Seven short stories filled with thrills, sadness, chills, laughter, love and murder. Stories long enough to provide dessert for your lunch, short enough to send you back to work satisfied.
Excerpt
October 3, 1992
11:22 p.m.
It was late on a chilly afternoon when I called my neighbor to say I wasn’t feeling well. Earlier in the week Marlene Westerly, three doors down, talked me into attending a mixer dance put on monthly by the Los Coyotes Senior’s Club. I knew at the time the mixer idea wasn’t going to work, but Marlene, bless her heart, was doing her damnedest to get me involved.
December was coming on faster than the headaches I get from an overdose of bourbon. I was well into my Yuletide funk and December twenty-sixth was only eighty-five days away. Joanie’s death on that date is like a black hole in my universe. The memory of her passing sucks me dry. Every year it gets a little worse and I get worn out. My desire to bumble around a senior center or participate in any other activity goes down to zero.
I didn’t do a damn thing that Saturday. I spent most of the day reading in my chair. At five I got up and did a few exercises for balance, worked at my tai chi and tried a kata or two, but my heart wasn’t in it. After my shower I wrapped up in my robe and stared at the slim pickings in the pantry.
I slurped up a bowl of soup pretty fast. Appetite, like a lot of things, sneaks up on me. I washed the dinner bowl, rinsed my glass and turned on the TV. Bad choice as usual, the news was depressing as hell. Old game shows and Roseanne Barr re-runs didn’t float my boat either. At eight-forty-five I hung up my robe for the night.
I turned on the bedside lamp and prepared the bed clothes. Joanie used to do that, but after four years of her being dead, I had to learn to do for myself. I sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the pencil and notepad I keep on the nightstand. I sharpened the pencil that morning, but it wasn’t until I picked it up again, that I noticed it was down to the nub. I made a mental note to replace it. That’s a good joke most seniors will appreciate.
Every night before bed, I write a note to Joanie. I tell her about my day. Most times I say the words out loud as I write them down. I laugh a little, as if she’s sitting across the bed listening, nodding and laughing with me. I try to make my humdrum days sound funny and exciting to my dead wife. It’s one of the things I do to keep her with me. Keeping her alive, if only in my imagination, keeps me sane.
I crawled into bed and switched off the bedside light. The room was swallowed in dark so infinite I couldn’t distinguish the white of the bed sheet. My head settled into the pillow and the realization hit me again, harder this time…my lungs fill with air…my heart throws itself against my breastbone…my brain functions, but my spirit is gone. I’m a shell, a waste of time and space. These crazy, incoherent thoughts bounced off my consciousness like some marimba mallet striking a hellish gong. Tears filled my eyes and something gave way. A cold, voracious, black hole sucked all my desire for life into its vacuity.
I thought of my Colt forty-five in the closet. It was locked and loaded. All I had to do was ear back the hammer and put the barrel in my mouth. If I pushed my head into the pillow I wouldn’t make much of a mess, but Nora Dean, my cleaning lady, came every two weeks. I didn’t want to cause her extra work. “Tomorrow, I’ll head out to the garage. Time I picked up my ticket for the bullet train,” I muttered and closed my eyes. Now that I’d made the decision, I was relieved. I drifted off thinking of Joanie and the way she looked on our wedding day so many years ago.
My dreams began and the encore performance of my nightly horror show was playing. I revisit the past two years…our nightmare of pain filled weeks in and out of hospitals and Joanie suffering all manner of indignity. I watch her tire and hear her weak voice, begging me to let her quit. “Oh no, ” I say and I squeeze her hand. I smile, but it’s cold and cruel. “You have to fight,” I growl, “you can’t give up. Do it for me. Endure a little more misery for me. It will be all right, if you just fight a little longer.”
I woke with indigestion burning my stomach and chest. I got up, swallowed a quart of Maalox, and paced. Guilt was eating me up inside, but not for long. I had a cancer and it was a bitch to treat, because it wasn’t physical. My cancer was the hate I had for life without my friend, my wife…my Joanie.
I got back to the bedroom and the forty-five was banging on the closet door…I swear. “Get it done,” I said, but I sagged. I couldn’t remember a night this bad. What the hell was happening? I flopped into bed drained of energy. I dropped off again and this time I didn’t dream. The twisted misery that plagues my sleep each night was gone for once, but it wasn’t doing me any favors. The sleep that came to me was restless.
