Category Archives: Short stories

Vignettes that echo in my mind

Food that (actively) disagrees with me

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The Clucking Dead

The Clucking Dead

Centuries ago, a Chinese friend of mine invited me to a family dinner where, among the many delicious items, he served chickens’ feet (I guess if he’ll serve me, he’ll serve anybody).

For the uninitiated, chickens’ feet is not a delightful nickname for some exotic construction of bamboo shoots and gelatin powder (ironically, horse’s feet), but rather the feet of chickens.

Now, I already have problems eating chicken wings…so much work for so little meat. Well, chickens’ feet are all the agony of a chicken wing sans the meat. So, I already was unimpressed.

Just doesn't add up to food

Just doesn’t add up to food

Making matters worse, however, was the chickens were just as disinclined to be eaten as I was to eat them, for as I looked down upon the bowl, I was presented with a dozen or so clawed fists, talons extended to scratch my eyes out or anything else that approached the bowl.

And when I say talons, I’m not talking the beautifully manicured hands of a lovely woman (which can inflict plenty of damage). No, I’m talking the rapier claws tested on the set of Jurassic Park that caused Spielberg to blanch and say from under his director’s chair: ”Nah, too scary for the kids.”

Physical or emotional, scars are scars

Physical or emotional, scars are scars

Despite watching my friends take great pleasure in popping the chickens’ feet into their mouths and spitting out an archaeologist’s Erector Set (can only imagine what they’d do with a fully assembled book shelf from Ikea), I made a vow that day.

I will never eat a food that is still actively defending itself! (So keep fighting the good fight, calamari and octopus.)

NOTE: This post was prompted by a post from Ned Hickson and his recent run in with rampantly randy turkeys (no relation).

The Beasts of the Nature

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plagues

Nature doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t.

I try to be respectful. I not only recycle, but I also reduce…or, at least, I’ve never thrown food away.

I barely leave my apartment, so my literal footprint is pretty small—9-1/2 wide, for those of you keeping track. And other than my laptop and coffee maker, I barely use any electricity. Nor do I use the heat, so if you come over for a visit, bring a sweater.

And I believe that all life is sacred…which is why my apartment is filled with four types of spiders, two varieties of sow bugs, and one rather large species of house centipede. As an aside, if any of you ladies are entomologists or just like to get your arachnid freak on, call me.

Hard to tell how the spider is fairing in this fight, but I'm not holding out hope

Hard to tell how the spider is fairing in this fight, but I’m not holding out hope

Hell, I barely wear any clothes at home, preferring to wander au naturel…again, call first before visiting.

And yet, for all this benign behaviour, Nature wants me dead.

Every Spring, 10,000 species of plants gather around my apartment in a massive botanic circle jerk, spraying me and my immune system with a dazzling array of ejaculates green, gold and white. And they do this knowing full well that in another life, my white cells worked for Al Qaeda. For me, the months immediately following March are Anaphylaxis and Can’t.

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You know when you make pancakes and first pour the batter into the scorching pan? Within moments, the batter bubbles up and bursts? That was me as a kid on a cloudy day. On a sunny day, I could watch Enola Gay footage and jealously think, “At least they had a breeze.”

And the water’s no better. Pond, stream, lake, ocean, they all think of me as chum, and not in the friendly sense. I’ve yet to find a boat I cannot fall out of. A canoe? An outdoor bathtub. A kayak? A restraining device designed to pin me underwater. A rowboat? Topless submersible.

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Currents. Waves. Tides. All mechanisms to keep me from remembering where I left the air. I once went body surfing in Oahu and got so disoriented by the swirling currents that I flew home from San Francisco. You worry about an undertow? I’ve never experienced anything smaller than an underfoot.

And regardless of my home BioDome project, all of that goodwill is forgotten the moment I emerge from my apartment and become a blood bank for what must otherwise be the most anemic bugs on the planet. Even the vegan insects view my flesh as hyper-ripe banana paste.

And despite the most astringent soap and strongest deodorant, I apparently offer flies the personal banquet of a 6-week-old corpse vacationing in the Louisiana Bayou. I am the no-pest strip of the bed bug world.

