Signage

This morning I was driving along, watching the town slide by. Since it's autumn and my allergies hate me, I've been a little diminished, vision-wise. And there wasn't a lot of traffic--so, like someone looking at a stage set for a play and there's no action going on, I was studying the scenery.

I'm not in a settled place right now. I have a lot up in the air. Haven't made every decision about my future. And there was a time, not long ago, that I would have been in a perpetual terror state over that, panicked, demanding answers, worrying over all kinds of situations I can't control. Not so, anymore. I am content with where I am, knowing the answers will present themselves in time. I think I learned something.

Patience.

Finally.

Anyway, I was thinking about the research I've been doing, looking at graduate programs in other states, publishing programs, presses. This is mostly for school but also for fun--possibilities exist and I'm delighted by this fact. And I noticed two particular places kept cropping up. Either their publicity departments are most excellent, or they just happen to be where I am, these days.

And as I was driving along today, my usual business taking me along back roads--and I drove across one whose sign, which I misread at first, was the same as one of these programs I keep seeing. I blinked and saw it for what it was, remembering that street fondly from when I used to accept lots of food orders for delivery--and wondering just what I was thinking about, that I saw a sign in a street I've passed a hundred times.

Ostensibly Bad Poet, More Like

This is what happens when I'm given a character voice to write from--one that's outside my normal comfort zone--by a guy who edits Trailer Park Quarterly, the sort of literary mag your mother would pin to the fridge if you were in it. For real.

I was assigned "Really Bad Poet."

I'm not even going to try to read anything into that. I am all ego, you guys.

The Greenest Blade

The blade of grass most long and green
Was greener on than e'er had been
The greenest blade I'd ever seen
'Twas greener than a French green bean!
I write this for my dude, Springsteen--
Who wore them really tight blue jeans.


-


That was a real creative stretch, let me tell you.

It's a Poem, All Right

Here's a poem I wrote several months ago, when I lived in a different place and followed a prompt given by one of my fellow poets at The Journal of Asinine Poetry (new issue just went up yesterday!).

"North Missouri"

North Missouri is nowhere near
Any Missouri close to here,
And distant is what they will call me.

Mysticism ruled and then incarnated
My skin is the only thing keeping me from flying into a million pieces
"so-and-so"

I don't remember
More than the shape of your chin
But that is enough

And distant is what they will call me.

-

Now, the prompt:

Asinine Hacks, assemble! It's time for an Asinine Poetry writing exercise. The prompt is very, very simple. All you have to do is:

1) Use your street name as the poem's title (the "St." or "Dr." isn't necessary).
2) The poem should be 10 lines long.

a) Lines 1 and 2 must rhyme, and mention your street again.
b) Lines 3 and 10 are the same. Use this sentence, filling in the blank: "And _____ is what they will call me."
c) In line 4, summarize the entire Bible.
d) Line 5 must be a movie quote (not in quotes).
e) Use the least foul swear word you can think of for line 6, put it in quotes.
f) This leaves lines 7, 8 and 9, which work together as a haiku. In it, tie together relational aesthetics to the Children's Crusade without making any reference to either, in the form of a 'thank you' note to a fictional ex.
*f) *Optional: Or, instead of the haiku, you can just write your favorite pickup line.

Good luck!

Filling Up

The more water I pour in the fish tank, the more agitated the fish get, even though they're less crowded this way. More room to live, to explore, to think their fishy thoughts and dream their fishy dreams. Exercise, play, relax, whatever they want is theirs, and yet their little faces register annoyance at me for daring to expand their field.

Sometimes I'm a real jerk.

Emo-broidery

Emo-broidery: n. The realization that the embroidery project you're working on will never actually be completed. Probably related to purchasing craft supplies at a yard sale, so is likely the originator of the project had passed away. See also: Six quilt blocks do not a complete quilt make; All the time and expense going into quilt-making makes for a finished product too awesome to give away but not really to my taste; Bad idea in the first place.

Note to Self

Marybeth, next time you clean your floors, remember to also clean your feet.

Monkey Do

I started making sock monkeys right after college. Newly married, extremely broke, and working part-time, I had a lot of time on my hands and was fighting ennui. Not just boredom, but the dragging despair that comes along with not having enough occupation.

I was looking for things to do.

