Thursday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

The Afghan 

 

fiction 

C. Ellington Hill 

Charlotte’s crocheted afghans were deadly.  No, she didn’t soak them in some exotic poison that killed on contact, nor did she infect them with a murderous microbe. She didn’t know what it was, at the mechanistic level.  She just knew that if she was in the right (or some would say, wrong) frame of mind while her fingers looped and knotted the yarn, the recipient of the finished product didn’t have long to live.  Of course, she only had two instances to go by.  This one would be the telltale throw. 

Third time will prove the curse works, she told herself as she worked on the lovely dove gray wool intended as a gift for the chairwoman of the Millville Zoning Board of Adjustment, Josie Pignatelli. 

That witch with a capital B will never see it coming.  I’m sure I sweet-talked her enough after that disastrous meeting.  But she should know she can’t ruin people’s neighborhoods without consequences.  Oh, yes, there will be consequences. 

The hard part would be getting her to accept the afghan.  Charlotte pondered exactly how to word the gift card while her fingers flew, propelled by the rage in her heart. 

How dare she grant that variance?  Can’t she see that Zimmer Estates will be the end of the neighborhood?  All those lovely trees across the street will be gone, replaced by a hundred-twenty identical houses jammed together with only a narrow strip of lawn between.  Why do they build them so close together?  Oh, the noise!  Dogs barking at midnight.  Horrible children with their bikes and basketballs all over the place.  And the comings and goings all hours of the day and night.  Intolerable! 

But the deed was done.  The variance had been granted thanks to the chairwoman’s tie-breaking vote, and the development would proceed.  Charlotte could already hear the racket of heavy earth-moving equipment.  There was nothing left to do but exact her revenge. 

I’ll probably have to move before it all drives me crazy.  But I just can’t right now. 

Her little bungalow was too comfy to leave.  Mixed hollyhocks grew tall and colorful in the beds out front, with purple clematis climbing the columns beside the front door.  Pink floribunda roses graced a rectangular bed along the right-hand rail fence, and deep red ones along the left.  Behind her brown, shake-shingled house grew her herb and vegetable garden.  After twenty-five years, the annually composted soil had ripened until it was so rich she could count on a bountiful crop every year. 

No, they’re not going to make this old gray head leave town.  She emphasized her resolve with a little nod, then released the yarn to straighten her stiff fingers and pat a stray wisp of hair back into place.  She knew she looked the part of a sweet old grandmother to those who knew her casually. 

People take advantage of my good nature, she told herself often.  That’s why one must always speak up.  And if that doesn’t stop them, well, then it’s time to get even. 

This credo had guided her through more than seventy years of struggles and injustices.  She had achieved vengeance in many ways, some big, some small.  Those horrid little girls who had given her daughter so much grief in middle school found themselves subjected to intense parental scrutiny and strict curfews.  She had simply made a couple of anonymous phone calls to their mothers reporting improper behavior with boys behind the Sweet Shoppe.  And that teacher, Mr. Wilson, who dared to give her son a failing grade.   Well, all that took was a call from the payphone outside the Community Pharmacy.  The police had been very interested to hear about his alleged improper behavior with young girls behind the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubhouse. 

As far as Charlotte could tell, no one had ever suspected her of planting the false rumors.  She didn’t look the part. 

* * * 

The gray afghan was done, just in time for the next monthly Zoning Board meeting.  Charlotte lightly steamed it, pushing and patting the lacy wool into a neat rectangle, and folded it into a white tissue-lined box.  Next, she penned a note to be inserted between the tissue and the afghan.  She’d given much thought to the wording. 

My dear Mrs. Pignatelli, 

      It is my sincerest wish that you accept this token of the esteem in which I hold you, and further, that you grant me the favor of forgiving any unintentional rudeness in my remarks to the Board last month.  Your long hours of service to the community have had great effect, and I know many people neglect to offer you their appreciation. 

     Please accept this gift in the spirit with which it is given and may it grant you and your family warmth in the coming cold months. 

Sincerely, 

Charlotte Bert 

    

Oh, she loved the hidden meanings, especially the reference to cold months.  Winter was at least three months away, but if the afghan curse worked, soon there would be bitter cold in the Pignatelli household. 

