101 Words

The walls are breathing again, one corner at a time.

Indented imprints remain as the sweat seeps out.

Within it the figure sidles to and fro.

I hear a jumble of muffled sounds as I stand waiting, in a torpid state.

He is trapped within its crevices where I hope he stays. I loathe the harm he has caused me.

Before I sealed him in, he haunted every living part of me; my senses will never be the same again.

I hope I have banished his soul for good.

He is nothing now, and he will soon be dust. Good riddance!

Cyrus always smelt of tobacco smoke because he was a twenty a day man.

We were lunching in the Anchor and he pointed to the chicken breast I had on my plate.

“They’re grown in a vat in the Holland factory, you know.”

“That must be uncomfortable for the chickens,” I said.

“It isn’t chicken, fool, it’s artificial. And I will prove it. I will get in to the Holland factory, take a picture, and send it to you.”

I never saw Cyrus again.

Some people said the chicken tasted of nicotine after that but I couldn’t taste it myself.

Kind, disheveled Moe felt most connected to his dog Emo. While Moe enjoyed a spry 52, Emo’s dog years had mounted too fast; 16 going on death.

Christmas Eve the vet slipped Emo into that long goodbye. Moe wanted to keep something. A paw? An ear? But that seemed too barbaric. No taxidermy for him. Yet the plaster paw print just wasn’t enough.

Moe moped. Three days passed without a shower, a phone call, or a regular meal. The kibble bag stood lonely in the corner.

But life must continue. Moe stared into the rarely used mirror astonished.

Those ears! That tongue!

“What you doing?” I kissed Dad’s forehead.

The Jamaican nurse, all loud prints and ugly shoes, squeaked in. She winks at me, “Your father’s making me another treasure map. Soon I’ll dig up your inheritance, run off to Florida.”

Frowning, I regard Dad’s chicken scratch handwriting.

Leaving the retirement facility, I drove to my childhood home. The moor outback was a pool of moon washed grass. I found the spot without needing any map and knelt, digging through soft earth until my fingers caught on a wrinkle of tarpaulin.

I sighed. Moving the bodies was getting to be a real chore.

I pick at the skin around my thumbnail as my father speaks. Miniscule shards of flesh peel off, dropping to the floor; my feet wrap around the chair’s legs.

“We just want what’s best for you,” he says, again. His ignorance is thick and heavy on the air. My mother—and the ubiquitous look of frustration—is a mute puppet at his side.

“You loved piano when you were younger,” he opines.

Younger. Naïve. Untouched, unsullied, unviolated.

“I’ve changed,” I say.

“Well, you’re keeping it up till the summer. It’s already been paid for.”

He cannot comprehend the price.

After the plunge, her nerves were washed away.

Butterfly stroke to the end of the pool, just as her dad had taught her.

Her arms shoveled water. Push straight toward your feet, she heard him say.

Again. Again. Catapulting herself forward, swooping, dipping, reaching for space. Her arms circled overhead, cartwheeling, swanlike. Then her hands dredged the pool for deeper and more satisfying armloads of water. Past her gut, down to the core of her being she dug, summoning, up and over, diving deep again.

Then, thunk. She grasped the wall. And in her mind—win or lose—her dad smiled.