Hero

Harv Brewster rubbed at the grizzled whiskers dotting his withered chin.  He spat tobacco juice into the dry dirt at his feet.  A cloud of dust rose in response, like a miniature nuclear explosion.  He looked at the horizon, saw the setting sun.  Nodded to himself in confirmation of a fact that everyone in town knew without saying: The football game was due to start in about twenty minutes.  He may as well head down.  Nothing else to do, except sit here and spit in the dirt.

He paid his admission: three bucks and a dented can of baked beans for the local food pantry.  He’d bought the entire inventory of the scratch and dent cans from the Shop-N-Save last winter.  Hadn’t opened a single can of them beans.  Delia didn’t care for him all that much when he ate baked beans.

And he cared for Delia a whole lot, he sure did.

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King Me

“Let me see the child, my queen.”

Regina smiled serenely at her husband.   “There are two, Phillip.”

The king gasped.  “A boy and a girl?”

No, Regina replied.  “Two boys.  First…”

“No, Regina.”  He shook his head.  “If I know which is to succeed me, I will treat him differently.  I will train him harder; I will have higher expectations for him.”  He gazed at the boys, small and clean and new.  Full of promise and hope for the kingdom.  “Both boys need to know discipline.  Both need to learn leadership and weaponry and defense.” 

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Conveyed

Cameras were outlawed when the Transition Time came.  Cell phones, too.  Computers.  Even the ancient things: iPods and iPads.  Blackberries.  Nooks.  Kindles. 

The government no longer trusted its citizens with technology.  Officials went door to door in blood-red uniforms, tearing apart houses, gathering up digital devices and taking them away in great boxes.    

They took everything. 

And the people no longer knew what to do with themselves.

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No Map and No Directions

Robert Hayes stared out the window listening his partner tell the new admin some lame joke; listening to her laughter, bright and thin and so utterly expected.  Part of the requirements of the job, he supposed.  Nothing like the laughter of his mother. 

He smiled and took a sip of his tea, thin and green and disgusting.  Celeste had forced him to abandon coffee.  And meat.  And dairy products.  He wondered what his wife—in ever pursuit of eternal life—would press him to give up next.  What would be the next thing to drop out of his life completely?

If he were to examine the facts—and that was his job, wasn’t it?  To sort through the facts and find some Truth within them?—he would have to admit the fault was his.  He had allowed it to happen.  Had started it, actually; had set things in motion all those years ago. 

He put his mind in reverse, reeling backwards a single frame at a time, each important moment a snapshot in his memory: The purchase of the Lower East brownstone.  His Columbia degrees—three in all.  His move to New York.  His mother, the day of his high school graduation, pushing him out the door towards town.  “Go, Bobby Joe,” she said.  “Go and make something of yourself.  Go and make me proud.”

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Don't Ever...

Behind the counter, Billie-Jo stocks candy, setting bars of Snickers and bags of M&Ms neatly behind plate glass.  Billie-Jo smiles to herself:  She likes to impose order on things.  An ordered life is a safe life. 

She hears the tell-tale ding and looks up to see a car pull into the station.  She shields her eyes and squints.  It’s an unfamiliar car; a rusted-out car; a car is full of dents and dings, certain proof of the uncertainties of life.  She tucks a final candy bar into place before heading outside.

The driver—a boy no older than nineteen—has rolled down his window.  He nods in time to his loud music. 

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