101 Words

Colin Fisher was cleaning his teeth one night when his wife sent him a text message that was meant for her lover. For one silly, tender moment, Colin thought it was for him but then he understood it wasn’t, and twenty years of marriage disintegrated while the toothpaste dripped from his mouth.

He went into the bedroom where his wife lay. He looked at her phone and she looked at him. Then he smiled a sad smile and took her in his arms, and over the following weeks and months and years he killed her with his terrible and unrelenting forgiveness.

Her two-year-old son looked at her curiously. “Mom, why don’t you wake up when the drums start?”

“The drums?”

“Someone plays the drums at night, and you never wake up.”

She remembered reading about how children are more sensitive to paranormal activity.

“Wake me up when you hear them, okay?”

That night he woke her up. “Do you hear them?”

She heard the sound of the sprinkler hitting the window. The timer must have broken.

She tried to hide her disappointment. As a practicing psychic and witchcraft enthusiast, she hoped that at least one of her children had inherited her gift.

Alberto dressed up as a secret agent for Career Day. He wore his first communion suit and carried his dad’s old briefcase, stuffed with trading cards. He was eager, for the first time, to go to school.

His mom dropped him off, and he walked calmly, trying to keep his cool as he moved past the other students.

Halfway up the stairs, he saw his third-grade teacher.

“How nice,” she said, “you’re a businessman for Career Day!”

“No,” Alberto replied, “I’m a…” But he stopped himself, and nodded.

His former teacher smiled. And Alberto walked into the school, still perfectly undercover.

I can drive the truck and take deliveries downtown, like him.

I can quit school, like he did.

I’m not afraid of angry voices in the dark, snarling, “Sell, old man, while you still can.” I’m not afraid of Big George with the scar that made Maria cry. I don’t need him to walk me home, or push me back inside while he steps out.

Re-reloading his gun, I can hit a dozen cans in a row off the Driver’s Park fences, right from the back door. I taped a face on the last one. I won’t miss like he did.

His middle name is despair, the rest is Joe Lunchbucket. Dark clouds hover over him everywhere, whispering him to never go astray. Silver linings elude these clouds, like hope eluding him. His decrepit apartment’s smeared ceiling knows him better than his emotionally absent mother and runaway father combined.

Stumbling mailman with misaddressed Christmas card cut his noose loose last winter. Dark clouds stayed the spring, hovering over him. Summer’s here; he won’t go to the beach. He cuts the power-line, latches windows, and contemplates the noose. It beckons. It’s neither winter, nor Christmas. He bolts the door, just to be sure.

The man left the office and sprinted toward his car, desperately hoping for a miracle.

The night before, he had not slept a wink, comforting his screaming newborn son and cursing the July heat. He drove to work in the morning and the world seemed eerie, as though he saw everything through a fine spider web. He planned to drop off some documents with his secretary and wasn’t going to stay more than a few minutes, but he got distracted. It was only after three hours that he remembered the car and the sleeping baby inside. His son.

His dead son.