Story #33

Dear Readers,

This is the thirty-third in a series of fifty-two weekly one-page stories, if the word ‘page’ has any meaning in this format. I thank you for your patronage and wish you good health and peace and imaginal adventure in the coming year.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #33

It’s that old familiar feeling. Ed is on a yacht that is leaving the harbor, heading out to the open sea for a three-week cruise, and he realizes he doesn’t like anyone on board and no one on board likes him. As he stands at the aft railing and watches the sea swallow the land, his brother Sal slings an arm over Ed’s shoulders and says, “I feel like I should just get this off my chest at the outset. I still blame you for my divorce.” “This again?” Sal says, “You’re the one who encouraged Ginny to take that cabinetry class. It was fine that she made more money than me as long as I did the woodworking in the family.” Sal had had sex with Ed’s wife long before the cabinetry class, but Ed doesn’t remind him of it because Sal already knows that he did it and would probably give the same explanation about why it wasn’t a betrayal that he has given the other hundred times they’ve discussed it. Ed is about to give his explanation to Sal, for the hundredth time, about how Ginny came to him and asked him about cabinetry classes, and that all Ed did was make a recommendation, but the sight of the mother dolphin frolicking with her baby just beneath the surface of the turquoise water alongside their boat causes him to say instead, “I’m really sorry, bro, I should have realized how much that would upset the equilibrium of your marriage.” “Look,” Sal says, and points to the deck above them, where their two young girlfriends are running around playing tag in tiny bikinis while the bearded captain and crew watch them with undisguised interest. The women shriek and laugh. They are sisters, Alma and Ina. Ed and Sal picked them up in a bar a month ago. They are aggressive, impatient, petty, grasping, duplicitous, and fantastic in bed—a mystery almost as old as the universe itself. There is a limit to how long Ed likes to have Sal’s arm slung over his shoulder, and Sal often exceeds it, which sets off a battle inside Ed about why he can’t just accept love from his brother, even if the love isn’t love of the actual Ed, but a crude yearning aimed at a blurry semi-Ed-shaped target that is the stand-in for Ed in Sal’s mind. Oh, Alma is incredible. If only Ed didn’t have to talk to her or see her at all except from a distance, or while they were having sex, and maybe also for ten seconds after, before his disillusion came back. Ed wonders what Alma feels like to herself when she is lying to him, or helping herself to two hundred dollars from his wallet, or sulking for half the day after Ed, who is paying for her whole ocean voyage, has failed to pull out her chair for her at breakfast. He wants her, now. He wants to have unprotected sex with her. He wants to conceive with her a baby dolphin, who will be free of all human encumbrance, and will swim fast through the clear water, its worst fate merely to be devoured by a great white shark.

Story #32

Dear Readers,

Here is weekly story number thirty-two. Thank you for reading and a Merry Christmas from all of us at Very short stories r us.

Yours,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #32

Kirk and his girlfriend, Claudette, were going on a ski weekend with another couple, and had agreed to meet them in a clothing store. But it didn’t really seem like a clothing store. Oh, it had clothes all right, and they were nice clothes—soft to the touch, pretty patterns, gentle colors—but there weren’t that many of them, considering Christmas was almost here. Their friends had not arrived and he didn’t know where Claudette was. A salesman wandered by and Kirk just had to ask the guy, “Is this a clothing store?” “Sure!” the man said. “I mean but is it only a clothing store or is there something else going on here?” “What else do you think is going on?” The guy was smiling now, as if Kirk had told him he’d just won ten million dollars in the lottery. It was all too much. Where was Claudette? He went in search of her and found a soft chair near the dressing rooms. He sat in it but things didn’t go well from there. He moved from the chair to the floor. He lay on his side and saw several women’s stockinged calves and feet in the eight-inch gap between the floor and the dressing room doors. “I could’ve ended up with any one of these women instead of Claudette and I would never have known the difference.” He rolled onto his back and stared up at the shirts and pants and beyond them, the brilliant track lighting. He was taken by the hand and pulled to his feet by the salesman. “You all right?” “No, I’m not all right. Stop smiling at me.” “I’m not smiling, my face is just frozen like this from years in sales. You’re not the only one with troubles.” “Sorry, man, I just don’t know what the hell’s going on. This has never happened to me before. I can’t find my girlfriend, Claudette. I can’t even really see anything anymore.” Claudette tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m right here, baby.” This woman might not even have been Claudette. Their friends Jack and Sondra arrived. “Ready to go, Kirk?” they said. They had their ski hats on with the goggles perched on their foreheads, like a ski advertisement. Kirk just stood there looking at them. Claudette said, “Baby, I see what’s happening. It’s okay, just come skiing with us.” They left the store. Night had fallen and the air was icy. Snow was coming down fast and hard. Kirk just had a thin pair of sneakers and a light raincoat. They arrived at the top of the mountain and the other three disappeared down the slope. Kirk didn’t have skis, but off he went.

Story #31

Dear Readers,

Snow is general all over New York City. Here is very short story number thirty-one in a weekly series of fifty-two. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #31