I remembered being a kid and having a sock monkey. It was soft, warm, just the right size to deliver a hug, and in its silent, half-smiling face was the understanding of a true friend who would never judge, never laugh, never gossip. Also, pairs of red-heeled socks were like two dollars each. That, I could handle.

I am in the process of cleaning out my craft supplies. I have a room devoted to them, a small room, but a whole room nonetheless, and it's gotten to the point where choked-up inspiration and half-realized ideas have clogged the entire floor space, shelf space, table space, drawer space. Attempts at organization have been woefully ineffective. I decided finally that the biggest problem in there was too MUCH in there, so I've been paring down. Down. Down. Pulling supplies out and making them into THINGS, and sending those things to people I love.

And one night, in the process of digging through a drawer where I'd found, among other things, a tiny pair of glasses and a sequined top hat, I found my last pair of red-heeled socks. I stopped, touched them, started to push them to the back of the drawer when I sighed and pulled them out. It was time, I decided, to make the last sock monkey. Until I buy more socks, anyway.

I've made dolls for years and years. As a kid, I used to hand-sew rag dolls and then make tiny dresses for them (pants were too complicated). I remember thinking it was funny, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing my needle through cloth that was becoming limbs, torso, extremities, a face. I still feel a little twitchy when I'm sewing up a sock monkey. Holding his legs apart so I can sew between them, cringing and saying, "This'll only hurt for a minute, I promise," lifting his arms so I can sew them onto what would be his rotator cuffs, sewing a line onto his lips with black embroidery floss so he'll have a mouth, but it feels like I'm sewing his mouth shut instead of on. Until I'm done, and then it looks proper.

More proper, anyway.

Something about a sock monkey, or any toy for a child, really. I might have read "The Veleveteen Rabbit" a few too many times, but I think the principle's there. A sock monkey is soft to catch tears, warm to hold hugs, and durable to pop out of a box years from now, so an adult can look at it, sigh, smile, and say, "Yeah, I remember this."

I hope so, anyway.

Cool Beans

Coffee is more than a beverage for me. It's joy, peace, quiet bliss that brings enough energy to handle whatever might crop up. It soothes my jagged nerves, revs up my tired eyes, and in the right amounts, keeps me from going over the edge where I normally dance. On one side is the ability to seem mostly normal. On the other side is giggling refusal to do anything but run around giggling. Very mature of me, I know.

Anyway, so I start every morning with a cup. A mugful, more like a cup and a half, liquidly speaking. I used to drink a lot more coffee than I do now. Like, mug after mug after mug, then fill a travel mug and take that along too. Then get another in the afternoon. Size of my head. Just drink it until I could feel the comatose setting in. I quit that years ago, as it was causing, uh, complications, but I keep my daily mug. And here in the Midwest where I live, we've been having a heat wave for the last week or so. A terrible heat wave. The kind of heat wave that vaporizes moisture in the lawn and crackles every living thing outside until it's a wizened, skeletal version of its formerly lush self. So yesterday, instead of having hot coffee, I decided to try something different.

I made up way too much coffee this time, more than double my normal amount, and poured it into a pitcher instead of a giant mug. Added milk and sugar, dropped it in the refrigerator, filled a sugar-rimmed glass with ice, poured, and enjoyed. Then I enjoyed it again today.

Not to brag or anything, but this might be the most impressive invention of all time, speaking mostly in terms of mankind. Mostly.

Mmm, coffee.

Sunflowers

I love cartoons. And I love art. I love cartoons AND art. The two together? Almost as good as a chocolate cake baked with crushed cookies inside.

And now I have a plan for tomorrow.

Anyway, when I was younger, watching cartoons one afternoon, I watched Yakko Warner hold up a sunflower and mention something about "that van Gogh grouch."

I was intrigued.

I went upstairs to our encyclopedia, where I found several black-and-white images lithographed onto the glossy white pages. Images that transfixed me. I mean, I'd seen reproductions of artworks before. Sure. Typical grade-school fare. Religious iconography. Reproductions of "Pinkie" and "Blue Boy" that my parents had in their room. But art? Real art? Independent of the dry recitation of fact, art as a life force all its own, art for art's sake? Art, I might add, that had an element of grittiness to it, art that was terrifyingly real. Art that had been suffered over, hadn't been sold during the author's lifetime, and had, most importantly, endured.

It was on that dusty Midwestern afternoon that I sat, cross-legged and transfixed on the floor of my parents' house, and first discovered something far outside my normal realm of existence.

Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers."

Fast-forward almost a decade, and I'm living in London for a summer of study. I am painfully lonely, broke, and yet desperate to soak up what I can of the culture before returning to the States. So most of my afternoons find me finishing homework, then wandering down to the National Gallery (free admission!) and strolling through the elegant structure. I loved it. It was cool in there, quiet, and smelled of antiquity, of culture, of understated sophistication. The guards got to where they'd nod to me in an absent, British sort of way--"There goes the scruffy American kid again," they seemed to say. And I'd wave back, every time. Friendly-like.

Without fail, every time, I'd wind up in the Impressionist room. It housed several paintings, masterpieces each, among them Monet's "Bridge at Giverny" and ...

van Gogh's "Sunflowers."

It was my favorite of the six different versions he painted. Yellow background, mellow oranges and browns, flowers tangled and rioted, each fighting for prominence, for recognition. And the paint was so thick. Valleys between the ridges, oily swirls cut into and over each other--I'd stare at them, fascinated, angling my head, imagining how he must have felt as he scratched his palette knife through heaps of paint thicker than any I'd ever attempted. I had painted, sure, but with acrylics, not oils--as a student, with no pretensions toward becoming a master. I wondered what drove him, what kept him from madness as he saw such staggering visions with clarity enough to realize them in paint. Did he see his subjects, or did he see into them? How much of himself was he projecting into their forms? Was his every painting a self-portrait?

I wondered.

I studied.

I dreamed of that painting. Nearly every day for almost three months, I visited it. I sat on the bench immediately facing it, felt its enormous presence. The canvas itself is huge, by the way. Big enough that I felt dwarfed by it. (I don't often feel dwarfed, being as how I'm six feet tall.) And the mental presence of a man who'd died hundreds of years ago--I could still feel it.

I later painted a reproduction of it, years later, one square at a time, gridded out to ease transfer from the printed image I'd gotten from the internet to the giant canvas I'd stretched myself. Every night I'd sit at it, quietly stroking acrylic onto the gessoed linen, until what I had was a passable ghost of the power of van Gogh's original.

So I like this painting, is what I'm saying.

A couple of months ago, my mother went to the Netherlands. She'd never been to Europe and I was delighted to see her travel to her family's original homeland. I'd skipped over to Holland for a weekend while I was living in England, and had loved it, so was glad when Mom had a great time, too. I asked her if she'd made it over to the Rijksmuseum, as when I had been there, at the bus stop in front, there was a young impatiently-waiting woman holding--wait for it--a bouquet of sunflowers. And Mom had. Cool, right?

Well, she'd brought back lots of presents for everyone, and gave them in a big flurry of gifting that lasted the two months she's been back. And I noticed, the first time I went to see her after she returned, that she had a refrigerator magnet with a tiny picture OF VAN GOGH'S SUNFLOWERS.

"Yay!" I thought to myself. "Mom's enjoying 'Sunflowers' too!" Because I'm super-enthusiastic about that which I enjoy, and Mom had picked up on my obsession with this painting. She listens, see. She can't hardly help but.

And then tonight, I was getting ready to leave my parents' house after supper, and Mom gasped while looking at the fridge. "Oh! I almost forgot! I got this for you--" And she pulled that very magnet from the fridge! I might have squealed, a little. And hugged her. And ... and called her my favorite mom. Of, you know, all of them.

So now I can see "Sunflowers" every single day. Again. It's like the National Gallery, but this time, it's in my home. Ahh.

Manifesto

SPARKLE UNICORN RAINBOW JOY WITH CUPCAKES AND PRETTY FLOWERS.

Reminder

Coffee is glorious. In the evening, more so.

Where I Am, Today

Happiness is a warm cookie on a sunny afternoon.
Also car parts picked up off the lawn.

Punk-Rock Bands I Am Sad Did Not Emerge from the '70s British Punk-Rock Movement

-Anglo In the Dark
-Brit Sh*t
-Hallucinogeneric
-The Voms

Patron

She trailed her fingers through the air between herself and the great works. Kept well back from the velvet ropes and security features, content to look, to be in a place of amazement. She didn't want to touch, to create the beauty for herself. She wanted only to look, to gasp, to think, to be transported without ever being the artist herself. Almost vulgar to press brush to paint, to trail and smear it across a virgin canvas, to decide where which color would evoke emotion. And with what? She imagined herself whispering to the canvas, reassuring herself as well as it that they would always have this moment, that others would see but by then it would be another experience, another time, another reason. To create art is to be entangled with art, to press flesh to bristle, liquid to yielding surface unforgiving in its eternity. She wanted no part of that. But to look, to imagine, to feel—oh that, that was sublime.

