The Little Hipster's Growed-Up Storybook

youvegotemal asked: I miss your stories. I want another one to read.

I promise I’m still writing, I’ve just been busy! But now that classes are over I have something like six projects to work on as far as writing goes, including a comic for which I have found someone interested in doing at least concept sketches.

Anonymous asked: You need to become a novelist. Even while reading your shortest stories, I get so sucked into the words and the characters that everything else disappears. You manage to grab my heart and drag me along for the ride. It all feels so real. Not many people are gifted with the ability that you have, and you're lucky.

Wow, thank you so much. I have never really considered working in as long a form as a novel, but I may choose to do so if I could only find the time to do something that involved. I like to think that my short work is my best anyway. I have considered, however, collecting some of my work. Could you, or any of my other followers, conceive of reading/buying a short story anthology? Maybe if it included a few new stories?

And of course, thank you once again. I can’t begin to tell you how much positive feedback means to me.

Unprecedented, I know, but here is another completed story. I started this one about the same time that I started “They Speak Quieter” and realized that the other would turn out longer, a requirement for my writing class. So this shorter story comes from about the same state of mind.

The Specter of the Wolf on the Snowy Dog-Path

The dog had to go out, and there was no negotiating it. When the dog had to go out, I had to take him out, because when the weather got too cold Greg couldn’t manage it. He may have just turned 35, but his knees were worn from his college days on the lacrosse team. So this time, when the dog had to go out I had to take him out. I linked up our German Shepherd Erwin to his leash and hooked it to the door while I put on my wool coat and tight knit hat. Erwin looked up at me, his smooth fur laid against his head. Erwin had the deepest most meaningful eyes, brown like most dogs have, but almost like a person. His eyebrows were very expressive. I reached down and scratched under his chin, then pulled on my tall snowboots.

“You don’t mind waiting do you Erwin? You’re a good boy. So patient.” I gave him another scratch under his chin. His eyes seemed to stare at me, and he pulled his lips past his teeth. He really did look like he was smiling at me, and I smiled back. Erwin was a good dog.

I opened the door to a blast of cold air and flurries of snow. They dropped in heavy clumps upon my face and coat shoulders.

“Let’s make this quick, huh Erwin?” He smiles back at me as we take our first steps into the cold wind. The powder has begun to accumulate upon the lawn in drifts, and the flakes were visible in the conic projections of the streetlights. They blotted out what little light came from the stalks that peered over the path. The shadows on the ground looked less like tiny crystals and more like great aircraft drifting across the sidewalk-sky. Erwin and I crossed the street, which had also found itself filled with heaps of glittering, sugar-esque snow. I took large, exaggerated steps in and out of the big white piles while Erwin frolicked along side of me.

Across the street there was a jogging path made of black pavement that Greg and I called “the dog-path” on account of all of the people who used it to take their dogs out. We had met many of our neighbors walking Erwin, but I figured that the path would be empty except for myself on this particular night. The path was relatively clear, so I stuck to it in order to avoid getting too cold and wet.

Erwin locked in by my side, as we strayed from the streetlights and closer to the dim lanterns that lined the path he became cautious of the dark.

Winter is a peculiar time of year, a time associated with the end of things. For almost a year following the death of my father I had wrestled with the concept of breaking things off with Greg and the winter had moved along the mood of finality. It had nothing to do with the event per se; it was a long time coming, catalyzed. It was practically thematic, I could see the plan I had in mind coming to a head. I come in from a snowy dog-walk and go up to Greg, stretched out on the couch. He might say, thanks Ian, I’ll catch up on these favors when the weather clears up. I would just make some reasonable noise of agreement. When I sit down I might see the oppressive cold out the window and feel it still hanging on my bones. Hanging, much in the way that the weight of a long since drab relationship does. I might then say Greg, would you mind having a talk with me, to which he would look up and try to figure out what was going on. I was actually on my way to bed, want to join me, and we can talk in the morning, he would say, and I would finally put my foot down and say no, we need to do this now. We’re growing apart and don’t understand each other anymore. I hate to say it but I don’t feel like I love you anymore, and I don’t feel like you care about me anymore. I need you to go Greg. Take your clothes and your things and go. I can’t go on like this. And in the morning, he would be gone, but the snow would be sitting on the lawn, clean and fresh. A clean, bright slate. It might go like that.

Erwin did his business on a snow bank, staining it with a yellow signature. I could see the streetlight well in the distance from where we were, flickering from the masses of snow hovering beneath it. I exhaled a deep sigh, letting a foggy cloud escape from my mouth and into the air. It seemed like such a long way back to the house, and yet I felt Erwin pulling to take the long way around the path. He is a strong dog, and it wasn’t long before I gave in and let him take me for the long walk around the jogging path. I turned my collar up to the cold weather and dug my leash-free hand into my warm pocket. We walked, and we almost made it three quarters of the way around before I saw it.

We were on the far side of the path. The streetlight was tiny in the distance like a cigarette or even a toothpick shooting a minuscule ray of light onto the ground. I stepped blindly on the path through the snow, until I noticed a tug behind me. Erwin had stopped and laid down warily on the path, the flakes gathering on his face and around his eyes. He whimpered slightly, and when I turned back around I saw the thing that had spooked him. It was a giant of its kind, and freakish in its color. A wolf, standing in the path and obscured by the pattern of darkness and snow. He was camouflaged, in a way, a big black wolf spotted with white flecks all over his back and legs and even on his face. I stepped back, terrified, to stand near Erwin, who had also essentially given in. We stood there and waited.

We watched, intently, the actions of the wolf. It paced down the path deliberately, but not quickly; stopping here and there to smell at the snow or snap at the falling flakes. It must have stood only ten feet away when it stopped where it was and sat, like you teach house pets to sit, and stared right at me. Beautiful, dark eyes stared out at me, like black reflecting pools. I heard it exhale, like a sigh, and a puff of fog escaped from the large wolf’s nostrils, tendrils like smoke swirling up into the sky. I thought, and then questioned why the thought came to me, about Greg, sitting on the couch. Erwin and I had been gone for almost twenty minutes. Would he still be sitting there, or would he be worried? I fancied that I might turn my head and see him coming up the path. He was not coming up the path. He would not come out to meet me.

I looked back at the wolf. It had the strangest pattern of colors, the white spots tiny like pinpricks on his massive black body, and I noticed that I had seen the pattern before.

In the winter-time when the lights are out and the sky grows dark, Orion is in plain sight above my house, the warrior shooting his bow. I have seen the constellation a thousand times, and there was no mistaking that on this wolf’s body were the four points, and the tightened three star belt. I placed my hand on Erwin’s head and he stood up slowly. We were both so cold, and I shivered as I took a tentative step forward. The wolf sprung up and started a brisk pace toward us, but I swear, and still do believe to this day that as the wolf came toward us, rather than walk past me he stepped right through me and into the night behind me. Erwin and I walked home as quickly as we could in our state. I was determined more than ever that I had to talk to Greg.

And here is how it might have went.

