I knew two things when I started the story: first, it would be about a mime who died while tying to get out of his invisible box; and second, the mime could never take off his gloves.  (The growing-back quality of the gloves came to me as I wrote.)

The title of the story popped into my head as I began to work, and at first, I tried to write it as if the narrator were at a funeral giving a eulogy.  No one at the funeral knew him, and there was going to be some big reveal about who he was at the end.  The whole time I tried to write that story, I struggled.  Meanwhile, the narrator was trying to tell me a different story—one of personal recollection—the type of eulogy we all give to those we’ve lost when we think about the role that person played in our lives.

Once I gave in to the story I was supposed to write, it wrote itself.  The growing-back gloves gave way to the transformation, and I was on a roll.  Until the end.  I tried to make it something it wasn’t, to wrap things up, to explain what happened to the narrator after Boyd died.  Several LAME attempts later, again struggling with the writing, I looked back about a page and realized the story—the eulogy—had ended when the narrator left the scene of Boyd’s death.

Want to know what forced writing is like?  It’s when fingers type things like “I could only hope Boyd’s death served as a reminder that things are not always what they seem” and the attached brain thinks for an instant that a cliché like that is good.  That a reader is that stupid.

I’ve burned those lame attempts, so don’t think when I’m famous you can break into my home, steal my computer, and find the crap I once wrote.  It’s gone.  I mean it.  And your brain will explode if try to recover it from my hard drive.  (See how thinking about it already caused a ripple in your mind: you don’t see the “you” in that previous sentence, do ?)

According to the coroner’s report, the mime suffocated at 12:03 pm.  Had the snow flurry hit on time, his struggles might have been taken more seriously.  You see, it was the build-up of the snow on the otherwise invisible box that drew people’s attention.

Laying Blame
I don’t blame the Robust’s lunch crowd for missing the signs of the mime’s struggle.  After all, part of his shtick was to appear to be trapped in a box, and the mime was always quite convincing.  Truthfully, I blame myself for Boyd’s demise.  He’d tried to warn me his routine was taking over his life, and at first, I simply refused to believe him.

Silence Becomes Him
Although Boyd and I spent time together on a regular basis, the last time he spoke to me was nearly a year ago.  He showed up at my office and began writing furiously on page-after-page of the small pad of post-it-notes I kept on my desk.  I laughed at him—I thought the new gag was a hoot.  No sooner had I done so, and he stopped writing his face growing angry.  Before I could read what he’d written, he’d stomped out of my office (my pad of post-it-notes in hand) and was gone.

I called him a number of times that night, but no one answered.  A week later, he finally picked up, but he still didn’t speak to me.  At first there was silence.  Then, I heard the unmusical notes of the numbers on the phone’s keypad being pushed.  My ears ringing and my ire roused, I hung up.  It was the last time I called him.

Show Me Your Hands
Nearly a month after the phone-call incident, Boyd showed up at my apartment.  He was disheveled and looked as if he’d aged ten years.  His T-shirt and jeans were wrinkled as if they’d been slept in for the past week, and the ball cap he wore concealed what was obviously unkempt hair.  If it weren’t for a lack of odor and the ridiculously white gloves he wore, I’d have thought he’d become homeless.  He still wouldn’t talk to me.

I invited him in, and over a six-pack of beer, I read as he wrote on a portable whiteboard.  He began by writing that he’d lost his voice.  (I was thinking he meant he’d contracted laryngitis, but he meant it was gone—for good.)  He wrote that something was wrong with him—that he thought he was going crazy.  (I began to wonder if the beer had been such a good idea.)  Boyd had never been one to indulge in drugs, but looking at him and reading what he wrote, I wondered.  I asked him if he’d been using anything.  He swore he hadn’t.  I told him he looked like shit, and he bowed his head and nodded.  I asked him about the white gloves he was wearing, remnants of his mime’s attire, and he began to write his answer but stopped.  He looked me squarely in the eyes before putting down his whiteboard and marker and peeling off his gloves—three times.  Each time he peeled the gloves off, they revealed another set below.  I wasn’t amused, and I told him as much.  In answer, he held his hands out to me and gestured until I understood he wanted me to remove the gloves.  I did.  Five times.  And each time I removed the gloves, another pair appeared in their place.  (Before I pulled the fourth and fifth times, I peeked between the fabric of Boyd’s right glove, and I saw his skin.)

