101 Words

Bill didn’t like Christmas.  He did not have any family so the day didn’t matter.  He walked passed a white church and he was surprised to see people walking in.  People still went, he shrugged.  Holiday Catholics that’s all he thought.   A thin man walked by.

Are you going in?  He asked.  No, Bill answered.  Christmas is good for the soul. He said.

No thanks, Bill replied.  We need volunteers to serve breakfast, can you help?

Bill’s mind raced, what was happening, he felt himself drawn to this person and suddenly he said “yes”.   At that moment Bill was transformed.

Jed buys dog food and candy. Outside the store, a girl digs in the dumpster.

Help an old man carry his groceries? He’ll pay, of course. She takes the bags in arms thinner than his. He tells her he rescues strays. Bathes them. Pets them. He points to the dog food. Feeds them.

Hunger gleams in her eyes like tears.

He doesn’t tell her how he slips them into cages. Teaches them tricks. Lets them grab a chocolate through the bars with their grubby little fingers.

Maybe she’d like to see his little zoo? She nods.

He smiles. They always do.

Eric was an artist so he noticed details. Like yellow poppies growing outside the window of the restaurant where he sat. And the bright green shampoo bottle sitting on a ledge inside a window — probably a shower — of the condominium next door.

When the slender blond sat at the table next to him, Eric noticed the far-away look in her blue eyes. The novel under her arm said she was there to eat and read. Period.

Eric recognized the book, one he’d read.

Next morning, Eric thought Sonya’s hair smelled so fresh after she’d used the shampoo in the green bottle.

Hector and Barney sat overlooking a dusty Southeast country lane one lazy summer afternoon. Soon, one of them noticed a small object.

“Hey, Barney, see that?”

“See what?”

“On the road there. Looks like a tiny lizard.”

“Ain’t no lizard,” Barney said, “It’s an insect.”

“I tell you it’s a lizard,” Hector said. “You’re getting old.”

“No I ain’t,” he said. And with a flap of his wings Barney swooped down, scooped up the skittering object in his beak and landed gracefully back on the telephone wire.

“Well, was it a lizard?”

“No,” mumbled Barney the blackbird, swallowing. “A roach. Yum.”

The lost boy sleeps peacefully under a blanket of autumn leaves. The search party’s cries do not wake him, nor do the searchers see him, though they pass within four feet of where he sleeps. The maple tree, which covered the sleeping boy with leaves to protect him from the cold, has inadvertently hidden him from his would-be rescuers. The maple wishes it could call out to the searchers, or wake the boy, but, being a tree, it can do nothing to repair its mistake.
The boy awakens hours later, in darkness, to falling snow, and the distant howling of wolves.

It would not be long before he was caught. He’d have to work fast if he wanted to finish his work without leaving traces of his dealings here. He was in a small wooded area, at the base of a heavily rooted tree. Digging through the damp soil, he congratulated himself on this spot, easy to remember and camouflage. Once the hole seemed deep enough, he dropped the evidence in, pushed the dirt back into the hole, covered the hole with forest litter. His girl was calling in the yard. He ran to her, his tongue lolling. She would never know.

They were buying their way into the history books. At least that’s how the media was spinning the whole thing. Once life was detected beneath the icy surface of that mysterious faraway moon entrepreneurs across the planet sprang into action to provide the rich the opportunity of the millennium; to be the first to interact with an alien species. Thirty-two of the world’s richest men and their wives boarded that rocket aimed at the stars. Sure, the security outfit was sparse but so was time.

In just two weeks an unsurprised world would watch billionaires get eaten alive some 400,000,000 miles away.