Red-winged black birds strafe me. Squirrels can’t tell walnut meat from finger meat. And wasps see themselves as my personal EpiPen.

I tell you all this because I am travelling to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks, and so I would like to pre-emptively apologize for the events that will finally bring beachfront charm to the Vegas strip.

vegas

 

NOTE: This piece is written as my contribution to a wonderful creative assembly called “Tell Me A Story” organized by my friend Will Ennis, a lovely actor in the city of Toronto. You can see his acting reel below.

The Race: A Celtic Legend (sort of)

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Two great chieftains stand at odds, menacingly snarling at each other, mighty armies at their backs. The only thing separating them is a simple Celtic druid.

“I am the first son of Glamorgan, who was first son of Dafydd, who was first son of Griffold, so the kingdom is mine to rule,” bellows Dafydd of the Mountain, raising his might sword above his head in challenge.

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Llewellyn of the Glen merely spits at Dafydd’s feet in disgust.

“Dogs, every one of you,” he snarls. “I am the first son of Blundewey, who was first son of Varus, who was first son of Glendoch. I am the rightful ruler!”

Dafydd drops into a fighting stance, causing Llewellyn to swing his axe.

“Enough,” cries the druid, slowly rising to his feet. “We cannot have our lands torn apart by yet another war.”

The two chieftains slowly lower their weapons as the druid passes between them and walks to the edge of a cliff. With great ceremony, he points across the waters toward a small island on which stands a great castle.

castle

“The sea brings us great wealth, but it also makes us vulnerable to attacks from across the waves,” the druid intones. “The great ruler of this land must therefore not only be a mighty warrior on land, but also a true master of the seas.”

“That is I,” spouts Dafydd.

“I am the master of the sea,” scoffs Llewellyn.

“The sea shall decide who is best,” replies the druid. “The succession shall be decided with a race. The first to touch the shores of that island shall rule over all.”

The two chieftains grunt their ascent and turn their armies in opposite directions toward the pebbled beach at the base of the cliff.

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Resting against the shore, two great ships swallow up the dwindling sunlight. One ship is jet black and sports a great dragon that snarls at the waves. The other is blood red with a horse that flails its anxious hooves into the surf.

The clansmen climb into their great ships, taking up their oars, brethren at their sterns ready to push them into the raging waters.

All noise stops, even the breeze, as the druid takes up his position and raises his arms to the sky.

“Let the gods of sea and air bless your efforts and deliver this land its rightful king,” the druid declares before violently dropping his arms to his sides.

With a mighty grunt and the hiss of resistant pebbles, the two teams push against the ships, forcing them into and over the arguing waves.

In each ship, the warriors pull mightily at the oars, the whine of the oar locks providing counter stroke to the rhythmic grunts of the rowers. The sea fights back, but the dragon and horse cannot be denied and slice their way through the offending currents.

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At first, the race is even, both armies in deadly earnest to claim the crown for their sovereign, but bit by bit, Llewellyn’s boat begins to pull ahead.

“Harder, you demons,” Dafydd cries to his men. “Pull harder or suffer the fires that Llewellyn has planned for your wives and children.”

Dafydd’s men strain harder against the oars, but the dragon continues to press onward, seeming to clip the tops of the waves sent against it.

“Give me your sword,” Dafydd orders one of his warriors.

“You cannot reach him with a sword,” the warrior cries, handing over his weapon.

celtic_sword_la_tene_iron_age_forged_swords_b

“I don’t have to reach Llewellyn,” Dafydd bellows, raising the sword above his head. “I have to reach the island.”

With that, he brings the sword crashing down onto the railing next to him, where but moments ago, his hand rested. CHOP!

Dafydd roars as his life blood spews across the deck and his severed hand cartwheels around his feet.

Stabbing the sword into the floor between him and his warrior, Dafydd quickly snatches up his hand and cocks his arm for a mighty throw.

“The druid said it,” he yells into the wind. “The first to touch the shores of that island shall rule over all.”

