Story #7

Dear Readers,

Story number seven has now been published at The Offing, the literary magazine of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is no longer available here. Thank you for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #6

Dear Readers,

This is the halfway point in the web self-publishing experiment wherein I am posting one very short story a week for twelve weeks here at ‘Very short stories are us.’ As always I am grateful for your participation.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #6

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Andrew was known around town as the one who paid for other people’s groceries and scooped up other people’s dogs’ poop. Then one night Jack started buying him drinks in a bar. When Jack went to the bathroom the bartender, who loved Andrew, as everyone did, told him to thank Jack and wish him a good night and go home and not look back. Just before going to the bathroom, however, Jack had said something lovely about Andrew’s face, and Andrew hadn’t had sex in four months and was only 32, so he ignored the bartender’s advice. They went back to Jack’s place and there was nothing weird that night or the next morning or the next dozen nights and mornings. Andrew did think Jack’s apartment could use a little cleaning though, so on a Saturday two weeks after they met, when Jack went out to run some errands, Andrew swept, vacuumed, dusted, scrubbed, straightened up Jack’s papers, did a few loads of laundry, and alphabetized the 50 or so books Jack had on his shelf. When Jack got home and saw what Andrew had done he literally clutched his own chest as if he were having a heart attack. He stumbled over to his couch, which no longer was covered with newspapers, and fell back onto it. “What have you done?” he said. “I just thought—” “No! Shut up!” Jack stood up and ran at Andrew. He clocked Andrew not very hard in the side of the head and Andrew used an aikido move he’d learned in his twenties to push Jack lightly into the refrigerator. Andrew knew things could go either way at this point. Jack started kicking the wall like an insane person. After three hard kicks there was a hole in the wall, and Jack kept kicking the hole bigger and bigger. Andrew was getting scared and inched toward the door. With one of his crazy kicks Jack broke through something inside the wall and several hundred cockroaches poured out onto the floor at Jack’s feet. Jack stopped kicking. He stood there panting and looked with curiosity down at the cockroaches moving in a fury at his feet, so densely packed together that you couldn’t see the linoleum. They climbed onto Jack’s shoes and up inside his pants leg. Jack smiled at Andrew. He raised his fists over his head. “Aaaaaaaaaah!” he shouted. “I am the King of the Cockroaches!” “Oh my God,” Andrew said under his breath, “I think I love this guy.”

Story #5

Dear readers,

The story that I'd originally posted on this page is now living at the online magazine KGB BAR LIT, under the title "It." Thanks to editor Suzanne Dottino for publishing it. Here's a link: http://kgbbarlit.com/content/it-1

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #4

Dear Readers,

Very short stories r us r pleased to present story number four.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe, proprietor

Story #4

Sid was walking up and down the aisles of the supermarket putting things in his cart. He put in a sea bass, though the store was in the middle of a desert, the nearest sea was a thousand miles away, and Sid had not seen it in years. There was no sign of the sky in here either, or trees or grass. Nothing was alive—the chickens, the carrots, the rice, the soap. “Hey Joey. Joey. Joseph Thomas.” A fellow shopper was addressing himself to Sid. “Slow down there, pal,” the man said. “It’s me, Roy Harbison, from high school.” “I’m sorry, sir, I’m not Joey Thomas. My name is Sid Whittle.” “Come on, Joey, you don’t remember me? You used to beat the crap out of me, I came home all black and blue.” “I didn’t go to high school anywhere near here. I’m from the mountains.” “You really slammed me, right in the face.” Sid was getting pretty uncomfortable with this conversation. “Well it was nice meeting you,” he said. “I’ve got to go check out.” “Check out is right,” Roy Harbison said. “You’ve been checked out for a long time now. I pass you in here and you don’t even acknowledge me, or any of the old crew.” “I’m sorry you got beaten up so much in high school, that sounds rough.” “‘I’m sorry you got beaten up,’ you’re a funny guy. Hey, at least it’s an apology, I hope that takes a little bit of the weight off—off of you, I mean. As for me, I forgave you a long time ago. Everyone did. Who wouldn’t? You look so damn lonely walking up and down the aisles here, or out there driving around in your car like you don’t know what to do with yourself.” Sid felt dizzy and leaned against the mile-long shelf of breakfast cereals. “Look,” Roy said, “here comes Margery. Hey Marge.” “Hey Roy. I can’t believe it, Joey’s talking to you?” “This isn’t Joey, it’s Sid.” “Joey, Sid, it doesn’t matter, as long as he picks a name and stays with it. How’ve you been, Sid?” “Do I know you?” Sid asked. Margery laughed. “I was so in love with you in high school,” she said. “You really dumped me hard. Don’t look alarmed, I got over it a long time ago, and it’s not a secret between Roy and me, he was there too, remember? I’m with him now, I’m crazy about him.” Margery gave Roy a big smooch and he squeezed her shoulders. Sid said, “I appreciate that you’re both being so friendly toward me.” “Listen, Sid,” said Roy. “We live in a desert. It’s tough out there. Then you come in here full of hope and it’s not much better. Being friendly, as you call it, is about all we have.” Roy and Margery stood there a while and let that sink in. “Well,” Roy said, “we’ll let you get on with your shopping. See you at check out.” Margery laughed. “Check out,” she said, “that’s a good one.”