*** 

Charlotte had her proof in only two weeks.  The Daily Sentinel headlined the obituary: 

JOSEPHINA PIGNATELLI, 42, CIVIC LEADER 

Josephina Pignatelli, aged 42, departed this world suddenly on Sunday, September 2nd.  She is survived by her husband, Salvatore, and her son Joseph, three brothers... 

Charlotte didn’t care about Mrs. Pignatelli’s relatives nor the lengthy enumeration of her civic involvement.  And she certainly wasn’t interested in attending the viewing and the graveside service.  She had all the information she needed.  The afghan worked. 

She settled back in her chintz-covered chair and raised her feet onto the matching ottoman.  The cat stretched and shifted position in order to keep up with the rectangle of late summer sun crossing the carpet.  The newspaper drifted from her lap to the floor while she considered her success. 

She felt no qualms, no remorse, not even a twinge of regret.  That woman had ruined her life and it was only fair that she had paid a heavy price.   

She reached into her yarn basket and selected a lovely crimson wool for the background of her next project. 

* * * 

The wind had a sharp bite as it swept the fallen leaves from the gutter into a dust-devil wannabe, yanking loose hairs from the bun at the nape of her neck and whipping them into Charlotte’s eyes.  She had to lean hard to shut the sturdy front door against the bluster.   

The mail was mostly campaign flyers, scarcely worth the trip to the mailbox.  Everything about the upcoming election enraged her.  A cursory glance confirmed the same old political drivel.  When would they ever change? 

“Well,” she told the cat, “they can’t do anything to affect the outcome anyway.  I’m taking care of it today.” 

She tossed the junk mail into the recycle bin then returned to the task she’d interrupted in order to collect the mail. 

In her best flowing Parker penmanship, she addressed the label for the parcel. 

Mr. President 

The White House 

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 

Washington, D.C. 20500 

****************************************************

C. Ellington Hill was raised in New Jersey and educated at Rutgers, where she studied biological anthropology.  She has two grown sons, two grandsons, and six rescued cats.  After teaching biology and anthropology courses, working as a legal secretary, as an analyst in contract management, and as an avid knitter and gardener, she is now looking for success as a writer of science fiction and "weird" short stories.

****************************************************

May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Tuesday's Truffle is...Short Fiction! (With a little bonus artwork.)

Keeping Safe

By Sandra Yuen MacKay

The laughter of children playing tag in the yard drew attention from the adults within the house. The owner, an old lady, had invited the neighbors to celebrate the birthday of one of the children. 

"Kids, keep it down. We can’t hear ourselves think,” called one of the mothers. For the next two minutes the noise dropped, then became louder than before.

"Come on inside and quiet down. You can go out later,” said the old lady.

The children moaned in unison. The three boys chased the girl into the house. Giggling, they ran into the sitting room and accidentally knocked a box off a table onto the floor. Jewelry spilt out. The old, grey-haired lady dropped down onto the carpet to rescue a gold chain. She kissed it and then held it to her breast, ignoring the other items still on the floor.

"Is it valuable?" asked one of the boys.

The old lady struggled to her feet. She wiped away the slow tears appearing on her face. "To me," she said. “I thought I lost it years ago.”

"Did it belong to somebody you loved?" the little girl asked.

The old woman shuffled to an armchair and sat down as if the weight of the world rested on her. “Sit down and I’ll tell you the story.” Immediately, the children clustered around her, kneeling on the carpet. Fascinated, they watched as the chain slipped in and out of her arthritic fingers, catching the light. "It reminds me of a day I can never forget. It was the day my five-year-old son gave me his favorite teddy bear to look after. He made it special by making it wear this gold chain. We lived in a small town on the coast. A quiet place with a lighthouse, a church and graveyard next to our house--” 

***

The door slammed. I looked up from ironing to see Thomas watching me. “Please mom, could you keep my teddy bear safe while I go out to play?”

I nodded, placed the bear on the table in the kitchen, and returned to my housework. Outside, the old swing squeaked as he propelled himself back and forth. It was hotter than usual.  After a while, I called to him, “Would you like something to drink?”

“Yes. Can I bring my friend too?”