I might have come back in, covered from head to foot in snow, Erwin the same. Greg might have gotten up and taken me in his arms, close to tears. I was about to call 911, he might say, I was worried what took you so long. And I would tell him that we just felt like a long walk. And he might have made me tea, and sat with his arm around me for a few moments to keep me warm. It might have been that instead of saying that we needed to talk I turned close to his face and planted a kiss on his cheek, then one on his lips. Maybe I noted that I could feel the scratch of his stubble on my chin, and maybe I put my arm on his chest. Warmth, a touch, there might have been that look in his eyes, the same one that I saw when we first eyed each other at the college reunion. Then he might have gotten up, taking my hand and going to the bedroom where we undressed and ran our hands over each other’s bodies. He may have taken me into his mouth, then made love with me as the snow built up around our windows. And as the sun rose, I may have wept, and told him that it was to be the last time. He might just have grasped my hand as I spoke with him, and admitted how hard it would be to let go of what we had, but also how necessary it was to move on. Maybe I helped him gather his things and maybe he refused to leave without one more kiss goodbye that took us lustfully back to the bedroom. And maybe by the time I awoke from the afterglow he was gone. But I might notice that the snow was not perfect and faultless. There wouldn’t be a blank slate, because whenever somebody leaves, their footprints trail behind them, a reminder to all of where they once were.

It might have gone that way. But there is one concrete thing I’m willing to say about that day. When I think about what happened between Greg and I, I don’t think about sleeping with him, or breaking up with him, or how he reacted or how I reacted. I think about a date we went on, and how it was so cold one night but we decided to walk home instead of hailing a taxi. It must have been ten degrees outside, but we made it the whole way back. At one point we stopped, huddled together laughing about how silly we had been, trying to save a measly few bucks and freezing half to death in the process. Suddenly he looked up and pointed to the stars, seven stars to be exact.

“Orion,” he said, “the warrior. The hunter.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “and what the hell makes those seven dots look like a person?”

“People. People who are willing to see something for being more than meets the eye. The stars aren’t the real shape of a person, just the main structural points. Two shoulders, two knees, and a belt. Enough to make somebody see exactly what they think they want to see. We do the same thing with everything.”

“Is that so? What do you see when you look at me?”

“Orion.”

“But what am I hunting?”

“That’s up to you. What do you see?”

And I remember that so well, I suppose, because up until the night that I saw the wolf on the dog-path, all I could see were the stars: separate, unjoined, and unrelated.

youvegotemal asked: Your imagination is inspiring.

Thank You! I take it you enjoyed my most recent story then.

“On the way to Cassadega to commune with the Dead, they said you better look alive.” - Oberst

It was a rip, or a tear maybe, in his trousers just a few inches above his knee. If Tom had wished to he could have poked the pocket, filled with his phone and assorted change, out through the hole in the fabric.

“Damn,” he said, taking his eyes from the road for a moment to examine the damaged slacks, “these are my only black pants.”

Lara glanced from the window to his lap. She looked for a moment, then grabbed her glasses from her clutch.

“Let me see,” she said, as she bent forward from her seat and closer to Tom’s pants-leg. It must have been quite a sight from the outside, Tom driving at the obligatory crawl in a funeral procession, his wife headfirst in his crotch. Tom felt a rush of blood and obscene thoughts climb into his head as her fingers brushed against the skin on his leg. She looked up at him through the glasses, sitting low on her nose.

“I can fix these,” she said, “but you’ll just have to wear them for today, I guess. It’s not that noticeable. Be careful of your things in the meantime, there’s a hole starting in the pocket too.”

Tom just stared at the back of the hearse. He felt the swelling thoughts in his brain and elsewhere start to subside. He hadn’t slept with Lara since his father went into the hospital two months earlier. There never seemed to be a romantic moment available, and Lara preferred to coo over him and act motherly whenever he seemed needy. Homemade soup, fresh laundry, and kisses on the forehead were nice; they were not however, erotic. On one occasion, after coming back from a hospital visit Tom buried his face in Lana’s breasts and calmly told her how much he needed her. She wrapped her arms around his head, put her hands on his cheeks. When he looked up into her eyes, she smiled, and told him that she would reheat some dinner for him.

Tom watched as the hearse clicked on it’s right turn signal and he followed it as it turned into the cemetery. Wrought iron fence surrounded the very old-fashioned graveyard that Tom’s father Harold had selected in his will; moss and ivy climbed among some of the older headstones, and there were only a few markers in the ground that were somewhat new. There was a little area sequestered off to park the few cars near the grounds-keeper’s building, and Tom sat in the driver’s seat watching his little family step out of their cars in the rear view mirror.

His little brother Ian, who was clearly uncomfortable at the traditional Catholic services with his boyfriend Greg. Greg had suggested they just not go, which is why they were both there, but were not talking to each other. Tom’s older sister Jonie and her fiancé Luke took a moment to kiss each other on the cheek as they leaned against the driver’s side door. Jonie was already tearing up, and Luke held her against his chest. She held on to him for dear life. Finally, Tom’s half-sister Emily got out of the car with his step-mother. Emily was barely out of high-school, and had flown in from her out of state University to attend the funeral. She looked sombre, but not sad, and held her mother’s hand tightly to help her get out of the car. Tom’s step-mother, Kelly, was younger than his father by a fair margin, and she had surprised the entire family with how quickly she had gotten involved with Harold. Tom had always figured that his father had been lonely after his mother had died, and was happy he had found someone as nice as Kelly. She was devastated when Tom left the hospital room to tell her that his father had passed. She put her hand on Emily’s shoulder to steady herself as she stepped out of the car.

Tom looked to his wife, who meekly smiled at him. She planted a little kiss on his lips and rubbed the hair over his neck the way she used to do when they were first dating.

“We better join everyone else,” she said, as she got out and straightened her dress.

Tom waited patiently through the burial, staring at the horizon as the priest quoted a favorite verse of Tom’s father.

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his…” he said, while Tom’s family sobbed and sniffed. Tom’s step-mother Kelly was nearly doubled over crying, and she had her hand balanced on Emily’s shoulder to keep her upright. Tom caught a look at Emily, and she had such a stone-faced expression he had to look away to prevent a peach pit from rising in his throat. His father was lowered into the ground, and he walked back to the cars with Luke next to him and his wife strolled ahead to unlock the door of the car.

“Hey, are you alright?” Luke asked, putting his slim, bookish fingers on Tom’s shoulder, “you, uh, haven’t been talking much at all. How are things with Lara? Still…?”

“I’m in a hurry to get back to the hotel Luke. Can we…”

“Sure. Just, you know, call I guess.”

When Tom looked toward the car he saw Lara standing at the passenger door staring into the side mirror. He shuffled slowly past the grounds-keeper’s and reached into his pocket. He found his keys, but instead of his phone he felt a hole that had formed in the bottom of his pocket during the services.

“Shit.” His voice was tired, and his face fell. He was tired, after all, and he handed the key to Lara with a resigned sigh.

“What is it?” she asked.

“My phone. The hole in pocket popped open and I must have dropped it somewhere. You go ahead and drive back, I’ll call a cab when I find my cell. OK?”

“Oh…OK. Are you sure? It’ll be dark soon.”

“It’s just graves, I’ll be fine. It’ll only take me a few minutes, we didn’t exactly tour the place.” He kissed her on the cheek and she got into the car. He watched as she pulled safely onto the main road, and then he trudged back across the grassy field toward the marker his father now laid under, scanning the ground as he went. The graveyard’s little imperfections came to the surface as he looked closely at each of the graves and the ground around them. This grave had a patch of upturned earth where someone had intended to plant a flower, but left as a divot instead. That grave read “Died doing what he lvoed.” That, Tom thought, was probably a happy customer. He hummed a dull sound of amusement, and continued surveying the ground for his missing phone; looking amongst the knotty tree roots and the patches of longer grass. It wasn’t long before he got back to his father’s headstone, but he had not seen any sign of the missing cellular.