Olivia had just gotten a coffee and was trudging to work. She hated her job and dreaded going to it each morning. She looked up and saw an old bent-over woman with white hair walking toward her. The old woman was staring at Olivia and looked deranged. Olivia looked away and tried to hurry past but the woman said, “Where are you going?” “Excuse me?” “Where are you going?” “To my job.” “Where do you work?” “Fit Woman! magazine.” “Oh, I love that magazine!” said the bent and limping crone who looked as if five minutes of the kind of exercise prescribed in Fit Woman! would kill her. “It’s awful,” Olivia said. “Why?” the woman asked. “Well, aside from the murderous office politics, there’re the cover models, mostly anorexic women whose faces have been digitally altered to look as if they’ve received skin grafts from the asses of newborn babies held under tanning lamps for twelve hours each. And what the manically perky ‘Ladies, you can do it!’ copy in the magazine is really telling you is that unless you exercise for two hours a day and eat only kale and have two percent body fat and a five-minute orgasm every night produced by your boyfriend or husband’s dexterous fingers and larger-than-average cock, you’re not really living. All in all it makes me wish I was a man.” The old woman looked at her gravely. “My dear, you must come with me.” Her bony hand clamped down so hard on Olivia’s fingers that she thought they were sprained. She led Olivia down the stairs of the nearest subway station, walked her to the end of the platform, helped her down a ladder onto the track, and guided her for some time through the foul-smelling darkness of the subway tunnel. The old woman opened a door in the wall of the tunnel that led to several flights of metal stairs, at the bottom of which there was another door. She pushed it open onto an enormous, high-ceilinged, softly lit room that smelled of lavender. There were hundreds of women in the room of varying ages, body types, and ethnicities. They were exercising, cooking, baking, knitting, sewing, building furniture, giving and receiving medical exams, reading and writing. Positioned throughout the room were numerous rotating magazine display racks filled top to bottom with issues of Fit Woman! spanning its entire history. “What is going on here?” Olivia asked. “Some years ago,” the old woman said, “I and a group of my friends discovered to our surprise that each of us loved to read Fit Woman!, and that we had all been doing so secretly and with embarrassment. We decided to be embarrassed no longer, and to join together to follow the exercise regimens and execute the recipes and take the medical and sexual advice and create the crafts written about in this excellent magazine, and to do so collectively rather than singly, because in collectivity there is power. Thus was born The Fit Woman! Underground!” “And what in God’s name is the point?” “The point is to follow the precepts put down in each issue of the magazine for a richer, happier, more meaningful life.” “But what about the impossibly skinny, toned, beautiful, wrinkle-free models in wildly expensive workout clothes who populate the magazine’s pages?” Olivia asked the woman, in whose face time had made one deep crease for every year she’d been alive. “They are our gods.” “What?!” “Do Christians feel oppressed by the goodness of Jesus? Do Buddhists or Muslims feel hopelessly inadequate in comparison to the Buddha and Muhammad? No, they understand them to be aspirational figures.” “But I’m telling you, these models have eating disorders and smoke cigarettes and their so-called physical flaws are digitally eliminated before the magazine goes to press.” “Just so. If you read all the accounts of Jesus that were edited out of the finalized version of the New Testament, you find a complicated, contradictory, and sometimes quite mean-spirited man. But that is not the one believers choose to worship.” “So this is a religion?” “No, I speak of Jesus and the others only by way of analogy.” “Why did you bring me here?” “We’ve been following your work since you arrived at the magazine a year and a half ago. We think it’s been superb. The articles you commission, your re-writes of them, the captions you produce for the photos, your sidebars and headlines, all have been very important to a great many women. You work so hard, the pay is low, your family doesn’t respect what you do, your love life has atrophied, and your doubt about the value of your work causes you real suffering, so we thought it was time to intervene, to give you the love and support you fully deserve, to make your life better.” “You’ve made it worse!” Olivia said. “I feel like tearing my hair out!” “But you won’t, since you yourself assigned and edited the article on the perils of hair tearing,” the old woman said, and winked at Olivia. “Go,” she added. “Go to your office. I’ve already made you late and you mustn’t lose your job. Come back on the weekend, we’re always here. You’ll be treated like a queen, and after a day with us you’ll feel great.” “After thirty minutes with you I feel frightened and sick to my stomach. I’m never coming back here.” “As you wish,” said the old woman, and smiled warmly at her. Olivia turned and pushed open the door she’d entered by. When it closed behind her she was surrounded by darkness. She felt her way to the stairs and began to climb them, clenching the muscles of her buttocks with each upward step, just as a fitness instructor in an article for the magazine had exhorted all women to do.

Story #30

Dear Readers,

This is the 30th in a series of 52 weekly very short stories I am posting to this site. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

P.S. Akashic Press has published a new very short story of mine here. 

Story #30

This was Sheldon’s first time bringing his clothes to a laundromat. He had never before lived in an apartment that had no washer and dryer. He had never before lived in an apartment. He’d gone straight from the suburban home of his childhood to college—he must have washed and dried his clothes in college but had no recollection of it—to the suburban home of his marriage to Julia. Now that marriage was over and some other man and woman were living in that house, and Sheldon was on the threshold of a below-street-level laundromat holding a black plastic garbage bag containing a month’s worth of dirty shirts, pants, underwear, and socks, many of them worn several times. He stood there for a while looking around at the white rectangular machines, each one gyrating internally and emitting a gurgle or a whine. A man approached Sheldon. “You look confused, buddy. You need some help?” Sheldon nodded. “I’m Edmund.” “Sheldon.” Edmund showed him how to separate his white and colored items, what temperature of water to use for each, and so on. “Did you bring detergent?” “No.” “Here, use mine. Don’t ever buy those little detergent packets they sell here—they’re a rip-off.” Sheldon’s clothes all locked away and embarked on their circular journey to cleanliness, Edmund said, “We’ve got some time, let’s take a stroll.” They walked into a nearby park. Edmund removed a joint from his pocket, lit it, took a few puffs, and passed it to Sheldon. “I don’t smoke pot. I’m an accountant.” “Come on, it’s Saturday morning, and you just got divorced.” “How did you know?” “Please.” Sheldon smoked and coughed. “Thatta boy.” Edmund took some more, passed it back to Sheldon, and back and forth till they finished the joint. Sheldon laughed uncontrollably and had to sit down and felt sick. “You ever ride a motorcycle?” Edmund asked. “No.” “Let’s go ride mine.” “I don’t think I can stand up.” Edmund helped Sheldon off the bench, they walked out of the park, and a few blocks past the laundromat they arrived at Edmund’s big red motorcycle. “Sheldon, there are certain machines you’re going to have to learn how to operate as a single man.” Edmund gave Sheldon a tutorial on the bike and then demonstrated up and down the block a few times with Sheldon riding behind him and awkwardly holding Edmund’s muscular shoulders. “Now you try,” Edmund said when they came to a stop. “I’m really feeling dizzy and disoriented.” “You’ll be fine.” Sheldon rode half a block and tipped over onto the street. The bike landed hard on his leg. Sheldon stood up and found long, bloody scrapes on his forearm and knee. His pants and shirt had been torn. Edmund approached him and said, “Jesus Christ!” He picked up his motorcycle and helped Sheldon to the curb. “You all right?” “A little banged up.” Edmund punched Sheldon in the nose and Sheldon fell back against a parked car. “What’d you do that for?” “You crashed my bike!” “I told you I couldn’t ride.” “Tough shit.” Sheldon’s nose was bleeding and his whole face hurt like hell. He hit Edmund hard with an uppercut to the tip of his chin, something he’d learned in high school boxing class. Edmund crumpled to the sidewalk, unconscious. Sheldon squatted over him. When Edmund eventually opened his eyes he looked up at Sheldon, laughed, and said, “This is fun, right?” “I guess it’s not bad. I’m in a lot of pain, and also hungry.” “Let’s go get lunch, you’re the accountant, you’re buying, and I may need to borrow some money from you later.” “What do you do?” Sheldon asked. “Kindergarten teacher.” A bicycle was coming toward them on the sidewalk and Sheldon shoved Edmund into its path. Edmund regained his balance and leapt out of the way at the last second. The cyclist cursed them. Edmund said, “Nice one!”