I saw an unfamiliar, slight, red-haired girl standing next to him in the yard. With a wave, I invited them in.  Full of laughter, they ran into the kitchen to each have a glass of lemonade. I asked the girl her name and where she lived, but she just smiled shyly and giggled. She seemed harmless enough. A sweet and honest girl. I smiled at their merriment, remembering my own summers as a kid. From outside came the jingle of an ice cream truck.

“How about an ice cream?" I asked. Thomas and his friend nodded eagerly. They took the money I gave them and made their way down the street. I watched them through the window as I continued to iron.

I saw Mrs. Fletcher busy at work in her rose garden. Sore from bending, she paused in her work to place a hand on her back as the two children passed. Thomas and his friend went to the parked ice cream truck and bought their ice cream. They ate the ice cream and dawdled back to the house. Meanwhile, I went upstairs to put away the clothes.

Minutes later, I heard a wail followed by scuffling and the loud bang of a door being slammed.

"Thomas," I shouted. "Where are you? Are you all right?" Horror-struck, I rushed downstairs, but the children were nowhere in sight. I checked the house and the yard. No one. Not a clue. Passing through the kitchen, I noticed that the chain around the neck of the teddy bear was missing. I felt cold chills run down my spine. The house filled with an eerie silence as if the dead had walked right through it.

From the porch, I shouted out to Mrs. Fletcher. "Have you seen Thomas and his friend go by?"

She looked puzzled by my question. "Only Thomas. Nobody else."

Afraid, I gave a great gasp and rushed up the street to question the ice cream man.  Perhaps he would know something. "There was only a boy on his own," he said. “I would have remembered a girl with red hair.” Distressed, I rushed back home and phoned my husband and the police. I alerted the neighbors. The police arrived at the same moment the phone rang. Startled, I picked up the phone to hear Mr. Fletcher’s deep voice. He said that when he arrived home from work, he saw Thomas enter the graveyard.

The police brought in two teams of police dogs to search the graveyard. They didn’t find Thomas, but discovered a gold chain hanging from a cross on a grave of a gypsy girl who'd died recently.


"I recall this case clearly. Five years old and killed in a car crash.” A policeman shook his head after reading the gravestone. The search continued for many weeks, but Thomas was never found. They found no more clues. He had completely vanished.

***

The old woman took the gold chain and placed it carefully around the neck of a moth-eaten teddy bear on the table. She wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffed.

"Was that the teddy bear?” asked one of the boys.

"Yes, dear," the old woman said. "It belonged to my Thomas. This is the first time I've hung the chain around its neck since he disappeared.”

“Kids, the food's ready. Come and get it!”  Immediately, the children jumped to their feet and raced out of the room to eat pizza, treats, and chocolate birthday cake.

One of the mothers came into the sitting room and handed the old lady a cup of tea. "I didn't want to interrupt while you were talking. But a boy came to the back door asking about his teddy bear.  Said he only gave it to you for safekeeping."

The End

Sandra Yuen MacKay is the author of My Schizophrenic Life: The Road to Recovery from Mental Illness and the scifi novella Hell's Fire. She also is an artist and resides in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2012, she received the Courage to Come Back Award. Her website is: http://symackay.blogspot.com.

You can view a video about Sandra, her art, and her recovery here.
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May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Thursday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

Today's "truffle" is actually about 37 pages long.  Due to the length, only the first three pages are shared here, with a link to follow at the end for those itching to read the rest of the story.  (It's a free download on Kindle and Nook.)  The protagonist is Art Hardin, a tough middle-aged gumshoe chosen one of the "Top 100 Private Eyes" by Mystery Scene magazine in January 2007.  The contributor, Robert E. Bailey, is an award-winning novelist who was diagnosed with glioblastoma in August 2011.  Read more about Bob following this excerpt.

Edit:  Sad to say, none of the online outlets would permit the publisher to offer this for free, as was the original intent.  So it's available for less than a dollar... .99 cents.  Sorry!  Hopefully this can be rectified in the near future.

The Small Matter of Ten Large

            I have my own string theory: With age the strings that bind memories together fall slack and faces and places pay a toll to the passage of time.  My son Ben and I hit Greektown, in Detroit, for a coney dog.  We found the place largely bulldozed, with a casino dropped onto the rubble—black jack and slot machines, but not one coney dog in a place that should have had a bronze statue of tube steak on a bun, with chili. 