The grave was newly covered, the mound of earth had filled up the hole in the time he had taken walking, and was still losing clods of dirt from the top to the wind. He put his hands in his pockets and sat on the ground. The headstone they had selected for his father was simple: a gray block of granite which read “Harold Laughlin” and then underneath that it had the dates of his birth and death, and finally a selection of poetry. It was from a poem and story that Harold had enjoyed in his life, and the line read: “And Spring herself when she woke at dawn, would scarcely know that we were gone.”

And while Tom was staring at the chiseled capital S he felt another hand on his shoulder, and he was about to turn and ask Luke to just leave him alone when he saw that he was not there at all. There was a girl who could have been an old teenager, or a young lady, and she was dressed in a gray summer dress despite the cool, humid breeze that blew more clods of dirt from the fresh mound on the ground. She was beautiful, and had a serene smile on her face adorned by a few brief waves of blond hair. Tom could not rightly see what color her eyes were.

“Who is he for you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Tom asked right back, as he started to stand up.

“Well, if you get buried it means you’ve got a list of what you are to people. Husbands, wives, children, grandmamas, cousins. Harold here, who is he for you?”

“My father. He was my father.” Tom answered, brushing stray earth from his pants.

“Is,” she said.

“I’m sorry?” Tom looked at her right in the eye, but still found that he could not quite figure out what color her eyes were.

“Is. He is your father. He’s not gone, just dead.” She picked a bit of browned grass from off of Tom’s shoulder.

“Well, no. He’s gone. Sorry if you think otherwise but I don’t buy in to all that. Eternal soul, holy spirit, whatever. He’s gone. Have you seen a cell phone around here?” Tom gestured around the area, indicating the entire space of the graveyard.

“Who are you gonna call if you find it? Bet it’s not someone you want to talk to. Nowadays, no one calls who they wanna talk to, just who they have to call.”

“Well I’m not calling my dead dad, that’s for sure.” Tom looked to the horizon to watch the sun go from being half obscured in the distance to mostly gone behind the trees and low buildings.

“You could probably stand to talk to him. You sound like it.” She fiddled with a little blue flower that was stitched into her dress. Tom put his hand on his hip and looked right at her, through her anomalous eyes. She must be some kind of crazy, he thought.

“I have a lot of things I could say to my father, but I don’t think I’ll get the chance. Damn shame.”

“It’s probably for the best that you think that. Anyway, no one ever says what they mean to say when they have at someone. I’m sure you’ve done that, I know I have anyway, gone up to someone and intended to give them a piece of your mind? But then you wind up saying, how are you, and that’s so nice, and oh good for you.Nah, we always realize that being mad is stupid right? Cuz we love people.”

Tom laughed aloud at this.

“I felt a few things about my father, and he felt a few things about me. I don’t think either of us would have held back if we had one more meeting.”

“Well I always feel like I’m gonna cry when I think about my daddy. He passed away as well. I used to get so angry with him. He was a strict man, but now when I really sit and think about it, the waterworks just go. You were gonna cry about your daddy at his funeral, right?”

“I don’t think this is your business, huh?” he said to her, then looked to see that the horizon was now quite dark, “when does this place close up?”

“Sundown. Soon, it looks like, and if the boys who do the digging finished up early they might have locked up and gone home by now.”

“God dammit!” Tom shouted, and ran through the maze of crypts and mausoleums and headstones to the gate, which had been locked by the time he reached it. He shook at the iron bars and grunted in his attempt to open them up. As the sun passed around the last bump the sky grew dark, and Tom dropped to his knees, breathing heavily.

***

“Tom. Wake up, Tom. You were screaming.” His father was shaking his shoulder, and he had a cold sweat on his forehead. The dim lights from the hallway behind his father’s head made a halo about his face, which showed a deep look of worry.

“The l-lights. Turn them on,” Tom said. He fumbled for the switch on his desk and a bulb lit up the room. He could see his father frowning at him as he sat up.

“I’m just gonna go back to bed, you don’t have to be up. I’m fine.” Tom pushed his father’s hand off of his shoulder, but his father took a seat on his mattress instead of excusing himself.

“You haven’t been taking your medicine before you go to bed. You’re having nightmares again, you need those pills they mellow you out. Keep you from getting too…”

“Interesting. They make me tired and mopey. I hate being like that. I’m better off…”

“Better off? Do you have any idea what type of damage these might be doing?”

“I don’t care. They’re only nightmares they aren’t affecting my health, I sleep fine most of the time.”

“I don’t mean just you. You wake up screaming, send the house into panic. You have to think about everybody this is a family.”

“That word gets thrown around a lot ever since Mom died and she moved in.”

“Married me, Thomas. She didn’t move in. She married me. I have no intention of having this conversation tonight.” He never looked right at Tom, just stared into the hallway. Tom could see through sleepy eyes that he was slowly shaking his head.

“Don’t patronize me Dad. You’re always ready to have this conversation. Just not for long enough for me to make a point. I’m going to bed.”

***

“What’s wrong? Are you crying?” The girl put her hand on Tom’s shoulder as he shuddered on the ground. Her hand wasn’t cold, but he could feel an icy chill down his spine. The sky had fallen completely dark, the only brightness coming from the distant streetlights on the highway.

“No. I have p-panic attacks. Nightmares. I take pills but th-they’re in my hotel room. I’ll be fine. Please don’t touch me.” His hand squeezed his own leg rhythmically. Fingers dug in, then out, then in, then out. The girl drew her hand away and sat on the ground next to him.

“Talk to me,” she said.

“What?”

“When I get nervous or upset, I just talk. To whoever. Conversation is a powerful medicine.”

“What would I talk to you about?”

“Tell me about your father.”

“Wha….”

“The dead man. Harold. What was he like?”

***

Thomas could hear the phone from his bed, but chose to ignore it. Lara was on his left breathing deeply in her sleep. She was beautiful in her afterglow. The answering machine clicked on.

“Tom. This is your Father. You haven’t called since…in a while. I…we wanted to see you for your birthday so I thought I’d call you. It’s early there, but…well call me back when you get this message. I l…I’ll talk to you.” The machine beeped.

Lara rolled over to look into Tom’s eyes. Tom stared back, and brushed his hand over her cheek. He felt warm in his belly when he awoke to see her that morning.

“You don’t wanna talk to your dad?” she asked.

“Heh…did you want to?”

“I guess it isn’t…an opportune moment. I’m glad I stayed over. What made you change your mind?”

“I wanted to. I like you lots, and I wanted to make you happy.”

“I hope you slept well even though I was here. You got up at least once in the night, were you OK?”

Tom adjusted his position in bed and got up. He checked the time, and put on a robe.

“I, uh, was fine. I never sleep well. I have…trouble some nights.”

“Hmmmm…I hope I’m the only trouble you get into lately.”

Lara smiled as she said this, and let the sheets fall across her body. Tom pulled off his robe and went back to bed.

***

“My father,” Tom began, “was a difficult man. He liked things the way he liked them and tried to keep things going his way. Ran a tight ship, you might say.”

“Like what?” She stared past his face, toward the locked gate.

“Hm?”

“How was he like that? Tell me more.”

The wind played with the trees, dropping a few leaves onto the dark grounds of the graveyard. Tom struggled, looking at his hands.

“I suppose he…” and he lost his train of thought for a moment, looking at the girl, who was so calm despite the dark and the cold and the locked gate, “I’ve never been asked that before. I guess I’ve gotten so used to just saying it I never wondered what it really meant. He was from a kind of old family, and he had a lot of rules. My mother, she was the one I was close with.”

“How was she at the funeral today? Does she miss her husband?”

“She’s dead, actually. Died when I was in high-school.”

“I’m sorry. There was a lady at the service, though. Who was she?”

