15 Ways to Bury Jane Doe (1st Draft) October 1, 2009

1. The Author

Maybe the best way to do this writing exercise would be to tell the story of a funeral for someone who had no one mourning her at all. There is a problem, though. Who are these fifteen characters telling the story going to be? It’s interesting that I would immediately be interested in this Eleanor Rigby-esque pathetic character. Maybe I’m depressed.

2. The Editor

Oh, great. Another short story that came from a writing exercise. Am I getting paid to read this? At least I don’t have to smell the formaldehyde. Or sit in a chair awkwardly next to people I don’t really know. And try desperately not to get the giggles. I hope all the paragraphs are as short as that first one.

3. The Funeral Home Attendant

When this body arrived I was annoyed. I was hoping that my overnight shift would give me a chance to sleep. When they brought the body in and I cataloged its clothing, I kept a few things. Twenty dollars from the wallet, and a movie ticket stub from the pocket. Yes, I said “the pocket,” “the body,” and so forth. What does it matter, if it’s a she? Do I look like a necrophiliac to you?

4. The Coffin

You and I are going to be touching for such a long time. Maybe after a while neither one of us will feel the other. Maybe after a while you will hold me as much as I hold you. You are heavy and will grow light. I am dense and will grow brittle. I look forward to the darkness and the quiet. It will be more like being a tree. Perhaps I will yearn for the faint warmth I feel during the day. I ache for the sun. I ache for fresh air. But at least I will not be so alone. I will not feel so mutilated and ridiculous. I will not be stared at. I will be I will be I will be around you you you.

5. The Obituary Writer

What can you do with an MFA in Creative Writing? Well, this. It’s like any form. You become comfortable within its rhythms and feel the openings to stretch the limits. And you can do it in your pajamas. That’s something.

6. The Gravedigger

I hope she’s not pregnant. I hope she’s not pregnant. Jesus, if she’s pregnant. Why can’t she be like this stupid bitch. Dead. Not anyone’s problem anymore. I hope she’s not. She’s a lying bitch. Bitch. Bitch. Cunt. Digging holes just reminds me of her, her, her, her. I hope she’s not. Not. Not.

7. The Florist

Why can’t people order flowers for something different? To celebrate the completion of a triathlon. To mourn the passing of a presidential administration. To poke into the showerhead and confuse your roommate in the morning while he’s still half-asleep. To give to prisoners. To sell to raise money for the NRA. I just want to feel challenged for once. I just want to care.

8. The Butterfly

Lovely lovely oh it’s dead. Oooh that’s not far and that looks lovely lovelylove.

9. The Reader

But who was this Jane Doe? Was she like me? Was she like someone I don’t like? This is weird. This is fun. I’m not a reader at all. I’m an author. Oh christ. Authorial intrusion. I’m not just depressed, I’m delusional.

10. The Forensic Investigator

Nothing suspicious here. I want to go home and have a nice long bath and some tea. I want to go home and fuck my wife so hard that I’m absolutely one hundred percent sure she’s alive. I want I want I want.

11. The Sparknotes Employee

Irony. Multiple points of view. Death. Repetition. I got an MA in English Lit for this? Maybe I’m depressed, too.

12. The Carpet

I like the lonely people the best because they don’t attract those other people who just want to step on me and oppress me and grind me down and spill their drinks on me and leave me without a backwards glance. Hey, #11? I’m the ultimate subaltern and I want to rise up. I want I want I want too!

13. The Coin

Someone superstitious put me in here, in this mouth. I will never get out of here. But I still know what I am. I am Lincoln. I am shiny. I have something written on my back. I will endure.

14. The Soul
.
.
.
.
.

15. Jane Doe

The end.

“House Hunting” May 12, 2009

Seth tried the door.

“Maybe we should come back,” Leah said.

“No, it’s open, look.”

Seth walked in first. The room was dark and cool and smelled a little like wet dog. Leah came in behind him, her leg in jeans brushing a little against his bare calf. He was wearing shorts, like he always did in the summer. Leah used to wear shorts too, baring her legs as casually as her arms or her face. Now she said she was cold all the time. She covered her legs in jeans, and her arms in jackets, and her face in makeup so thick it looked like she was in a high school play.

