101 Words

I’ve learned to despise poetry. It started the day you took off. All that unrhymed crap misplaced in unhinged margins that you would beg me to read to you under the covers. It is now impossible for me to read even one poem without wanting to yank a tooth out. The hair went a long time ago. That started when you disappeared to who knows where. I must hand it to you, though—you took your sweet time conjugating my soul, but once you completed the assignment, you neglected to put me back together again. How is that for poetic justice?

You must take heed!

There is an alien parasite infesting the halls of power. Fungal in aspect, though its twisted version of DNA makes it as unlike earthly fungi as a jellyfish is to an elephant. No-one knows where it came from. It infected the scientists first; those who might have halted its rapid spread. Next it rotted the brains of the politicians, and now it’s making moves on people in the media, opinion makers. One by one my colleagues have fallen prey. For nefarious purposes it changes the infected…the infected into…really, really good people.

Actually, truly great people.

In search of lost memories, those early years no one recalls, he builds a time machine and enters coordinates: his childhood backyard, midsummer, nighttime. He means to land when he was a baby, but hits a wrong key.

They make love behind their house when a domed contraption with a man inside materializes nearby. Startled, the woman rolls off.

Unfortunately for the time traveler, they are his parents and were conceiving him. He doesn’t exist. Therefore, he cannot interrupt them. But then he exists, interrupts and isn’t, is, isn’t, is. The traveler, his descendants, and everything they touch flicker ever after.

The shirt that your Nan bought for you. You never see her for the holidays and she’s left the price tag on the garment. $9.95 from Target. That picture on your Aunty’s Instagram. Everyone smiling together. You, a little too left. Your dad’s birthday wishes, “Happy 28th.” You are 29. Misnamed ‘Catherine’ instead of Caitlin at school. It was too late to correct them. Even now, friends still misidentify you. You wonder how much it costs to legally change your name so that it is no longer a lie. Maybe you can ask your Nan to gift you that next Christmas.

“Anybody can be a wedding photographer,” Tony scoffed. “Everyone’s dressed up, eager to pose, do the chicken dance… Now, a divorce photographer… That would require talent.”

Becky had never thought about it like that. But she nodded like she had.

“I bet you’ve never thought about it like that, huh?”

“Sure I have,” Becky said. Then, “How many girls would you marry just to keep a steady clientele?”

Tony grinned. Becky tried not to smile. He fondled his camera. Or maybe she did.

“I bet you’d like to take my picture right now,” she dared him.

“Nah,” Tony said. “Not yet.”

Officer Stinson dropped by. Again.

“I warned you. No bonfires.”

I was drunk. “Stinson,” I said, “you ain’t shit without that badge and that gun.”

Stinson put his badge and gun on the passenger seat, then locked the cruiser. He walked at me, greeted me with a gut-punch. I spat foamy puke, buckled. His rib-work left me airless in piss-soaked jeans.

I attempted, “I’ll put it out,” but only gurgled.

Stinson’s arms got tired. It was over. I sat up.

Then he started kicking me.

Later, badge and gun back on, Stinson arrested me.

Downtown, neither of us said a word.