Tom got up and looked out at the street. The occasional car passed the graveyard and the headlights put shadowy bars over the grass and his face.

“Sore subject, I guess.”

“Kelly. They got married only a little while after my mom died. I always suspected that they…knew each other before mom died. For a guy who had so much damn moral fiber…”

“He was cheating on your mom?”

“I mean…I couldn’t know for sure. I never wanted to talk to him about it and he never said anything. How do you bring that up to somebody?”

“You talk. You remember that? You can’t have a conversation without starting one.”

“Good advice. A little too late, though.”

“Well and you would never say anything. Like I said, no one does. All you’d have to say is what you really feel, and that’s what makes talking so important.”

“He’s dead. Gone.”

“Maybe. But the proof isn’t in what he’d say back. It’s what you’d say to him. What you meant to say to him.”

“I know what I meant to say.”

***

The two walked towards the center of the graveyard where Tom’s father was. She dragged the time out, stopping at graves and pointing out their “stories.”

“Look, ‘Raymond Freeland, 1945-1986’. He was young, a banker, probably not married.” she would say.

“How could you know that?”

“You can tell, by the headstones I mean. Some headstones are rich, some are poor, some are funny, some are poignant. Headstones are like people, they have lots of personality. Epitaphs are the best though. That’s what my dad says anyway.”

“How does he know that?”

“He’s the undertaker. Worked here for a long time. Wanna know why epitaphs are the best?”

“Sure, why not.”

“They’re like last words, but you get to think about them. You know? Like ‘what I would say with my last breath, if I got one more breath to get composed.’”

She smiled and pointed at Raymond Freeland’s grave. Underneath his name it said: ‘All too brief.’ Brief was underlined, a stern straight line compared to the elegantly chiseled typeface on the rest of the stone surface.

“He was sad.” Tom said.

“Who isn’t? Dying sucks. But even though we all do it, it very rarely happens when we mean for it to.”

They were finally at Harold’s grave, when Tom spied a glint of metal under a pile of leaves near the stone. His phone was chilly to the touch, and he immediately called for someone to open the gate. It would take half an hour. He looked to the girl, and saw that she was staring at the headstone.

“He really loved you, you know. He was a sweet guy.”

“You can tell that from the headstone?”

“I can tell from how you talk. You’re only as upset as you want to look. And now that he’s gone…how can you be upset at someone when it’s done?”

Tom looked at the grave, and saw the epitaph again.

‘And Spring herself when she woke at dawn, would scarcely know that we were gone.’

“What would I say to him?” he asked. But when he turned, she was heading down the path. For just a moment she turned and gave him a polite wave. He looked back at the grave, and slipped his phone into the pocket that didn’t have a hole in it. The ground was cool, and as he sat down, he put a finger to the face of the stone.

“Don’t be,” he said, “I’m sorry too. Talk to you later.”

I finished this little draft at 4:00 am last night. I woke up at 3 and had to get it all down. Pretty good, and a nice little short piece as well. I have done zero editing, so I would appreciate some written feedback if anyone has the time.

The Old Apartment

When we first looked at the place I remember thinking the same thing that most everyone said to me when they walked in to see it.

‘Well, it’s big, isn’t it?’ I thought, staring into the large dining room and kitchen and the bathroom with the long counter-top. Even the living area and bedroom were roomy, able to accommodate two couches and a coffee table in front of the television in the case of the living room. The bedroom had space for our queen sized bed, a few bookcases and tables for lamps and other such little things that Harriet had accrued for ‘our place’ over the last two years of dating. We were never at a loss for living space, the walls were never bereft of posters, and the floors had enough space between pieces of furniture to show nice rugs. Harriet and I looked at the place together that day, and agreed we should live there, which is how all of our furniture wound up there, of course.

Unfortunately, Harriet didn’t last, as most things don’t. As it turned out, nothing terrified her more than the concept of ‘our place’, and after living together for six months she decided that we needed very badly to have our own space. She stood in the doorway much as she did every morning before leaving for work, purse in hand, hair done, and dressed well. She stared at me with her big sad eyes and instead of saying ‘see you this afternoon’, or ‘have a good day’ or some other pleasantry she shook her head. She shook her head and started to cry, and finally, she said, ‘I just don’t know what happened’.

Which was a good question. I didn’t really notice anything bad happening at all. We had been amicable and close for the six months in the big old apartment. We ate dinner together, and watched movies in our big living room. We even had guests over occasionally. I remember now one party in particular that may have hinted to the problem that Harriet had seen in our situation. It was not long after we moved in, and we had invited her brother and his fiancée over for dinner and conversation.

When Harriet’s brother, Jeremy, and his fiancée, Lara walked in they of course loved the place. The first words out of Lara’s mouth didn’t surprise anyone.

“My, it is a big place, isn’t it?” she said, looking down the long hallway into the living room, then toward the dining room and the kitchen as she hung her coat on the wooden rack that Harriet had bought to put in the big empty entryway.

“Yes,” I replied, “big for a one bedroom, but it suits us.” I led her and Jeremy into the living room where I had just popped open a bottle of Pinot Noir and poured them each a glass. Harriet put on a quiet record and we talked while the roast finished in the oven. Jeremy was an interesting sort of man, he had found his way early on in the business world, and after a couple of right turns fell into a lot of easy money. He was essentially retired at thirty, a sparse five years older than Harriet and I were. We talked for quite a while about the record that Harriet put on and the rent prices in our neighborhood, but just before dinner, while Harriet and Lara were in the other room, we came upon a subject that interested him a great deal.

“So,” he asked staring me down like a bullfighter stares down his taurine opponent, “what’s the progress with you and Harriet look like? Plan on making an honest woman out of her soon?” The subject did legitimately interest him. He was the oldest in the family, and Harriet was the next oldest. After their father had died, Jeremy became very attached to his younger siblings and did his best to do right by them. The question didn’t catch me by surprise, and I produced an appointment book from my pocket. The date of our anniversary was circled and I detailed the plan for him. I had everything planned out, her favorite restaurant, a bottle of champagne, and of course a nice modest ring. Simple things, the sort of things she would appreciate. I looked in the doorway in time to see Harriet and Lara appear from the kitchen. Lara looked excited as all hell, but Harriet seemed a little pale. They announced that dinner was ready, but I had no idea how long they had been standing and waiting for us.

After Harriet left, her things started to disappear. She or her brother would come by while I was at work, and when I got home bits and pieces of our place would be gone. One day all of the posters were taken off of the wall. The next day all of the knick-knacks were gone from the end-tables. She took her half of the books, then her half of the records, and her half of the DVDs. Eventually, after asking a few times, I combined all of my things into a little bit of space. She then took her half of the bookcases. Before long my big stupid apartment looked much bigger, and stupider for it’s lack of things. My kitchen had only essential appliances: no food processor, no blender, no stand up mixer. Only a microwave and coffee machine. The shelves were mostly bare as well, since most of the cooking utensils were also Harriet’s. My dining room was a joke as well, no table, and no chairs. All that stood was a small table that I had purchased to place a lamp upon. The lamp was Harriet’s, and it was gone before long.

My living room sat with it’s one lonely couch, no coffee table, and a TV that sat on the ground. The stand was not mine either, and it left at the same time that the nice set of sheets disappeared from my bed, replaced by the ones reserved for when the others were in the wash. The worst of it was watching bits an pieces disappear without seeing so much as a whisper of Harriet. It was like she was a ghost, slowly taking her things from the mortal realm to the afterlife, leaving me with a cold feeling and empty shelves and bookcases.