Put On a Happy Face
Boyd spent that night at my apartment.  The beer and the late hour of his arrival had made me weary, so I left him on the sofa with blankets, a pillow, and the TV remote.  Before heading to bed, I put fresh towels and a change of clothes in the hall bathroom.  (I’d hoped he’d take the hint in the morning and clean himself up.)

I awoke the next day to the sound of the shower running and the smell of coffee brewing.  As the previous night’s events began to replay themselves in my head, I felt a sense of relief.  Coffee and a running shower were sure signs Boyd was done playing at whatever game he’d begun the previous month.  I looked forward to hearing what he had to say for himself, so I settled in the kitchen with a large cup of coffee waiting for the old Boyd to arrive.

Engrossed in a magazine, I hadn’t heard him enter the kitchen, but the tinkle of a spoon on the side of a coffee mug alerted me to his presence.  I put down what I was reading and offered up a warm greeting.  Boyd turned, and I nearly spilled the sip of coffee I was taking down the front of my robe.  Staring back at me was a face covered in black and white make-up—mime makeup—and as I watched, a freshly shaved, showered, and cleanly clothed Boyd sipped his coffee, his hands covered by white gloves.

I grew angry and fired accusations at him.  Without his whiteboard, Boyd relied on his body language to reply.  I felt like a fool as I stood in my kitchen trying to converse with a man who refused to speak—a man whose make-up and gesturing seemed to mock me.  Boyd slammed down his mug of coffee, stormed out of the kitchen, and returned writing furiously on his whiteboard.

Don’t you see?

It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.

I’m becoming a mime.

Before I could answer, Boyd rubbed at his face with the palm of one gloved hand, and having done so, he held the palm up to me.  It was smeared with black and white grease paint, but his face remained perfectly decorated.

He removed the glove (a fresh, white one emerging beneath) and repeated the process.  More smeared grease paint appeared on his palm, but nothing about his face make-up changed.  Boyd grabbed the hand towel from the kitchen counter, gave it to me, and pointed at his face.  I dabbed at his forehead, pulled the towel away, and saw paint on the cloth.  I looked at his forehead, and saw no indication I’d touched him.  I tried a cheek, and the results were the same.  I was moving toward his chin when Boyd grabbed my hand, placed the towel in the middle of his face, and rubbed vigorously.  I could feel the hollows of his eyes and the rise of his nose below my towel-covered hand, yet when he pulled the towel away from his face, his make-up remained intact.

The Clothes Make the Man
I’d left the kitchen in an unsteady state of mind, and even after my own shower and shave, I was at a loss about how to deal with what I’d witnessed.  As I removed the numerous bits of tissue from my razor-nicked face, I wondered if Boyd and I were sharing a type of madness.  Then I thought I might have been in a terrible accident, and tried convincing myself that the whole Boyd thing was part of my coma-induced imagination.  I was willing to accept almost anything but the thought that a man I knew was turning into the thing he spent his workday being.

By the time I returned to the kitchen, Boyd had departed.  He’d left a note saying he’d gone out for some air and that he’d bring back breakfast.  An hour later, he returned.  His arms were filled with two shopping bags of groceries, and it wasn’t until he’d put down the bags and begun unpacking them that I noticed the shirt I’d lent him was gone.  He still wore the jeans I’d given him, but in place of the tan oxford, Boyd wore a horizontally striped black and white, long-sleeved shirt.

He waited until we were both done eating before trying to remove the shirt.  Neither of us was surprised to watch as another appeared in its place in the same fashion as the gloves.  Within two days, black pants and a black beret were permanent fixtures on Boyd’s body, and I no longer questioned his sanity or mine.  Although I didn’t understand the how of it, there was no doubt in my mind that Boyd Robertson was no longer a man—he was a mime.

Life Goes On
Boyd became a permanent fixture on my sofa, and that suited us both just fine.  I can’t speak to what it’s like turning into a make-believe thing, but I can say knowing someone who has changed into something that is otherwise imaginary puts a tremendous amount of stress on one’s sanity.  I think each of us felt a little less crazy around the other.

