If all the copies are on reserve at your library, here's a chance to win her most recent book THE MISSING PLACE. (Let's just say my sox were knocked off so often while reading this I finally just abandoned them completely and stuck with flip flops)
Usual rules apply:
1. Write a story using 100 words or fewer
2. Use each of these words in the story:
oil
boom
mother
ice
shower
You can use the word as part of a larger word but it must be appear in whole form:
oil/spoil is ok but ice/icicle is not.
3. Post your entry in the comment column of THIS blog post.
4. If you need a do over, delete your entry and post another. [It helps to compose on a word .doc then paste to the comment box when done]
5. Entries outside the US are ok.
6. Contest opens Saturday (10/25/14) at 10am and closes on Sunday (10/26/14) at 10am.
Questions? Tweet to me @Janet_Reid
Ready?
Set?
Oops, too late, contest closed at 10am Sunday 10/26/14
67 comments:
I hate my step-father. His oily hair. His toothy smile. My dad dies and Uncle Claude moves right in, boom, just like that. My cunt of a mother has ice water in her veins. How could she marry her goddam brother-in-law? It happened so fast, they actually fed the wedding guests leftovers from the fucking wake! I can’t stand them. And something else is bugging me: the way my dad died so suddenly.
I’m in the shower, thinking about this dream I keep having. The ghost of my father, saying, “Remember me.” Oh, I’ll do more than that, Dad.
"Save your money, son," the private investigator said. "Don't waste another dime on this."
Even my mother-in-law believed Vicki was cheatin' on me, but I still clung to denial.
"Follow her and see for yourself."
Her car was at the motel, parked next to the Chevy Silverado with Texas plates and an "Etoile VFD" sticker.
I saw her...with him...through a gap in the drapes. Her boombox was on the dresser.
I drove home, showered, opened a bottle of Jack Daniels and tried to erase the image of my wife's magnificent body eagerly responding to her Texas fireman's touch.
According to my mother I could ride a broomstick before I could pronounce the word. “Boom”, I used to call it.
I guess I was a difficult child for my mother to raise on her own. If the dinner she cooked wasn’t to my liking, I’d spoil it with nothing more than a frown. One morning I didn’t want to get up for school, so I turned her shower into ice. I’ve been on my own ever since and it’s been all right. No one visits so no one will ever find the body.
Jessica picked up the bottle of baby oil, one of six in a gift box. The card attached read: "From one mother to another. Congratulations! Love, Mom." A flip of her thumb released the top and she inhaled deeply the scent of newborn, flooding her with memories. The heartbeat booming through the ultrasound device. Grainy images on the screen. The kicks.
Jessica wiped her eyes and replaced the bottle with the other shower gifts: diapers, onesies, toys, all carefully arranged on the dining room table. In the middle, a pair of booties. A reminder of the day the kicking stopped.
Your blood is like an oil spill.
Technically, I know there are five, six quarts. It seems like more. Mother of God, you gave me no choice.
And you. You and that ridiculous laugh of yours, the one that made me feel trivial, insignificant. That was your answer when I asked you why.
You’re in the bottom of the shower. I hear that booming laugh over and over. I begin to slice, skin, muscle. I retrieve what you seem to have misplaced.
It’s of no consequence to you, really.
You were already heartless.
Still, I loved you, didn’t I?
"That mother of an oil-rig boom tried to ice me again. Piss on it," he said as he gave it a golden shower.
A gust of chilled air swept into the room.
“We have two bathrooms,” I said as the door clicked shut.
“You know I prefer this one.”
With a flush, the shower spray shifted from hot to ice-cold. I tensed, a smile spreading across my face. The toilet lid slammed shut with a boom as her foot slipped on the slick of bath oil I’d spritzed across the floor. Her head landed with a solid thunk.
“Goodbye, Mother.”
Ten miles down the road and my car is running.
Racing.
And I'm wishing it wasn't true.
But once them spoiled bastards started smoking that ice it was too late. The boom of the shotgun signaled the beginning of the end. Two lives disappeared in a shower of poor judgment and good intentions.
Ten minutes down the road and my mind is humming.
Wondering.
But I know it was overdue.
"Mother, where's father?”
Burning in hell.
"Oh baby, don't worry. He's nowhere new."
"What’re you in for?" she asked.