Story #29

Dear Readers,

No turkeys were harmed in the making of weekly one-page story number 29 in a series of 52. Thank you for reading. As always, please feel free to leave a comment or pass this on to someone you think would enjoy it.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #29

Henry had bursitis in his elbow. He went to a reiki practitioner who, while holding her cupped hands near his hurting elbow, told him to visualize it, and then to visualize the face of the first person who came to mind. “Picture the face inside the elbow,” the reiki practitioner, whose name was Lucy, said to Henry. “You don’t need to tell me this out loud, but whose face is it? What expression is this person’s face wearing?” Henry visualized his father’s grumpy mustachioed face. “Is the person saying anything?” “Goddamn it, Henry!” Henry’s father said, inside his elbow. “And what would you like to say back to the person?” Henry lay on his belly on her soft vinyl-upholstered reiki table, his face pressed into the medical tissue paper that surrounded the hole into which he had inserted his mouth, nose, and eyes. He stared down at the speckled gray indoor-outdoor carpet of Lucy’s office, which she shared with an acupuncturist and a Rolfer. He could think of nothing to say. After a while Lucy said, “What’s going on with you right now, Henry?” He told her. “Okay, I’d like you to work on that this week.” “Work on what?” “When the elbow starts hurting, visualize that elbow, that face, listen for what it says, and try saying something back to it. We’ll work with it when you come back next week. I’m seeing an expression on your face right now, what is that?” “I feel demoralized.” “Yeah, this is hard work, and it can be frustrating, it stirs up lots of stuff. Stay with it, I’m going to help you.” Lucy gave him a quick hug and he left. The hug made both his elbow and his mood improve. But that night when he was watching TV the elbow started to throb. Within minutes Henry was in agony. Okay, visualize, Henry thought. This time not his father’s face but Lucy’s appeared in his hurting elbow. Lucy was young, with short brown hair and glowing skin, and she smiled easily. Her face reflected her good health and inner beauty and her positive outlook on life. Neither Henry nor Lucy’s face spoke. With the non-affected hand he masturbated. The elbow felt fine afterward, but the pain returned the next night, and Henry did the same thing again, and the night after that and so on. When he arrived at her office the following week, Lucy said, “So how’d it go?” Henry smiled. “I told my father to fuck off. I mean, the father in my elbow, because I haven’t spoken to the real one in a year.” “And then?” “And then he turned into a baby, crying and crying and not being taken care of by anyone, and now I became his father. I picked him up and rested him in the crook of my arm, the one with bursitis, and I rocked him to sleep.” “And how did your elbow feel after this?” “Better.” “Henry, I’d call that progress.” “Me too.” Lucy had him lie on the table again and she cupped her hands an inch away from his elbow. “Oh!” she said, and drew back. “What?” “Nothing, I just, I felt a burning heat in your elbow and it startled me.” “What does it mean?” “It means things have definitely shifted since last week, and we have a lot of work to do.”

Story #28

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the twenty-eighth in a weekly series of very short stories, and thank you for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #28

When the bell rang in June’s classroom and she looked up from the storybook she had been reading aloud to her students, she had the sensation of having seen her husband standing in the doorway as she read, though she knew that that could not be so because he was a neurologist with a full schedule of surgeries on weekday mornings. She lined her children up in two rows in the hallway and marched them down to the auditorium, where they were to have a dress rehearsal for the play they would perform that weekend. When she emerged onto the sidewalk outside the school for her lunch hour, there he was waiting for her. They had been having some problems and Saul had moved out a week ago. She’d spoken to him on the phone but not seen him since then. He had several days’ growth of beard, was thinner, and looked as if he was balancing on the sidewalk rather than standing on it. As usual he didn’t speak but waited for her to. “How are you?” she asked. “Good.” “No surgery today?” “Elmo’s covering for me.” Elmo was the skeleton he kept in his office at the hospital, hanging from a hook in its skull and held together by wire. Saul was not given to making jokes, especially about surgery. He was a taciturn man who expressed very little. This had begun to make June nuts. Now he was laughing at his own joke. “Saul, are you all right?” “No.” “What’s wrong?” “What do you think is wrong? I can’t sleep, I hardly eat. I’m on my way to give a lecture on the human brain to a group of college biology majors and my hands won’t stop shaking.” “But you said nothing when I asked you to leave. You seemed indifferent, as you seem about most things.” “I’m not indifferent. I’m different. My inside is different from my outside. I’m always feeling something, I just don’t show it. I thought you knew this.” “So what’s it like to show your feelings, finally?” “I hate it.” “I like you better this way—I don’t know what to do with you when you won’t let me inside you. Do you have another joke for me?” He pointed behind her at the front door of the school and said, “Your students are approaching me with pitchforks and torches in their hands. They look angry.” June laughed. “No,” Saul said, “I’m serious.” The students surrounded June and Saul. They had dirt on their faces and they were shouting, “Give us the monster! Give us the monster!” Saul acceded to their demands, pulling from his briefcase a large jar that contained a pink human brain floating in clear, viscous fluid. Teddy, the biggest boy in June’s class, rushed toward Saul brandishing his pitchfork. “Put the brain on the sidewalk and back away!” Saul obliged. Teddy tossed his prop to the ground, picked up the jar containing the brain, raised it over his head, and ran back inside the school, surrounded by all the other shrieking students. June went to Saul and gently put her arms around him. “Darling, how do you feel?” “I feel like I’m melting into nothing.”

Story #27

Dear Readers,

This is this week’s one-page story in a series of 52. Thank you for reading.

Best wishes,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #27

Dave was walking in the park when he felt something smash into his left arm. He staggered and regained his balance. Two boys, about thirteen years old, were standing to his left, giggling, shoving each other. “Why did you do that? Say you’re sorry,” one boy said to the other. “Why did you do it? You say you’re sorry,” the other said. They weren’t really asking or apologizing, they were playing a game with each other in which Dave was the equipment. “Be more careful next time,” Dave said, and kept walking. He wished he’d spoken more strongly to the boys, put them in their place. It was forty degrees and cloudy. There was no grass in this park and there were no trees, just a lot of concrete and fences, and the park was very small. He reached a closed gate and opened it and went through. He sat on a bench and closed his eyes to collect his thoughts. “Didn’t you read the sign on the gate?” a woman said. “No adults without a child.” Dave opened his eyes to see the woman sitting on a bench not far from him with several other women. He looked around and saw small children, swings, and a jungle gym. He was in a playground. “Where’s your child?” the woman asked. “I don’t have one.” “Then what are you doing here?” “I just needed to sit down.” “Sit down somewhere else.” “Not only is he a wimp,” she said to one of the other mothers, “he’s also illiterate.” “Or he’s a pervert,” the second mother said. “Keep moving, pervert,” said a third. He got up and left the playground and the park. Now he was walking along the sidewalk on a cold Friday afternoon not knowing where to go. “Hey Mister!” someone called behind him. Dave turned around. A woman was running toward him, holding something above her head. Great, now I’m going to get hit in the face, Dave thought. “You dropped your wallet,” she said. She handed it to him. She was wearing running shorts and a form-fitting shirt, her face red and sweating, her arms and legs glowing with exertion. She stood looking into his eyes. “Those women were wrong about you. You’re a nice man, intelligent, and you have a beautiful soul. I can tell by looking in your eyes. You’ve had some hard blows lately. You’re vulnerable. People sense this and instead of being kind, they go in for the kill, even mothers of small children. I used to be like that but I’ve changed. Now I seek out people with whom I feel a connection and shower them with kindness. Do you think you can be kind to me too?” “Yes.” “Good, my car’s right over there.” She started down the block, walking fast, springing up off the balls of her feet, great leg muscles. Dave followed. When they got to her car he hesitated. She said, “I’ve got a pretty little cottage upstate, fields and trees for miles. Just for the weekend. I’m a little crazy but basically okay. If we don’t get along I’ll take you to the bus station, scout’s honor. My name is Laura.” She extended her hand. “I’m Dave.” They shook hands and climbed in the car. Laura got onto the highway heading north. Dave looked her up and down. “Did you just go for a run?” She laughed and said, “I’m so glad you said yes. I’ve been really needing a good man.” “For what?” he said, realizing he was flirting. They were paused in traffic and she looked over at him. He expected her to be leering but she wasn’t. She looked somber and scared. He put his left hand on her right one, which was resting on the seat between them. She flinched but Dave held her hand there. “You’re stronger than you look,” she said, nervously. He said, “The contact is healing.” “Okay,” she said, and relaxed. There was a massive Friday evening traffic jam on the highway, no one moving for miles ahead and the sun going down. Dave and Laura sat quietly in the car.

