101 Words

The Moon watched the old man: his sagging skin, his tired eyes. Too shaky to hold a pen. Too tired to put on shoes, so barefoot he went. It had been ages since he saw his wildflower.

She had left without him. He felt empty. Alone.

The old man’s breath faltered. His heart stopped. The moon watched the old man’s wife reach for his hand. Her skin was iridescent, transparent. Her touch held the ghost of him. Filling him with warmth from heaven, though the body laid cold.

“It’s time to go,” she said. A soft smile spread. “It’s time, George.”

Neel’s Siamese was all over me as soon as I stepped foot in the house.

“What the hell!” Neel could not contain his surprise. The Siamese was rubbing itself against my denim-clad legs, meowing loudly. It sniffed at my fingers vigorously and started licking them when I bent down to pet it.

“He only does that to my wife!” Neel cried, voice coloured with envy and betrayal. As I rubbed the cat’s belly, I thought about how 40 minutes ago, Neel’s wife and I were in her office cabin having sex with clothes on.

I laughed. “Guess I’m a cat whisperer.”

In 4011 A.D., Dr. Idryssa Bright believed Americans worshipped pizza two thousand years before, but she struggled to prove it.

When she counted 3,452 skeletons ordering pizza in the ruins of Spokane, Washington, her critics said that showed only the food’s popularity. When she found more mentions of ‘pizza’ than ‘church’ in ancient newspapers, her boss fired her for heresy. Finally, she uncovered a temple, ‘Chuck E. Cheese,’ where people took pizza sacraments, worshipped costumed mice priests, and genuflected before coin-operated praying machines.

For this, Dr. Bright won a tenure-track position teaching hyper-sentient androids at Truth University on the planet Pegasus.

For Sale: Jar of hope (used).

Clarion read the advertisement aloud over breakfast. Of course, we told her to buy it.

It arrived half-full, shimmering in a carton packed with shredded disappointments.

“Does that mean it works—or not?” she asked.

We couldn’t say.

After the matron cut the lights, we slipped from our beds into deepest shadow. Each of us dipped two fingers into the jar’s glow, dabbing radiance at the hollows of our throats and on our lips. So marked, we clasped hands to close a circle of light. Sparks fizzed and burned. We let go.

Released, hope dissolved.

We met in some downtown bar.

Ivy was heady and intoxicating, clinging onto my every word. I soon became addicted.

“Relationships never last,” she told me one melancholy night. I went a little crazy that summer. Missed work. Avoided people.

When I eventually, predictably, lost my job, I couldn’t find her anywhere.

I searched the bar, but the bartender sneered. “Schmuck!” he said.

“Excuse me?” I asked, confused.

“Another one stung by Poison Ivy,” he replied.

I heard her voice behind me and turned. She winked at me as she walked out, clinging to the arm of her next tree trunk.

“Turn off the dryer!” Mom yells.

Anxious because of her, my face contorts as I unplug the toaster.

Pitter-patter down the hallway, then I pull the cord. Hard.

ZZZZZ! Fuzzy black dots float behind my eyelids as I

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disappear into the brown shag carpet. Uh-oh. Did I make a mistake?

Static brain, frozen body, racing heart. Fearful to disappoint.

Jolted to self-soothing.

“Shhhhh,” my neighbor tries to calm my mom, but she paces and screams.

“I told her to shut the dryer off, not pull the fucking plug!”

Still drooling, I smirk on the inside.

I am the power plug.

He told her it wasn’t her fault. Like he always did, though it never was.

As he fumbled—fat sausage fingers, eyes squinting—her mind drifted. Outside, clouds scudded, a hint of jasmine floated in the open window, and to one side, she noticed a patch of wallpaper wilting from the wall, scuffed, discoloured. Tired.

She thought back to a time, years ago, rolling in the sheets, feeling an avalanche’s thundering crescendo, a tipping point reached.

Afterwards, he sat, cold-shouldered her. She knew he would have smoked a cigarette if he had one, if only just to feel something firm again.