            A walk around the neighborhood revealed that a street or two of the turn-of-the-century, four-story, brick tenements remained.   Store fronts that had been small groceries, hardware stores, and lunch counters had surrendered to the onslaught of theme bars and snooty restaurants.   Detroit Police Headquarters still stood on Beaubien, but the grey facade now crumbled, and the entrance seemed too narrow and the stone stairs too few.

Even when my son asked—whatever he read from my face--I didn't tell him.  I don't have a good excuse.  He's a damn fine detective and older now than I was when this little porch seemed a much grander stage.  Some things you just don't tell the people you care about.  

It'd be a dumb-shit thing to do today, but back then—on what I remembered as a wider porch with more steps--ten grand would get you two new Chevys, a new Caddy, or a drop-top Deuce and a Quarter with change for a trip to Florida.   Knowing that, I still have to wonder, y'know? What if you knew where you were going to get it and you just didn't go there?  Then what?

Like the day Ian Campbell got his.  That day, the subject of my morning surveillance job got up to acting a little hinky, so I let him go at a traffic light and hit the Lafayette Coney Island for an early lunch—couple of coney dogs and a big plate of fries. That was my plan.   Mickey dah Cousin was already there and he had run into his bookie. Definitely not his plan.

                                                            #

            I walk in and Mickey is sitting on a stool at the counter next to Vinney Slick—Vincent
Maurice Schlichenmeyer--sideways, like he just stopped by and he ain't staying.  Vinney's eating apple pie, little bites.   Tarzan--Fredric Masono, Vinney's muscle--is standing behind Mickey, wearing a pink floral shirt with two yards of collar and cuff squirting out of a coral polyester leisure suit.   Tarzan--who got his nickname because he was big enough to maim an elephant with a stick--wore his black Italian hair permed into a bulbous afro, and his face relaxed into a bored smirk--a vulture waiting for his lunch to exhale, one last time.  

Vinney says, "You owe me ten large last week.  You fuck!"  He takes another bite and shakes his fork at Mickey.  "This week, you owe me eleven."

            Mickey shrugs, shows Vinney his empty palms, and makes that big lap-dog Irish face.  "I was out of town last week," he says.

            "The phone was working when you laid the bet," says Vinney.   "Ten large?   You fuck!"  He takes the fork in his fist and stabs the pie like he's trying to pin it to the counter.  The plate shatters on the floor behind the counter and apple pie is everywhere.  Now he's shaking the fork at Mickey and it's all bent to shit.  He says, "You think I'm a fish?  You trying to gut me like a fish?"

            "I--I had a tip."

            "You thought the fix was in?"  

Alex, the owner, is wiping up and gives Vinney a fresh piece of pie—cherry--and apologizes he's out of apple.

            Mickey's lips are moving but no words are coming out, and when he can't think of any, he's staring at his hands, which he's rubbing together, and squeaks out, "Well, yeah."

            "The fix is in and you're gonna fuck me?"

            "Well, you're gonna lay it off, right?" said Mickey.

            "Yeah, I laid it off.  Such a dumb-shit bet--it only cost a grand.  And let me tell you something, you mick maggot..." Vinney looks at the cherry pie and says to Alex, "The fuck is this?"   Alex apologizes again but Vinney isn't listening because he's shaking the bent fork at Mickey again and saying, "It wasn't such a dumb-shit bet I wouldn't have taken the action.  But I took the action and I paid, last week.  I paid because I'm a stand-up guy.   Unlike you, you fuck!"

            Mickey's looking like a puppy worked over with the sports section and says, "It wasn't a chump bet.  The Pistons won."

            "They didn't make the spread," says Vinney.  "So for you, it's the same as they didn't win."

            "Three days," says Mickey.  "Three days, I make it good.  All eleven."

            "You ain't got three seconds," says Vinney.

            Right there events take an ugly turn at the Lafayette Coney Island and I'm wondering that thing about knowing where you were going to get it and being smart enough not to go there.   Ten minutes later I'm in Detroit Police Headquarters and thinking the same thing, but not mentioning it to Cal because he's not looking like he wants to discuss philosophy.

*Click here for the rest of the story!

