Tag: Grief

Short Story: Cheap Rounds

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

She sat atop a bar-stool, dressed and hunched over like a man might. She’d learned to emulate them, though mostly to defy conventions. She was a rebel through and through, but rebellion wasn’t the cause of the day’s slump. It wasn’t spite, nor angst, either. Not even the usual mix of downers and booze that could take down a twice-laid, pro-player.

No. Today, it was loss.

Cameron had seen and done about everything one could, short of all-out world-war. Street wars, she’d seen. Even taken part of. She’d run guns, drugs, used more. She’d laundered money, skimmed from guys about to get capped. She’d even capped a few would-be hustlers.

She’d hustled her fair share too, met others in the game, traded tricks for camaraderie over drinks and drugs– even dinner, depending on the company. She’d loved, fucked, burned, and chased her chunk of women, but nothing compared to Cassie.

Cass’d started– damn near ended– that way. Cameron would’ve been the notch rather than the other way ’round. Things turned before long. They ended up inseparable. Two sides of a coin. Two halves of a whole. Both of them knew it.

Fact was, however unwilling to admit it, they’d been in love. The kind that made people insane; drove them to write poetical epics, mutilate themselves, or pump out double-platinum albums of veiled love-songs.

Now she was gone.

The semi-auto .44 pressed Cameron’s back from her waistband, loaded with two-surplus rounds; one for Cass, one for her. They’d used surplus everything since starting to save creds for a trip. Three weeks in paradise and a reprieve from the shit-hole of their lives.

At least, that was the plan. Not so much anymore…

She tossed back rotgut from a copper-plated still, regretting the rounds couldn’t have been higher grade. They’d come from Cass’ stash though. That much felt fitting at least.

The bleached faux-hawk, soaked red in her hands, stabbed Cameron’s chest.

She took another drink, hoping to pinpoint where things had gone wrong.

They’d met in the alley after the job. Smash ‘n grab at a jewelry store. The kind of knock-off a friend of a friend did for insurance. No shortage of scams these days. They were supposed to meet, divvy the loot, then head to the fences.

You went alone to a fence, or only with people that already knew them, okayed them. Otherwise, you were as good as snitching. Even if through third-parties. Didn’t matter, jackboots were jackboots. Every Tooler knew that. None took advantage.

Especially not like this.

Cameron was a few paces from Cass; just in ear-shot but not enough to hear clearly.

They were arguing. Probably a rip off, she guess. Every other dickhead Tooler tried one way or another. Mad ’cause “she ate pussy”, wouldn’t “eat” cock too. Or, ’cause she looked small enough to outfight– too small to be a well-respected black-belt in Shotokan Karate.

If she’d been given a chance…

There was no warning. Thunder cracked and the bastards fled. Cameron was too concerned with Cass, her body. It hit the dirty alley-floor and shattered Cameron’s mind. Her body still worked, but it was a long time before she knew or returned to it.

Sheremembered only abyssal despair; surfacing from depths so fathomless they’d permanently erased themselves; hot, blood-drenched fabric chilled in wind. Nothing else.

It was senseless. Capping a fellow Tooler for no reason? Beyond monstrous. Disliking someone wasn’t an excuse. Sure, there’d been tension after Tiny brought them on. Even more when he had to pull out, but Creeps aside, they’d all been hired as professionals.

Only after the creeps knew they weren’t getting more than the deal specified from the couple– did things start souring.

Cameron partially blamed herself for things. Assured to drink herself into oblivion because of it. ‘Least ’til what needed to be done was done.She’d felt those first hints of resentment, spite. Tasted and smelled them on the air. Mostly, coming from the pair they were set to work with.

By then, Tiny knew he was off the job but kept the group together and helped them plan and prepare. To Tiny’s credit, he’d done what he could ’til the job was on, ensuring it went as smooth as possible.

Indeed, it did. Despite being forced to attend other, unavoidable matters, he found a way to make due, did so expertly. Cameron could never have thought to blame him.Not in a million years. Nothing he’d had control over, or a hand in, was even far from perfect. Even the creeps had come highly recommended, with more-or-less ample skill.

Honor was Tiny’s way. His paradoxical name came from the stereotype he so thoroughly defied. Nothing about Tiny was small. Neither act nor intent, nor size and stature. He held to his word as a blood-pact, nothing more or less. No-one that knew him, believed otherwise.

Betrayal, or hints of it, weren’t a thing to him. Such fundamental wrongness didn’t exist in the world until he heard of them. Then, as its antithesis,he helped correct them.That was it. Betrayal existed only as long as was needed to ensure it did not, so it would not.

