden of Eden after all. Impossible to match that. I see native red flowers, and Plumeria trees, too. It’s really beautiful; there’s every plant you could imagine and more, I think I even saw a crab apple tree. Just like in the Congo, Hawaii seems to have it’s own unique beauty. Like the mixing of old and new. I see the solemn faces of the Congolese wrapped in brightly cheery fabrics hidden in the clashing of modern and traditional here—of fragrant flowers falling on cement sidewalks. I read that this school is a missionary school, started by white people, like us. I bet they were Baptists. I know father wanted to do something great like those missionaries did. God has his plan for us, I know, but I prayed and prayed for greatness to happen in the Congo, but to no avail. What did we do wrong? What did we do different from the people who started Puna***? They were missionaries in a savage land filled with heavens. We were missionaries in a savage land filled with heavens. Shouldn’t it all amont to the same? Well. It doesn’t matter now. I loved the Congo; though I’ll never tell Father that. I learned more from nature, from the Congolese earth, than I ever learned in the bible. It opened my eyes. I know that Father’s eyes are sewn shut like my hope basket. I don’t think anything will ever open them.
—Leah
I know that directly this doesn’t seem very Leah like, but I really sense that Leah feels this way by certain things that she does and says in Genesis and Revelations. I will include some quotes later.
There is a China lady who sits in the aisle across from me on the bus. She has hair as fine as silk strings and it looks like a bird’s nest. The nest of a beautiful songbird that plucks black spider webs from enchanted, misty forests and turns them into a home. The China lady is as delicate as her name, too, with pale white skin; porcelain skin. The deep cracks all over her aged body make me wonder who the bull is in her china shop.
She wears a cluttered, eclectic costume of second hand clothes. The China lady is not afraid to pair bright primary color plaid with seventies aloha print shirts, the final touch being a Chinese silk scarf. Maybe they used her silk hair to weave it so finely. Though her black orthopedic shoes don’t even touch the shaking bus floor, the look in her eye is fierce. I am reminded of the African independent women. They wear the same bright, mismatched thrift store clothes, and I know the look in their eyes bears the same intense features of my China lady.
My eyes dart up, and her laser beam stare fixes on my sleep deprived ones. It is the end of the week, and red-rimmed eyes are not uncommon on the bus. Her eyes are the perfect contrast of deep black to white, though. She looks like she wakes up at five every morning; she looks like she’s in cahoots with the eastern sun. I can tell they have a connection that I seem to be missing. She may understand the eastern sun, but I understand the western. The western sun is foreign to her, because, in spirit, I am Selene, the goddess of the night. The China lady is the crane who rises before dawn, and I am the owl who hunts at night.
When my bus stop comes, I stumble past her seat. The air is different where she sits. It smells like stale incense and the mysterious contents of her plastic grocery bags. I take one last look into her onyx eyes set in pure white marble. Hard, and yet they hold heat well. I get vibes that tell me she understands more intuitively than could care to be explained. I understand that too. Farewell China lady, I think as I step out of her slice of reality. I descend the bus stairs leading outward, and I step onto the cracked grey sidewalk. Smells change; there is a shift in the continuum. The air I breathe is filled with garbage and exhaust. I walk the block to school and enter the stoney gates.