With all of his might, Dafydd throws his severed hand forward, watching it arc over Llewellyn’s boat on which it rains blood, toward the island. Everyone behind him rises to their feet to see the fleshy ballista arc…arc…arc…and…

SPLASH! Into the water a good 30 feet from shore.

Everyone on Dafydd’s boat is crest-fallen, as blood gushes from his open wrist onto the deck. Clenching his remaining fist in anger, Dafydd turns to his warrior.

“The other hand!”

“What?” the warrior cocks his head.

hand

“Cut off my other hand and throw it,” Dafydd commands.

“I’m not going to cut off your other hand,” the warrior complains. “How will you hold a sword or feed yourself?”

“When I am king, others will defend and feed me.”

“I don’t know,” the warrior whines. “Should we put it to a vote? Everybody raise a hand-”

Dafydd grasps at the warrior’s vest but really only knocks him to one side.

“Cut off my other hand or I will cut you in half right here!”

The warrior looks at him as if asking “really”. Dafydd just holds his fist against the railing and nods at the sword.

The warrior raises the sword above his head and…

“Nothing will stop me,” Dafydd declares through gritted teeth.

CHOP!

Dafydd screams into the night as the warrior grabs the hand and throws it for all he’s worth.

SPLASH! It doesn’t even travel 30 feet from the boat.

Dafydd stares at the warrior, eyes unbelieving what has just happened.

“Nothing will stop me,” he repeats, “except a warrior that throws like a girl!”

Resigned to his fate and starting to feel the effects of the blood loss, Dafydd slumps against the deck.

“I guess that’s it then,” he sighs to no one. “Llewellyn will be-“

“You could touch the island with your foot,” the warrior thinks out loud, slowly reaching for the sword.

foot

“I am not giving up my-“

CHOP!

“Aaaaaaaah!”

SPLASH! The foot quickly sinks and resurfaces to float against the nearby hand.

Through a haze of agony, Dafydd looks up to find the warrior approaching with the sword. With his arm stumps and one good leg, he backs toward the rowers.

“No, no, no!”

CHOP!

“Aaaaaah!”

SPLASH! Another foot.

The night is filled with the cacophony of CHOP! Screams! SPLASH! as shins, legs, forearms take flight one after another, only to fall short.

In the distance, Llewellyn’s men puke over the side of their boat as it slowly fills up with blood and human tissue, their puke coursing streams between the severed body parts.

A soldier on the battlements of the castle, however, sees a fuzzy round ballista finally strike the shore, rolling up the beach and coming to rest against a bolder.

Face contorted in perpetual agony, a small rivulet of blood makes its way from the hairline of Dafydd’s decapitated head. As the blood reaches his right eye, the eyes suddenly fling open and look around.

Macbeth

“I did it!” Dafydd cries into the night. “I won! I won! I am the king of-“

He is suddenly distracted.

“Oh, shit.”

A raccoon grabs Dafydd’s head and drags it down the beach.

And thus began the reign of Llewellyn the Fully Assembled.

(Images are property of owners and are used here without permission because the druid said it was okay.)

Kid Lit publisher/illustrator needed

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Looking for recommendations for a Kid Lit publisher for a new story I have written but do not yet have illustrated. Story is aimed at 3- to 5-year-olds.

Alternatively, looking for an illustrator who is used to working for no cash and can work with me on this to find a publisher.

In my head, the imagery for the story could be along the lines of any of the books in the image below, but I am open to other styles as well…this is just what resonates in my head.

In my head, these styles could work with my story, but remaining open to other ideas!

In my head, these styles could work with my story, but remaining open to other ideas!

Ultimately, I will go to the usual sources for these types of things, but thought I would check with my loving, supportive and talented social network to lend a hand, an ear, an eye…whatever you’ve got, really.

Any recommendations or thoughts, Universe?

Feel free to DM me…happy to share the story with people….thanks…Randy

The subway ride

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I don’t actually know what the following is, other than: the beginning.

subway-1

The subway was crowded that morning. It was always crowded when it rained.