“It doesn’t work,” Seth said. He heard her trying the switch. It made a sound like a moth hitting a lightbulb, ramming its way to heaven. When she gave up it sounded like the moth falling to the floor, the tips of its wings still trying to fly.

“Do you have the flashlight?” she asked.

“I think I left it on the counter.”

“Shit. Well, we can come back.”

“No,” he said. He said it a little louder than he’d meant to, and he heard the word echoing from empty rooms. The kitchen, the bathroom, he thought. The rooms with tile floors.

“What, we’re just going to-”

“Give me your phone,” Seth said. He wasn’t really asking; he was already grabbing. Leah’s phone cast an eerie blue over the carpeted floor, leaving the corners dark.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t think, look, there’s a hole in the wall.”

“I’ll bet they’d give us a discount. If there are repairs.”

They walked into the first bedroom. There were a few boxes on the floor, filled with trash. Fast food wrappers, styrofoam cups, plastic bags. He quickly moved the cell phone’s beam away from the plastic bags, but it was too late, he’d heard Leah’s breath sucked back in, like it had changed its mind and wanted to stay inside her forever.

“Let’s look at the other bedroom.”

“We don’t need two bedrooms,” she said. “I thought you said it was a one bedroom.”

“You could use it for your scrapbooks and photo albums,” he said. “Or maybe I could make a den, a man-cave, you know?”

Leah snorted a little. “Right. Just what you’ve always-” And then there went her breath again.

In the center of the room, an empty crib with broken rails. Like the skeleton of a beached whale whose ribs had been broken, or stolen. A dirty blanket, wadded in one corner, covered some grubby toys.

Leah walked over to the closet. Seth followed her with the light. She found plastic bags, more toys, sticky, smelling like soda and urine.

“They must have left in a hurry,” Seth said. “Broken the lease.”

“Sometimes you have to,” she said.

They walked out of the bedroom and looked in the bathroom. The toilet’s flusher dangled impotently, barely connected. Seth smelled mildew and cheap shampoo.

Then, the kitchen. They opened the refrigerator and the sudden smell of rot and spoiling was so strong that Seth cursed and Leah slammed the door shut.

“Jesus,” he said. “It’s like something died in there.” Then he froze and looked at Leah and she was tearing up. Christ.

“I don’t think we’ll take it,” he said, holding the front door open wider.

“Do you remember when we were looking for our old apartment?” she said, standing half on the carpet and half on the doorstep. “When we’d get dinner and picnic on the floor? Or…”

They were both silent and left. A light came on at the neighbor’s and they walked away faster, feeling criminal.

“Workshop” May 4, 2009

You sit down in a small room around a conference table with sixteen strangers. One of those strangers will decide how your artistic talent translates to a grade point average. You are a Creative Writing major because you didn’t know what else you wanted to do with your life. You’re a graduating senior and you wish you’d picked something that ended in Ology instead. You will spend almost three hours in the late afternoon here once a week until you graduate. You will be tired, hungry, bored, and foxholed.

Flash Fiction: Annie vs. the Child Molester pt. 1 April 30, 2009

Annie sold most of her possessions to fund her new vocation: she was a born-again assassin.

She took all her books to the bookstore, where they offered her five dollars for thousands of hours of reading pleasure. The book buyer fawned over her copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook. “Actually,” she said, “I think I’m going to hang on to that one.”

She entered the pawn shop tentatively, like a first-time visitor to a brothel. There, she sold her television, digital camera, and iPod. Although they also offered her an amount of cash not nearly commensurate with the value of her things, she was far happier with their offer of in-store trade for a gun. “If only bookstores sold guns,” she said. Then: “Never mind.”

She went to the used clothing store and attempted to divest herself of interview pumps and little black dresses. The girl with a tiny sparkling gem clinging to the side of her nose like a teardrop apologized profusely for how terrible Annie’s taste in clothing was. “But I bought that here!” Annie said, trying hard not to be That Customer, like the meth-leathered effigy beside her, insisting that chlorine-faded cutoffs were the height of fashion. “Oh,” the nose-pierced hipster said, forming her lips like she was about to ingest a blow-pop. Annie went to the sun-warmed dumpster behind the store and left all her brightly-colored clothing on top of enough cutoffs to clothe a trailer park.