The Real Monster

She found a corn chip shaped like Georgia, dunked it in cheese sauce, imagined the screams of Charleston as the fearsome monster laid ruin to their fair city. She maybe could do without all those Godzilla film festivals.

Goat Seek

They called him Seeker of the Goat. What they didn't know was what he would do when he found it. But they could guess.

Faux Pas?

“We're having a clown and butler convention here at this old abandoned church! You should come!”

“No … thanks.”

A World Apart

He looked up, locked eyes with me.

“What are you … how …” He sputtered to a stop, dropped the book in his hand, and launched himself across the porch at me. The look on his face was so horrified, so elated, that I started to step back. Too late—his arms were around me, and he was kissing me.

It seemed like forever, that moment, with his hand on my hair, his nose pressed to mine like it had always had a home there. I must have made a sound, because he broke from me and looked deep into my eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

I didn’t have an answer for that one.

But I said it anyway.

“Are we—together?”

His face went white. His eyes widened, but only slightly.

“You’ve been gone,” he told me, like that explained anything.

“No, I haven’t, I just went for a walk. This morning. From my place, I was headed here, and there was …” I stopped. He was looking at me with a calm sympathy that I would have found obnoxious if I’d had any idea what was going on.

He took my hand and stroked it.

“You’ve been gone for eleven months,” he said.

I shook my head.

He nodded.

I shook my head again.

He touched the side of my face, and I felt nothing but warmth and love from that touch. I took a deep breath and thought back to that morning.

I’d gotten up early, gone for a walk. Scarf wrapped around my throat, good walking shoes on. I was going to see a friend of mine who lived a few blocks away, never minded my dropping in. I was watching the scenery go by, looking at the houses with their tidy gardens, the lawns of green and gray, the trees throwing their annual striptease. The sidewalk had jagged cracks, the same as always—dust drifted into them, dust with microscopic seeds that would grow into life come spring. Further along there was a fresh crack, one I didn’t remember, one that looked like it had glitter caught in it—one that I suddenly very much wanted to cross, one that shimmered at me, one that once I went across, I felt different. Calmer. At the time I’d chalked it up to someone spilling leftover craft supplies, but now, suddenly, maybe a little too late, I wondered.
I could feel memories bleeding in from the edges, memories of being with him. Memories of doing just this almost every morning—taking a walk, dropping by his apartment, and there he’d be, sitting out front with a book and a mug of coffee, then looking up like he’d been waiting for me. And he had. But there was more—trips we’d taken. Movies we’d seen. Nights spent on the couch, curled together, old episodes of shows no one else watched anymore, popcorn. All the mundane things couples do, but with him, they all meant more. Added up to a reality I didn’t want to believe was possible.

“I thought I imagined all of that,” I said. Daydreams, that’s all. Odd moments when the sun slanted just right, and I would dream of what it would be like to be with him—if he was there with me, holding me, asking me, touching me just as he was doing right now. I mean, I knew I had a hell of an imagination. But had I imagined this into reality? That was just crazy.
He folded me back into his arms, and I laid my head against his chest. “If you did,” he said, and hooked his chin over my head, “or if you didn’t, all that matters is, you’re home now.”
I relaxed against him, felt his head dip, and he kissed the side of my head. Tiny tears squished against my eyelids.

This was pretty crazy, all right. But I could get used to it. Again?

We went to the little table on the porch, a little table I was very familiar with all of a sudden. I traced the mosaic pattern with my middle finger, saw him watching me. I smiled at him, and he looked at me like he still couldn’t believe it.

“Tell me,” he said.

I blinked at him. No words would come.

His face went hard. “Then I will. You left,” he said. “Didn’t say a word to anyone. We found your purse, had everything in it, on the sidewalk. The last time I saw you …” His face contorted then, and I saw he was trying not to cry. Then he cleared his throat. “We had fought.”
I was starting to remember.

“You wanted to get married.” I said it. His eyes narrowed.