Novelist Robert E. Bailey is the 1998 recipient of the Josiah W. Bancroft award for his first novel, Private Heat, featuring PI Art Hardin.  The novel went on to become a finalist for the PWA Best First Novel at the 2003 Shamus Awards.  Bob went on to pen Dying Embers, a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award, and Dead Bang, nominated for a Library of Virginia award.  Glioblastoma temporarily stole his ability to read and write, but Bob has battled back enough ground to resume work on his fourth novel, Deja Noir, and his first screenplay, For Love and Money.  You can find all of the Art Hardin mysteries here.  Visit Bob on the web at robertebaileyauthor.com, or look him up on Facebook.


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May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Tuesday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

Cobra! Sahib! Cobra!

by

Cleveland W. Gibson

I wake up in a sweat, full of dread, seeing coloured, sharp images multiply beyond recognition.  I see her everywhere. I try to sleep but she invades my brain. I swear I've a hole in my skull through which she drifts but I can't prove it. Like daemons, the images beckon, then jump out at me forcing me awake.

I stand trembling in the middle of the night, unable to cast off the scourge of certain events, even though they took place in India many years ago. I may never get rid of feeling trapped like a caged animal.  Always the scene flashed in my mind's eye to torture me.  In my nightmare everything is as black as if it's me inside the body bag, it's me trying to come alive again, and it's me trying to claw a way out of my personal hell.

To say I was riddled with guilt might be a gross understatement.

I remember acting like a madman, as I waited those split seconds, for the security gate to our house at 53 Ripon Street, Calcutta, to be forced open.

“There's a murderer in there, Bearer,” I shouted. “I must save Sarah.”

He didn't answer. The medics bustled around him with drips as he tried to stifle a look of pain. 

The stab wound to his neck appeared serious enough to saturate his shirt. Soon the medics

would whisk him away to the Gandhi hospital on Lower Circular Road.

I'd seen the butter brown face, at the window, of the psychopathic killer hunted by the police. That grabbed my attention, as well as knowing Sarah, my wife, was inside our house alone with the violent killer Ali Sunja. His track record meant every person he met faced a cold, lonely grave.

I entered the courtyard at speed, then crept up the wide wooden staircase built on the side

of the house.  My revolver felt comforting in my hand.  I used the cover of the guava tree 

in climbing upwards to the first floor.

I passed through the open doorway and, though I listened carefully, all I heard was the 

sound of the grandfather clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

“Sarah!” I shouted. “Where are you?”

First the single shot. Then Sarah screamed. From the sound of the shot I placed her in the bathroom. As I rushed to help her, I heard more shots in rapid succession. Then I felt the tense atmosphere, the strange eerie silence. I shivered.

“Sarah!”

The flimsy door stood ajar. I kicked it open wider still. I darted in to see Sarah lying 

in a bathtub of bubbles, her head thrown back, an arm twisted beneath her. I saw blood on her 

face, enough to make me fear the worst.

“Sarah! My God!”

In the same instant I fired one shot. One shot was enough, but then I was a Bisley Trophy Holder, a born marksman. An army sniper.

Sarah lay out of the bathtub at an awkward angle. Her position suggested death to me. After my time in the Burmese jungle I knew a dead body when I saw one.

On a mat across the floor lay the Indian Ali Sunja, a victim to the snake attack. 

He looked dead, as dead as the cobra a few feet away from him, the one I'd shot a second ago for killing my Sarah.

I hardly had time to take it all in when I heard a shout behind me.

“Cobra, Sahib! Cobra!”

I always remember that warning shout. It still fuels my nightmares. But it saved my life by 

alerting me--to the second cobra that loved its dead mate. 

It also hated me. Revenge. Revenge.

I turned.  The cobra, with its hypnotic red eyes, slid over the thin raffia matting toward me. As it reared it pumped up its hood.  Through my sunglasses I looked cold death in the face. I sweated.

I shot again.

                                                       #

I had thought myself wise to leave Sarah a loaded gun in case an incident like this arose. I swallowed hard, savouring the bitterness, the irony of the situation. My eyes filled with tears.

Wisdom is always fine, in retrospect. I stumbled through my parlor, past the numerous trophies I'd won for shooting that now gathered dust.

Wisdom too might have saved Sarah, if only I'd taught her to shoot straight.