Personally, Cameron knew blaming Tiny helped nothing. No-one could predict the suddenly unpredictable regardless of the bystanders in its vicinity.

Besides, Tiny was already doing his part to right the wrong. He’d gotten the trigger-man to come in. The onethat took the life outta’ Cass. Cameron wantedhim. The other guy’d let it happen, but hating a person for intent made her worse than the murder. Too many people with hellish intentions but amicable actions to go that route.

She settled for the lesser evil; an eye for an eye. Taking out the one responsible most directly. Whether on hate or instinct, he’d shown he could not be trusted to control himself. If it had been premeditated, Tiny would’ve been involved, wasn’t.

His was crime of passion. Hers would be one of calm erasure from the collective populi.

The bartender stepped past, brushing her hand; the signal. Subtle. Indecipherable. That momentary pass still told of cold skin. The creature it belonged to as lifeless as its mate, now interred beneath a makeshift-marker outside town.

Less so even: the Earth was warming Cass now, keeping her ground temp. Cameron was less, might as well’ve been on ice. She threw back the last of her vile poison. The taste of a prison’s piss-filled casks followed her to the back door.

It’d take a few minutes before Tiny could work the guy into the alley. The places eternally reeked of equal parts piss and stale-vomit. A fitting place for the disposal of refuse.

Cameron added to the former at a squat in a corner, pissing as she hocked mucus and spat at a wall. She recomposed herself, then leaned against the wall near the door to smoke. It would open on her, giving Tiny the right entrance.

She took as much enjoyment as possible in the last smoke of her life, then flicked it away to check the .44’s chamber. Cass’ surplus round might as well’ve had Riven’s name etched in it– as if the very act of taking her life etched it there through will alone.

Instead, a brass jacket gleamed up beneath the industrial-bulb caged overhead. Five-pound moths fluttered and smacked the cage with the same of dullard indifference of the bullet beneath them.

Tiny’s deep voice reverberated the bar’s back-hall, leaked through its.

Cameron snapped the slide back; he’d talked Riven into stepping out for a line and a smoke. Riven’s mistake was thinking he’d gotten away with what he’d done– with thinking Cass was just another dead Tooler, nothing to no-one anyhow.

She planned to show just how wrong he was.

The door opened then shut. Riven whirled expecting to see Tiny’s Six-Eight figure shelling out smokes and coke.

Cameron’s five-five figure was draped in ragged clothing, reeking of liquor, and ending in the raised .44. Riven’s eyes widened. His mouth opened to protest.

Sound was swallowed in a crack. The .44 splattered his head’s contents out its exit-wound.Refuse sprayed the wall. The pistol sank, upturned. The barrel against chin.

She closed her eyes; Cass’ smiling face. She breathe, squeezed.

Nothing.

Memories flooded. Desperation. Anger. Betrayal. Worst and deepest, despair, grief.

They broke through her ’til she wound up cowering, utterly wracked by sopping-wet sobs. Tiny’d given her five minutes, expected to emerge and find two bodies, both with skull wounds. Instead, he found one; the other bleeding much deeper than senses allowed for.

The only thing he could say of the intervention later, was God, providence, Cass even.

That was how Tiny was. Cameron didn’t believe a word of it. It was cheap rounds. Cass had bought cheap rounds ’cause they were saving for their trip. Three weeks in paradise, fucking, drinking, loving. That was their plan. In that roundabout way, Tiny was right it was Cass, but divinity was a mile-stretch.

She explained as much, offered him Cass’ ticket. He replied simply, “You wan’ me to go?”

She shrugged. “Could use a friend right now. I think Cass’d be grateful.”

He finished his beer then nodded and rose to leave with her. After all, they had to pack, and boozing in paradise in a friend’s name wasn’t the worst way to memorialize them.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Reflections in Stone

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Before I go,
I must tell you what is known,
just so you,
may carry on with what is shown.
Sun low. Sky,
ablaze. Reflections in stone.
Dead foe and,
all that is left of man is bone.

The few creatures,
yet living and breathing
of hue ashen,
black eyed and now seething.
For they too,
have suffered from a species still teething,
that knew nothing,
of the value of weaponry sheathing.

Thus time was,
cruel to those whom least knew it.
The rhyme of,
a way they knew could not fit,
with a dime,
they sought only to pocket,
while a chime,
signaled to run rather than sit.