"Malpractice."
"Sir, think you’re in the wrong place. This is Boomer’s Auto lube and —"
"I wouldn't be showering at the damn Y if she had just lain still. You're supposed to trust your therapist."
"What’re you doing? Get down.”
"It was just baby oil.”
“You can’t lay on the counter."
“Reparenting. Was playing her mother."
"That's it. I'm calling the mana —"
"I should've sued her."
“Boomer, a man’s laying on the counter. Hurry.”
“Honestly, I knew better. I have mommy issues too,” he said as he handed her a bottle of oil.
A Little More Time
The ice was already beginning to melt as I sat the bags down and opened the apartment door. A gush of warm air passed my face as I raised my head slightly and took a deep breath. I had a little more time to figure things out.
Then I noticed the bass booming from the apartment below, and I knew they were still unaware of what I’d done. I hurried into the bathroom and opened the shower door. Mother looked so peaceful lying there, except for the now soiled nightgown that she knew I always despised.
“Mother, the shower’s freezing.”
“Stop whining.” She shook an oily grey towel.
“But it’s like ice-cold. I got goose bumps.”
“The boiler’s low on earl.”
Mom calls oil Earl and thinks that towel is white. I don’t like that scratchy towel.
“Hurry up. Got cookin’ to do. Can’t stand here waitin’ all night.”
“But I want hot water.”
She snatched my arm and jerked me forward. The yucky towel cloaked my head. The water stopped, the door slammed. She was gone.
I stuck out my tongue. My heart boomed and I shuddered. She doesn’t like that one bit.
"Daddy," asked little Ernie, when father walked into the trailer unexpectedly early from work, "why would mother and the mailman need cooking oil, the clothesline, my Gameboy batteries, and then lock the bedroom door?"
"What?"
"I knocked but she yelled ‘something something boom-boom, come back later.’"
"Not again," said father.
"Mommy always says I look just like the mailman".
Glancing at his red-headed son, the gun safe, then the far bedroom door, father wisely chose a shower.
Ice cold.
I'm of the boomerang generation. Off to college, then back home to mother. Off to the oil fields of North Dakota, then back to--
You get the picture.
I need to get off this merry-go-round before I lose my sanity. But January in North Dakota is a beast, already a sanity robber.
But if I disappear, mother will come looking for me. Maybe bring a crazy friend along.
And my mother is a beast, for similar reasons.
I stole my work-issued ice pick before I quit and went back to mother.
A warm shower will clean up the blood.
Alice’s breath puffed out in visible plumes as she carried her mother’s belongings across the ice-encrusted driveway. She dropped the box on the passenger seat and put a hand to her lower back, wincing. Nothing a hot shower couldn’t fix.
In the distance, the oil derricks stretched up from the snow, motionless. Ashland’s economic boom had ended long ago, and she wondered why her mother had stayed. It was a ghost town.
Alice turned and looked at the house, the reflection on the windows concealing whatever ghosts wandered there. Finally of the living, she would not cross that threshold again.
boom
It sounded insignificant. Eighteen miles will do that.
A grenade, tittering from the explosion’s vibration, toppled and rolled off a shelf. It dropped onto the table, its fall deadened by my pinky.
“Mother fu--“
“Mind yer mouth, ya oily son of a bitch,” snapped Sarge.
I snatched the pineapple from the table and flung it across the room in an irrational response.
Sarge showered me with disdain.
I retorted with a flip of the bird. A pin hung from my finger. My blood turned to ice.
BOOM
It sounded deafening. Exploding next to you will do that.
"Hurry up," Callie whined as Penny doused her with more fake blood. "It's cold in here."
"The scene's in a goddamn freezer," Steve snapped. "You should be cold."
I adjusted the boom mike, letting it slip and thunk onto Callie's head.
"Ow! I'm telling mother." Any minute Nancy would waltz in to shower praise on her spoiled, entitled princess. And then rip me a new one. This shoot sucked, but I needed money.
Steve took a drink of his soda, crunching the ice as he handed me a folded note. I opened it.
"Another $100 to hit Nancy."
Worth it.
The oil was just starting to boil when she creeped back into the room. She always crept about like a boomerang, busy with nothing, as the ice cubes in her drink betrayed her, announcing her with a jingling warning. Her signature cow bell, gripped in her pock marked hands. Her flesh hung from her boney fingers like melted cheese. I picked up the boiling pot. It was time. Time to shower Mother with love.