Story #26

Dear Readers,

Today marks the halfway point in the project wherein I post one one-page story a week on this site for a year. Thanks for reading.

Best wishes,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #26

Ted’s neighbor Selena invited him to attend a séance at her house. When he got there he found that one of the attendees was his former high school math teacher, Iliana Silver—not a spirit of her, she was still alive, scowling on the sofa, no closer to teaching him math or treating him with an ounce of generosity. Morris Undelage, who had accidentally run Ted and his bike off the road with his car and never apologized—on the contrary, had blamed Ted—was also present, in a hard-backed chair. Ted didn’t know the others. Selena took his hand, brought him to a chair—right next to Morris—and went around closing the window shades before taking a seat across the room from Ted. The room was dim. They were seated in a circle. Selena asked them to close their eyes and be silent. She said some things about welcoming the spirits and so on. She said people could open their eyes and invited anyone to say whom they’d like to contact. Iliana said, “I’d like to see my mother, I miss her so.” It was quiet for a while and Ted got fidgety. “Mama!” he heard Iliana exclaim. “Oh Mama,” she said, and wept. Ted couldn’t see anything except this old woman weeping in the dim light. Morris leaned over to Ted and whispered, “This is bullshit. Want to go to the kitchen and have some pancakes?” He got up and Ted followed. In the kitchen Morris said, “You just sit there at the table and let me take care of this, I make terrific pancakes.” “Why are you doing this? I thought you hated me.” “I don’t hate you. After I knocked you off your bike I was scared you were going to come after me for everything I’m worth.” “No, I just wanted to be treated with a little kindness and compassion.” “Thus the pancakes,” Morris said, and put a plate of them in front of Ted. They were delicious. “I think you and I are alike,” Morris said. “We both want everyone to be nice to us and we want to have a lot of material comfort, but the difference is that I’m confident those things will happen and you haven’t gotten what you’ve wanted for as long as you can remember.” “How do I turn that around?” Ted asked. “With pancakes,” Morris said. Ted lost track of things for a minute and found himself back in the chair in the living room. Selena was opening the shades. The séance was over. Ted put his hand on Morris’s shoulder and said “Thanks.” Morris pulled away, frowned, and said, “I don’t know why you’re thanking me or why I’m here.” “None of us knows why we’re here,” Iliana Silver serenely said.

Story #25

Dear Readers,

We offer this week’s edition of ‘Very short stories r us’ in honor of Halloween. Warning: ghoulish.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #25

After Charlie died he was more at ease. Once you’ve reconstituted yourself from your own ashes, you tend to have a positive attitude about things. It was three a.m. and he was naked, walking down the street, feeling great. “Get some clothes!” yelled a young man smoking a cigarette on his fire escape. “I will!” Charlie yelled back, smiling and waving under the streetlamp. He walked into the park, known to be dangerous during the dark hours. He strolled along a wooded path, enjoying the cool night air on his skin, the soft dirt on the soles of his feet, and the sweet fragrance of the flowers and trees. A man who was a murderer and a thief approached him and pressed a bloody knife to his neck. “Hi,” Charlie said. “I’m going to kill you,” said the man. “Why?” Charlie asked, gesturing at his own naked, possessionless self. “I just killed a guy over there and you saw me do it.” “I didn’t.” “Well but now I’ve told you.” “True, but I’m already dead so you can’t kill me.” The man looked Charlie up and down and said, “I wish I was dead.” “I know the feeling. In life I was mean and alone and hated and miserable and poor. I did a lot of harm to myself and others. I, too, wanted to die, but I didn’t kill myself, I was run over by a garbage truck. I see now that it’s not a good idea to harm yourself or others.” “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Listen, you need breakfast or something?” “Okay.” The murderer threw his bloody knife into the woods and they walked to his apartment, which was spacious and clean and tastefully furnished. “All this stuff is stolen. Have a seat at the kitchen table and I’ll make us some eggs, but first put on these sweatpants, I’d rather not have your naked dead buttocks on one of my kitchen chairs, I just had them re-upholstered.” The murderer was a good cook and Charlie enjoyed his first post-life meal. “I’m exhausted,” his host said, “I need to sleep.” “Okay, well, thanks so much for the meal.” Charlie got up to go and the man said, “Uh, I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but would you mind lying down with me?” Charlie thought about it. “No, I wouldn’t mind.” They went to the bedroom, where the murderer stripped down to his underwear and climbed under the fluffy comforter of his king-size bed. Charlie climbed in from the other side and lay on his back. The man scooted over, draped his arm gently across Charlie’s chest, and pressed the front of his body against Charlie’s side. As the sun came up over the river out the window, the men fell asleep. Being dead, Charlie experienced himself and this man as two tiny animate objects in a light-filled corner of the vast universe. And then they were not two objects but two aspects of the same larger thing. Charlie knew all the man’s memories, feelings, and thoughts, a catalogue of ugliness, squalor, hatred, and abuse. Waves of fear and anger and sadness and, above all, tenderness coursed through him. At midday he and the man woke up and looked at each other. “How do you feel?” the man said. “I feel good,” Charlie replied. “You?” “Lousy as ever. Are you going to leave now?” “Yes.” “Here, take this suit.” The man went to his closet and pulled out a beautiful blue linen suit and a white dress shirt. He gave Charlie underwear, socks, and shoes, too. They parted company with a handshake. Charlie looked deep into the man’s eyes and the man had to look away. Strolling down the street that warm sunny afternoon, Charlie realized that in addition to clothes he would need some money. He came up with an idea for a new business, a sure-fire winner. He walked into a bank and was ushered into a pleasant glass-walled office by a loan officer named Cheryl. He smiled at her and she smiled back. They chatted about her children, of whom there was a photograph on her desk. He described his idea, Cheryl said, “Wow, that sounds amazing, Charlie,” and gave him the loan application form. On the form, Charlie gave the murderer’s address as his own, he didn’t think the murderer would mind. He wrote in a few other plausible and harmless lies where necessary, since, for example, being dead, he had no credit history, but he told the truth wherever possible. “I don’t usually do this, but let me go expedite your approval. I’ll be back soon.” Cheryl walked out with Charlie’s papers and returned a while later smiling. “You’re approved!” “Terrific, Cheryl, thanks so much.” “Take these papers to the teller at the front and you’re all set.” They chatted and joked a bit more, shook hands, and Charlie walked out of Cheryl’s office. She sat down at her desk and sighed with pleasure. In her enjoyment of Charlie’s company, she had forgotten for a moment that her husband had not returned home last night and that she had not heard from him. She did not yet know, of course, that he was lying stabbed to death in the park ten blocks away.