I sat one afternoon in my big, stupid, lonely apartment, when I heard the door click open. Harriet was standing in the doorway, her coat wrapped around her shoulders and her purse slung over her shoulder. She was sniffing, maybe from the cold, but maybe not. Her eyes were red, too. She stood stock still, as if I might not see her if she didn’t move, then finally walked into the big empty entryway. She still had her keys, it seemed. She held them in her hand, but they were separated from the chain and the souvenir key ring that she got on our trip to Acapulco. She swallowed hard before walking all the way up to me and putting the keys in my hand.

She didn’t fight when I took her into my arms and held her close to my body. When I leaned away and pressed my lips to hers she sighed and kissed me back like I had seen her only this morning, and she was returning from her day at work. By the time we had moved to the big empty bedroom I knew that it was going to be the last time I slept with her, so I made the best of it. We spent hours in bed, some spent talking, others making love. When I woke the next morning she was still there next to me. We both got out of bed, and dressed. We awkwardly kissed before she insisted that she had to leave for work. As she went out the door I stopped her in the threshold and hugged her one last time. When I pulled away she looked into her pocket and grabbed the apartment key, looking quizzically back at me as I closed the door. I like to think that when she looked away, she smiled.

When I got back from work that afternoon, the posters were hung back on the wall of our place.

I hope nobody on here was waiting with bated breath for my next story, because I just found out I have to start from scratch. It is gone, completely. I don’t know what the fuck happened but I am so pissed about it it is unbelievable. Five pages gone and I don’t even know how. The file is just blank, does anybody know why that would happen?

Just a warning to everyone, this is a bit NSFW. There is a little bit of making out and some pretty frank talk about private parts and also some four letter words. I usually try to avoid overt cursing, since you can put more power behind other words, but it fits here. Just warning you, but it is a very good story, I think.

King For A Day

I guess I’m telling this story again, but you know what? I have a confession to make. I’ve never really told it how it went, and even though I’ve told people the story of how I met this chick Paula at a bar and everyone by now knows the way it turned out and we have a good laugh about it and it comes up at parties all the time. But you know what? Fuck you all. I’ve never told the real story because I was embarrassed about it but I’m sick of catching shit as it is and I’m also sick of telling the story the way that makes all you jackasses laugh instead of telling it the way that it happened. And I can tell by the look on all of your faces that this is exactly not what you expected to hear, but I don’t care.

It was in college or just after college or something, and I had decided that I was going to try one of those stupid gambits that Men’s magazines put out to make you think you can get sex by playing some stupid game or spouting a set of lines. So I went to Halsted with some of my gay buddies that I had made in Campus Democrats, and we went to a gay bar. The idea was that straight girls go to gay bars so that they can drink without getting harassed, but they get sick of being ignored so they get just the tiniest bit desperate. Then, you take the opportunity to swoop in and be like “Hey I’m a straight man!” According to this ill-plotted plan it was supposed to make you look like both the only option and a very masculine man who is comfortable in his sexuality.

The bar was different than any place I had been to, aside from the obvious reasons. It was more like a club, with a dance floor and a DJ and colorful lights. The whole place felt like a party was already going on. I stood at the bar scoping the place out. There were no girls there at all, and sitting at the bar with a scotch was apparently an invitation to have quite a collection of friendly men come on to me.

I was there for two hours without seeing a single breast. It was a really awkward experience and I disliked every moment of it. I am the last person that I would call homophobic, but the fact of the matter is that after getting hit on something like ten or eleven times in a night because you look like Ryan Gosling is irritating. I don’t even know who that is, I don’t have time to go see movies. So I didn’t have any luck the first time and I decided that it was a stupid idea and it wasn’t going to work. My buddies however had a great time watching me squirm at the bar, so they invited me back to go out with them a couple of weeks later.

It became an event for me. Every two weeks or so, I would go out with my gay friends and hit a club. They would dance, and I would deter the advances of Chicago’s homosexual community one guy at a time. I started to loosen up a little bit and at least not shoot people down right away. Have a conversation for a while; on several occasions I found out that there were other straight guys there too, doing exactly what I was doing. Staring down the front door waiting for a chest without hair on it to walk in.

It was probably the sixth or seventh time that I went that I met Paula. It was not unlike any other time that I had ventured out to BoysTown, but it was getting to be less of a plan to pick up chicks and more of a routine. Something to do when I didn’t have anyplace to be on a Saturday night, and hanging out with a bunch of nice guys who happened to be gay was fine by me. The place we went to this night was more subdued, a bar with a few booths. We were all tired after a a round of tests, which I guess settles that this was in fact during college. It was once again filled with only men, but no dancing folks, only a little subdued music piped in through the speakers over the bar played. Everyone sat, and talked. I decided this was my favorite spot we had gone too almost immediately and the distinction stuck when Paula walked in. She was wearing an outfit, a skirt that fell just before her knees with a lacy red top. I remember I could see her bra through her shirt, and I got all worked up. My buddies all goaded me on until I got up to talk with her. She stood at the bar, as she ordered herself a martini. Three olives, dirty. She had big lips, and long black hair. She wasn’t what I would call busty, but she had things going on in other places to make up for it.

“So are you from this part of town?” I am notoriously bad at flirting, and even making small talk was hard for me back then. She smiled anyway.

“I am. My apartment is a few blocks north of here. How about you?” She turned on the barstool to face me as she spoke, and her skirt rode up a bit up her leg, revealing some of the smooth road to the promised land.

“Further north. Almost out to Edgebrook, actually. But I like coming to these places, every now and then things turn out.” I was trying desperately to hint that I was interested in her even though I had approached her at what was definitely a prominently gay hangout. She smiled and put her hand on my leg. She had long fingers.

“I get what you mean, I think.” She winked, and we wound up talking until midnight. I was surprised, through all of my fumbling and obvious flirting that she invited me back to her apartment as she got up from the stool and smoothed out the front of her skirt.

Paula’s place was nice. She had bookcases and more than one room. A fireplace. Her whole apartment was warm and inviting; as I walked in the door she walked ahead of me. Her plump ass jiggled with each step and she headed left while indicating that I should take a seat to the right. I heard her shout something from the bedroom as I took a seat on a cushy yellow couch. I couldn’t hear her.

“What?” I yelled, craning my neck as if she might hear me better.

“I said do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked, louder this time.

“Uh, yes. Thank you.” My voice wavered uncomfortably. I took stock of my surroundings for a moment, noticing the little things strewn about her apartment. The bookshelves held books of all varieties: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a collection of plays by Jelinek, poetry by Pablo Neruda. She had good taste, better than me anyway. Between the stacks of books were little knick-knacks. Carved elephants and frogs were prominent pieces, and several of them found their place around the apartment, not just on her shelves but on the coffee table and end table. I idly picked up a frog sculpted out of bronze from the coffee table. It’s sideways eyes stared not at me, but at either side of my face, like it was trying to avoid my gaze. I put it down as I heard Paula walk from the hall and into the living room. She strolled into the room with two mugs, and as she took her seat next to me on the couch she set them on the table.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t want any coffee.” I said suddenly. She scooted down the couch to get closer.

“I don’t either. The mugs are empty.” Her last words were spoken with her lips so close to mine that I could feel her breath on my face.

Kissing, unlike talking, I am good at. The mouths are occupied with other activities. I have moves. Moves I demonstrated upon Paula. I started with my hands on her face, our tongues exploring each other’s lips and mouths. I caressed her face slowly, deftly moving my hands down her neck and to her shoulders. To her arms next, then I made the leap from her arms to her sides. Rubbing gently around her waistline, I slid my fingers down until they rested right on the side of her ample hips. Slowly, as if testing the waters, I let my fingers travel first down the curves of her hips, then back around to grasp two handfuls of meaty buttocks. Paula inhaled quickly as I took my grip upon her assets, then moaned as suggestively as she could. I lifted one hand from her backside, brushing it across the front of her dress. Consequently, I ran my hand over the bulge of her half erect penis. I was confused, to say the least. To say that Paula was too was surprising.