It had been a boom town once, now covered in ice—a terrible place to return to this time of year, made even more dreadful because she had come here to bury her mother. She wondered how the gravediggers were going to break through the frozen ground and if she would be able to gather her words enough to get through the eulogy. Her uncles would be there, no doubt, and they would hover; especially Hank, unshowered and stinking of oil and brandy. She had seen the will. And Hank was getting it all.
Tom brought home a brochure for steam showers.
“A definite step up,” he said.
Debbie runs her finger over the glossy paper, wondering what happened. They were Baby Boomers: marchers, peace-lovers, fighters of The Man. Then Debbie got pregnant. Tom got a job, a taste for artisanal olive oil, and, as he put it, ‘a motherfucking hot secretary’.
Plopping an ice cube into his martini, she holds it up to the light. A blue shadow falls across the countertop. With a steady hand, she adds 8 ccs of antifreeze, two more than yesterday.
A definite step up.
A lifer once smothered his cellmate with a binder clip stolen from G.E.D. prep class. Held the man down, covered his mouth, clipped it to his nose. Guys said it was snoring-related. Crazy weapons go with stupid reasons.
He’s called Boomer. Blew up banks back in the day. We pay a price for revolution.
He had ice for blood. The teller’s was warm.
A tired old man, he shuffles off to the showers. A brother waits. A knife’s a simple weapon. Boomer doesn’t resist. The teller’s a good reason. Shuffle off this mortal coil, old man. We pay a price
He traced the charted territories on his map, yellowed from determined use. He searched wasted land, where serried houses sprouted up in ancient boomtowns, culs-de-sacs so new the trees yet grown, streets yet paved, but somehow still permanent enough to persist. He pictured mothers feeding their children between the plaster walls; he would find it below them he thought.
He could see the topography of the land if he focused enough. Tiered forever, by decades and eras, showers of ice and bone and eventually oil, which swept through his mind, like a fine black smoke. He would find it soon.
"I don't see why it's impossible to get a decent cuppa in space," Madge said.
"Water doesn't know how to behave, and tea doesn't like the pressure." Horace tended the vacuum coffee press.
"Are you sure that's right?"
"You're like your mother."
"I'm sure." Madge float-flounced to the nearest tiny window, gazing out at Mars below. "She'd have some choice things to say about all this."
"Hush now, here's the tricky part." Distracted, Horace applied too much strength; one of the levers twisted right off and boomeranged around their small living space, showering them with tiny bubbles of hot espresso.
I am in the shower when our mother leaves. There are no goodbyes, only the eventual whistle of the teakettle boiling in the kitchen, an alarm we don’t yet know to panic by.
“Turn it off!” my brother yells.
“You do it,” I yell back, stepping onto the mat.
He yells, “Mom. MOM!”
Hair dripping, I come into the kitchen. The TV is on; Schoolhouse Rock tells us three is the magic number. An orange pekoe spice tea bag sits near an empty mug. The keys are missing.
The kettle steams.
Three minus one equals two. Boom, just like that.
Each boom from the cannon echoes deep in my breast. The concussion edges toward the void in my heart, prods it to beat again. Colored sparks shower the newly dark sky, followed by traditional oohs and aahs. The band plays a time honored medley to continuous rounds of applause. Anger, pride, loss roil every carefully constructed defense of recent months. I smother the tears. He knew, I knew the potential price; every privilege exacts a cost. The finale of explosions, layers upon layers of expanding rosettes, a relentless beat of hope and promise lifts me toward tomorrow. I will survive.
I eased back my lid. Dark, and quiet except for the generators. The warehouse was ice-cold after the stuffy heat of the oil-drum.
I whistled. Boomer burst out of his drum.
“Simmer down, motherfucker!” I hissed. God, every time we robbed a place.
“Claustrophobic,” he gasped.
“If you know a better way inside than getting delivered, speak up.” I crept through the gloom. “Freckles said the Rolexes were this way.”
The ground lurched. Soot showered down.
Boomer grabbed me. “Earthquake!”
A long, loud note blared. What the...? Shit. Fucking Freckles.