Story #24

Dear Readers,

Here is the twenty-fourth in a series of fifty-two very short stories I am publishing here once a week. Thank you for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #24

Eleanor hadn’t felt good in years. She’d been to many specialists. One told her to eliminate sugar from her diet. Another told her to eliminate dairy. Another told her to eliminate wheat. One said no coffee, one said a cup of hot water first thing in the morning, one said cold shower first thing in the morning. And then there was don’t eat anything that can look at you. But everything looked at her—quinoa with its little eyes, kale, a gluten-free breakfast patty. She crawled into bed one day and slept for 36 hours. When she came to a strange man was standing over her. He had bright red glasses, straight black hair, and a camera. “Hi, I’m Bruce Philipos, an art therapist. I take photographs of sick people and heal them. May I photograph you?” “How did you know about me?” “Dr. Urgreif told me.” “I can’t handle this,” Eleanor said, pulled the covers over her head, and rolled away from him to face the window. “That’s great, stay just like that.” She heard him clicking away behind her. “The play of light and shadow on the gray blanket is fantastic,” he said, moving down toward her feet. She felt a strange tingling sensation on her skin and in her pelvic area that she eventually recognized as sexual excitation. She concealed her pleasure by coughing. “Okay, that’s enough pictures,” she said. “Do you feel better?” he asked. “I don’t know. I’m hungry.” “Let’s get you something to eat.” She threw the blanket off, stood up out of bed, and collapsed to the floor. Bruce picked her up and helped her down the hall to the kitchen, where he fixed her some toast with butter and jam. “This has wheat, dairy, and sugar, there’s no way.” “Try it,” he said, “let’s see if the therapy worked.” She ate a few bites, enjoyed them immensely—she hadn’t eaten these foods in years. She stood up and vomited into the kitchen sink. “I feel awful, worse than ever. Take me back to bed.” He helped her back down the hall. “Well,” he said, “I have to be leaving. Same time tomorrow?” “I’m not going anywhere.”

Story #23

Dear Readers,

I am writing to you from New Orleans, where it is raining, and there are homemade biscuits. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #23

Alvin was talking on the phone with his son, Russ. “So how’ve you been?” Alvin asked. “Not so good.” “Why?” “Mom didn’t treat me that good and neither did her boyfriends, one in particular.” Alvin was 34 and Russ was 17. They had never spoken before. Alvin hadn’t known Russ existed till a minute ago. It was nighttime and Alvin was standing in the bedroom of his small suburban house. He lived off the modest proceeds of a motorcycle accident, had jobs sometimes but they didn’t last. He hoped Russ wasn’t going to ask him for money. “What do you mean, didn’t treat you that good?” “Beat me.” “With what?” “Different things, belts, fists, books.” “Books?” “He liked to read.” “Do you?’ “I’m more of an action guy.” “Me too. How often did he beat you?” “Once or twice a week.” “I got beaten too, same amount of times, different objects except the fists.” “By who?” “My dad.” “Would you have beaten me if you were around?” “I don’t know, I’ve been in lots of fights. Why are you calling me?” “I don’t know.” “Do you need money?” “You offering?” “Is that why you called?” “Gonna hang up now.” “Wait!” “Why?” “I don’t know. He still hit you?” “Not since I hit him back.” “Where are you?” “Outside your house.” Alvin walked down the hall to his front door and opened it. The face of his son made his knees shake. There was beer and soup and bread in the fridge. He figured there’d be a fight at some point, hopefully not more than one. They seemed about evenly matched.

Story #22

Dear Readers,

Thank you for reading.

Matthew Sharpe

Story #22

Harvey, who had been unemployed for several months, went to the modern art museum hoping to clear his head. He found himself in a small dark room where a video was playing on the wall. In it, a blurry woman was doing something ambiguous to her body against a gray background. This made Harvey anxious, so he walked toward the exit of the room, but he accidentally went out a different way than he’d come in. He entered an enormous bright room with a high ceiling. The floor and walls were made of concrete. Tall wooden crates lined the far wall and several forklifts were transporting giant irregularly shaped pieces of metal from one part of the room to another. Not far from him a small gray-haired man and a large red-haired woman were arguing vehemently. “I will not agree to that!” the little man shouted. “I’ll never agree to it!” “Well then I don’t see how this museum can continue to do business with you,” said the woman, towering over him. The man tilted his head back and looked up into her face. “Of course you will continue to do business with me. I am Vladimir Sharkovsky!” The woman’s face turned purple. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them she saw Harvey standing a few feet away. “Oh, Mr. Devlin,” she said, “you’re here, thank God. Maybe you can settle this for us.” She beckoned Harvey to her and when he arrived she grasped his shoulders and kissed both his cheeks. “Devlin,” Sharkovsky said with stiff cordiality, and held out his small hand, which Harvey shook. The woman said, “Mr. Devlin—may I call you Edward?—as you can see, we’re at an impasse. Help us.” Harvey was a people person and he said, “I don’t think you’re going to make much progress now, you’re both too worked up. Why don’t you sleep on it and meet again tomorrow?” “What do you say, Vladimir?” Sharkovsky looked warily at Harvey and then at the woman. “Fine, Gladys, but I thought we were going to sign the contract and have a celebratory drink, so I’ve got two hours to kill before my driver comes to pick me up. What the hell am I supposed to do now?” He stared at Harvey. “Oh, no,” Gladys said, “you can’t just ask Edward Devlin to babysit you.” But she, too, looked askingly at Harvey. “I don’t mind,” he said, “let’s go for a drink.” Soon he and Sharkovsky were sitting at the bar of the chic hotel across from the museum. Sharkovsky had the bartender line up three double whiskeys for each of them. They downed one together and Harvey stopped but Sharkovsky drank his second. “Something is weighing on you,” he said. Harvey said, “I lost my job a few months back. I’m not Edward Devlin.” “Of course you’re not. No one is. Gladys does that all the time. What was your job?” “Car salesman.” “Pshaw. I have a new job for you.” “What?” Sharkovsky gulped his third double whiskey, ordered two more, described the job, and made a salary offer that surprised Harvey. The drinks arrived and Sharkovsky drank them. “Sir, that’s flattering, but I come from a small town and go to church every Sunday. And I don’t know how my wife would feel.” “Yes, your wife. We must go and ask her permission, but you’ll have to help me up, I’m blind drunk.” Harvey helped the staggering little Sharkovsky to his car and drove him out to the suburbs. When they arrived the twins were in their high chairs at the kitchen table and Ernestine was feeding them their supper of cream of broccoli soup. “Ah, Ernestine, you are just as I pictured you. And the twins! I love this family!” The artist was holding onto Harvey’s elbow for balance but speaking clearly. “Vladimir Sharkovsky?” Ernestine said. “I studied your work in college. You’re amazing.” Sharkovsky looked bored, then announced his intentions with regard to Harvey. “You’re going to use Harvey—Harvey Marmle—as your model?” She laughed and slapped the table and laughed some more. “Don’t you ever—” Sharkovsky roared, “disrespect this man! He is your husband!” Ernestine silently shed a few tears. The twins cried and Harvey went to quiet them. “You’re right, Mr. Sharkovsky,” she said. “I’m sorry, Harvey, it’s just, I’m here all day with the twins and I get slaphappy while you’re out doing God knows what.” “Well today I got a lucrative job,” Harvey said, sulking. Sharkovsky, clinging to the stove, said, “No, it is I who must apologize, Ernestine. I understand how much strain economic hardship puts on a marriage. My father was a successful shoe manufacturer until Stalin sent him to the poorhouse, then to Siberia and his death!” Sharkovsky’s eyes now also leaked tears. “But please, Ernestine, Harvey, promise me you will always respect each other. Respect is paramount. Here,” he said, reached with a shaky left hand into the inner breast pocket of his blazer, removed ten $500 bills folded together, and handed them to Harvey. “Your first week’s pay.” He then pivoted toward the stove, vomited into the remaining cream of broccoli soup, crumpled to the kitchen floor, and lay there unconscious. Ernestine rushed to Harvey, wrapped her arms around him, and pressed her whole body into his. “Congratulations, my husband. I’m so proud of you.”