Finally Annie turned to the internet. She didn’t have time for the endless bubble-wrap and feedback dance, so she happily gave a commission to the Sell It For You On eBay! store similar to the one that Steve Carrell had mocked so mercilessly.

Then Annie went hunting.

New untitled story April 25, 2009

Jack was at the Swinging Swan. He was a policeman, and that was where policemen went after their shifts, to relax, to meet floozies, and so forth. Jack hadn’t been a policeman long, and he went as often as he could; he wanted to fit in. There was one particular floozy who hung out there.
-What’s her name? Jack asked.
-Ananda, one of the guys said.
-Amanda, one of the other guys said.
-Who gives a shit? another one said.
-God, she’s a crazy bitch.
Jack didn’t say anything, but he noticed that most of the older, more experienced officers seemed to be quite familiar with this girl, in the Biblical sense. He’d learned about body language in the police academy. He could tell that they were embarrassed, ashamed, lying, turned on, all kinds of strange reactions that they never seemed to have to any other girls.
When Jack approached the girl he was curious and maybe more turned on by the thought that all the guys were thinking about him being about to fuck her, than he was by the girl herself. She wasn’t bad-looking, a nice body, but her face was lined and haggard. She was young but in the right lighting, she didn’t seem young at all. Most of the Swan was dark; she was never there in the daytime; it was only one flickering neon light that gave her sadness away.
-Hey. I’m Jack. Can I buy you a drink?
-Sure.
-On one condition.
-What’s that?
-Tell me your name.
-Does it matter?
Jack thought maybe she’d been listening to their conversation and he blushed.
-Oh you’re just a baby, she said.
-I’m nineteen.
-Are you a baby with a gun?
-Yes. No. I have a gun. I’m not a baby.
-Show me, she said.
They went back to her place. The guys said things as they left together but Jack couldn’t make anything out that made sense.
Her place was small, dark, unpleasant. It reminded Jack of Gollum’s cave in Lord of the Rings. My precious. Jack followed her to the bedroom, undressed her, kissed her. She tasted like beer and ashes. Finally she sat up.
-You’re just a baby.
-Do I look like a baby?
-Why’d you want to be a cop?
-I dunno. I just want to take care of things, I guess.
-I read somewhere that cops and criminals are psychologically the same. They do tests, she said, lighting a cigarette and taking a few drags.
-That’s bullshit.
-Does it annoy you when I smoke? She blew smoke in his face.
-Yes.
-You don’t smoke?
-No. It’s stupid. Expensive. My grandpa died of–
-Whatever. I want you to grab my cigarette.
-Make you stop smoking? Take care of you?
-No. I wasn’t finished. I want you to grab my cigarette and put it out on my skin.
-What? That’s fucked up. Are you crazy?
-Yes.
-Well I’m not going to do that. Put it out yourself.
She put it out and ground it into her arm. She closed her eyes and winced. It sounded like a girl in a porno coming. Jack didn’t stop her.
-Jesus. That’s fucked up. I’m going.
-I like cops, she said.
-Good for you.
-Your friends in the bar there, they’ve all fucked me.
-Yeah, I gathered that.
-They weren’t scared. They liked putting out cigarettes my way.
-Right, sure.
-No, they did. They like doing other things to me. You want to know my favorite thing?
-No. Where’d I put my–
-I like it when they shove their nightsticks up my ass.
-What? That’s sick. You’re sick. You need a fucking shrink. You need.
-They all do it. Why don’t you do it? You’re a fucking pussy.
Then they fucked. Jack fucked her. Jack did what she wanted. Jack did what he wanted.
Jack went to the bathroom and washed his hands. There was blood on them, and shit. He dried his hands on her towel. He washed his hands again. He dried them on his jeans. He lifted them and smelled the tips of his fingers. He went out into the room with small steps, like he had shrunk.
-Were you abused or something?
-You’re a fucking genius.
-Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know–
-Don’t be. Get out of here now, kid.
-Do they really–
-Yeah. They do. Just like you. Except they want it harder. Except they know themselves better maybe.
-You’re still bleeding. You need–
-You don’t have any idea what I need, she said. Get out of here. Get out before I call the cops. She laughed like air hissing out of a slashed tire.