“We’re on a cargo ship, Boomer. Hope you like Chinese.”
Mom was a big mother. Ice tunnels large enough to fit her were unsafe. So we built a boom to raise and lower her in a shaft. When we raised her we dug deeper so she could reach fresh ice. As we got deeper we ran into some oil seeps. At first they made it easier to raise and lower mom. Then we got to the bottom of the glacier and there was a shower of oil. It scared mom enough that she got too hot. The oil fried her right there. Damn she was tasty that way.
Arctic air pushed through on the night she came to tell me what I already knew. The cold as sharp as the diamond that sparkled on her left hand.
“He was my boyfriend.”
“Sweetheart, it’s nothing personal,” she said as she retreated down the oil-stained drive, ice crackling beneath her stillettos.
“You won’t get away with this Mother. I’ll never let you have him.”
Her laughter tinkled on the cold air. “Don’t be ridiculous darling. Who are you, Tony Soprano?”
She climbed in the Porsche and cranked the ignition. Once. Then twice.
Boom.
Ashes showered down like snow.
Once or twice a year, I walk to the old battlefield. Misting rains shower the hills every spring, erasing the violence of the past like a forgotten nightmare.
They came from the northwest, trying to expand a queen’s sacred realm. We foiled their plans and kept our freedom, for as long as it will last.
They’d marched unopposed until I met the enemy commander. We were brothers, but not by blood. War was our mother, and she birthed heroes and cowards, victory and defeat. I can still hear his booming voice in those bucolic hills, the voice I silenced.
Twelve sacrificial years at Kirby Law Office before being discarded like a piece of soiled tissue. Downsizing left Michael with no other option than to join the ranks of the Boomerang generation. His once fruitful love life was reduced to long hot showers and his new mode of transportation was a city bus pass. He was bitter, vengeful.
Setting his weapon on the counter, Michael opened the refrigerator. “Mother, where’s the milk?
“We’re out.”
Pissed, Michael poured some juice before picking up his weapon, still awed by its capacity for devastation. His fingers lingered momentarily before sending the scandalous e-mail.
". . . Holy Mary, Mother of God - "
Garen kicked me. "Shut up and get down here."
I stowed the ploy and my beads and crouched at his side.
"Oil?"
I passed the three-in-one and watched as he anointed the fake tile's hinge. The lid fell back with the boom. I peered in. "It won't fit."
Garen's eyes were ice. "Go on."
I pulled Vito's heart from the jar and plopped it in the hole. Guess I was wrong.
Garen resealed the tile. "Saint Andrew's has a new relic." He glared at me. "Get some sleep. And for Pete's sake, take a shower."
Age six, under the lights, slathered with oil, this kiddie shampoo ad director showering him with conflicting instructions: of course my baby is struggling with his lines.
“Stage mother,” the one with the boom mic says, snickering with the others. They’re judging me
“Ice queen,” says the director’s whore, clipboard pressed against cleavage.
I grab a hammer from a toolbox. Now behind her, gripping the handle, I’m ready to cave in her skull. But there’s my little boy. Terror in his eyes, he shakes his head no.
I lower the hammer and take a breath. For him, I walk away.
Mom’s in the shower so I move Mrs. Maplethorn into the garage, her leg covering the oil spot where Dad’s Eldorado used to be parked. That leg looks funny even with snow pants, like a doughy pretzel that cooked with a piece twisted to the outside, just asking to be eaten first. I drove by Maplethorn twenty years ago in that Eldorado, the engine backfiring with a boom as I passed and I remember the look she gave me. I wish I made her fall on the ice in front of our house but it was just her bad luck.
The festival of Diwali glittered across the sky.
Fireworks boomed as Sanita combed clove oil through her mother’s hair with reverential strokes. The spicy scent of chrysanthemums garlanding the streets wafted over the open casement, blending with that of the roses she’d twined among the glossy strands.
Mama had always looked forward to Diwali. Sanita bent, pressing dry lips against the beloved forehead.
Beyond the window, sparks showered down, reflections glinting in fixed pupils; shimmering over mounded ice…Mama’s bed. “Tomorrow flames will lick your pyre. But tonight…,” Shanita whispered, “…tonight’s light and color will not consume you. Happy Diwali, Mama.”