We fell into a routine that was as close to normal as possible.  Boyd went back to work and marveled at the time and money he saved not having to “get ready” each day.  I returned to my accounting job, and I looked forward to the camaraderie of having a roommate with whom to share pizza and beer and the joys of sports on HD TV.  I even became adept at reading Boyd’s body language and facial expressions, so he rarely needed his white board to communicate with me.  It was a comfortable if odd six months of my life.

Last Saturday, I grew worried when I realized Boyd was late coming home.  It was unusual, and in our already unusual lives, any deviation was notable—and worrisome.  Knowing he spent his mid-Saturdays performing at the Robust Café, I set off to see if he was there.  I presumed he might have hit a boisterous lunch crowd and decided to work into the evening, but as soon as I stepped outside, I realized the severity of the snow should have ended Boyd’s day.  I was still two blocks away from the Robust when I became aware of the not-so-distant sound of sirens.  The noise grew louder as my heart sank, and though I had no reason to connect the sounds to Boyd, the moment the fire truck passed me by, I knew I’d never see my friend alive again.

My heart grew heavier with each step as I drew nearer to the café, and as I walked in the ebbing snow fall, I tried to brace myself for what I knew was inevitable, but what I saw when I arrived was beyond even my imagination.

There were three rings of onlookers.  The outside ring consisted of passersby who had not properly comprehended what they were seeing.  This group believed they were witnessing a new type of mime performance, and most wandered off before realizing the act had ended—permanently.  (As each small group of the outer ring walked away, it was replaced by a new wave of passersby.)  The middle ring was transitional in nature.  Those who had once been in the outside ring but who had recognized what had happened pressed forward into the center.  They were joined by those who had been closest to the tragedy by virtue of chance, and who—realizing a death was afoot—had pressed back and away from the deceased.

The inner ring was a hub of activity.  Firefighters and paramedics seemed to be buzzing around like insects, and the few civilians who remained there appeared to be moving about trying to do whatever they could to help as well.  But there was nothing to be done.  In the middle of it all was Boyd Robertson.  Enclosed in a clear box not unlike a telephone booth, the mime remained motionless.  He was fixed in a position between standing and crouching, the lower part of his body obscured by the condensation that had built up within the enclosure.  One white-gloved palm remained pressed against the glass as if still searching for a means of escape.

I considered what to do—to what degree to get involved, but I feared repercussions should I be discovered as the one person who’d known Boyd’s secret.  There was nothing more I could do for him—the man and the mime were both gone.  With a final glance, I turned around the way I had come, and I headed home.

THE END

By TwitterButtons.com

Oh God, no. The fire. I’ve let the fire go out.

Patrick strained to see the floor below, but the semi-darkness cast menacing shadows everywhere. Reaching into his shirt pocket for one of several penlights, Patrick moved the slim beam first left and then right searching the ground below.

Thank you, sweet Jesus, Patrick thought as he let out a weak laugh.

The old Patrick would have spat out a righteous, “Screw you—you bastards!” not some weak-kneed thanks to an obviously non-existent deity’s offspring. Of course, the old Patrick hadn’t spent his days collecting fuel to keep the fire-ring around his apartment burning, and the old Patrick hadn’t imagined his life would be reduced to a daily struggle to survive. And carnivorous plants? No way—not unless they were invading the TV’s screen in some horror flick.

But the old Patrick was dead—replaced by the new Patrick: a man who coveted canned goods and gasoline; a man barely hanging on to his sanity; a man who sat atop a throne of furniture after dark to keep himself out of the reach of the flesh-eating plants.

The old Patrick had dismissed an early report of flesh-eating trees as a hoax. The reporter had talked about the history of the Zaire River Basin—wherever the Hell that was—and its ancient tales of voodoo and carnivorous plants.

What a load of crap, he’d thought.

Several months later, when more accounts of flesh-eating trees traveled stateside, and ghastly corroborating scenes were captured by Rain Forest tourists on cell phones and video recorders, it was too late for people to do much but hope for the disaster to pass while avoiding the infected area.

The old Patrick treated the news as an inconvenient hiccup in his life: after all, he lived in the middle of New York’s concrete jungle—nothing green grew around him. But then, he got a new job, and new Patrick began to emerge.

