Adult Education *

North light fills a row of windows high above the wooden platform where I’m told to stand. Easels scrape into place like a flower blooming around me. I hear easy chatter, lean into the paint-smeared stool, struggle to unwrap this borrowed robe.

*This piece placed third with the crowd, and was also Editor's Pick (Thank you Christine!)

High

The black place between
no way in and no way out.
Black is how you see everything.
Except when it's not black,
when lights are spinning and your body
feels like it's god.

33 words for , including the same one, thrice.

Deliverance

“Awkward is what it is!” Gerard is sitting in the wheelchair like some elderly pneumonia patient, waiting for Tony to gather up the paperwork. “Give that to me,” he snaps, “and get me the hell out of here.”

Tony fumbles still with the charts, x-rays, CDs, finally managing to slip them all into the folder - why a business folder and not an envelope he’ll never know - and slaps it down on Gerard’s lap.

“Awkward!” Tony kicks at the wheels to straighten them out. “There’s nothing awkward about it except you. I’m your companion. A perfectly ambiguous, inoffensive, let-them-think-what-they-will word. Honest to god, I don’t know what you’re so uptight about. It’s not like you have some reputation to maintain, like you have anything left to throw in people’s faces. What do you care what that silly little nurse’s aide thinks of you?” Tony is now standing in front of Gerard and the wheelchair, hands firmly on hips.

“Can we leave?” Gerard says tight lipped. “I’d like to get the hell out of here before they find something else wrong with me, shove me back in that black hole of an emergency room.”

“It’s me, isn’t it?” Tony has finally begun pushing the wheelchair which keels to the right. “You’re so horrified to be stuck with me that you can’t even treat me like an execrated houseboy. Like your least favorite lackey! I knew I shouldn’t have come here, especially not today with the way I feel and christ the way I look I’ll be scaring the small children.”

“Tony, for chrissake!”

Tony cannot straighten the wheelchair out properly, and he is pushing it diagonally across the hospital entrance, which appears to be a jousting range. “Fine! Let me back you out,” he says. Gerard watches the interior of the hospital recede while he is jerked backwards, unable to witness Tony’s journey towards the exit, on which he is dragged like an afterthought. The jousted glare at him as they stumble away.

 333 words for , including COMPANION (noun) 3a :  one that is closely connected with something similar b :  one employed to live with and serve another

Tea with the Neighbors

“Today it’s four years since Bertha died.”

“Well. More or less,” said Dan.

“Oh, Dan, don’t start.”

“I’m sorry, but the truth is implacable,” Dan said, looking at Sacha but glancing at Sally in quick, lizard-like flashes of acknowledgement. “Today we remember Bertha,” he said. “But the truth is this is the anniversary of her funeral, not her death.”

“Dan, cut it out.” Elaine turned from the stove and crossed her arms over her chest. Sally stared wide-eyed at her.

“What?” she asked. “Was she murdered?”

“Oh, no,” said Sacha, putting her arm across Sally’s shoulders. “Nothing like that. It’s just so sad. We never found out how long she’d been dead when they found her.”

“They. A neighbor,” Joanne said softly.

“Sometimes she just disappeared, you know? She was private that way. We never thought...” Sacha gave Sally’s shoulders a squeeze and let her go.

“Are you going to her grave?” Sally asked.

“No. Her family...”

“This year we’re making flowers,” said Joanne. “Elaine took a course on napkin folding.”

“I’m pretty good at it,” said Elaine with a wry smile. She tossed a weight of dirty blond hair off her shoulder. “I figured out how to make dahlias, Bertha’s favorite.”

 “What are you gonna do with them?” Sally asked.

“We haven’t decided,” said Elaine. “We could decorate the restaurant.”

“Oh, sure, pulling for the home team, huh, Lainy?”

“We could take them down to the beach and let them loose in the surf.”

“Dan, she never went near the sea.” Sacha poured tea into small hand-made raku cups. “We could take them over to the hospital…”

“If we’re going to honor Bertha,” Joanne broke in, “what we should do is go up to the train station and hand them out to random travellers. Whoever strikes our fancy. Some good-looking guy…”

“Good luck with that!” said Cora. Everyone turned to look at her in surprise. They burst out laughing.

“I love that idea,” said Dan. “Something special and unusual. Quirky. Like Bertha.”

 333 words for , on their 2nd Anniversary Challenge. Using Remember (verb): 3 a : to keep in mind for attention or consideration b :  REWARD

Harvest Moon (La Mercè)

Moonlight penetrated the back windows, throwing bright, other-worldly patches onto the bare floor. Sitting on a pile of books, Kate stretched one bare foot into the light. Jason would be there soon. Her brother, the rock.

She could hear the clatter of the downstairs neighbors as they prepared their dinner. Quiet neighbors who knew nothing, who read about people like Kate in the newspaper. She pretended to forgive their ignorance, alternately despising and envying the softness in their speech, the banality of their arguments.

Avoiding the moon’s white squares, she crept to the darker front room, to the door with the caged window that gave onto the patio where Ben paced. She watched him from behind the thin curtain. Earlier, when she had pulled it back, there he had been, his face a blotching snarl that snapped at the glass, making her squeal and jump, her heart pumping adrenaline she didn’t need. She had phoned Jason then.

With long strides Ben crashed across the porch, fierce in every movement, arms jerking out as if to punctuate a lecture, or to knock out imaginary rivals. He turned, abruptly stopping, his arms crooked at his sides as he sniffed the night air. His head jerked up and to the right, his eyes blazing a hole through the glass into Kate’s throat. He ran at the door then, threw himself against the window grate, howling in pain before he struck.

Kate willed her breath back and opened the window.

“Animal!”

Her voice was broken.

He limped off the porch and resumed his pacing. Headlights shot through the hedges and like a wild boar Ben froze.

‘Kate!” Jason called as he pulled the car up. He beeped. “Kate? You ready?”

He had been there before.

She watched Ben tear across the patio and out to the street. She heard the car’s horn again, then listened as Ben’s yawp faded away up the hill and became a labored, frothing pant.

Kate shouldered her bag and unlocked the door.

333 words for including ANIMAL (noun)3:a human being considered chiefly as physical or nonrational; also: this nature