Story #21

Dear Readers,

Thank you for visiting ‘Very short stories r us,’ where we are celebrating our twenty-first week with the twenty-first story in an ongoing series.

Best wishes,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #21

with thanks to AT

Susan had just been yelled at by her mother-in-law. This time it was about leaving the butter out on the kitchen counter after fixing a snack for Arnold, her three-year-old son. “I know it’s not your fault, dear, it’s the way you were raised. I only hope that, at 35, you’re not too old to develop some, how should I say it, coherency in your behavior.” When they had all rented this same vacation house together last summer, Myrna, the mother-in-law, had treated Susan similarly, and Susan had appealed to her husband, Rip, who had in turn appealed to Myrna, who wept bitterly, so Susan wasn’t going that route again. She went into the dark wood den and sat in one of the old musty armchairs. She looked out at the storm churning up the water of the harbor. Myrna was raising her voice to Rip in the kitchen. There would be no getting off the island today. On the small table next to Susan’s chair was one of those old fashioned land phones, black, with a big heavy receiver, to which someone had taped the handwritten message, “If you need help dial _____.” Susan dialed. A man answered. She explained the situation to him. “You’ve done the right thing by calling me,” he said. “Throw on a rain slicker and be on the dock in front of the house in five minutes.” Susan checked on Arnold, who was taking his nap, and then did as the man said. The air in the yard was warm but the wind was high, and the rain came down in thick waves. Susan’s legs, feet, face, and hands were soaked. He pulled up in his speedboat, she climbed in, and he roared off over the giant swells in the harbor, the boat rising and falling in stomach-turning swoops. He was old, about eighty, with a red, sun-weathered face and thick, callused hands. On the other side of the island, they approached a rocky cliff and he slowed down. He eased the boat into a little cave in the side of the cliff. It was dark and quiet and the water was calm. He maneuvered toward a narrow rock ledge, tied the boat to a protrusion, and helped Susan out onto the ledge. They stood on it and he pointed to the rock wall next to them, where someone years ago had used a sharp tool to scratch out the words “Jared loves Myrna.” He looked away toward the opening of the cave, his eyes bright. Susan said, “I’ve asked Rip about his father but there’s so much silence in my marriage.” “I did love Myrna,” he said, “but her unhappiness was gobbling me up, I had to get away. Rip has not been gobbled up. He is a strong young man, very inward. That must be hard for you. Keep an open heart. He will come to you slowly. We must go back now.” He rode her once again across the violent sea and deposited her on the dock. “I’m dying and you won’t see me again. No tears, my beauty.” She approached the house and saw Myrna at the window glowering out at her. Behind Myrna stood Rip, solid and vertical, as if holding up the roof.

If you would like to be notified each time a new story is published here, please send an email with the subject heading ‘add’ to poopsie.schmelding [at] gmail.com.

Story #20

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the twentieth week of this blog. Following is the twentieth very short story I am posting here. I’ll be doing this for one year, or so I intend. Thanks for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

P.S.: M.J. Fievre has interviewed me about this project here.

Story #20

Katie’s father drove her to her cross country meet on Saturday morning. He was in a bad mood. He took pills, she didn’t know how many or for what. He hid them from her and she never saw him take them. Sometimes they improved his mood, sometimes they worsened it, sometimes neither, but she could sense the pill presence in him, and in his periods of abstention, the pill absence. They arrived at her meet, three high school teams running five kilometers on Katie’s home course. She hugged a few of her teammates and said hi to the rest. They admired her because she was fast, and she liked them fine, but she did not want to get drunk with them on the weekends or, as often happened, sit along a wall and watch the boys get drunk. She befriended the foreign exchange students from places like Germany, Norway, Finland, and South Africa, who introduced her to music, books, words, and ways of thinking that were new and exciting to her. Then they went back to where they came from. She lined up with the girls from all three teams, and a coach from one of the other teams fired the starter’s pistol. For the first 400 meters they would run across a field, take a long looping trail through the forest for the majority of the race, and finish back across the field.  By the time they got to the woods, the girls who’d sprinted out front had faded to the middle of the pack, and the three runners battling it out for second place were ten yards behind Katie. She sped up, faster than she would usually run at this point in the race. She checked in with her breathing, her posture, her stride, her arm swing. She relaxed her shoulders. She had many opportunities for solitude. The solitude of the race was one kind of solitude and the solitude of her room was another and the solitude of cooking dinner while her father was late at work or asleep in his room or mysteriously away was yet another. She ran past the semi-blur of green trees, 35 yards between her and the pack, 36, 38, 41. She rounded a bend and no one behind her could see her. There was a fork in the trail. To the right was the final thousand meters of the race. To the left was the railroad track. She took the left and soon was running alongside the commuter train to the city, which was slowing down for its stop at the mini-station between towns. Katie leapt up onto the platform. When the train stopped and opened its doors she boarded the rearmost door of the rearmost car. Her friend Jürgen was waiting for her just inside the door with a small overnight bag containing a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, and her wallet. Her wallet contained $500 in cash she had earned from babysitting as well as the credit card with the $10,000 spending limit her father had gotten her under the influence of his troubled conscience. Jürgen hugged her, handed her her bag, and stepped off the train. He could not accompany her or his host family, the Lieboviches, would be worried. Katie sat down in an empty seat of the mostly empty car as the train pulled away from the little station. She wanted to try out city life for a week or so and then return home, for now. Her father, Mel, watched as the first few runners emerged from the woods and came into focus, racing furiously toward him across the field. There was a close battle among two of Katie’s perplexed teammates and a girl from another school. Mel was dejected that his daughter would not be coming in first.

Story #19

Dear Readers,

“The only other sound’s the sweep / of easy wind and downy flake,” wrote Robert Frost. Here: the fridge, the pigeons, the garbage trucks, a barking dog, my downstairs neighbors’ new Casio electric piano, and my tinnitus. “Tinnitus miracle,” the internet told me just now when I asked it how to spell “tinnitus.” Anyway here’s the nineteenth of fifty-two weekly very short stories I am publishing here on this site.