“I’ve thought a lot about that conversation,” he said. “Had a lot of time to. I wanted you, wanted to make you part of my life, wanted to make you happy. And I thought I was doing all right at that.” Like a dagger, right into my heart of hearts. “You kept telling me how much you loved me, how fast the future was coming on, and so I thought … I thought that’s what you meant.” He was talking fast, in a rush to get words out that were so hard for him to say.

I laid my hand on his.

“The police said you’d run off, especially after I talked to them.” He took a deep breath, steadied himself. “I knew that wasn’t right. But you’d been kind of distant, like you were thinking about something that you didn’t want to talk about. I respected it,” he said, and looked dead at me. There was heat in his eyes, and I didn’t blame him. “I respected it, damn it.

“So where did you go?”

I closed my eyes, lowered my head. Trying so hard to remember. I knew exactly what he was talking about, could remember what I was thinking while we’d been having the conversation—remembered that I had wanted to be with him, but was terrified that life would end for me if I went through with it. Remembered that I’d walked out, furious, feeling trapped, had been walking down the road, heard someone approach, but after that, nothing. Nothing but a vague unease and blackness. And my other life was there, laid over it like a projection of a film I starred in but couldn’t remember the lines.

“I don’t want you to think I’m making excuses.” I was looking at my hands, folded in my lap, fingers twisted together. “Please, listen until I’m done, that’s all I ask.”
He didn’t say anything, so I plunged ahead.

“I was scared. I was mad. I felt … I felt eternity closing in on me. I wanted to think, didn’t want to have a panic reaction, you know? So I left. Went home. Was going home. And this’ll sound insane, but … all of a sudden … I wasn’t here anymore. I crossed into that other life, the one without you.”

I looked at him then. He was staring, but not angry.

“So you went to a place where we weren’t together.”

I nodded.

“For eleven months.”

He sat back, rocked his heels.

“I don’t know what happened, but I do know that I hurt you, that my being gone … really hurt you.”

“It damn near killed me.”

I cringed. Sorry wouldn't come.

“Am I too late?”

He closed his eyes. Without opening them, he began to speak. “I never stopped thinking of you.
Even when everyone said there was no hope, that you’d just been grabbed, that you were going to turn up in a reservoir, I still thought … no, I knew. So I kept looking, waiting, hoping. Do you know what that’s like? Do you know?” He was looking at me now, his eyes blue fire. I sat very still. He looked away. “And here you are. A miracle.”

“But it’s not me.”

He slanted a look at me.

“I mean, it’s me. But I don’t think it’s me the way it was before.”

Tears rose in my throat, near choking me. “I can’t make you understand. I don’t understand it. I just … you were my friend, this morning, and … and I can remember being with you, I can remember not being with you. I don’t know what that means.”

He sat for a moment, quiet. “You’re not too late.”

“But?”

“But. But nothing. I loved you, I love you now, and I know you love me too. You said we were friends?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we were.”

“You were alone when I met you.”

I felt the smile start, grow, bloom. “So I was. But not anymore.”

“No,” he said. “Not anymore.”

He opened his arms to me, and I went to him. Again.

Corporate Gag Gift

“Listen Frank, I don’t want to do this anymore.” He slammed the stack of papers on the desk.

Frank thinned his lips between his teeth. He was about at the end of his rope with this guy. “You were hired for a job, here, fella,” he said, and was met with a glare of an intensity he used to think only he could match.

“I never asked for this part of it, Frank,” he snarled. “You want to get personal about it, fine, but don’t you call me anything you wouldn’t call yourself.”

“We all call ourselves things we wouldn’t call others. You know that as well as I do.”

Frank stood, hands clenched, shoulders relaxed. It was a forced posture, he knew, but it looked good and would fool anyone but the closest observer.

Just his luck.

“What made you think I would want to do this shit anyway? It isn’t like I have ‘Slave’ tattooed across my forehead.”

“Might improve your looks,” Frank said, and watched with grim unsurprise as his look was returned with a vigor that did not surpass his—but it was a close call.

“Why don’t you do this yourself if it’s so important?”

Frank strode around the desk in three quick steps, long steps that were not lost on his companion. His hands reached for what might have been a bad idea—clamping onto another person’s throat, never a good idea. He managed to stop himself in time, however, collected his thoughts and took in a deep breath. He let it out and tried a smile. Really he ought to be more patient, he reminded himself. He was in a leadership capacity here after all.