It was like no matter how far people had to travel, they were terrified of getting wet. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that most of them had lost several umbrellas in the windy corridors created by the city’s office towers. And yet, to a person, every man and woman carried a neatly folded umbrella, their multiple layers showing nary a single bead of dampness.

By the second station on my route to work, I had lapsed into my typical fog of who cares. At this stage in my life, work was just something I had to do to make money. I had long ago given up on any hope of finding fulfillment or happiness on the job, if only because the company had a strict no-dating policy. Without interoffice sex, my desk was just another place to sort papers.

It didn’t take long before the fog in my head was matched by a fog on the windows of the subway car. The body heat of the mingled strangers turned damp coats and hats into instant humidifiers, rain water mingling with sweat and post-shower damp to coat the walls and windows of the subway with rivulets of diluted deodorant, cologne and perfume. All we needed were a few handprints on the window and the subway car would have looked like the back seat of a sedan parked at a drive-in where the kids inside were doing everything but watching the movie.

I had managed to grab a seat that morning, an unexpected bonus for getting up a little earlier. Even living at the end of the line was no guarantee of finding any comfort in local transit. Too often, I spent my time staring down the tops of flat-chested teens too self-absorbed to give up a seat or leather-skinned grandmothers so desiccated they made your tear ducts hurt. That morning, however, I had managed a forward-facing seat. So people could look down my top and I got to stare right into their crotches.

It was a rough ride into town that morning. The constant start and stop of the train as it waited for the guy up ahead to get his shit together, and the tropical humidity that was slowly growing in my shorts made the decorated plywood seat under my ass that much more uncomfortable. Within 20 minutes, I found myself chafing like a newborn in a day-old diaper.

Tugging at my trouser legs to try and unbunch the material from my crotch, I felt something soft and dry against the back of my left hand. Looking over, I realized it was a leg.

A gorgeous leg. A leg that begged to be touched, but could just as easily crush your balls with the slightest twitch. A leg that worked out regularly, but had never seen a gym in its life. And standing right next to it was another leg, which also shimmered in the grey opalescence of flawless stockings.

Recognizing my transgression and not wanting to be rude, I moved up from the legs. Past the immaculate tweed skirt, the crisp peach blouse, the mottled brown scarf and up to the reddest smile I have ever seen in my life.

This red, I was certain, existed nowhere else in the world. This was a red created for one woman and set aside, the formula for this colour being instantly destroyed as it would appear flawed on anyone else.

I smiled at that red, those lips, and nodded slightly. It was an apology for the unintended intimacy. Words seemed out of place for some reason. The slight rise of her right cheek told me I had been forgiven.

Summoning everything I had in me, I tore my eyes away from that mouth and back to the zoo I called my ride into work.

The fog had definitely lifted from my morning, but it had been replaced with an equally numbing intoxication that I couldn’t handle. Although numbing probably wasn’t the right word, because there was damned little I wasn’t feeling at this moment.

I don’t know if it was 10 seconds or 10 minutes later when the subway jostled around a bend, but what I do know is that the leg found my hand this time. And as the curve of the tracks lingered, so too did the leg, sliding its silken fibers up and down the back of my hand until it began to pull the hairs out one by one.

As the train pulled back onto a straighter course, however, the leg stayed exactly where it had landed, determined to either erase every hair off the back of my hand or gain my attention. It was about to complete the first, but it was mission accomplished on the second.

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission but a lot of inner dialogue.)

Writing “Line by Line”

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Do you want to be a writer but don’t have any ideas?
Are you afraid of looking like a fool?
Don’t have time to complete a project?

Then check out the blog “Line by Line”, a project to create a story one line at a time by anyone who wants to contribute.

No money down! No payments ever! No long-term commitments! No sense, at all!

At “Line by Line”, you’ll read sentences like:
“Without realizing I was doing so, my hand reached out for the vial, and Dorgon hesitated before finally releasing it to me, nervously licking his eyelid.”
and
“Instead, I pulled myself to my feet using his adam’s apple for leverage and pushing his face into the floor, such that I finally had the upper hand.”

Check it out!