“I didn’t think I was that passable.” she said incredulously at my cold and shocked reaction, “How was I supposed to know you were straight?”

“I hit on you? You were in skirt?” I was indignant, but the words came out soft, as if a terrified little boy had said them.

“You were at a gay bar. With three gay people. It’s kind of an assumption I’m allowed to make.” She raised her eyebrow. I laughed quietly.

“I think I would like that cup of coffee now.” I rubbed my face with my hands.

And maybe that’s where the story should end, hell it’s the place that I’ve always stopped, except I would say that I just ran out and then got a drink. But that just isn’t what happened, actually it’s the farthest from the truth I could be telling. She came out from the kitchen a few minutes later, changed into a set of more androgynous sweatpants and a t-shirt with the two mugs now steaming with hot black coffee.

“I didn’t want to assume that you took cream or sugar. Is black fine?” She handed the mug to me, and I held the warmth between my palms.

“That’s fine. Thank you.” I took a sip. It was very hot, and I watched as Paula blew on hers with plump lips. I tried to remind myself that behind her attractive exterior, she was for all intents and purposes a man, not the hot skirt wearing Paula that I saw at the bar, but a man with breast implants and a good eye for making himself up. But as she told me, she preferred ‘she’ to ‘he’.

“I’m what you would call a transsexual, not a transvestite. I got implants, and I take hormones. I consider myself to be, a woman, but sex change operations can be dangerous, not to mention expensive. So, I still have all of my…” she explained to me between sips of strong brew.

“Equipment?” I asked, trying to be jokey and funny.

“I was going to say genitalia. But yes, that’s it.” She calmly placed her hand on the couch next to mine. Her fingers were long and thin, feminine, oddly enough. I felt my hand move lightly to cover hers. She had cool hands. It was on odd feeling, to be holding the hand of another man, or whatever Paula had decided to call herself, but a moment ago I had my tongue in her mouth so I had no reason to fear a little human contact. She softened into a smile, then wrapped her hand around my palm.

“You seem a little less uptight now. Something you have to say?” She shifted ever so slightly, and I swallowed down a hard lump.

“You are a very…attractive…person.” I admitted. It was true, that despite a few things Paula was exactly what I looked for in a woman.

“I guess I am aren’t I?” She said as she placed her lips softly on mine. And even though I stayed for several hours talking and occasionally kissing, I couldn’t drive up the courage to stay the night yet. On the other hand, I left with her number, and she with mine.

And I did call her. I called her the very next day, and we talked over the phone for a long time after she got off of work that afternoon. The next day I asked her out to dinner, and even flipped the bill for a fancy meal. I liked Paula, and spending time with her was lovely. For four months we had dinners and dates and movies and evenings in. It was not unlike a normal relationship, but for one particular problem. It all began after a night out to see some foreign bit at the theater and we had settled in at her place. We were sitting on her big puffy yellow couch and drinking a little when suddenly her eyes caught mine.

“So, uh. Whatcha doing?” She asked pushing her lips over her teeth into a sly smile.

“I was thinking more about what I was going to do, I suppose,” I said, leaning myself closer to her face, and eliminating the distance between us.

We did this often, macking indiscriminately, spending hours of our time rubbing and touching and tonguing and such. But on this day, almost reflexively, I reached down between Paula’s legs and placed my hand over the bulge that lay beneath her panties. My hand recoiled as it had the first time, and I moved it back around the edges of her hips. She slipped her lips away from me, to let a few sparse words slip into my ears.

“It won’t bite.” She whispered gently into my ear, taking one of my hands and placing it back on the hardening appendage. I removed it again, more casually, placing it just at her navel.

“We shouldn’t move too fast,” I whispered back as I tried to lean in to kiss her again. She pulled away, rolling her eyes as she did.

“You’re terrified of it. Why?” The question was a long time coming. “You find every other part of me attractive. You can’t keep your hands off of my chest. My hair. My face. Why can’t you get over it?”

It was a valid question, and one that I didn’t answer as I gathered myself and headed out the door. Walking home I thought about it. It was a wall between me and her, bricks and mortar that were necessary to work around for intimacy of any fashion. I just couldn’t do it. It bothered me in a way I couldn’t describe, and even can’t really describe it now. It was like staring down the proverbial barrel, and making a move in either direction meant making a commitment that I wasn’t prepared to make. I was terrified. But standing halfway between my the bus stop and Paula’s apartment I think I realized that I wasn’t making a choice or defining myself at all. So I turned around and she opened the door for me and took me into her bed and I spent the night and the next few sleeping at her side.

The million dollar question is what happened to Paula, right? Well, what the fuck else am I supposed to say? She isn’t sitting next to me, drinking her drinks and smiling her smile so maybe the next part of the story was that I was going to get to it. I still don’t understand everything about those last few weeks, even though they were always my fault, but I don’t have any idea why I did the things I did. One evening, laying in Paula’s bed as she slept next to me, some little thing, a reflex sprung in my head, or something and I looked at her and had to get up. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, I thought I was dying. I just got my clothes on and ran out the door. For a few weeks I tried to ignore her, spend less time with her. I was sick, I swore, I had too much work to catch up on, anything. I found myself in bars on the weekends, looking for women to take home. One night, this very drunk girl did let me drag her back to my apartment and enjoy several minutes of squishing noises with her, but she was put off by my kicking her out so abruptly. I had never been so messed up, and I don’t think I have been since. So I broke up with Paula. I cheated on her, I broke up with her, and I knew that I didn’t have a reason, because after spending so many nights together “you have a penis” is kind of irrelevant. I didn’t know what to say.

I guess the best way to put it is like this. It’s like…ordering a sandwich. You see what you want, ask for it, and they give you the sandwich. And you like it, but you find out that it has something you didn’t expect on it. Something you don’t like, usually. But on that sandwich, it was good. And I guess I got caught up wondering if I liked that thing, or if I didn’t. I got so caught up in it, that I couldn’t enjoy my sandwich. And now she’s gone. And I guess the metaphor breaks down there, because you can’t break up with a sandwich. And you rarely have a sandwich that you never forget.

Paula used to say this little thing, I guess it was pertinent at the time, but the more I think about it I can’t tell if it was just something she used to say. She would say, she never wanted to fall in love with a boy, or a girl, or another transgender person. She’d say “I just want to find someone I love. Because we were never meant to love one or the other. We were just meant to love people.” I think I didn’t love her, and maybe she did love me. Or maybe I did, but couldn’t see it. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how I felt about Paula as well as she understood what she felt about me. The best I can do is miss her, I suppose.

A little bit of scheduled morbidity. A story that I wrote for my honors class.

As Tomas Is Dying

As Tomas is dying, so am I, but I die slower than him because I have got more years to live and Tomas is sicker. I meander towards death, like a Boxing Day shopper but Tomas finds himself sprinting toward the specter of his end despite the cancer in his bones and the tubes and wires that run from his body into beeping consoles and bags of fluids. To weep for him would be foolish, not just because Tomas is old and it’s his time, but because I am jealous.

As Tomas is dying so is a star, in the way stars die. They die in bursts of light and dust and glory. Humans, were they to die this way would take with them the things closest to them, the way most people would prefer to die. It is odd, if this star dies on the same day as Tomas, we wouldn’t really know until almost a thousand years later, since it’s so far away. When the supernova blink of expanding gases reaches us, Tomas will be less than even a memory. I say this as Tomas takes a few more shallow breaths.