Someone slapped at my face. I opened my eyes to a white hot light that stung my eyes. It was like being snow-blind. A voice behind the flashlight growled, “Why ain’t you at the senior’s mixer?” and then I was yanked out of bed. Not appreciated at age sixty-seven.
My sleep fogged brain was having trouble with coherent thought processes. Experience, and the instinct it breeds, took over. I made a show of losing my balance and fell against the nightstand. The lamp, clock and my notes to Joanie scattered on the floor. I groped around amid the chaos and my fingers closed on the stub of my pencil. The intruder yanked me to my feet and pulled and jerked on me, stretching the neck of my tee shirt. I was dragged down the hall, stumbling behind the bastard.
He pulled me into my office, a converted back bedroom, pushed me to the floor, and turned on the overhead light. The burglar bent close to my face and removed his ski mask. He grinned like a barracuda in heat.
Showing me his face was not a good sign. The man was confident in his control of the situation, but more importantly, he didn’t plan to leave me around for an ID. The bastard figured me for a terrified old man and he was right, but he screwed the pooch in a couple of important areas.
A new emotion took possession of me. I was pissed off for the first time in several years. I was so pissed, my desire to die disappeared. There was something sacrilegious about letting this dumb shit take away the only good promises I made to Joanie the night she died. I watched the burglar and schemed awhile. I would find a way to use his mistakes to my advantage. Picking our home that Saturday night and shining his damned flashlight in my eyes, that was the intruder’s first mistake.
He showed me his fist and said, “Sit tight. Keep your trap shut, old man. I hope you ain’t so scared you piss your boxers.” He laughed and turned his back. I studied his moves as he swaggered in the direction of my desk.
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” I whispered those words thinking only I, in my head, could hear. “You saw these gnarled hands, my gray hair and saggy neck. You put that together and wrote me off, old, scared and helpless. We’ll just see about that.”
“What are you muttering about, old man?” The burglar looked over his shoulder and gave me a snarl. “You’d better shut the fuck up you know what’s good for you.” He chuckled and put his attention back on the desktop.
Like molasses poured on French toast, rapturous calm oozed through my brain. It was the calm of a man with nothing to lose, one who was pushed to the limit. He had put his hand on my head and shoved me to the floor. He made me feel like a child, pushed in a corner for bad behavior. I wedged my back against the wall and worked my fists into the carpet. I sat without movement. The ecstatic calm had its way with my body as well as my mind.
I remembered Joanie’s words on that sweltering September night of 1986: No matter what happens, Hank, I want your solemn oath. Promise me you’ll live your life and be happy. I smiled and put my head against the wall. That memory was like Joanie sitting at my side, giving me one of her pep talks. Well, I had two things going for me: my gentle appearance and the burglar’s own arrogance. I made ready to use those tools.
The man had a hundred pounds on me. While he plundered my personal correspondence, I studied his broad back and watched him move. His step was flat-footed, slow and ponderous. There was no fluidity in his movements. He was more muscle than flexibility.
I couldn’t imagine what this thug wanted in my house. I’m not rich and my retirement pay and Social Security is just livable. I tried to understand. What do I have that’s valuable? To supplement my income I do residential security analysis. Now and then a few small time investigations come along. Husband or wife cheating stuff…nothing. I couldn’t think of a damn thing to rate a home invasion. At least, I couldn’t put anything logical together.
He tore at my desk like he was having a high old time. Finding nothing of interest, he turned to my four drawer filing cabinet. The burglar rummaged through the top drawer grunting and shaking his head. In the second drawer he stopped his pawing of my files about halfway through. He bent close. I saw his light pick out an individual folder. I was too far away and too low to see much more, but I saw his body relax. Whatever it was he was after, he had found it.
A cold rage filled me. I had my knees bent and my legs ready. I pulled my feet up tight, heels close enough to touch my butt. My hands were curled, knuckles pressed into the carpet. I was going to push up fast and would need the wall and my legs for leverage.
I wear a watch on my right wrist. Yes, I wear it to bed. It’s a habit I’ve developed over the years. I used to wear a big, rubberized divers watch. After years of its weight, chafing in winter, sweat rasping in summer, my skin has grown thin. Of late, I’m prone to rashes and I develop little sores. Now I wear a flexi-band watch on my right wrist. The stub of my pencil was tucked under the flexi-band. I could feel the sharp point digging into the heel of my hand.