This innovative new idea for building a story, line by line, day by day, was hatched by Ionia Martin and Julian Froment.

Irish Eyes

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fassbender-guinness-commercial_01182012_192420

A few weeks back, I wrote a stupid opening line to a story that was never written. A friend of mine was intrigued and suggested that each of us should write a story based on that opening line. Below is my version.

 

That human semen would curdle when added to a pint of Guinness was not a fact that Jeffrey ever thought he would learn.

“Well, are you going to drink it or do you give up?” Tom asks, a shit-eating grin halving his face.

Jeffrey just stared at the glass, watching small white chunks rise and drop beneath the head. Impossible, he knew, but he swore he could see the individual sperm, wriggling through the darkness in drunken ecstasy.

“That’s nasty,” Jeffrey mutters under his breath. “And it’s a shitty way to treat a Guinness.”

“What did you think was in an Irish Blowjob?” Tom retorts.

“Baileys! Whipped cream! Something normal,” Jeffrey decries.

“So, you’re not going to drink it?”

Jeffrey swirls the glass a couple of times before sliding it away and flopping back in his chair.

“That can’t be legal,” he fumes. “It’s got to be a health hazard.

Tom shakes his head as he takes another long draw of his own pint.

“I don’t even know whose spunk it is,” Jeffrey adds.

“Would it help if I told you?”

“No.”

“Then what does it matter?”

Jeffrey runs a fork through the glass, trying to scoop out the floaters, but all he does is break them into smaller pieces that quickly dissipate in the murky fluid.

“What if he had hepatitis or AIDS?”

“Then you’ve already been infected from the five other drinks you’ve ordered.”

Jeffrey’s eyes widen and his chin drops.

Tom simply nods, as Jeffrey turns to the bar tended by a bronzed Adonis.

“Luis?” Jeffrey says to himself, his tone a church-like hush.

“I guess if you want to get technical about it, it’s an Irish-Costa Rican Blowjob,” Tom smiles, adding a raised eyebrow. “Mui caliente!”

Jeffrey wrinkles his nose in disgust but continues to stare at Luis.

“Look, if you’re not going to drink it, I will,” Tom snaps, grabbing the glass as Jeffrey wheels about.

“Throw it out!”

“Fuck that,” Tom responds. “Cum or no cum, it’s a Guinness.”

And with that, he tilts his head back and practically pours the pint down his throat. Jeffrey is mesmerized despite his revulsion.

Tom slams the empty glass on the table, running his tongue across his foamy lips.

“The man knows how to pull a pint,” Tom says appreciatively. “A little salty, but nice and thick.”

He smiles at Jeffrey and then rolls his eyes.

“Oh would you fucking grow up,” he yells. “It tasted like a Guinness. Everything in Guinness tastes like Guinness.”

Jeffrey turns back to the bar, staring without staring.

“How do you think he does it?”

“Going out on a limb here, but I assume the same way you do it,” Tom whispers conspiratorially, motioning with his wrist. “You do do it, don’t you?”

“No, I… Yes, I do it,” Jeffrey blusters. “I meant, how do you think he preps the drink? Not exactly a ton of privacy back there.”

As his words dissipate, he sees Luis pressed against the bar, smiling at a customer.

A movement catches Jeffrey’s eye, as Donna, the bar’s chef, suddenly appears from beneath the counter, sliding up Luis’s leg.

She puts a can of Clamato on the bar.

“You suck,” Jeffrey complains, rounding on Tom. “You have totally ruined this bar for me.”

“I didn’t tell you to order that drink,” Tom protests his innocence.

“But you knew what was it in when I ordered it,” Jeffrey presses.

“Maybe you wanted to explore your latent homosexual tendencies.”

“I don’t have any latent homosexual tendencies,” Jeffrey responds. “I’m gay. All of my homosexual tendencies are the opposite of latent.”

“Active?” Tom offers. “Flagrant? Flamboyant?”

“Okay, now you’re just being an asshole,” Jeffrey snarls, rising to his feet and pocketing his phone.

Tom jumps up and puts a hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder.