Story #3

Dear readers,

Following is the third of twelve very short stories that I am posting on this blog once a week. The “us” part of “Very short stories r us” is not just the characters in these stories and me. It is also you. I am the author of the story below, sure, but if you read the story, then you are also its author. You complete it, kind of like Renée Zellweger completes Tom Cruise in that movie.

So thank you, truly, for reading, if you choose to. As always, if you like it, please let other potential readers/authors know about it. And/or leave a comment. And/or click on the donate button below to support our overhead, or indeed, our underfoot.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #3

Theo picked up his daughter, Juniper, from her therapist’s office on Friday afternoon, and they set off to the country. He had intended this to be a fishing trip until Juniper had called him in tears on Wednesday night saying that the thought of killing fish with him that weekend was making it hard for her to get through the day. From the passenger seat of the car, as they left the city, she looked at him expectantly, and all he could think of was hearing his thirteen-year-old daughter say, without exaggeration, “hard for me to get through the day.” He wondered what the effect was on Juniper of the arrangement wherein, every other Friday, Janet dropped her at the therapist’s office and Theo picked her up from it, scrupulous not to come in contact with each other. “I’m glad you told me how you feel about fishing,” he said. A teardrop slid from her eyes, and then many teardrops, and then she was sobbing. He reached out and put his right hand on her two little hands, which were grasping each other tightly in her lap. She did not move them, did not slacken one’s grip on the other. He pulled off the highway so that he could hug her and dry her eyes. “No, Dad, it’s okay, just keep driving, I’ll be okay,” she said between sobs. But he had already stopped the car on the grassy shoulder. He envisioned the two of them in the canoe on the quiet lake at dusk, singing, joking, splashing water at each other playfully, reposing in each other’s silence. Was there anything he could do to make that happen? “Let’s just stand up and walk around in the grass for a minute and take in some fresh air before we get back on the highway,” he said. “No, let’s just keep going.” Theo looked toward the thick line of trees at the edge of the narrow strip of grass next to the highway and saw a disheveled, deranged-looking red-haired woman coming toward them. His ex-wife, Janet, also had red hair. This woman seemed to be wearing Janet’s beautiful tan suede coat, which was now limp and covered with grease stains and missing its buttons. The woman moved in a haphazard zigzag toward their car. Her hair was wild, her face smudged, her eyes unfocused. It was Janet. Theo bolted out of the car and went to her. She became frightened, ran back to the trees, and cowered behind one of them. “Let me try,” Juniper said. She eased out of the car and walked slowly toward her mother. She was saying something to the crouched, fearful woman as she approached, but Theo could not hear it over the loud sounds of the cars barreling past on the highway. Juniper extended her hand and held it out to her mother for a long time. Finally Janet took it and walked slowly back to the car, the mother’s hand and the daughter’s clutching each other tightly, much as Juniper’s two hands had clutched each other moments ago. Juniper opened the rear passenger door of the car. Janet slid in, curled up in a ball on the back seat, and closed her eyes tightly. She lay there shivering as Theo started the car. Juniper got in the front seat and he got back onto the highway. Of course none of this with the crazy Janet really happened. What happened was that Juniper refused to get out of the car and Theo resumed driving out to the country.