The intruder didn’t show me a weapon, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hot. If he was carrying a gun he could shoot me where I sat. I didn’t allow that possibility to clutter my thinking. In this neighborhood, filled with God fearing Christians, a gun shot would rate a call to the cops in the time it takes to kick off a shoe. In any event, if I was going to be shot, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it and so I watched and waited.
My mind hopped around like a barefoot boy with a cocklebur in his toe. My chaotic thoughts returned to the overhead light. The burglar had no fear of being exposed. I remembered his growl behind the dazzling flashlight beam: “Why ain’t you at the senior’s mixer?” Who was this guy? How did he know about the mixer?
The gauze like blur of confusion, brought on by my abrupt awakening, was finally starting to lift. It wasn’t unusual to see lights on at the back of my home. I kept nocturnal hours on occasion. This time of year was the exception. This time of year, with Joanie on my mind, I didn’t get much work done. It followed that someone catalogued my habits much earlier in the year.
The questions begging answers were: How did the burglar know about Marlene? How did he know about the senior center activities? How did he know I was Marlene’s special social activities project? Those how dids would go unanswered. The burglar was staring at me. I studied his eyes for some sign of intention, but he showed me nothing.
He jerked as if slapped by an invisible hand and pushed away from the filing cabinet. He crossed the room pointing a fat, stubby finger at me. “What the fuck you doing, old man? Why you poking your nose in other people’s business?” He spoke through his nose and business came out sounding like bid-ness.
He stood over me staring at nothing. The moment stretched out lasting a minute or more. I’ve seen similar behavior in other felons. This guy was a violent man, but to kill he had to dig around in his darkness. The burglar had to find his rage. Pull it up where he could feel it. Taste it. He needed a hateful fury for what he was about to do.
In the next instant the burglar reached, a swift move, grabbing a handful of my hair. He was right handed. He didn’t realize my legs, pushing against the wall, were helping to lift me. He was confident. Comfortable. I saw his eyes turn colder. His mouth pull down tighter. This man had found his insanity. The madness he embraced was his to use in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. I stood up tall on tippytoes. Whatever the man saw on my face, he liked. I guess I look scared when someone’s pulling my hair out by the roots.
The burglar giggled and reached under his jacket for the small of his back. I had worked the pencil into my fingertips by that time. My hands were moist with the sweat of fear. The pencil was pinched in my fingers like a big pushpin. I brought my hand up fast and jammed the sharp tip into the side of his neck.
I wiggled it twice: up and down…twice: back and forth. The move took two or three seconds tops. His eyes got big and his body went rigid. A hot, thin stream of blood shot over my right shoulder. It hit the wall and speckled my cheek. The intruder saw it and screamed. His left arm shot upward and knocked my arm away. I don’t think he realized what happened. I think the shock of the pencil’s penetration was working like an anesthetic.
The spurts of blood increased with his heartbeat. He stepped back, his eyes blowing up like tiny balloons. He groped with the fingers of his gloved right hand and found the pencil. The burglar made his second mistake of the night…he pulled it out.
I must have hit the jugular vein or the exterior carotid artery. When the pencil came out, the tiny hole expanded with the force of the burglar’s blood pressure. Thin spurts turned into cannon shots of blood. His face blanched chalk white. He coughed as if clearing his throat and dropped on his back.
The burglar blinked and his body jerked when I stepped over him. At my desk I put my bills, notes and correspondence back in order. I heard another gurgling croak as I picked up the phone. The dial tone hummed in my ear and I turned to look at him. My would-be killer’s eyes met mine. His mouth opened and closed. Opened and closed and then he was still. I pulled my chair back into place and sat.
My hands are a little arthritic and so it took me a while to dial the police. A crazy thought came to me just as the emergency operator answered my call. This prick just saved my life. I sat forward and stared at the body of the man sent to kill me. The rapturous calm stayed with me and I remembered my forty-five banging on the closet door. I couldn’t imagine what time I would get back to bed, but I was willing to bet my forty-five wouldn’t make a sound.
I shook my head in disbelief. It took this hired assassin, and the schmuck who sent him, to make me realize my life was precious. “Maybe I’ll get a sign made: Hank Straker, Security Analysis. A little advertising? Who knows,” I murmured.
I heard the whoop-whoop of the sirens and got up to pull on a pair of sweatpants. It was going to be a long night and suddenly I was very thirsty. I always keep a few long neck Buds in the fridge for emergencies.
Read more about Screwing the Pooch and J. B. Bergstad HERE.
Copyright 2008 J. B. Bergstad. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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