To die is a funny thing, a thing that happens to most every creature down to the smallest, the simplest. Anything that respires, expires. Even the rocks and sand find a way – they erode into nothing, degrade into entropy. Entropy is the word for the universe dying, in its own way – becoming simpler and yet more chaotic until it eventually has to reorganize itself. But the universe dies the slowest of all, its death will be long after Tomas’ or mine or the star’s.

I stare at Tomas, envious as I was before and still am. He is performing the Grim Fandango, the Danse Macabre, the Tango into the Seventh Circle of Hell. As he circles the drain I grimace at his fortune. He, so close to finality. Entropy, his grand return to the Earth. The glorious moment of letting go into ecstasy. As each life begins as an orgasm, a moment of bliss, each life ends on the fall of the same crescendo. A fall that relieves the climb, the wind rushing past the faces of those who descend from their lives. Smiles, the faces they wear are not sad or lonesome, but calm and serene.

As Tomas is dying, in the ICU, a doctor in the door every fifteen minutes, in another wing on a different floor a baby is being born. Thrust from its mother into a world that is colder, brighter, and more frightening than the world it has known before. It cries, perhaps because it misses the darkness, perhaps it knows more of the world than it wishes to. Perhaps it knows, like I and Tomas know, that the moment we are open to the rest of the world, the carcinogens and the false hope of sterile lifestyles, that we begin to die.

I leave Tomas’ bedside for a moment to walk around the hallways, when I find myself in an alcove with an aquarium. The fish swim in little circles around one other that does not look well. It buoys into fits and twitches. Suddenly it flails about and turns belly up, an ascent to the surface slowly crawling for the bright light as some claim to do. The other fish circle it again, then begin to nip at its fins, at its scaly flesh. The dead tissue is consumed before it has the chance to rot, and the bellies of the other fish are filled with the sinew of their passed compatriot. Bellies full of dead flesh, fish are remorseless because they don’t realize that the very next day it could be their carcass rising to the ceiling of the glass world they live in.

As I stare at the fish, a young boy steps up next to me, and points his stubby finger at the tank. What is that, he says. A fish tank, I say back. No, I know that, he says, What is that, he pointed again at the tank, this time tapping his finger impatiently at the spot where the fish floated at the surface. The bits of dead body surrounded it. That’s a fish, I say. What’s wrong with it, he asks, Why doesn’t he swim around. That fish is dead, I say, plainly and inoffensively as I could. He looks down and whispers, Oh. Why are you here, in a hospital little boy, I ask. I’m not here, my grandfather is here, he says. Why is he here, I ask him. My grandfather is dying, he replies.

When I return to Tomas’ bed he is already dead, the doctors have pulled a sheet over his face and the nurse was pressing buttons on the machines. They weren’t beeping anymore, and instead the room was filled with the dull hum of the air conditioner. As all the hospital staff leaves I sit where I had been all day but for the few minutes I spent away. A moment was all it took for Tomas’ shallow breathing to stop. I stare at his prone body beneath the sheet. His body no longer shifted beneath the blanket or caused his hospital gown to rise and fall with his diaphragmic motions.

Tomas was lucky, but as he is dead I no longer envy him. Just as death is the relief from the climb of life, the final fall into oblivion is no wonder. Oblivion that we come from, oblivion that we enter when we are no more. When Tomas leaves the hospital he will be burned, turned into nothing more than a fraction of his weight in ashes, and for that I do not envy him. As glorious as the final release is, it never comes again. As Tomas dies, I realized that maybe I was dying faster than I thought I was.

Ladies and gentlemen, my latest story, Frogs.

Frogs

It really was very foolish to build a castle on a swamp. The swamps are unforgiving even after clearing away the trees and killing the creatures that haunt the brush. The water is adept at holding diseases which torment the body, and even with deadly creatures gone vermin still crawl upon the earth. Snakes and flies and all manner of fowl. And frogs, of course, everywhere. Frogs that the cooks found in the pantries, that the lords found in their beds, that the servants awoke to covering their bodies, four or five of them serenely croaking on their bellies. The castle was infested constantly, and never was there a moment when ribbits could not be heard. The stately prince of the swampy castle loathed the creatures. He took great pains to kill each slimy creature that crossed his path, often resorting to using the heel of his princely boots to crush them with a squish. But with each amphibian destroyed it seemed that another two would emerge, hopping from behind tapestries and dining chairs. They dropped from the ceilings onto ladies’ heads who then sent shrill screams into the vast halls. The Prince was determined to send away his fly-catching infestation, and devised a plan that was met with much praise when offered to his lords and ladies. He would go upon an expedition into the unexplored swamp and destroy the breeding grounds of the foul creatures. Surely, he assumed, it would reduce the number of frogs if not get rid of the scourge completely. He set out, armed with a supply of lumber to dam up their spawning grounds.

He was not long into the swamp before he was upon a stream with the wriggling tails of tadpoles by the banks. He eventually came to the pond that the stream emptied into, nestled in a clearing. At the edge of the pond was a small wooden structure, a hut with a grass roof. The Prince, eager to end the reign of terror that the frogs had over his home, began construction of a barrier that would slow the flow of water into the pond. As he began his construction an old lady, waddling from the weight she carried, came to him at the mouth of the stream.

“What are you doing, handsome young man?” She was ugly, with a wide flapping mouth and wide set eyes that bulged. She was fat, and had warts on her face. The prince recoiled slightly at her sudden intrusion.

“I am building a dam. This is surely the source of all the frogs that have found their way into my home. I will be rid of them yet!” He continued snapping branches and cutting away so that he could clog up the water.

“Oh, don’t do that! Frogs bring wonderful luck, and are omens for fortune! If you have frogs in your home you will never be without wealth or good tidings!” she said.

“Rubbish. Frogs bring me no luck, they bring only warts. You will thank me once we are rid of them.” The stately prince completed the finishing touches on the structure, then watched as the water level behind the dam started to rise, and the water in the pond began to drop. “There. They’ll be no more trouble with that!”

As he turned to go back, triumphant in his quest, he saw the old lady send an evil look at him, a look that made him feel itchy all over.

By the end of that week, the prince’s hair had fallen out. Not only had it left the top of his head, but it had stripped itself in layers from his arms, legs, face and chest. He was as smooth as the day he was born, lacking even eyebrows and lashes. He stalked around his castle, bald though he was, pleased with the lack of frogs on his floors. He sat calmly in his chambers knowing he would not hear the flat slap of a frog’s bottom upon the stone floor. He slept without being disturbed by the croak of amphibians beneath his bed. He lived contentedly until he fell ill several days later.

He was pallid, and clammy. Moist with sweat and lethargic, but cold to the touch. Windows and doors were opened, and the hot swampy air made the Prince able to stand and walk about again. The sun warmed his skin significantly. He was back to normal, but the doctors suggested that the heat remain high throughout the castle until his color returned. The Prince happily noted that even with the doors open to the outside, no sound of ribbit or leaping could be heard.

Eventually it became clear that the Prince’s affliction was not one of this realm. His nose flattened against his face and he became skinny around his eyes, but fat around his neck. His own color never returned to his face, but instead a sickly hint of green tinted the edges of his lips and cheeks. One of his servant’s was sent away from the castle for noting that the Prince appeared to be bowlegged. A cruel nickname began circling among the lords and ladies who visited the Prince, a name from which he took such great offense that many lords and ladies were turned away from the castle lest they harm his pride.