The car spun, flipped, and stopped on its head. It was a cheap foreign car, he knew then; the good American ones went boom when they landed, not this lame-ass crack.
Still, he was pleased.
He approached the wreckage, peeked inside. Two bodies: woman and child. Blood began to inch and creep across the ice like crimson oil.
“What have you done, Charlie? What have you done?” The voice said then. It was always his mother’s voice.
The carnage pleased him, but the voice made him feel dirty. He needed a shower. Cleanliness was next to Godliness, him mother said.
Iced-pink porta-potties radiated in the sunlight. “See Shiela? Not a single woman waiting to use the restroom,” Becky grinned.
Shiela snorted, recounting how she’d repeated this to the vendor over the phone. He’d warned against broken sink pumps, but Becky dismissed this like a spoiled Malibu Barbie and made Shiela order them anyway.
Boom! One of the pink doors exploded open, and a bewildered elderly woman exited, showered in brown and green. Shiela ran over. “Mother!”
A crowd of onlookers gathered, and an appalled Becky plastered on a strained smile.
“Guess we’ll all be waiting in line now,” Shiela grumbled.
Ice against the window.
Another distant boom of thunder.
I counted.
It was getting closer.
Hail, lightning and a torrential downpour - we would lose power. I would be okay but mother wouldn’t. Without electricity her machine could not keep her alive. This was not a summer shower, this storm would turn deadly.
Oil for the lamp, blankets and a promise, I would help mother breathe. Blackness. A few minutes later a deep sigh. Mommy-dearest was dead.
I turned the lights back on and called 911. No one questioned why we were the only ones to lose power.
Freedom.
Inside the office bathroom, the Antioils, huddled, fighting. Slick flyers covered the window and writs littered the floor.
“My mother was right,” a young woman screamed at the CEO. “If I had become a petroleum engineer, I could be taking a hot shower instead of stuck in this ice hell.”
The CEO with the angelic face and misplaced ideals shakes his head. “How was I supposed to know? Boom, gasoline prices hit $5 and citizens revolt! When I started opposing drilling for oil, I never thought it would mean I could not use the current oil supply…”
“No, no.” Betty snickered. “It’s… nice.”
“What can I say? I’m a grower, not a shower. Besides, do you know how cold it is today?”
Betty fidgeted. “I can’t do this.”
“Sure you can. Just give me a minute, and boom! I promise.”
“It’s more than that, Todd. The gifts, the late night texts. It’s too much.”
“I like to spoil my gal.”
“It feels more like smothering.”
“But…”
“Goodbye Todd.”
As she swam away and out of his life, FWOOMP!
Figures. Now he looked a proper puffer fish.
Windows explode outward with a boom, glass showers down in a deadly rain. Smoke billows in oily clouds. I walk down the street, my shoes grinding on rubble. A siren wails and Edward tenses next to me.
"Don't worry," I say. "We'll stop him." We turn a corner, and at last my search ends. I've found the source of it. The cause of my mother and father's deaths. The reason for this war. The Minstrel, who always hid, not this time.
"Don't kill me!" He whines. I feel all of loathing in me like ice. I draw my sword.
Caleb rolled his eyes. “It’s good PR.”
I grimaced. Since when did “good PR” require me to freeze my ass off on camera as part of some Internet fad? And in swim trunks, no less.
“Think of the headlines. ’Oil Exec Raises Money for ALS Research.’ Business will boom!”
“Let’s just get this over with.” I stepped into the tub, cursing the late night TV host who’d called my name for the ice bucket challenge.
Caleb beamed. “Smile.”
I watched the light on the camera and braced myself for the shower. My chest tightened when the water hit. “Mother—!”
Boom, boom, boom, I pound my fist against the oil-smooth walls of my cell and ice showers down on me. All the while I mutter to myself, " I should have listened to Mother."
Sammy squinted at the paper. “Oil shaft thoroughly before inserting.”
Joey sniggered and grabbed his crotch. “Oil my shaft.”
“Jesus. Go take a cold shower.”
Biting his lip, Sammy lubed the slender metal rod and then read the next step. “Position shaft above opening and insert tip gently.”
This time Joey howled with laughter, right in Sammy’s ear.
“Holy mother of God.” Sammy yanked Joey’s arm, got right in his face. “This ain’t a joke. If I mess up, we die. Get it?”