But in essence,
perhaps that is the moral.
Seek presence in,
those things not bound to whorl.
For a fence,
cannot help but to strengthen a quarrel,
just as sense,
may remain its own laurel.

We value blindness,
in a world of foresight.
And undo what,
nature has made right,
then chew on,
gristle that makes our jaws tight.
And during day,
rant long into the night.

But don’t you,
see we’ve but one world to claim?
Think, won’t you?
People, this is no game.
Life thrown’t to waste,
for fictitious gain, for shame,
This known’t, we’ll
forever be lame.

Short-Story: Staccato

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 3 Comments

Ryan McCafee hadn’t spoken to his father in over twenty years. He’d seen him. He’d even exchanged words with him. He hadn’t spoken to him. They’d interacted millions of times, even come close, but to “no cigar.” It wasn’t for lack of wanting. It just never happened. If they’d been insightful, or traffic control tower workers, their perpetual status would be “failure to commit.”

Ryan knew his father’s health was failing him. He remembered the first phone call. Mom had called. He’d spoken to her. They’d spoken often, in fact. Usually, she was speaking. Ryan wasn’t immune though, his mother was simply a gusher. The type to call eight or nine times for trivial things. Then, on the ninth or tenth, she’d suddenly burst with joy, sorrow, anger– whatever she’d been bottling. Ryan always listened, waiting patiently. This was, after all, the person that had taught him to walk, tie his shoes, dance with girls– the sort of thing every good mother does.

For a while, Ryan thought that the source of it: maybe their inability to say anything meaningful was from lack of some paternal role. But, no. The more Ryan thought, the more he’d recalled his father teaching him to swim, to ride a bicycle, to get dates and tie a tie for them. He did everything in his factual, punctual way, but he did them. His instructions were short. His tone staccato notes. Others might have thought him cold. Ryan knew it was just his way. He’d watched Dad explain things to Mom, or anyone else for that matter, the same way.

If he thought hard enough, Ryan could almost see where the shift began. When the proverbial chasm opened. It was around his seventeenth birthday. He’d been caught drinking and getting high. Nothing unusual for the time nor place. His hometown was what some might’ve called “one-horse.” Most just called it boring, Ryan included.At that age, his friends agreed. A few got daring, and grew grass or smuggled it in from other towns. Everyone got a piece, and ended up lying around giggling and fat from junk-food.

They’d been doing just that in a friend’s basement when the party was raided by the friend’s parents. They took Ryan and the others out, lined ‘em up by the phone, and made them each call their parents. Most importantly, they were made to say why. The first kid that didn’t had the phone torn away and the situation explained. The phone returned to his ear and his face went white. The kid whose parents had done it didn’t even need to punish him further. The death-marches of his friends to the phones and their parents’ cars was more than enough.

Ryan’s parents weren’t particularly disposed to discipline, but even he’d feared the eventual return home. Rather than treat him like a wild-west outlaw, they sat him down to “discuss things.” It was like the sex-talk, but longer, and somehow ended with him feeling more ashamed. His parents had been disappointed, but that was it.

Still, if Ryan thought hard enough, the “silence” had begun there. Not totally. There was no hard-edge. No “boundary.” These lines were the real kind. Not the imagined ones on maps. The truth was, it started there, but the separation was a process. It left Ryan feeling as if he couldn’t honestly say he’d miss his Father once he was gone. He knew he would, but admitting it didn’t feel honest. There simply wasn’t anything more between the two than if they’d been strangers at a party.

Now, at thirty-eight, he lie in bed staring at the ceiling. He’d gotten another call: Dad was going. They weren’t sure how long exactly, but it wasn’t long. He was still active, still moving, but that was the “silent killer’s” MO– your death certificate was signed before you knew it was on the table. Then, a few days, weeks, or months later, tired from the fight, you were gone.

Ryan left the one-horse town over a decade before the call for the city. There was a liveliness to city-life he liked, no matter how exhausting it got. Mostly, the world was there. The jobs were there. Mom and Dad weren’t, but that was it. He’d gotten Mom’s ninth call around midnight: she was sorry to wake him, but on-cue, gushed. Ryan said he didn’t mind, wasn’t sleeping, and listened to the sopping utterances.

He’d done his best to comfort her. He’d never been good at it. She wasn’t much in need of it anyhow. She’d always been the strongest of them– the warm, goose-down during the family’s sorrowful colds. Ryan did his best out of obligation, knowing it would never be enough. She was grateful anyway. They ended the call with the promise that Ryan would sleep then drive to One-Horse in the morning.