The Prince decided to seek the aid of mystics and religious men. From the north came men in white robes with horns from stags and chants who called the prince cursed for his pride: the target of a god of mischief and jests. Men from the south came in scarves and turbans, telling the Prince to pray to their god, to seek salvation in this life and the next. Men from the east came, their beards long wispy and white, their clothes ornate and their fingers jeweled in jade and gold. These men said the Prince was not accursed, and that he was simply transforming from this life into the next. Each man was cast away, as the Prince was not satisfied with their answers.

However, he had one final visitor. A lady from his land, the swamp, squat and ugly with warts on her face. She came and smiled upon the Prince, ugly mouth displaying a crowd of yellowed broken teeth. Many of the Prince’s teeth had since fallen from his gums.

“Why, you’ve taken on quite a different look, handsome Prince! A little green around the gills perhaps?” She jested with him. “I’ve heard that the lords and ladies have taken to calling you what you’ve always been?”

“Get out. You have no way of helping me,” he snapped, but his voice had since become low and croaking.

“Oh, but surely you would be willing to listen to anyone who could help you now? Unless you want to be the Frog Prince for the rest of your life,” she cackled.

She stood before him, hands upon her lumpy hips. The prince pondered if she in fact was quite as lumpy as she was when she first found her in the spawning grounds. She was more svelte, with less warts on her face. The yellow broken smile was full of teeth, though he could swear that there were some missing from her mouth when she stood before him in the swamp, threatening that his luck would be lost without the frogs.

“What should I do, then, if I want to go back? How can I fix this affliction?” The prince’s throat swelled as he spit the final syllable, and he emitted a clear, ribbitty croak. His eyes closed in mortification.

“I’ve told you already, frogs bring good luck, your highness. The Frog Prince! You best hurry to bring them back, lest you become the symbol of someone else’s good luck.” She laughed again, running from the hall as the Prince croaked again.

It was less than few weeks before the dam was down and the frogs returned to the castle in the swamp. They came with renewed vigor, not just behind the tapestries and dining chairs, but upon them, climbing with their sticky hands and feet upon the carved wood and woven scenes. The flooded the halls in such numbers that the prince, when he was carried from room to room was treated to a flood of croaking and the flat slaps of their fleshy stomachs hitting the floor. He had to be carried, because despite his luck returning his bones hurt, like they were shrinking. His face, flat as it was, was becoming narrow, and his greenish pallor became even worse. All of his teeth were gone from his mouth, and his tongue occasionally slipped from his mouth as if it were stretched from it’s root. Though he rarely ate, weight sat around his hips and belly, while his legs and arms got skinnier and skinnier. Angry, the Prince called back the lady from the swamp.

When she entered, the Prince swore that it was not her, for this woman appeared much younger. She had long locks of hair, and nary a mole upon her face. She had weight still, and she was aged and wrinkled, but not stout or covered in warts. Her teeth, yellowed no longer, merely crooked from their years. He knew her only by the sick cackle and cruel nickname that she afforded him.

“My, if the Frog Prince hasn’t gotten worse? You would think that somebody with all this good luck wouldn’t be so ugly.” She laughed and laughed at his flat green face as his tongue lolled lazily out of his mouth. He shot a glare at one of his servants.

“Your majesty has requested that you explain yourself. The frogs have returned, yet he does not improve. What does he have to do to get better?” he asked.

“Well bringing back good luck will just help things along. After all curses can only be broken one of two ways. And the much more favorable way is to get a kiss from a woman who loves you. Warts and all.” She burst into another fit of wicked cackling at her joke. The Prince was not amused, but summoned up the gumption to speak.

“What is the other way to break curses?” he asked, tongue flapping against his bare gums, drool spilling from his mouth onto his green chin.

“Why no man can escape death, and death breaks all curses. You might not have to worry about finding a young maiden to kiss. Amphibians don’t live too long.” With that she turned and left, leaving the Frog Prince writhing with anger in his throne.

A notice was sent to the town, that the Prince that lived in the swamp castle was in need of a bride. Now, many young ladies had heard of the Frog Prince, and that he was an ugly, stout little short man with green skin and no hair. There were even rumors that a flat lump was sliding over the place where is manhood once lay. But these young ladies also knew that they could stand to pretend to love a monster if it meant the chance to live a life as royalty. Many young ladies left the town and traveled to the swamp castle to be presented before the Prince.

He sat, as it was, upon his throne, as best as he could. His deformed, shortened, painful spine lay uncomfortably across the flat wooden back of the chair. He waved his skinny limp fingers, beckoning in the many ladies who had lined up to be presented to the Prince. He asked them only one thing: that they would give him a kiss as if they were already his lover. Some ladies were so shocked by his appearance that they ran from the castle, but others placed upon his cheek a small peck. None bothered to venture as far as to give him a real kiss, a loving one as he might get from his future bride. The charade passed on for weeks on end, and as they peeled away from the calendar, he became more squat and fat. No woman he kissed had yet reversed the curse, and despite the fact that the flow of lovely women had stopped, he was content to sit on his throne and wait for the right woman to grant him his freedom from the horrible deformity.

Many more weeks passed, and the castle became close to empty. The chefs were sent away, but for a few to feed the servants. The Prince was content to lash his tongue at passing flies, competing for juicy morsels with the thousands of other frogs that writhed like a living green carpet upon his throne room floor. The only servants required were the ones that brushed the Prince with water from the swamp every few hours, and the ones that swept away the frogs that had died beneath the miasma of squirming creatures. The Prince’s herald, who spoke for him at every occasion, stayed by his side, staunchly loyal and diligent in his quest to reverse his lord’s affliction.

One day, as the sky turned gray, a young lady came to the door of the castle. She was fair of skin and hair, but dressed in the clothes of a peasant. She walked to the throne room, and stood before the Frog Prince, seated upon his cushion. He was now no more than the average garden frog, his throat swelling and his tongue flipping out to catch flies that buzzed idly in the muggy air. The herald spoke up as she entered the room.

“Oh young maiden, come, if you can love the Prince as he is, despite his appearance, then your kiss will reverse his disease and he will marry you and care for you for as long as you both live.” he pleaded as she crossed the room, wary of the frogs that writhed around the floor.

She took the Prince in her hands, and held him close to her face. She placed upon his slick, green lips a kiss, like one would give a lover, but as she did, no effect was put upon the Prince. The walls of the castle began to erode and drop, and water rose from the stone floor. The herald fell from his chair, tripping around the room to avoid falling bits of the ceiling.

“What foul sort of trick is this? Sorceress! Witch!” he yelled as he pointed at the beautiful young lady. As she spoke, her cruel cackle ripped through the crumbling walls.

“Who else but me could love a man in the form of such a creature?” The beautiful woman laughed, young though she seemed, she hid behind her spell the face of a woman who was once covered in warts and fat folds. The walls and ceiling of the castle were left in ruins, and in the spot where they once stood, trees began to form a clearing around a pond. The frogs reveled in the new found home, and the herald ran to her side to look at the tiny green Prince.

“But why not change him back? He could care for you for the rest of your life!” He shouted, terrified of the foul woman’s power.

“Why? Because frogs are good luck. And what better luck to have than a Frog Prince in your new home?” As she said this she walked to the bank of the small pond, and placed the Frog Prince upon the muddy earth that the swamp castle had given way to. He leaped joyfully into the water as she took her seat upon his throne. The herald was about to approach her and send her away when he noticed a small bunch of hair fall from his head. The woman looked him dead in the eye, and as he ran from the swamp she cackled her awful cackle.