Like me.

The End

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Cleveland W. Gibson is the author of digital shorts Silver Wolf and Only 
the Best, plus several others available through amazon.com. He was born 
in colonial India in an atmosphere of colour, mystery and intrigue. In 
the UK, he worked in the government, trained as a life guard, and was a 
road race director for over ten years. Since taking up writing, he’s 
published over 200 short stories, poems, articles in more than 
eighty-five countries. His current project is a fantasy novel, House of 
the Skull Drum.

You can read more short fiction by Cleveland here. 

**********************************************************

May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Thursday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

                                    ELIZA'S QUICK-DRYING POLAR WHITE

                                          Copyright 2004 Joseph M. Erhardt

The field cricket kicked and squirmed, but Rupert DeNeuve held it firmly between

his thumb and forefinger.

      He turned the cricket over, exposing its back, and dotted the creature
with a dab of Eliza's Quick-Drying Polar White fingernail polish.

      Rupert never dotted the larger, spindly-legged camel crickets; if he
caught one, he just threw it out the nearest window.  But field crickets--like the 

one he held now--stridulated, and few things irritated him more than hunting 

down a chirping cricket in his bedroom at three o'clock in the morning.

      The camel crickets--ugly as they were with their long legs and humped
bodies--bore the virtue of silence.

      Still, Rupert reasoned, the field crickets could hardly help being what
they were, and at first he just threw them out as he did their larger warped
cousins.

      But after a time he suspected the chirpers he threw out were making their
way back into his house, and he came to a sobering compromise between his
distaste for violence and his need for sleep.

      Every stridulating annoyance he caught would be given one chance.  If the
cricket re-entered his house, it would be summarily squashed, and to distinguish
the first-time offenders from the career criminals, he marked those he released
with the white fingernail polish.

      After dotting his current capture, Rupert used a hair dryer--set on
cool--to dry the polish.  He then tossed the cricket out of his study window.
The entire process had taken less than two minutes.

      While some might think two *seconds* too long a time to waste considering
a bug's fate, Rupert DeNeuve was happy with his compromise.  It suited his
system, his temperament, his peculiar frame of mind.

      For Rupert, a peculiar man, had grown so from his beginnings as a peculiar
child.  He saw the world differently from the way it was seen by his classmates
or teachers.  At age 6 he surprised his parents with the question, "Why is there
Something instead of Nothing?"

      To which, of course, all answers were tautological.

      He wondered if others saw colors the same way he did.  He wondered if
others saw colors he could not.  And Rupert questioned everything--from plot
errors in *Romeo and Juliet* to the applicability of the Cause/Effect Paradox to
superluminal signaling.

      And Rupert wondered if the world in which he existed was the real Real
World--or whether there wasn't a greater existence just out of reach--just
around the next corner--that would explain the mysteries of the present All.

      Most persons, of course, had moments like that--moments of sudden
awareness where the self is juxtaposed against a bizarre reality--but moments
which never led to any satisfying revelation, each moment an epiphany denied.

      But where most would shrug off such episodes and go on with life, Rupert
would seek out such moments and savor them, and he trained his mind to sift for
these "cracks" in the fresco of existence.

      After several near-accidents in his car, he ordered his mind to suspend
the search while driving.

      But at other times, his mind was always busy at the task.

      So it was with no surprise that, after shutting the window and turning
back toward his desk, the feeling of unreality struck once more.

      Rupert relished the feeling.  At these times he felt more alive than at
any other, and this time the feeling was stronger than usual.

      He wallowed in the sensation, let it run the length of his body.  And his
mind, in its peculiar way, resonated with the feeling, and Rupert DeNeuve took
his hand and parted the curtain of existence and stepped through--

      --into a sparely-furnished office housing an old wooden desk on which a
feeble yellow lamp stood and glowed, and behind which a man in a gray burnoose
sat gazing at a stack of printed forms.

      Rupert stepped forward and harrumphed.

      The hood of the man's cloak fell back, revealing white hair, deep-set eyes
and a tangle of bushy brows.

      "What!" the old man gasped.  "Who are you?"

      Rupert told him.

      "Rupert DeNeuve ... Rupert DeNeuve ..."  The man shuffled through his
printed forms.