He pushed Joey away, reached for the device.
“Bastard.” Joey spat at him.
Sammy flinched.
Boom.
“He smelt like oil and that thing that goes boom. No, not a dub box. What’s it called? An exhaust pipe? Yeah, you kick it into gear and it spits out smoke like it’s choked up down the throat. He smelt like that. I told him he needed a shower. He swore up a storm ‘bout me mother. I think he was on ice. Have you ever tried, officer? Blows your mind. No, sir…I didn’t…I know what it looked like, but I didn’t shoot him. I got no mum to be all ‘fended ‘bout...he shot himself.”
The biggest lie my mother ever told me is the one about baby showers being fun.
I have been subjected to endless prattle about cravings for Chunky Monkey ice cream and the horrors of hemorrhoids, as well as a prominent display of ghastly stretch marks beneath a too small crop top, but it is the mother-to-be's detailed account of the night she conceived, which involved a great deal of baby oil and her husband shouting the lyrics to Boom Boom Pow loud enough to wake the neighbors, that causes me to flee.
Mom always was a little nuts.
The front door’s ajar. A foreclosed split-level, the soiled relic of a once booming neighborhood now irretrievably bust. My body, ripe from a jog, begs for a shower, but curiosity entices me up the front steps. Neighborhood kids won’t go near the Lawton house. They swear a madman dismembered the family and hid their body parts under the now warping floorboards. I laugh and tell them nothing sinister happens in Shay City.
I walk toward the dining room. The table is set for one. New, shiny silverware. The sound of a chainsaw revving in the kitchen smothers my scream.
“Don’t. Please.”
Bitterns boom far-off in the fog. Ice crystals cling to the eaves of the hut, awaiting the thaw with infinite patience.
“You don’t have to do this, mother. Please.”
His face is a pale circle, his body blurry behind steam-clad glass. He pushes again on the door, but it is tapped firmly shut. Oil trickles from the shower head. Pools on the floor.
She smiles gently and strikes a match.
He honed my edges in a shower of sparks, slicing off my dullness until I was keen as an ice-white diamond. A clean cut doesn't announce itself with the crack-boom of a pistol shot. A clean cut doesn't leave blood spreading like an oil spill. Before you can cry out for your mother, a clean cut ends you in an invisible prick to the heart.
With a thousand rough cuts, his sandpaper touch made my frictionless facets—a thousand tiny wounds too small to bleed. Iron sharpens iron until it can cut through anything and feel no pain.
Hello, faithful followers. Today is the day. Today I show my coworkers what I really think of them and their expensive suits and power ties. Today justice will be served.
As I write this, my Python rests in my lap, three pounds of nickel-plated comfort. My vest is cinched tight, packed with penthrite and coils of det cord. I'm on my way, brothers, to deliver unto those snotty motherfuckers a shower of love! LOL
I can't wait to see their faces as I start firing, as they suddenly regret the snide comments and condescending attitude.
Everybody smile and say Boom!
Water pooled into her palms. She was bent over the sink, frozen, her body unyielding as ice.
In the shower. Behind her.
She’d seen it in the mirror. Its face twisted—its smile even more so.
A loud boom rang out from a heavy bottle being knocked into the tub. She shot up, already screaming. Two filthy, rotted hands slid around her neck. She fought, twisted. Finally, she turned.
And found nothing.
“Honey?” Her mother’s voice came from behind the door. “You okay?”
She touched her neck, feeling a slick, oily residue. “Yeah.” Her voice shook. “I’m fine.”
This time.
The boomslang struck, recoiled, then struck again.
“Mother F***er!” Gordon screamed, cursing and fighting against his bonds.
I watch him struggle. The venom works slowly, but that’s fine with me. Longer for him to suffer.
People say my snake fettish is senseless. They say it’s extreme. Unhealthy. Dangerous even.
I say it’s damn useful. Especially when my boyfriend cheats on me. I caught him in the shower with another girl. Not once, but twice.
The first time I forgave. Now it’s time to forget. And I can only do that if he’s dead.
Some are born unheroic.
Rather than fight or flight- they fright.
They’ll never have sonnets in their name, or movies on their lives, but then their lives don’t need retelling.
They’re still around to live them.
An action star might save the day and survive, but that’s against all odds.
Numbers don’t lie.
