Larry & the Team

Ah, to see it the way ‘the team’ could see it. For this team of hardened gents, things had fallen into focus the moment their eyelids popped open for that first blinding taste. The rainbow of life took one look at these kids and, knowing it had met its masters, wasted no time sorting itself neatly into black and white.

For these guys, it all added up; there was no in-between; and the world made sense. They were the kings of the office, and those who didn’t share their endless glee slipped helplessly into an inhospitable wavelength on the light spectrum. Goodbye, downers! Nobody can see you now!

Larry the Housefly was an exceptionally old insect (he’d miraculously lived to be nearly a year old). He did his rounds in the same hall as ‘the team,’ whom he hated with all the hemolymph in his primitive heart.

The ill will flowing through Larry’s abdomen was one of the only unambiguous feelings that occupied his tiny body. Every day, he exited the comfort of his warm nest and loving family to carry out the duties of his job -- mainly buzzing around aimlessly, so as to invisibly extract small particles of his soul, which in turn floated down onto the ears of ‘the team,’ nourishing their empty heads. Larry naturally resented that the fruits of his labor in any way aided the work of his enemies, but there was larva on the way, and he did so love to fly.

And so Larry kept up his rounds, shedding pieces of himself and living for the evenings, when boys of a moral certitude ran off for booze and chuckles and practice at the shooting range. In those late night hours, Larry would try to rest peacefully with his wife and baby to be, haunted, however, by the distant bang of firearms and the baritone laughter of a faraway oaf.

The Russians

The year was 2050 and Russians ruled the Earth. Any bit of the world not destroyed was now decorated with the trash of drinking binges and sunflower seeds. The planet reeked of dried fish and mayonnaise.

Those alive didn't quite understand how things had gotten to be exactly the way they were, but it was clear enough that life sucked and hope for something happier was, for the foreseeable future, a sad and useless exercise.

Something had gone terribly wrong with the doctrine of mutual destruction. That is to say, only one side appeared to have been destroyed in a (what really was quite inevitable) little nuclear weapons exchange. Owing to a perpetual nervousness stomped into the Russian DNA by thousands of years of bad weather, worse food, and geographic purgatory, the Motherland seems to have been just that much quicker to respond to a flicker of the world's computers in late 2045, when human history was dumped into a vat of borscht.

The hobbling masses that live on today, of course, know very little about any of that, as, in a nuclear holocaust, the flow of information is less a world wide web and more a rumor floating in the wind. Plunged into this isolation and ignorance, most people, oddly enough, still managed to arrive at a common verdict: some alien race from a distant sea-planet had conquered the Earth and fed somehow on the joy and hopes of human civilization.

But they were wrong. It had only been the Russians.

Train Ride

A day's jokes at their end. The day itself at dusk. The man on the train. The train on the tracks.

Friday had come, and, for a brief while anyway, it would remain. These are the moments when the good is ahead, waiting on the tip of a ready fork, and the bad is behind, managed and consigned to history. A dreary thought is flushed into the airless vacuum of your mind, where it eventually grows nocturnal eyes and stabs you.

But, for now (at least) the beast is weak and blind and you are alive and all-seeing. The world before you is a warm bed in the shape of a great open palm. You're standing over a throne and time is stopped.

The lights buzz by and you sit in your seat aboard the train, rocking with the ugly weight of the locomotive. The street lights are a blur and the traffic's headlights and break lights whimper a sad yellow-red song. Your song is the chatter of the train and its tired cargo. Everything moves down the gray metal slick and--facing the opposite direction--you watch the Earth spit up the roads and smile to think where they lead.

You ride and dream of home.

A Chance Encounter

“Dreadful business, war is,” muttered a boy not more than five, as he lined up toy soldiers on the edge of his sandbox with great seriousness. “Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful,” he went on. Across the lawn, gnats buzzed and dragon flies thudded into the wide glass of the porch sliding-door. Behind the door, a man angrily worked the knot of a silver tie.

"Time! Time!" he thought to himself.

The sky outside darkened and warm raindrops splashed down on the yard and the house. For a moment, the rain's pitter-patter rolled over the skylight with the rhythm of a metronome. It was a soft drum.

"Time to go! Now!" the man repeated through locked teeth.

At last, he settled on the state of his necktie, and jumped back to examine his reflection in the glass door. It was well tied; the tip perfectly aligned with his belt, and the knot around the collar in a smart-looking tangle. Here was a captain of industry! A hero in the office place! The man was tempted to strike a pose and rest his hands on his hips, as if he was Superman.

"Dreadful business, daddy. War is," said a voice from inside the reflection. The man squinted and realized he was looking at his son, who stood drenched and holding an armless action figure.

"Can you fix his arms, dad?" asked the boy.

"I can do anything," came the answer.