New Patrick’s company kept meticulous records, and new Patrick learned EdgeCorp had, several decades ago, been at the forefront of stopping the spread of the flesh-eating trees. EdgeCorp had tried a variety of stoppage efforts, the most notorious of which the public knew as the deforestation of the Congo (A.K.A. the Zaire River Basin).

The Congo’s flesh-eating trees were systematically destroyed, but the pollen and seedpods and other genetic materials were unwittingly distributed by the destruction teams themselves. The workers picked up microscopic particles on their clothing, on the bottoms of their shoes, and even in their hair. Eventually, the mutations spread to other places around the world.

When seven-year-old Tommy Nelson was eaten alive while playing in a park near his home, a kind of madness spread, and people everywhere took axes and chainsaws to the trees around them. Then, they lit the hacked branches and trunks on fire, and almost overnight, the air began to rain ash.

The plants adapted, and the mutations spread. It no longer took a breeze to loosen the leaves to attack: the plants were able to strike targets twenty-five yards away. Within two years, the world became a jungle of lethal beauty. Fruits and vegetables were only safe if canned, and soon, disease and starvation began to set in among the human and animal populations of the world.

Several years later, well fed and firmly established, the plants became more sinister. They grew slowly, mockingly, and the few people who remained waited for their homes to be choked and overgrown by the carnivorous greenery.

This was the fate the new Patrick faced. No longer a skeptic, he’d heeded the warnings and stockpiled canned goods and bottled water. He’d watched in horrified awe as the concrete jungle surrounding his multi-level apartment building turned a luscious, deadly green. Then, before the flesh-eating foliage could overtake his building, he and several other survivors built a fire ring around the building’s base—which they’d kept burning day and night.

Fuel supplies and survivors waned–some of the others had gotten careless and had been eaten, and the rest had fled–eventually, Patrick was alone. Believing the height of the building would be an advantage against the plants, Patrick had moved to the top floor and built his throne of furniture.

Until he was falling, Patrick hadn’t understood he’d slipped, and until he felt the first piece of his flesh tear away from his leg, Patrick didn’t comprehend the reason his fall had been cushioned.

From somewhere deep inside new Patrick, old Patrick’s voice emerged yelling obscenities at the foliage. The obscenities turned to screams, but in the end, only the sounds of
primeval dining remained.

THE END

The Carnivorous Leaf

Do you see the carnivore lurking in the leaf?  (The mouth is on the bottom right side, and the eye is slightly higher and on the left side.)

The original story was longer and primarily third-person narrative.  From there, it got very short and was told almost exclusively through Patrick’s eyes.  Several revisions later, it was a combination of the two, and I began sending it out to contests and magazines as a piece of flash fiction.  There were no takers, but I rather like where the story came from, although I think it may have suffered from too much rewriting.

If it were a painting, it would be muddy, and all the shapes would be the same.  Wait—that might make a good story. . .

When I started writing the story, all I had in my head was a vision of the character sitting in an idling cab parked in front of his family home while looking out though the darkness and missing what was inside. I just ran with the image, and got to a point that’s pretty much what you’ve read.

The submission I sent to the contest was titled “Food for Thought,” and though much of what you’ve read in “Love Letter” remains, I cut a bit of overt nastiness out of the dialogue. I also added to the letter itself—when I reread my submission, I felt the letter needed an extra line or two to become more focal to the story.

In my first draft, the mission to Mars is being talked about on the television that’s playing in the background when the Fenters gather in the kitchen. While revising my entry, I replaced the TV with the portrait of the dead sister. Why? Because the television commentary made the dialogue confusing, and because I wanted the dead sister to have a greater presence in the piece.

That’s my story—and for now, I’m sticking to it!

Oh–and if you want to read the winning story, it’s HERE.

His mother serving dinner.

Jason offered the driver a grand (half now and half later) to ensure he’d wait curb-side. The cabbie took the money and said something, but Jason wasn’t listening. He got out of the taxi—he in the darkness as the still-moving silhouette of his mother beat time against the rhythm of his steps.

Steps filled with anger and finality.

Steps wanting to turn and run away.

Steps carrying him to the front porch and the task at hand.

He wanted to hate them. But he wanted them to believe him.

