SE #8
The following pieces of fiction are introductions to full short stories, each based off of real news—although I have warped the news into something stranger and more coherent. On top of that, I differ from the news in a very important way: while the news reports facts, I focus on why people do things, what people love, what moves them; while the news, and real life, often seems stale or inexplicable, I try to give meaning to the lives of my fictional characters and significance to their actions; my fiction is all about choices and why people make them.
If you prefer one story above the rest, please let me know in the comments below or on X (@ChadFiction) or via e-mail, NSE@chadfiction.com. Your feedback will determine which of these first pages I translate into a full story first.
Rachel sat in Tabitha’s little house, in the little kitchen, at a little folding table. She felt embarrassed for the woman, a rotund fortune teller barely scraping by, so she had never asked what had happened to the kitchen table, the nice wooden one with the fresh lacquer. It had been here only two weeks ago, hadn’t it? thought Rachel. Maybe I should—
“Rachel, I think you know what you have to do,” Tabitha said, bringing Rachel back from her ponderous thoughts. She sighed in response to her prophetess friend, then inhaled. She immediately regretted it, as her nose quickly filled with the scent of litter boxes and dog food.
“Do I?” Rachel asked, a long finger placed subtly on her upper lip.
“It’s in the cards,” Tabitha said, her hands waving elegantly over the cards, not playing cards, but large Tarot cards with symbols foreign to Rachel.
“I don’t know…”
“Then forget the knowing,” Tabitha intoned, leaning back. “Focus on the feeling.”
“I’m conflicted, Tabitha. My friends want to go one way, your premonitions want to go another, I don’t understand your cards, and I’ve only ever wanted one—”
“That’s the problem, Rachel,” Tabitha said, her voice still soothing, almost a whisper. “You only want one thing. You’re too concerned with one thing. While the rest of us, and the universe at large, is giving you a clear message!”
The large woman leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, past it, to the sky, the stars, the universe. Or, so it seemed to Rachel. She tried to see up there, too, but she only saw yellow paint peeling off of the ceiling. She looked back down.
“What message, Tabitha? Where?”
“You came to me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then now is not the time for questions.”
“Then what—”
Rachel stopped herself just as Tabitha’s big dark eyes came back from their journey through the cosmos to look at her quizzically.
“Close your eyes with me, Rachel. Touch palms. And you’ll see.”
Rachel stopped with her questions. Reached out her hands. Flattened them against Tabitha’s. She tried to stop her mind, as well, but it kept bringing her back to the big issue, to her museum’s impending failure, and to the suggestions of her two colleagues, women who had never been on board with her business, but who now wanted her to take things in a new direction. One with avant-garde ideas, the other with a childlike obsession—but both with money to help her. And now her long-time counsel and friend, Tabitha, had an idea. If only she’d just say it.
But Tabitha had her ways, however strange and mysterious, and they had helped Rachel in the past. If only she would just say—
“The cats,” the soothsayer’s large chest belted out sonorously, ominously.
“Whose ca—” Rachel asked in a whisper that faded to silence as she remembered to cease her questions.
“All of the cats. You must invite all of the cats. To the gala.”
The gala. The failed gala. Invite cats… No one had come before.
“Egypt beckons the cats.”
And she couldn’t stop the questions. Tabitha had found it, found the answer, somehow, some way. Rachel didn’t understand it, she’d never told Tabitha about the offer she’d received from the touring exhibition, the one for Ancient Egypt. Had not told her of her inability to afford it—unless she accepted the help of her two contentious colleagues. Because, primarily, it was her problem, not Tabitha’s; but also because she had never thought of it as a serious option. How could she ever get anyone to come to a gala for Egypt?
“The cats, Tabitha! That’s it!” Rachel had jumped out of her seat, was grabbing up her phone, her purse, frantically leaving cash without counting it, thanking her savior, repeating that the cats were the trick, inviting all the women in the town and their cats, that would do it. Tabitha simply smiled, her eyes turned into wise, glowing slits in her round face, her head nodding slowly.
Then Rachel was out in the daylight, walking briskly to her car, and the air dropped out of her gut and down into her feet: she still had to talk to the women, or there would be no Egypt in their little town. And no cats to visit Egypt either.
Darkness and pressure closing in around an even darker center. One pinpoint of yellow light emerges in the center of it all, then a white lights grows, not from the pinpoint, but from the edges, like a manhole cover slightly lifted to reveal the smallest glimpse of the sun above. A choked breath, a wretch and a gasp, another choked breath. A dull pressure above all of this, like a sponge filled with mud. And, above that, a vague awareness of awareness.
Where am I? she asked in an internal whisper that was meant to be a scream. She tried to make a sound, a living, human sound, but only managed another choked breath. That one was easier, it was more of a wheezing than a laborious cough, but she knew she should conserve her energy. Particularly as she could now feel the rest of her body, its aches and weariness still distant but getting closer.