“C’mon. We’re just having a bit of fun,” he placates. “I’m sorry. I should have said something. I just thought…”

Jeffrey raises his eyebrows as if to ask “really?”

Tom throws his hands up.

“You’re right, I didn’t think at all.”

Tom plunks back into his chair and points to the one across from him.

“Please sit. I’ll buy the next round and I promise, no novelty drinks.”

Jeffrey reluctantly drops his coat on his chair and sits, as the waitress arrives.

“Another round?” she asks.

“Dos Dos Equis,” Tom says, looking for a nod from Jeffrey, who does.

“You guys ordering food, as well?”

Tom waits for Jeffrey, who considers the menu.

His face lights up.

“Hey, Donna’s egg drop soup!”

Tom slowly raises a hand in protest.

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission because I’ve had too much Guinness.)

Happy Thanksgiving, America

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Still waiting for the conversation that begins:

Native American slowly walks up to POTUS and kind of shuffles his feet, looking everywhere but at POTUS.

POTUS: Hey sweetie, whassup?

NA: Hey Anglo. You know I think the world of you, right?

POTUS: Oh, oh.

NA: I was sooo excited when I invited you to move in.

POTUS: You made me so happy that day.

NA: Yeah, we were going to do so much stuff together. Discover the world. Make new friends. Redecorate the place. It was going to be great.

POTUS: Was?

NA: Yeah. *pause* Look, you’re a great people and all that…

POTUS: Spit it out.

NA: It just hasn’t worked out like I thought it would.

POTUS: What’re you talking about? We’re having the time of our lives!

NA: YOU! You’re having the time of YOUR life. You shut me out of everything.

POTUS: Sweetie. *attempts hug*

NA: Don’t touch me! This is hard for me to say, but it’s… it’s over between us.

POTUS: This is because of that football team in Washington, isn’t it?

NA: Don’t try to trivialize this!

POTUS: So, you just want me to move back in with my mother?

NA: I don’t care where you move. I just want my place back.

POTUS: Come on. Look at me. We can work this out.

NA: Fine! I didn’t want to tell you this. But I’ve… started to see the Chinese.

POTUS: What? *laughs*

NA: What’s so damned funny?

POTUS: I started seeing the Chinese, too!

NA: *laughs* Oh, my Earth Mother! Are we a pair or what?

They hug and when POTUS is at work the next day, NA throws his stuff onto the front lawn (in Canada).

(Image is property of owner and is used without permission, so deport me!)

Trench – A short story (Part Two)

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trench2

(Click here for Part One)

At the sound of distant splashing, Francis opened his eyes. His face had slowly deformed the mud until it almost seemed a mask in which he might have suffocated. Trying to turn his head, he winced. Somewhere in the night, it seemed, his bones and muscles had fused to become an almost immobile mass.

Slowly, painfully, he pulled his arms to his chest and pushed himself up onto his knees. His body wanted to scream but his instincts said he needed to remain silent.

His world was a grey cloud. As it often did, a heavy morning fog had settled into the trenches, blurring the lines of reality and imagination, preventing the senses from reaching more than a half-dozen feet in any direction. The light said it was day, but that was where his universe stopped.

The splash sounded again, closer. Francis had seconds to debate friend or foe. He opted for safety, launching himself across the gap to the other side of the trench, burying himself behind the remnants of crates. Silence was key.

German voices pierced the fog. At least he assumed they were German. He knew Welsh and English, but just enough of the words sounded familiar to suggest he wasn’t hearing French.

His heart was ready to explode and he willed his breathing to calm, the rapid exhalations forming eddies in the fog that he was sure would give away his position.

From the mists, two boys in German uniforms emerged, poking their rifles into the detritus that lined the trench, presumably looking for food or ammo. They plodded through the puddles, secure in each other’s company, unaware of the din they created.

One soldier cried out and attacked the side of the trench.

His compatriot turned to find him tugging at the buried corpse. Placing his rifle to one side, he joined the other and between the two of them, they pulled the dead soldier out, the mud protesting their invasion with a loud sucking noise.