And they hadn’t.

Didn’t.

Wouldn’t.

And so the rage and the sorrow fought for center stage.

The front door opened, and Jason lurched back. Before him, holding an over-stuffed bag of trash, stood his younger brother. The plastic garbage bag oozed from the boy’s fingers and lolled slinky-like down the steps before spilling its contents at Jason’s feet.

“Jason—what are you doing here?”

“Hey, Timmy. Dinner over?”

“Yeah, but. . .”

Jason pushed past him and went in. It was an old move—one he’d used against his younger brother in touch football a million times—years ago—in his life before. . .

From the entry hall, his mother’s silhouette reappeared, this time rippling in the glass blocks separating the front of the house from the kitchen. As Jason stepped forward, he watched a second silhouette undulate into view—his father. They’d seen his shadow too and knew it was too tall to be Timmy’s.

“Who’s there?”

His father’s voice lacked authority.

“Mom. Dad. I. . . ”

Jason moved around the partition and looked into the bewildered eyes of his parents.

“Jason—what are you doing here?”

“I already asked that, Mom.”

Timmy squeezed around Jason to stand against his dumbfounded mother and father. It was another football move, and it threatened Jason’s composure, but his father’s words saved him.

“Did you break out, son?”

“No, Dad, I didn’t break out. I got an early release.”

Tears welled in his mother’s eyes as his father wrapped a protective arm around Timmy.

“That’s not possible. You got life. No parole.”

“Things change, Dad. Outside the walls of this house, anyway.”

“Are you hungry?”

His mother fought her tears and began retying her apron as she spoke.

“I’m fine, Mom. I can’t stay. I just needed to tell you. . .”

Jason’s words were swallowed by the family’s frightened faces.

Looking past their huddle, Jason saw the huge, framed picture of Linda.

Dead and buried Linda.

Dead and buried Linda, the oldest child.

Dead and buried Linda the oldest child who Jason had been accused, tried, and convicted of murdering.

And looking at her face, he found his words.

“I got out because I volunteered for Mars. Part of the deal was a week of freedom before take-off. We leave tomorrow, so I came to tell you. Now that I have, I’ll go.”

His parents’ faces were stoic, but Timmy’s lit up before skepticism smothered the joy.

“No way. There’s no way they’d let a killer go to Mars.”

The thwack of his mother’s hand caused spittle to fly from Timmy’s mouth. Jason shook his head as his younger brother’s cheek grew a pinkish welt.

“Anyway, I guess you know it’s a one-way trip, so. . .”

Without waiting for a response, Jason turned, retraced his steps, and disappeared into the night.

# # #

The envelope came the next day and was addressed to “The Occupants,” but the writing was unmistakably Jason’s. Inside the envelope was a check wrapped in a note. The check was for $1,000,000. The note was short. The opening line which had consisted of several attempted and failed greetings had been crossed out, but the rest of the writing was strong and clear.

I volunteered to go to Mars as food—it’s better than being caged up on Earth.

Love,
Jason

THE END

Writers are big readers, and for big readers, there’s nothing more exciting than a new book—except a new book with a promotional bookmark included. (Okay, there’s one thing better: a new book with a super-cool jacket design and a promotional bookmark that takes advantage of that really cool design.) If you don’t get this, don’t worry—it’s a very geeky thing.

A really good book—a page-turner—is bittersweet. The rush while reading it is compounded by the desire to get to the end to find out everything that happened, but

. . .then. . .
. . .it’s. . .
. . .over. . .

And the books in one’s TBR pile all pale by comparison. And the thought of picking up another book seems awful—like cheating on a loved one. And that promotional bookmark? It’s great, but how can one possibly use it in another book?

Writers and big readers get very attached to characters, and when one is killed or suddenly ceases to exist because the “next” book isn’t something a publisher is interested in publishing, there’s a period of mourning. It’s not that different from reading a great stand-alone: once it’s over, everyone’s gone. For good. Period.

I’d just finished reading Stephen King’s Duma Key, and I was desperately trying to find the thing I could read next—Duma Key was SO GOOD, I was having a hard time finding my next read.

Then I settled on something, and I started it, and I bookmarked it, and my puppy got a hold of the whole thing, and. . .