By tobyscales on February 1, 2012
The sad old demon sat in the corner of the elevator hunched over his knees, face in hands. Thick leathery skin, no longer the vibrant red of youth but purplish with age. His wings twitched and closed around him, their fine silk shredded now by the arrows of countless do-gooders.
Across from him, his charge — Ernest Trimble, a professor of English who cared nothing for his job and less for his life — swayed back and forth uneasily.
The elevator stopped and a passenger boarded: Mrs. Wells in 410. She nodded slightly and sadly at Trimble, who did not offer her assistance with the cart she dragged in behind her and which forced the demon to his feet by virtue of its size.
The demon hated Mrs. Wells with all the charcoal burning in his heart. Sure, she seemed a sweet old lady but he saw delight in her eyes the moment she smelled the booze on Ernest’s breath. Ernest couldn’t see it. He was too drunk. And anyway by the time he’d slurred out “Nice night, eh Mishuz Wells?” she’d managed to transform that gleam into self-righteous pity. She fixed him with it now, holding his blurry gaze for too long as if she were searching for something in it.
“Christ,” the demon thought to himself, “Can’t wait to get off this elevator.”
Then Mrs. Wells wrinkled her glaucomous eyes into a pitying smile and nodded quietly. “Yes. Nice night.”
The demon’s stomach filled with hot bile and suddenly the depression which had filled him moments before — the creeping in his spine that had told him he was getting too old for this and that Ernest Trimble of Apartment 401 would be his last charge because he simply could not find the strength to take another soul — suddenly all that worry slid away from him and he felt glorious rage creeping up his spine as he leaned over the cold, frail body of Mrs. Wells to whisper hotly in her ear: “You’re next.”
Posted in My Work, Periodic Rambling, Wednesday Words | Tagged New York Is A, Wednesday Words, Writer's Block |
By tobyscales on January 18, 2012
I regarded my father from across the table – his moist, soft eyes deep-set among the folds of skin dripping from his high forehead. I had watched his eyes retreat beneath these folds and his forehead stretch into a vast expanse of pale flesh since I was a child, and studying both now (mottled freckles chart the constellations of a distant galaxy, silver arthropods extrude from the furrows of his brow) I know he has seen my face grow from newborn-soft to the half-hewn stubble I wear these days; indeed, that is part of the problem.
“This is my work, Dad.” I hear my own voice as if at a distance, the emphasis on work and not the stronger possessive, yet still relieved to note that I’ve outgrown the adolescent stressing of the last syllable.
He makes a sort of grunting noise and rolls his lips away from his teeth several times rapidly, giving the appearance of chewing but I know it’s to work saliva in between his lips and his gums. The dentures dry him out.
And now he looks over my shoulder, those sparkling eyes seeming to notice something in the distance yet not so focused as that. It’s a tiny gesture I’ve seen him make a thousand times, this off-centered glance which used to startle, then intimidate, and finally frustrate me (startle when I thought he’d really glimpsed someone or something approaching, intimidate when I would try, as a teenager, to argue with him, and frustrate when as a young man I decided it was a calculated dismissal of my presence).
Nowadays I understood that he was merely thinking of what to say. It was a stalling tactic, useful because of the contrast it offered to his frequent and deliberate eye contact. That it destabilized his conversational sparring partner was merely a happy accident. This train of thought led me to my grandfather, the boxer, who would have appreciated the analogy. He was spry and thin like me, and I imagined him dancing around an oafish lumberer like my father on the balls of his feet, bouncing his weight easily from one side to the other, always in motion, always seeking the easy jab.
Fights are never won in single blows, my father had explained to me. A good boxer waits for the right opportunity before he swings, else he risks tiring himself in the early rounds. In point of fact there is the slightest of distinctions between the right opportunity and the wrong one. When a boxer sees the right opportunity he must be instantly and totally committed to the swing; rare is the man who can so readily shift between patient observance and purposeful attack.
My father’s eyes found mine again. “Well…” he began, “I don’t have to like it.”
Posted in My Work, Periodic Rambling, Wednesday Words | Tagged Growing Up?, Wednesday Words, Writer's Block
By tobyscales on January 17, 2012
Waiting in line at Starbucks, gleaming rows of pastries beckoning behind the glass, Jarvis felt something loosening — and clamped his fists against the terror.
Posted in Periodic Rambling | Tagged writingprompts whyimnotfamous emotions