elementia Short Story

Time’s hands are surprisingly familiar for all the change they bring. Their grasp is a feeling we all know and yet always seem to forget until they put us a down.

Every Saturday, after work, I visit my grandmother at her nursing home. It’s about a half an hour drive to get there, but it’s worth the drive. Grandma G isn’t the normal nursing home type you’d think of: sweet, unsuspecting, a kind of elderly innocence.

It’s been more than 30 years since Nam. It’s been about 20 years since the Wall went up, but this is my first time visiting it. Right now, my nephew, Robin, is headed to Kuwait, and probably soon, Iraq, for another war.

I walked into my room, setting my old backpack down next to my bed. One more, one more year and then I’ll be old enough to move out of this place people call a home.

A mindless leaf fluttered out of nowhere and perched on my sandaled foot. In the distance, a disorganized medley of birdsong made up an unrehearsed orchestra. Idyllic as it was, I was in the middle of a fairly typical snapshot of spring.

“Hostile vehicle moving to desired location, ”Ryan heard his spotter and put his handheld bible back into his shirt pocket. Ryan’s face was smeared with camouflage paint, and his rifle was covered in a rifle wrap, with his Ghillie suit covering the rest of his body.

I broke the silence with a short cough. If anyone else had been in
the sunlit room with me, they would have started and stared as if
I’d broken a silence not meant to be disturbed.

She fell on top of me, burrowed her face in my fluff, hands smacking the down inside of me, legs kicking, wriggling, growing restless at the foot. Every night I gave her comfort, she told me her secrets, whispered in the meekest of voices of the taunts and the teases and the tortures of the day.

I get hit in the face... a lot. Dodge balls, basketballs, volleyballs, tennis balls, doors, walls, bird crap, baseball bats, rogue hands, flying sand, and just about anything else you can think of. Everything just seems to have an affinity for my face.

Bullets flew through zombies like needles through cloth, and doing as much damage. The four soldiers were the last of their platoon; the rest had long since fallen to the swarms of the undead.

“It’s your turn,” Addison grumbled, her voice muffled by the pillow she was planted into. Her eyes were crusted with sleep and she shifted her head over a little to avoid the drool puddle she had accumulated during the night.

Can you believe that? Absolutely impossible. The world ended three months ago. But if you think that’s why I’m in denial, you’re wrong.

I simply can’t believe that a guy like that can even exist...

I’m sitting in the middle of nowhere, on a hill looking toward the horizon. No tripod, just crossed legs and my elbows resting on my knees, holding an old camera filled with darkroom film.

You ask me If I know the way back home from here. I sing the words, “yes, dear” back to you like I’m someone else. You say “alright” because you’ve got nothing else to say right now; I respect that. I keep my eyes on the road. I’m not quite sure where you’re looking at this point

Even when she was young, Sonya had never been afraid of the supernatural.

Embers in my hair, black dust getting to my lungs. Red, yellow, purple, blue fire in front of me, behind me, beside me. Above and below me. Within me.

When we finally start talking to each other after the fall, huddling on the side of the island where the black-eyed humans can’t hear us, we all tell the same story. A day that started with the sun rising and waking up and going off to whatever it is we do during the day.

momma momma momma
it was ricky it was ricky

momma don’t believe that it was ricky who done it
she thinks i killed him

momma momma momma
don’t call the fuzz
it was ricky it was ricky

I feel that if I move from this spot I will die. But I take a step forward and don’t.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

It’s 10 pm on a cold-for-California winter night, and there’s nothing I want to do more than to leave the ice cream shop. I drag the mop along the floor behind me, letting its weight act as an excuse for my lack of movement.

Zachary sighed and put a hand to his forehead. He took off his glasses and rested his head on his arm, wishing he could find even one decent actor.

“The End.”

On a cold February evening I learned one of life’s biggest lessons: appreciate what you have at present because once it’s taken away from you, all you’ll have left are memories. For me that ‘it’ was my fifteen month old niece, Bano.

Nobody knows what really goes on in her mind, her life. In school Sarah is always happy always smiling. To everybody that is Sarah. Home, Sarah is a little different. Home, Sarah is sad, lonely, mean. Every day she is hiding, hiding from those mean words, the icy glare, the horrible thoughts.

Billions of miles away, the Oort Cloud orbited the Sun in silence. The cloud, consisting of thousands upon thousands of chunks of ice and rock, formed the edge of the Solar System, millions of miles past Neptune.

Even now that she’s gone they won’t stop moving and knocking, I wanted to say How could you say that you love her when you won’t leave her alone, and Darl knows it and instead he sets fire to the goddamn barn. The goddamn barn.

Every so often there are nights when the veil between worlds is so gauzy and thin, that travel from one to the next can happen as easily as crossing a bridge. Some of these nights follow the rigid calendar journey of the earth, moon, and sun.

“Come on, Jenny, you might beat me this time,” David teases trying to coax me into running with him after work. Yeah right, I couldn’t beat him even if he was missing a leg. It’s not like I am slow or anything, it’s just that David is a hell of a lot faster.

He leaves his shoes on the doorstep. Size twelve and a half, wearing through the toes and curling with wrinkles of use. He stopped working at the orchard in November, but red Oklahoma mud still caulks the crevices and holes, stains the laces.

“My husband was not supposed to die young.”