      "Confound it!"  The man drew himself back.  "Must be an error at Central.  Doesn't 

usually happen.  Wait.  I have some old blank registration forms, I think ..."

      The man opened a bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a single sheet.
  He put it on his blotter and dipped a quill into an inkwell--only the second
inkwell Rupert had ever seen; the other had been in a museum.

      "Rupert ... DeNeuve ..." the man repeated, writing the name on the form.
"Middle name?"

      "Alexander.  Who are you?"

      The man wrote down the name but ignored the question.  Instead, he pulled
out a watch.  "12:43 local time.  Less the two minutes you've been here makes
12:41."  He wrote that down as well.

      "Now," the man looked at Rupert, "I need the place of death."

      "What?"  Rupert's reaction fell somewhere between amusement, annoyance and
apprehension.

      "Place of death.  Surely you know where you died."

      "But I'm not dead!"

      "Of course you are.  Transitional amnesia is not unheard of, but it is
hardly common.  What's the last thing you remember?"

      Rupert folded his arms.  "I was in my study.  I had just thrown a cricket
from the window when the feeling of unreality--the feeling that what most people
perceive as reality is just a sliver of the whole--hit me.  And when my mind
figured out what to do, I reached out and separated the curtain between my world
and yours."

      The man's features, yellow under the lamplight, paled to match his ashen
brows.  "You jest!" he spat.  "You take advantage of an old man's humor!"

      Rupert shook his head.

      "Oh-my-God!"  The man put down his pen and tore up the paper with Rupert's
name and time of arrival.  And as he tore each bit, he stuffed it into his
mouth, chewed and swallowed.  "Must be--dimensional leakage--had the contractors
here--just last week--incompetents!"

      Done with his roughage, the old man rose from his chair and limped rapidly
to Rupert's side.

      "You must understand," the man began.  "You mustn't be here--yet.  If this
becomes known, there'll be an inquiry, maybe even a visit by Central, and in the
meantime I can kiss my job good-bye."

      Rupert prodded the old man.  "Is this Heaven?"

      "Yes!  No!  Dammit, don't ask questions!  You must go back, now!"

      "But I don't know how."

      The man spun him about, pushed him toward a faded, flower-printed wall and
raised a bony finger.  And as the old man lowered the finger, the office
unzipped into the familiar world Rupert knew.

      "That's my bathroom," Rupert said, "not my study."

      "Close enough," the old man said.  He put his hand against Rupert's back
and, with a force disproportionate to his ancient frame, popped Rupert through.

      And as the Other World zipped shut behind him, the last Rupert heard from
the old man was a terse, "Don't come back!"

                                                                   ***

Rupert stood still in his bathroom for a long time.  The adventure had confirmed
several guesses of his about the afterlife but had also spawned many more
questions.  Perhaps, if he unzipped this reality at a different spot, he would
arrive at a different place in the other.

      Rupert took off his shirt.  He was suddenly hot, as his experience had
charged him with adrenalin and had pushed his metabolism into overdrive.

      He started the shower and dropped his pants and shorts.  But as he twisted
to pull off his T-shirt, he caught a glimpse of something in the bathroom
mirror.  He turned his neck and looked, and an ironic laugh escaped his lips.

      There, between his shoulder blades, lay the ghostly-white imprint of the
old man's hand.
 
                                                      T H E   E N D

"Eliza's Quick-Drying Polar White" originally appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of Talebones (as by T. Rex) and is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

****************************

Joe Erhardt, while making his living in computer consulting, has
been writing fiction since before puberty and still has some
horrifically terrible evidence to prove this.  Since puberty,
he's had short fiction published in places like Keen Science Fiction!,
Maelstrom Speculative Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine,
and Talebones.
 
His most re-read SF novels:  We All Died at Breakaway Station by
Richard C. Meredith, Sinister Barrier by Eric Frank Russell and
Sleeping Planet, by William R. Burkett, Jr.  (Classics, he contends,
that are significantly underappreciated.)
 
His most valued writing book:  Getting the Words Right by
Theodore A. Rees Cheney.

*For the past twelve years, Joe has served as the dedicated leader of the Richwriter's writing group. Several of

its grateful authors have seen publication in the past few years and all wish to convey a quick thanks here.

****************************

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Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.