101 Words

She teetered on the ledge, three stories up. Her tattered nightgown flapped like moths making for the moon. We all gasped when she dangled her dirty, bare sole. I felt a responsibility. Guilty, almost. And utterly powerless. I positioned myself beneath her, as if to catch her, but a policeman pushed me back.

When the woman behind me shrieked, I put my head down and looked at the concrete pavement. No more could be done, so I started walking. Kept on walking. Looking back over my shoulder, I hoped the mess she made would cover the one I made of her.

Patty perished in the arms of her lover.

Patty’s husband, Alan, had begged her to call Dr. Amor to examine her heart. She’d been afraid of what the Doctor would perceive.

Under cover of the night, Patty called on her lover. Rough and rugged, he made her heart race until it exploded.

Dr. Amor relocated Patty when he discerned the problem with her heart. He was afraid it would shatter Alan’s heart.

In the obituary, there were proclamations of the attachment of Patty’s heart to Alan’s heart.

Patty’s lover called Alan about the problems with her heart.

Consequently, Alan has heart problems.

“Hi, my name’s Jonathan, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Seemed sincere enough and his lips quivered when he spoke. Way more sincere than the last time I saw him: face pressed into his grimy sleeve and his left hand dangling an empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

Didn’t expect to see him here. Not even sure he recognised his own son.

The woman motioned for me to stand.

“Hey, everyone, I’m a Jonathan too,” and I looked straight at him, wondering if he appreciated his masterpiece, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

And when I sat down, he just kept giving me this goofy smile.

Rain pounds Dildo in the winter. Baker, still here, bought a run-down houseboat, and at night while he slept, the rope unmoored and drifted out to the harbor. In the morning he found himself beached on Dildo Island, still in sight of the shore and had to be rescued. Now he sits, gripping a cup of tea, now tepid, staring out the same window he’s stared out every day for the past month, across the road to where they lit the big DILDO sign every night, while a song, maybe Interpol, sounds familiar but he can’t place, plays over the AM.

Duane slowly maneuvered his truck around the curves. Just one load of logs before sunup and Jenny’s teeth could be fixed.

He slammed the brakes! Facing him was an effigy of himself—dangling from a branch.

His heart pounding, Duane noticed movement in the semi-darkness. People cocooning out of sleeping bags surrounded his truck chanting: “Cutting trees kills owls. Cutting trees kills owls.”

He fingered his gun, knowing he had to turn around.

Safely home, Duane sat—half praying, half cursing.

“Daddy, Daddy, look what I found,” Jenny shouted. “May I keep him? He’s so cute. It’s a tiny baby owl.”

She was fillings, he was bread, and they worked in the huge city sandwich-making plant. They had never met, until one day, when their destinies came together in the hospital emergency after their separate accidents.

She lost her right hand to a malfunctioning can-opening machine. His left hand was destroyed during a moment of inattention operating the roll-slicing machine. She could never again eat tuna, and he could not face bread.

They discovered, however, that they both liked chocolate and cream cakes.

Eventually they would waddle down the aisle, their prosthetics intertwined, to the encouraging two-handed applause of their workmates.