Also I am happy to report that Leonardo Moro is publishing one of these stories a week on the excellent Italian literary blog Brown Bunny.

Yours in gratitude,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #19

Lonnie saw her in the morning when he walked out of his apartment building and hated the way she was holding her phone as she got into the cab. She didn’t even hail the cab, she just opened its door and stepped into it after it had stopped at the light, as if her thinking about needing a cab caused it to appear, and the phone in the hand because she was probably willing a wealthy friend or relative to call her on it, once she was inside the cab being whisked to her cucumber facial spa treatment and could answer without straining. She was wearing a white form-fitting dress of course. Next time Lonnie saw her was a month later in the business district where he worked, several miles from his home. This time he just had to say something. He moved in front of her on the sidewalk—not too close, he didn’t want to be menacing, he just wanted to mess up her day a little bit, thereby correcting an imbalance in the universe. “Why do you even wear those?” he said, pointing to the black lace half-gloves or whatever they were that didn’t cover her fingers and went halfway up her forearms. “And don’t tell me for warmth, it’s not even cold out. They’re ridiculous and pretentious. What are they supposed to be, a fashion statement?” He hadn’t meant to say that much but all the while she was standing there looking at him mildly and he felt he needed to keep talking until he got what he wanted. “Apparently,” she said, “they are a fashion provocation, provoking your fashion question. I bought them yesterday. I know it’s too warm to wear them but I really needed a little bit of fun.” Lonnie could still win this. “And why do you just walk around with that phone like some fungus growing out of your palm?” “Oh, well, my mother’s dying and I asked the hospice people to call me when it looks like the end is coming so I can get there in time to see her off and let her know as she leaves this world that she is loved.” “Is she rich?” Lonnie couldn’t believe he had just said that, he’d gone too far. “I wish she were, for her sake and mine,” the woman said, still regarding him in a friendly way, “because then she wouldn’t have had such a hard life and I’d be able to stop taking the verbal abuse that comes with my alimony payments. Of course what I really need to do is become financially self-sufficient. I keep getting involved with these older rich men who turn out not to be so nice. I’m working on this.” “My God,” Lonnie said, sick to his stomach, “I’m like your ex-husband only not even remotely rich.” “You’re nothing like him. Much younger. And so lonely.” “Why are you being nice to me?” “I don’t know, it’s a thing I do, it gets me into some interesting situations, maybe I ought to work on that as well.”  “No,” Lonnie said, “it’s so refreshing!” Tears came to his eyes. She said, “You know, I’ve seen you around the neighborhood, and not only are you wearing a dreadful outfit now, but you have one on every time. Could I please take you clothes shopping right now?” “I’ve only got an hour for lunch.” “Can you call in and make it an hour and a half?” “Okay.” She enfolded her arm around his and he hated her again for a second—just taking his arm as if she knew he wanted her to, which he did. He was now the one with the messed up day, because as they strolled arm in arm toward some clothing store that would no doubt be incomprehensible to him, he wanted her to love him as he was dying, and even as he was alive.

Story #18

Dear Readers,

Autumnal greetings from the editorial staff at ‘Very short stories r us.’ This week we bring you the eighteenth in a series of stories we are posting once a week. Thanks for reading.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #18

Against his oncologist’s advice, Randall started walking one day and kept on going. He slept at night, exhausted, under thick hedges or in sheds. Once a day he went into a fast food joint and choked down a burger and fries, though he had little appetite. He had a credit card and a YMCA membership so every few days he bought a new set of clothes, showered, put them on, and threw away the old ones. Time went by but he had succeeded in losing track of it. At some point he arrived on the moon—rocky hills and craters, no trees or grass, the feeling of walking and floating through corn syrup. Hedges, sheds, fast food joints, and YMCAs did not exist here and credit was worthless. “Looking for work?” A man was standing by a large pickup truck that several other men had already climbed into the back of. Randall climbed in too, though he had to be helped up by one of the other men. They drove for a while and stopped near an enormous pipe whose length stretched to the horizon. The other men jumped out of the truck and joined still other men who were lifting segments of pipe out of a cargo container, carrying them to the end of the enormous pipe, and fitting them onto it. The segments were so heavy and big around that four men had to carry each one. Randall tried to help three other men lift a segment but he couldn’t hold his part and the thing almost crushed them. The man who had spoken to him earlier came over and said, “You’re no good for this work. Sit over on that rock and tonight we’ll take you back to where we found you. You bring lunch?” “No.” “Water?” “No.” “Well it’s going to be a long day for you out here.” Labor was not much different on the moon than on the earth. Randall first sat and then lay on the rock. He was parched, hungry, and in pain. His wife, Sybil, walked up, holding their six-month-old daughter, Clara, and handed him a bottle of water, which he drank. “How did you find me here?” “You weren’t moving very fast.” “I’m so sorry I left you.” “I guess you did what you had to do. Please stay with us from now on. We need you.” Clara started to cry. “How do we get back home from the moon?” Randall asked. “My love,” she said, “I don’t think we do.”

Story #17

Dear Readers,

Thank you for visiting ‘Very short stories r us,’ where I’ve been posting one story a week since May of this year. I woke up unusually early this morning just before, it seemed, a crucial turning point in a troubling dream, and while the coffee was brewing I scraped and washed a baking pan we had used last night for vegetarian sausages, a reassuringly mundane task. It is still quiet in the house.

Yours feelingly,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #17

Jim was fishing with his ten-year-old son, Hal. They did other things together too but those either left little space for conversation (tennis, skiing, videogames) or generated their own (chess, math homework). With fishing, once you baited your hook and dropped your line, then you were just sitting out there in the rented speedboat under the hot sun, waiting. Jim was a pretty good conversationalist if the other guy kept his half going, but Hal talked hardly at all, barely looked at Jim, and when he did he seemed to be either imploring him to talk or telling him it was hopeless to try, which Jim knew meant the same thing. He stared down at the little form of his son’s body, the thin strong arms holding the pole, the freckled face that was the seal on a thousand mysteries. “Did you have a nice week at your mom’s?” A little shrug. Bad opening line. Dumb. “Have you ever been fishing before?” Slight head shake. Classic out-of-touch dad question. God of the sea, help him. “I wish,” Jim said, “one of us would catch a talking fish.” Hal looked over at him warily and said, “What would it say?” “It would say, ‘Hey fellas, it’s a beautiful day, why so sullen?’” “No, no, Dad, it would be a shark, and it would say, ‘Hey fellas, it’s a beautiful day, really happy to be in this boat with you,’ but it would be lying to make us let down our guard, and then you’d just be sitting there going, ‘I caught a shark, I’m so happy, duh,’ and that’s when it would bite you really hard on the calf, right down to the bone, and I’d take off my t-shirt and tie it around the gash in your leg and you would say in this kind of weak shark bite voice, ‘Son, do you know how to operate this boat?’ and I’d say, ‘Yes, Dad, I do,’ and I’d steer us back to shore and in the mean time I’d radio to the paramedics to tell them to meet us at the dock. But when we’re about halfway there you go, ‘Son, I don’t think I’m gonna make it,’ and sure enough I look down and see blood all over the floor of the boat and that’s when I use fishing line to stitch up your cut while steering the boat with my other hand and we get to shore and the paramedics say, ‘You’ve done well, son, he’ll live, we’ll take him from here.’” Jim waited to see if his son would say anything else, but Hal was waiting for Jim to say something. “What happened to the shark?” Jim asked. Hal said, “Oh, it was still alive. Animal control wanted to kill it but Jim begged them not to. When Jim got out of the hospital he built a giant shark tank with his son Hal and put it in his living room, and when they were putting the shark in the tank the shark said, ‘Oh, no, fellas, don’t put me in here, I need to go back in the ocean where I can get caught again and bite other dads. Besides, I can only talk when I’m out of the water. Once I’m back in I can’t—Oh no! Glug, glug,’ and then they put the lid on the tank, and then whenever they played chess in the living room they looked over at the angry shark to remind them of the hard times they went through together.” That’s when Jim felt a tug on his line.