The first soldier reached inside the dead man’s great coat, feeling around blindly until his hand lighted on his quarry. Smiling at his partner, he extracted a sodden square of leather, teasing apart its folds and sliding out military script. His partner, meanwhile, was filling his pockets with items from the dead man’s kit.

Francis watched the vultures loot the corpse, his mind racing to comprehend the incomprehensible. This was one of their own.

He was as surprised as the German soldiers when the chest of one caved in at the bullet wound. The recoil of his rifle telling Francis that he had pulled the trigger.

By the time the unwounded soldier figured things out and was rising to his feet, he too found himself with a bullet in the chest. He gaped at Francis, who slowly emerged from his hiding place, and his eyes rolled into his head as he fell to his knees and then face down in the mud.

Francis shook, bracing himself against the crates lest he too collapse into the puddle. The dead soldiers—the men he had killed—lay at his feet. Francis tried to feel anguish at his crime. He tried to feel joy at his survival. He felt nothing.

Not cold. Not wet. Not even numb. His world had closed in on him, smothering him.

This was the first time Francis had fired in battle, all previous conflicts amounting to little more than scurrying from trench to trench, fox hole to fox hole, keeping you head low lest it be removed. The first time Francis had taken a human life, and yet he was intrigued that he felt no different than had he just slaughtered a hog for its meat or put down a rabid dog.

Francis dragged the soldiers onto their drowned comrade, laying their rifles next to them. He then stood silently, scanning the air for any sound, the splash of footsteps racing to the rifle shots. He heard nothing.

He pulled aside the coat of one soldier to find a filthy uniform underneath, not just torn in places but the material actually rotting away. A photo dangled precariously from the soldier’s pocket. He retrieved it and saw a youth, the soldier, standing in front of a portly woman near a well. He wondered if this was the boy’s mother. Flipping it over, the back was inscribed with German.

Without knowing why, Francis pocketed the photo and rose to his feet. As he lifted and flipped over the soldier’s military kit, he was startled by the rumble of artillery in the mists far ahead. The line had apparently moved in the night. Time to rejoin his unit.

Shouldering the German kit and his rifle, Francis stepped over the fallen soldiers, picked his way past the puddles and dissolved into the mists.

*****

Two months ago, while organizing my grandmother’s things after her funeral, I found an ancient, moth-eaten bag in her attic. Opening it, I discovered a German bible and a mixture of English and German war rations, as well as a photograph of a boy and his mother.

The back was inscribed in German, which I asked a neighbour to translate for me.

“Be safe, my beloved boy, and come home soon. Mama.”

No name. No date. Just a message of love and worry.

That my great-grandfather had his kit and photo suggested the boy did not make it home and his mother’s heart broke.

I keep the photo with me as a constant reminder of the sacrifices made on both sides. Sacrifices that let me lead the life I do.

I will never forget that.

 

Please note: This story is a fiction, although my great-grandfather Francis Sowden did serve in the first World War.

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission, but utmost respect and reverence.)

Trench – A short story (Part One)

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trench

Ass over tea kettle, Francis plunged into the trench, its existence in the darkness signalled by nothing but a lack of anything, his fall broken by ice-crusted water and gelatinous mud.

Spewing the filthy frigid water from his mouth, Francis tried to regain his footing, his body too cold, his mind too much in shock, to tell if anything was broken. Every movement, however, was a mired mess as the cloying mud that perpetually threatened to steal his boots worked in concert with the glass-sharp ice to hold him down.

Francis wasn’t a weak or timid lad by any estimation having learned some hard truths about life while fighting to survive in a Welsh orphanage before finally relocating to a rural town outside of Ottawa in Canada. He knew what it was to toil in the fields, to be completely responsible for your own welfare, to stay alive. But  this, this was stupid.

How could a month of running around a farmer’s field in full pack have prepared him for this? Better to have him run up the Ottawa River in full flood that teach him to worry about gopher holes and broken ankles.

This wasn’t the France he had read about. The France of Dumas and Monet. This was some sort of crazed underworld that only the cold and wet prevented him from calling Hell. Perhaps this was Canadian Hell, he thought as he tossed his gun to the side of the trench.

