1929, two twin children were drowned by their parents in Bar Harbor, Maine, attached to weights and sent to the ocean floor.
Years later, a seashell was discovered at the bottom of this harbor, in the same area where the children’s bodies were found…
Dave was in the market for a house. He stopped looking when he saw this listing:
4 Br. 3 bath. In-ground pool. 2 car detached garage. Ominous Portal to Hell, finished Basement, Some Demonic Undercurrents, Modern Kitchen, City Water, Appliances, MUST SEE!
The house was far too cheap. Dave figured that it had to do with the portal to Hell. He didn’t care. He called his Realtor, put in a fair offer.
Katrina was a gust of wind and a wall of waves that burst through the fence and the house and the neighborhood. She collected with her the souls of soldiers, fisherman, pirates, men hung on hate’s noose and men stuck under the white hoods they had built of their own hate.
“Do you know what that does to your footprint?”
I was standing at the checkout counter fishing through my wallet while the stone faced Korean shop-keep waited in what was either benevolent patience or quiet contempt, when a slight framed woman with large breasts in a black tank-top unabashedly flaunting an inordinate amount of cleavage, asked about my footprint.
I was visiting my friend Jack in Boulder, and we went to this party in a big house up on a cliff. There were two skinny guys in their mid-twenties, both wearing aviator sunglasses, snorting lines of something gray at the kitchen table. A middle-aged bald guy was setting them up, but not snorting himself. Jack asked them if they were doing coke, and one of them smiled and said: “No way, man. This is way better than coke. This is the ultimate trip.”
At 7:30, Andy Blankets walked up the cracked cement stairs from his basement efficiency apartment. It had been a nice day with no rain, a first for the week, and plenty of sunshine. Taking the keys from his pocket, he started towards the parking lot in the back yard. Finding the long thin key to his two-door sedan, he saw a small bunny snacking on grass near the tire of another car. He stopped and smiled. Then he remembered what he was doing, creating a chain of thoughts that ended in an ambiguity about what to get his Mom for Mother’s Day.
I pretend that I am looking for jobs. I dress up in nice outfits, and I leave the house, then go to Wal-Mart and buy some cat food or nail polish or gum. I tell Andrew that I am still hopeful and that I think my interviews went well, and he smiles, reassured that soon our life will be back to normal, and I’ll be just as busy and distracted as he is all of the time. Perhaps I hope this as well, but another stupid job does not seem to be the answer.