Heroes die, leaving a hell of a mess.
Ever seen a hero organize a replacement vase?
The third boom showers him with ice and oil.
Hidden, he prays to Jesus, Jesus’ mother, her second cousin.
He watches the hero die, leaving him to continue the world tomorrow.
1944
“If death wore perfume it’d smell like this” I thought as the foul odor showered my senses. Now awake, my gaze boomeranged around the room, before lingering on the captivating woman beside me.
“She’s still distracted.” The doctor bent to stroke my hair but I recoiled. “Don’t worry, dear wife. I will fix you. Then we can start over again.”
I turned to the beautiful blonde and noticed her badge: Adele Woods, RN. Garter Asylum.
“Sorry, lover. But he pays me well for my services.”
My lips still tingled from her kiss. Or from the device smothering my desires.
It’s Saturday night, and I’m sitting on the kitchen floor, between my mother’s knees. She’s hot combing my hair, and using too much oil. It’s burning my scalp viciously. I glance up at the kitchen clock, but that causes Mom’s hand to slip, and the comb burns my temple. I jump and yelp. “Be still; I told you!” Her voice is a boom in my ear. I have to put ice on the burn before I take a shower. In one hour, I’ll be going on my first date with a hot comb burn on the side of my head.
I welcome Chaz’s bullet.
Gotta make sacrifices to close a case sometimes. This one’s already cost me a wife and two partners.
I fall. They crawl from their holes like worms after a rain shower—Chaz, Terrance, others. Eleven years like ghosts, now the whole Toil Gang huddles around me.
“Sheezus, Chaz. Boom! One shot! Lookit ’im leak! Finish up.”
“He’s old. Mother Nature’ll finish him.”
“…geezerfuck’s even wearin’ a fanny pack…”
Guffaws.
Eleven years accumulating anger and SEMTEX explosive to fill my waistpack. My palsied hand clutches the detonator.
“Say . . . why’s he laughin’?”
Gotta make sacrifices.
Jenny knew Ben was cheating, but couldn’t prove it. This sweater could make up for it a bit, she thought, rubbing the green wool between her fingers. It had her name all over it, a thrift-shop one-of-a-kind. She’d gone broke flying here to see him not once, but twice, so she smothered her desire and returned to Ben’s dorm to shower. Robed and damp, Jenny slipped through the hallway back into Ben’s room. And there he was. Kissing a leggy redhead, obviously HER. Jenny recoiled, her heart boomeranging in her chest. Screw Ben. SHE was wearing The Sweater.
He was devastatingly handsome. The type your mother warned you about, but you couldn't help but touch, given the opportunity. Jet black hair, chiseled jaw, and a body as hard as the ice blue eyes that regarded her over the merger papers. He'd sign. Oil ran in his veins, but she knew what the boom would cost him. Just another notch in her belt on the way up the corporate ladder, she reminded herself, but that night she had a long, lonely crying jag in the shower as she tried to wash away the guilt.
In the shower, I couldn't hear my mother at first. Must have been calling a long time. Nice warm water but I was cold as ice, wanted to stay there forever. Turn off the tap finally, reach for the baby oil, delay. She'd really lower the boom this time, ground me for life probably.
I took ages getting downstairs. There she was, in her Chair of Judgment. But she didn't speak. That was unusual. I walked around to face her. She wasn't looking at me.
The empty glass lay at her feet, lethal contents drained, dripping. I was too late.
"This is the biggest gamble of my life. I had to take this." It was for all or nothing. Deep in his gut he knew he was right. "Play your hunches," said his mother.
"Oil, here? That's absurd," said everyone. "They drained her dry back in the '80s. Prudhoe Bay is spent. Don't waste your time and money here."
He had seen many an oil boom before, in Russia and in the Middle East. "God, make this work!"
"Bingo!" they shouted. Grabbing some ice to stay cool, he raced to reach in time for the first shower of rich oil.
“Pass the turkey already!” demanded the figure at the head of the table.
He sliced the turkey, while at the same time he sliced open her throat, showering the table in her blood, soiling the fine linen.
As he passed the slice of turkey along to her, before her irritating voice could boom out another command, he imagined stopping it by pushing her face into the mashed potatoes, smothering her as she flailed wildly.
“And what are we thankful for this year?” asked his daughter.