Why is it so dark? she asked herself, wary of straining her neck or twisting her shoulders, willing only to squint to get a better look at the pinpoint of yellow ahead of her. But the pinpoint didn’t clarify or grow, only the blurry, white edges did—and they burned. She tried to squeeze her eyes shut, but then she realized the already were shut; that’s why she couldn’t see much of anything. She had to see, she had to use her eyes to tell her where she was, but she feared the burning; if it was that bad with her eyelids down, then…
She had to try. She focused on the skin of the eyelids, on her eyebrows, on her temple. She willed a stretching of any little muscle around her eyeballs; the burning stopped them all. She took in a deep breath, free of interference this time, then strained her face again. Slowly, a stunning brightness filled her vision, snapping her eyelids closed, then she tried again, repeated the process, until she could make out vague shapes of brown and green and burnt yellow.
She was in a jungle.
She jerked her right hand up to her face, but her entire forearm burned and throbbed and refused to move. She looked down. Too blurry. She closed her eyes, breathed in slowly, looked again. A rope wrapped around her main arm, her hand stuck there, hanging limply. She grasped and loosened it, trying to get feeling back into it, then noticed that she felt numb like that all over. Except for pain.
But she had something besides the pain: curiosity. She refused to be overwhelmed. Refused to focus on the itching, the burning, the aching. She focused on how to figure this out. Her mind went to the sensation in her mouth, like saliva had been replaced with hot dirt, and she looked around for water. Her mind went to tightness around her feet under haunches, as if cemented there, possibly just bound—and she readied herself to stand. Her mind went to the weakness all over her, a weakness that allowed barely any movement, probably even if she weren’t bound as she was, and her mind went to that, then the noises around her, then the very idea that she was in a jungle, a real jungle, full of enormous trees and enormous leaves and enormous flowers and enormous—
And she passed out.
She wasn’t sure how long it had been when she heard the echo of a voice from somewhere far away. Wasn’t sure, either, how long it took her to painfully peel apart her eyelids and see the dim, reddish glow of a jungle at dusk. But she was sure, almost sure, of the face in front of her. A sad, bearded face of a man, his mouth moving, making sounds.
It’s not far away! she shouted in her mind. He’s right there, speaking to me, right there!
But why is he asking me if I’m all right?
And how do I know what he’s saying?
I don’t speak that language.
In the breezy, tropical spring, the island buzzed with life, as if the island were in a perpetual state of celebration. With life of all sorts, from the fish and the whales and the seagulls, to the spiders and tigers and peacocks, to the businessman, the lawyer, and the athlete. But these latter three were the most alive out of all the life on the island, even out of all the human life, all the travelers and vacationers and youths and natives. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed to them this day.
Today, it didn’t bother these three men that their lives were not under their real names, their birth names, or, as some might say (but none of them would) their god-given names. Today, Bart knew very well that owned his security company; Jack knew he owned his law-firm; and Victor knew he owned his gym—and not a one of the men cared that he had to hide the name Bart, Jack, or Victor. But it wasn’t because they had forgotten who they were, wasn’t because of the many years that had passed. In fact, their joy today was because of all those years that had passed.
But it wasn’t about forgetting their lives before today, either. Each man was acutely aware of his past, albeit in different ways. Bart, a simple and direct man, called himself and his two friends thieves. For Jack, each man was a laundry list of crimes, all punctuated by the final acts of bond jumping, identity forging, and evasion of authorities; he had a lawyer’s typical attention to detail. And, for Victor, it was something more complicated; as the other two men knew well, everything was always more complicated for Victor.
Victor’s excitement, on this day, came not, as it did on any other day, from his immediate task at hand: watching one of his pupils practicing a stunt Victor himself had perfected decades ago. He enjoyed it still, admired himself, how he had used it, hands on the ground, feet in the air, to procure a particularly valuable object that did not belong to him. Enjoyed the young man, too, and how they had developed the technique for use as entertainment, the two working for weeks on building the young man’s body, focusing his mind, overcoming his failures. Victor loved this process and the new life he had for himself—but that wasn’t the real source of today’s excitement.
Bart was in a similar position, as was Jack, each man going through the motions of work as he focused on their real excitement. It was an unusual distraction for the men, and the reality of it hit them surprisingly. For Bart, the realization came when he noticed his security officers smiling at him, not because there was anything wrong or funny, but because Bart himself couldn’t stop smiling. But, for Jack, the realization came in a less positive fashion.
It started when his client insisted, out of nowhere—to Jack, at least—that Jack take the case seriously. Please. Jack had then rushed to assure his client that he was taking it seriously. He wasn’t laughing at the case. No, of course he didn’t think it a ridiculous situation, of course the client’s chickens have rights, of course their eggs did need protecting, of course he wasn’t laughing at that at all.
And he really wasn’t. He was thinking of the beach.
Like all of the men, Jack was constantly distracted by the beach in his mind: by the blue sky darkening, fading to yellow as it plunged towards the blue sea; by the dark water streaked with sunlight, the color turning teal as it neared him, then turning a frothy cream as it covered his feet; by the buzzing, the buzzing above all things, the sound of hundreds of wings, miniature, silken propellers, undulating in the cool breeze.
They just had to get there. Unknown and unnoticed. Like in the old days.