Story #16

Dear Readers,

Here is the sixteenth weekly very short story. Please feel free to leave a comment, pass the link to this site on to others you think might be interested, make a monetary contribution to the author (me) by pressing the 'donate' button below, or all or none of the above.

With thanks for reading and best wishes on this Labor Day weekend of 2013,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #16

Sarah was stunned when she sat down across from Todd on the patio of the Mexican restaurant. He had seemed so kind, articulate, introspective, and handsome on his internet dating profile. She tried not to judge, but she wanted to go out with someone who knew to wash his hair, hands, and t-shirt before a date, and someone who, as he was reaching out to shake her hand, would not say “Oh fuck” when his phone started to ring, answer it, and proceed to get into a screaming fight with his ex-wife that everyone on the patio could hear. The busboy poured water in their glasses and Todd yelled into his phone, “So you’re telling me that Gina and the dog are at my house right now and you just left them there so you and that idiot can go to a movie?” He slammed the phone down on the table. “Unbelievable,” he said to Sarah. “Unbelievable indeed,” she wanted to say, and get up and walk away from this maniac, but the waiter came and asked for their appetizer orders. “The shrimp diablo,” Todd said, and Sarah said, “I’ll have the same.” “You realize,” Todd said, “I’ll have to leave in ten minutes and go sit at home with my daughter, Gina, and the dumb dog my ex-wife got her. Shit!” Todd looked off away from Sarah and frowned. She couldn’t move. They sat like that till the shrimp arrived. Todd ate his with his grubby fingers. Sarah didn’t touch hers because she was a vegetarian. The last spicy shrimp in his mouth, he said, “I forgot to bring money so I’ll need you to pay for this. I have to get out of here now, I can’t wait for the check.” Sarah put cash on the table—there wasn’t even, as on other occasions, another Sarah looking on in horror going “What are you doing?” Todd was walking away. He turned around. “Are you coming or what?” Sarah got up and they walked the ten blocks to Todd’s house. Todd opened the front door and went right to the back of the house. Sarah went to the living room and sat on an ochre Swedish couch. The house was a recently renovated mid-century modern, sparely but comfortably furnished, a child’s colorful drawings on the walls and the fridge, and everywhere photos of Todd and a beautiful, happy girl, frolicking in the countryside or at the beach, smiling, laughing. He emerged half an hour later in a clean dress shirt and slacks, hair just washed. “My daughter’s asleep, and I’ve behaved abominably. I hope you’ll allow me to make it up to you. There’s a great French bistro around the corner, I can order and the food’ll be here in fifteen minutes. In the meanwhile I’ve got a first-rate pinot noir and a lot of apologizing to do.” Sarah nodded her head. “I just have to check on the damn dog in the back,” Todd said. He walked out of the room. Another half an hour went by. In came the dog, an Irish Wolfhound twice Sarah’s size. His name was Dolf. He nuzzled her face with his whiskers, and rested his shaggy, powerful jaw on her shoulder as she scratched his ears and neck. Todd staggered in, the bottle of pinot noir in his fist, three-quarters of it gone, and said, “I’m ready to start apologizing now, though I haven’t ordered dinner yet. Let me just order dinner.” Dolf leapt on the couch and pushed Sarah toward Todd by wedging his enormous body between her and the cushion she’d been leaning on. She stood up. “All right, Todd, I’m going, and I’m taking Dolf with me.” “But my daughter needs that dog!” “No she doesn’t, having a dog is too much for her now, it’s too much for all of you. Thank you, Todd, for an important evening. I really mean it, I’ve learned a lot.” He sat down heavily on his couch and put his head in his hands. Sarah waited by the front door while Dolf pressed his paws into Todd’s knees and licked his face. Then the dog turned his head and gave Sarah a meaningful look. “Oh, all right, Dolf, you go out back and sleep one more night in your little house, and I’ll sleep in here with daddy,” she said, beginning to undress.

Story #15

Dear Readers,

In case you are new to this site: I am posting one very short story a week here. It is my intention to keep doing this for a year, for a total of 52 stories. This is story fifteen and week fifteen. Thank you for reading.

Best wishes,

Matthew Sharpe

Story #15

Phil was lonely so he decided to take a tour of the giant bombed-out crater. Early one morning he got on the tour bus and rode for a long time. Some of the passengers chatted and others, like Phil, did not speak and were not spoken to. He wanted to talk to the woman in the seat next to him, who was slightly older than he was, and looked nervous and tired, but he couldn’t do it. When you’ve been alone a long time, as Phil had, a membrane of silence grows around you and you can’t get through it on your own. No help was coming from this woman, who had her own membrane. They arrived late that morning in the middle of what was now the desert, and climbed down to the bottom of the crater on rope ladders. When the last person was down the guide said Okay, and that was it. There was no tour as such, there were no real parts to the crater and they all knew how it got there. So Phil just wandered around, lonelier than ever. At one point he crossed paths with his seatmate and tried unobtrusively to catch her eye, and then to follow her. There was a name for this—the crater romance. He didn’t want to be a creep so he stopped following her. Now he was just out there walking. Beware, he had read in a guidebook, of becoming sleepy in the crater, which has measurable soporific power. Well aren’t I just a walking crater cliché, Phil thought. First I fall for someone and then I get tired. He lay down on a jagged rock and fell asleep. He woke in darkness. He stood up and called out. No answer. He made his way back to the place where he thought the rope ladders had been. They were not there. He walked around calling out. He thought, Wouldn’t it be great if she got left behind too? Then we’d have to talk to each other, and we’d have to have sex, strictly for warmth in the cold night desert air, but it would turn into more. He masturbated, and this brought out the dead. He couldn’t see them but he could hear them. They weren’t screaming, they were going about the lives the bomb had ended. They were making business phonecalls, washing the dishes, reading bedtime stories, telling a drunken joke in a bar. This was the least lonely masturbation Phil had ever had. It wasn’t even masturbation, it was love.