He shuddered a little, banishing the thoughts once more, slower every time.
“Self control.”
The boom rattles the bathtub and sends lather flying onto the shower head. I forgo conditioner and grab a towel. I shouldn't have left my mother and Aunt Maddie alone. They never agree on how to cook Thanksgiving dinner.
Outside, a seared turkey lies fifty feet away in a neighbor's yard, and Aunt Maddie's flat on her backside, hair askew. "Oil overheated," she yells, partially deaf from the blast.
Mom, still in curlers, douses the turkey fryer with foam. "You're not supposed to add water," she says through clenched teeth.
"But I didn't!" Aunt Maddie protests. "I used ice instead."
"It was the best of times. We were Baby Boomers, hippies, flower children...our music was the best. We cared about peace and Mother Earth; make love - not war.
It was the worst of times. Too many were sent half a world away. They toiled in the heat through jungles and infested rice paddies. They were showered with napalm and then returned home to scorn. But you know what?"
"Yeah, we know, grandma. Altogether, 'The world was a little crazy back then. Now it's totally insane.' Can we go out now and play?"
"Yeah, go ahead. (Door slams.) Little shits."
Billie-Jean always said he couldn’t swim in the dam for an hour after eating. ‘Take a cold shower or stick your head in a bucket of ice,” she’d tell him every summer Sunday of his childhood. Sunday – an hour after lunch – was the one time Jack-Boy was allowed to swim; the rest of the time he did chores. And every Sunday after eating, he told his mother he would run away and keep on running until he found his Widow Douglas. The day the oil came in – the boom was heard two farms away – Jack-Boy swam all day.
You want to know what happened? Fine. I’ll tell you. The other kids made fun of me. Called me Norman. The girls always mock-screamed like that chick in Psycho, the one in the shower. The administration wanted to know what kind of relationship I had with my mother. All the laughing and questions eventually turned my veins to ice. Why should I feel anything but cold? I’m not a victim. I showed them. I used oil and lighter fluid. It was grand. Made the news, it did. Boom.
‘Dead on Arrival’, the guaranteed emergency room affirmation when one tumbles down serrated steel steps. Horrible, jagged treads rip one apart. No place for slick ice or slippery oil. A sign reads, 'avoid in snow and showers'.
Iron stairs climb outside walls, dangerous, but necessary. The young bound up and down like gazelles, the elderly cautious. She stepped outside, gasped, stood on a landing of open bar-grating plunging downward. The mother******, his hand against her back, guided the woman towards the edge; bang, bash, boom!
“Get that pan off the heat!” Mother panicked.
Amelia grabbed the fryer, tossing it to the counter. With a ping!, it cracked the granite and sent a shower of oil onto her arm, setting several hairs aflame.
Amelia rushed to the sink as Mother dove for the freezer for ice. The oven was smoking now, and both jumped back when a BOOM! sounded inside. Was it the spinach soufflé or the salmon mousse exploding?
“I told you this was a bad idea.”
“You’ll never impress him if you can’t cook.”
Amelia shrugged, defeated. “Didn’t keep Dad away.”
Mother’s eyes narrowed.
I hate being the boomerang generation. I kick at the rainbow-slick oil puddle. But: no money, no rent.
The wooden door shut slams behind me.
At the stove, Gran stirs, ice-white hair perfect picture framing her blue eyes.
“Hi hon.”
More mum than mother, I’m grateful. But we’d’ve all been better off if I’d been a girl.
I check the pan. Collard greens.
Gran’s hands cradle my cheeks. I love her dark cinnamon face more than my own blackness.
“Don’t. Give. Up.” she says, “We’ll make do. Go shower. Then we’ll eat.”
I shuffle up stairs narrow, ankle monitors vigilant.
He took an ice-cold shower, feeling nothing.
"Ronny, are you OK?" His mother's voice sounded muffled.
"Yes, mom. I'm almost done."
When he walked into the living room, the snow was glowing through the big window.
Then he saw a trail of blood outside.
"Honey," his mother startled him. "Look who is here."
She loved using words like "look" and "see." She was blind.
He turned around.
"It was you," his girlfriend said. There was turmoil in her eyes. "It was you."
She collapsed.
His mother dropped the bottle of red wine she had in her hands: boom.
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