Using his knife to clutch the dirt, he slowly achingly pulled himself from the muck. His hand struck a fragment of barbed wire that used to sit atop the trench wall. A barb pierced his skin but he actually found the pain refreshing as this was the first thing that had broken through the numbing cold. The wire also gave him a bit more leverage.

Francis scooped a seat out of the mud wall and rested. He was uncomfortable. He was miserable. But he was out of the water and out of the line of fire.

The night was overcast—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the sun—and was illuminated sporadically by the distant blast of artillery. A thunderstorm that perpetually threatened but never actually rained.

As he chewed on a piece of meat that he had found in an abandoned farmhouse—it could be cow tongue or boot tongue for all the flavour it had—he smiled at how blasé he’d become about artillery bombardment in six short months.

The noise used to terrify him as he’d watch the ambulance corps bring the still-breathing remnants of soldiers from the front. He remembered several times feeling the sudden warmth of his own urine as he moved from trench to trench in his first days in battle. He quickly learned it was possible to be proud and experience wrenching fear at the same time.

Now, he was completely fatalistic about his chances. His hope was that should he come under bombardment, it be swift. This was not to say he was suicidal, however. Francis very much wanted to live.

More a feeling than anything concrete, Francis turned rapidly toward a sound in the darkness, knowing there was only a 50-50 chance his rifle would fire if called upon.

It was a low noise, the sound of something being tugged in the darkness. Short bursts of sound followed by silence. The sound neither receded nor approached, however. Whatever was being moved and by whom, the going was hard. That and they hadn’t noticed him.

Keeping as still as he could, Francis craned his sight into the shadows, focusing as hard as he could when the distant flashes gave him a moment of light. The noise continued its ebb and flow, unphased by the chaos around it.

Just as he thought his eyes would leave his head for the strain, he caught a furtive movement. On the next distant explosion, it was clear he was watching a rat. For its size, it could easily have been a raccoon, but its scraggly state and focused snout clearly suggested a rat.

With rabies running rampant throughout the front, Francis would normally have steered clear of the animal or tried to shoo it off. These were anything but normal times.

Slowly moving from his perch, Francis slid down the trench wall to the mud’s edge, creeping slowly toward the rat, rifle barrel firmly in hand. A couple times, the rat froze as though ready to run, but then resumed its activity as the artillery covered Francis’s approach.

In a fluid motion, the rat’s skull crunched under the butt of Francis’s rifle. Death swooped in so quickly, the rat never flinched or made a sound.

Grabbing its tail, Francis flicked the rat into a puddle, immersing it to drown any fleas, knowing in his heart that he was more likely to give fleas to the rat than the other way around. He then raised his prize into the air, letting the muddy water drip for a moment, as he pulled his knife back out.

Life on the farm paid off handsomely, as within minutes, he had successfully gutted the rat, throwing the offal as far as he could to avoid unwelcome family members. He had also peeled back the skin to reveal what he knew to be pink protein-laden meat.

Between the wet and the lack of fuel, a fire was out of the question, but Francis had his lighter, which he used to char segments of the rat before he bit into the flesh. The flashes of warmth and juicy flesh revived his spirit somewhat.

As he roasted his fifth piece, however, his eyes focused beyond the burning flesh and fire to take in what the rat had been tugging at.

Through the muck and mire, Francis stared at the toothy grin of a German soldier, drowned in a muddy avalanche of a collapsing trench wall. The soldier’s bottom lip was flayed while the left top lip was completely missing. No wonder the rat had struggled to bring its find home.

Francis stared at the death mask for a moment, before shifting his gaze to the rat remnants in his hand. As though scalded, he threw the rat down the trench and doubled forward, fisting the mud at his feet.

His back arched violently several times as he convulsed a wretching wail, but his starving body refused to release its cannibalistic gains. Instead, from deep within came a mournful cry that rose in volume and violence until it seemed he might turn inside-out.

Part Two in the next post.

(Image is property of the owner and is used here without permission, but a lot of respect.)