He hadn’t lied. He meant to sleep, but just sort of laid there. He must’ve fallen asleep at some point though as he found himself sitting in a strange, white room. It looked like an airport terminal, a train station, or a harbor, but didn’t at the same time. As if it were nowhere, everywhere, and those places and more all at once.

Ryan had just enough time to get his bearings in the uniform ubiquity before the odd shape of a person materialized beside him. It shimmered, fluttered into form. Even before it was whole, Ryan knew it was Dad. Once finally corporeal, Ryan gave his father a deranged look. He knew he was dreaming. Yet he was too conscious of it. It was like the room: the more he tried to convince himself of one thing, the more it felt like the other.

“Dad?”

“Hello, son.”

This can’t be real, Ryan thought.

“It is,” Dad said.

“Huh?”

“This,” he said with his factual way. His arms widened to encompass the place. “It’s real. As real as anything.”

Ryan craned his neck to eye every nook and cranny of the ethereal landscape. Dad’s tone put him at ease. Like everything else, this was his way of saying, “It is what it is. Whatever it is.”

“Okay,” Ryan replied aloud. “So, why’re we here?”

Dad eyed him, “I’m here to shuffle off. I ‘magine you’re here to see me off.”

The uncertainty gave Ryan pause. That pause lasted an eternity and a breath. However long it really was, he couldn’t say. All those emotions he thought they’d missed appeared full-force. Atop them were all the others he’d expected to have but hadn’t. He sucked in a pained breath that shattered the misty silence of that ethereal place.

Dad’s hand laid atop his shoulder. Suddenly, everything was muted. He found himself back where he’d been: Calm. Punctual. Like Dad. He exhaled a severely longer, deeper breath.

“One of us should speak.”

Ryan cleared his throat, “We haven’t spoken in twenty years, Dad.”

Dad nodded. “You’re right. But this’ll be our last chance. Might as well. Right?”

“Why was it that way?” Ryan asked for two reasons: One, it was a sensible reply. Two, if there was anything he felt could be worth speaking about, it was their lack of speaking.

Dad shook his head, “I taught you everything you needed to know, son. What I missed, your mother filled in. When I felt you were ready, I stepped back. Not because I didn’t love you, but because I did. I let you take command of your own life. I had confidence. I was ready to step in, if need be. But you’ve been immutable. When I thought you might falter, I waited. It took everything in me. But I waited. You stood tall. Every time.”

Ryan felt he knew the answer, but asked anyway, “Why? I spent years struggling. You couldn’t even say “congratulations” when I pulled through.”

For the first time in his life, Ryan’s father visibly winced. “It was a difficult decision. You might have resented me for it. We both know you don’t. If you did, I’d have been forced to step in. I knew, if you looked hard enough within you, you’d know I was proud. Now, you know I did it to help you be strong.”

Ryan felt like a broken record. “But why?”

Dad shook his head. He rose beside his son. Ryan found himself following suit. Suddenly the pair were walking along a long hallway. They stopped at a boarding hallway. Or atop the start of a train platform. Or the edge of a pier. Maybe it was all of them and more– or none, and less.

Dad hugged him, then stepped back. “A man’s life is his own. I love you, Ryan. I’d tell you to take care of your mother, but we know she won’t need it. She’s strong. You are too.”

With that, Dad began the walk to the end of the path ahead. As he’d materialized, so too did he flicker and flutter again to disintegrate.

A sudden growling from Ryan’s beside table tore him from the place. His phone was ringing again. He eyed the clock; he’d slept only a few hours. Darkness still pervaded outside. All the same, he knew. Even before he saw Mom’s photo. Or heard her sopping words. Or felt reality’s sting. He knew, but he was at peace. Dad was too.

Whether a dream or real, he understood. In the end, he decided, that was all that mattered. Like father, like son. Short. Staccato. Truth. Facts. Love.

Short Story: Cold Moon

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The moon had risen cold that night, duller than it had any right to be. Just another sign something was wrong, or heading that way. The highways were deserted. Only once did headlights meet to warn then bypass Austin from the oncoming lane. He barely noticed them. To him the road was merely an endless series of ups and downs, micro-turbulence, and wide curves. For all he knew, he was flying.

The dull-Mooned sky was cloudless. An occasional wisp of fluff drifted by in the distance, but never bothered the dampened sheen of incandescent white. The two were like opposite sides of a coin, ne’er to meet. Somehow that didn’t affect Austin. He merely drove, staring, almost lifeless. His motions automatic.