“I brought you on board because there are certain parts of this job I don’t want to do,” Frank said in what was, for him, heartbreaking agonies of truth. “Paperwork being one of them.”

“What made you think you not wanting to do them would make those aspects any more appealing for me?”

Frank paused.

“Yeah, you have a point there.”

They locked stares. A long moment passed, one heartbeat, two, three. Frank would not be the first to break the gaze, but it was looking like he wouldn’t have a choice.

Just then, the door opened.

“Mr. Gascar, your eleven o’clock is here.”

The door closed.

“That was close.”

“I won’t argue with me. I mean, uh, you.”

“Well … ” He paused for consideration. “Can we agree that this is new to both of us, and we ought to work on just keeping from killing each other for the time being?”

“Yeah.” Frank closed his eyes. Never did he think this would wind up being so complicated. Otherwise he might have thought twice before going ahead with the process. “Maybe the rest will sort itself out.”

“Due time. It’ll tell.”

Frank turned his back and walked toward the window. Its wide vista showed rolling hills and a few buildings, none of which were important to anyone but those who worked and lived inside. Frank had never wondered about their occupants. He didn’t have much of an imagination, and thought that maybe this was part of what had led to the present situation. But there was no real objective way to tell. He shook his head, not even sure what he was denying, and went back to the conversation without turning around. Addressing the window seemed the safest course of action for the moment.

“I guess you’re right. But it seems like maybe … someone’s bound to catch on.”

“Your secretary there didn’t seem to notice anything.”

Frank huffed out a short laugh. “She doesn’t tend to.”

“Didn’t she order the kit for you?”

Frank stopped again, looked his way. He nodded. “You know, you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it, but she did tell me she thought it was a great boss’ day present. Double my work output, you know, we both had a laugh, oh ha-ha, then I put it on the shelf over there and didn’t think anything more about it … until, well, you know.”

“The Winkerman account.”

Frank grimaced. “Yeah, that one.” He still had nightmares. That night, when he’d been sitting at his desk, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, fifteenth cup of coffee cooling next to the desk organizer, finger-shaped furrows plowed through his hair, a living embodiment of every stressed corporate stereotype, and his eyes had lighted on the gift box. Some stupid corporate gag gift, he thought. A corporate gag … but he had a break coming, and after seventeen hours of staring straight ahead at line after line of bullshit, he was more than ready to believe anything. Or something, anyway.

And the direct result was now staring him in the face, a problem on top of a problem, whose presence was supposed to be a solution but had wound up as a serious complication.

“I don’t even know what to call you,” Frank said.

Frank grinned back.

“I don’t know what to do with you. Everything I can do, want to do, I already do. So what good are you?”

Frank continued to smile, but Frank thought it started to falter.

“You’re the one wanted a clone, Frank,” Frank said.

He waited. Frank didn’t answer.

His hand moved.

Frank froze. His throat wouldn’t work to push words out. But his mind knew exactly what he was going to say. To the syllable. But Frank’s dawning terror had gripped him. And hard.

Frank reached for an award he'd won for fifteen years of loyal and faithful service to the company. Finally coming in handy.

“Frank,” Frank said. “Now, Frank. Don’t do anything … hasty … you know, bloodstains can be a bitch to … get out of carpet … Frank … Frank!”

Frank wasn’t listening. But he was advancing. The chain clinked steadily against the heavy bar—a very heavy bar, the kind that wouldn’t bend when used to tighten a cinch. Why he had this in his office, he couldn’t say, but it was certainly coming in handy. If Frank would just stand still!
He was cringing back, pressing himself into the wall as though hoping Frank would forget he was there. But there would be no such luck, tonight.

“You were right about those bloodstains,” Frank said, and his voice sounded very far away.

Frank’s panic broke. He snapped out of his position and went running across the room, making a break, Frank realized, for the giant plate-glass window overlooking that view he was so fond of.
A plate-glass window that would be a real pain to replace.

Frank ran toward himself only to see him strike the window, full-force, but instead of leaving a Frank-shaped hole, he left a Frank-sized skid mark as he rebounded and bounced off the floor.

He was knocked out.

Frank smiled. As if his job weren’t easy enough.

He wrapped the chain around his throat, and the twisting began.


Look for another version of this story at this loverly web site!