Even after, he wasn’t sure where things had gone wrong. There was a deer in the headlights moment, with Austin the deer. Moments where, even long after the accident, Austin swore there’d been no-one there. It was as if one moment the road were empty. The next, a boy had materialized. The blood stains said otherwise. His damaged car said otherwise. The boy’s grieving father said otherwise.

Austin knew the kid was dead. He was just sitting, waiting to hear it confirmed. A police officer sat beside him. He’d come to take a statement. It was simple: “I was tired, but alert. Like always. I drive that road twice a day. No-one’s around on late-nights like mine though. Still, I check the mirrors. Always. Mom was killed by a drunk driver ‘cause she merged without checking her mirrors. I always check them.”

The cop was forced to re-focus him.

Austin stared at the floor, completely shell-shocked. “I checked my mirror to change lanes. My exit was next. You know how it is. I look up, and this kid’s in the middle of the road. I didn’t see him before. It was like he’d come outta’ thin air. I didn’t… didn’t see him. I was checking my mirrors.”

Austin wasn’t much use after that. He descended into a fugue state. Traumatized. The officer stayed near him. Eventually Austin suspected it was as much for safety as support– the last thing a prosecuting entity wanted was a vigilante murder out of grief. Austin didn’t think it would’ve been all that bad. Then again, he didn’t feeling much save complete and total dread.

Before long, a doctor appeared. He stepped from earshot with the officer, muttered in low tones. This was the moment. Austin knew it. In seconds, the officer would lock-step over, relay the news. He couldn’t help but feel the soul-shattering crack in his chest. It still echoed through him as the officer escorted him to his bloody car and promised to be in touch. Austin drove toward home, front-end one headlight less than usual.

He wasn’t one for bars, but he knew all of them in his dingy town. He knew the upscale ones. The ones that attracted the best women. The ones that brought allowed underage kids. He even knew the ones that stank least or offered the best drugs. He wasn’t interested in any of them. He went to the only one he was certain he’d never wanted to approach. It was a dive-bar for dive-bars. A place where nobody knew your name because no-one had names there, because no-one spoke. They just drank, hunched over, acting as small as they felt.

He hid in there, and within there, like all the other so-called barflies drinking away sorrows. No-one bothered him. No-one would. The bartender didn’t even ask what he wanted. He just set two-fingers of whiskey on the counter. It was warm, vile, felt like Austin’s insides felt. Whether clairvoyant, or prescient, the bartender never needed to speak. If someone needed another drink, or a change of taste, they got it.

Perhaps that was the reason Austin found himself returning nightly. Perhaps not. Perhaps it was something entirely unrelated, inexplicable. Or, perhaps, it was just another of life’s mysteries– like how a child living twelve miles from a highway mysteriously appeared there without his family knowing he was missing.

Like everyone else, Austin drank with his head down. This was the way such people were made– how places like the dive-bar survived. They fed off the souls of those slowly killing themselves there. Not directly. Indirectly. And not through money. Not a single person, Austin included, ever paid. They were never asked to. Their tabs were kept and tallied, in as much silence as everything else, to be paid by their next of kin. All of it was overseen by one man; a creature of silence like the rest.

Somehow, perhaps from lack of awareness, or the desire to keep quiet, drown sorrows, the man that joined the barflies every night in the corner was entirely missed. He sat with legs crossed, just out of range of Austin’s peripheral vision. Atop his knees was a book. Beside it on the round table, a Mojito. A curious drink for such a place. More curious was the way, every few minutes, he dabbed sweat from his forehead, sipped his mojito, and scratched his book with a pen.

Had anyone bothered to look, they might have noticed the rhythm. Had they bothered to look, they might have noticed him at all. Then, they might have thought to step near him. They might have smelled the hint of sulfur to the air. They might have seen the ink colored of fresh blood or drying to a deep, brown. They might have noticed too, the curiously Latin and rune-like writings in the book. If anyone in the bar had thought to notice him at all, they might have noticed these things too. Indeed, they might have noticed the names of their fellow liquor-jocks, or even themselves.

And if they’d thought to stick around long enough, observing closing time, they might’ve seen the man rise to disappear out the door. Were they able to inhabit multiple places at once, they might even find themselves near a highway and at the bar simultaneously. Then, with a flicker of surreal reality, the man would disappear from the door while a boy materialized on the highway.

Perhaps, if someone thought to look, they would see these things. But no-one ever did. And no-one ever would.