Dialogue, the worst thing you've ever done, without the worst thing youve ever done

The kid lives three houses away. Tom and Mary live in the house on the corner. Tom calls it her corner office but she doesn’t think that’s funny anymore. He doesn’t think its funny anymore either.
Tom walks down the stairs in pajamas.
“I made eggs,” Mary says. She is sitting at the kitchen table in a floral print dress. Her skin is pale. Her hair is completely gray but the rest of her looks young.
“Breakfast of champions,” he says
“I thought that was Wheaties.”
“I thought it was a shitty book.”
She laughs a little, not like she used to. “Anyway, they’re in the fridge.”
He grabs a cup of coffee and opens the kitchen shades. The light hits the sink; it’s been polished over night. He sits at the table with his coffee. “Where’s the paper?”
“They left it around back this morning.”
“Did they?”
“Do you want some toast to go with your eggs?”
“Sure,” he says, “thanks.”
He brings the paper back and Mary’s standing over the toaster watching it. “I don’t know why you want to read about corn prices anyway.”
“It’s where we are now,” he says
“Yah, well, the eggs are in the fridge.”
He puts down the paper and grabs the plates from the cupboard. He opens the fridge, there are seventeen boiled eggs lined up there.
“The ones on the left were in eight minutes, the ones in the middle were in ten, and the ones on the right are twelve.”
“Yah, I can see the numbers on them.”
“He was blinking his light again last night.”
“I figured,” he said.
“It’s not Morse code,” she said
“No?”
“No.”
“Look, I’m going to go to work,” he said.
“Ok.”
“You should get some sleep.”
“Pack some eggs for lunch,” she said.
“Yah. How’s your chest?”
“It’s tight but it’s almost clean, I got it almost clean last night.”
“I can tell.” He looked at the sink.
“Don’t get worked up Tom.”
Tom laughed, “Yah, I wouldn’t want to over react or anything would I.”
“And don’t get mean,” she said this in a quieter voice, looking down into her coffee.
I know, sorry.” Tom looked out the window at the hills of cornfields. “Look, I’m sorry about it all. Maybe we should move back.”
“You know we shouldn’t,” she said
“Yah, I know.”
They were silent for a minute, sitting. Tom blew at the steam coming off his coffee cup. Then he looked at her. “No, I don’t know, why shouldn’t we leave.”
“It won’t change anything,” she said. “It will still all be here, he’ll still be here.”
Tom stood up and stepped around behind his chair. He rested his hands on the top of it and looked at the table. “Yah, but we won’t be here and that’s got to count for something.”
“I think I can do something here,” she said. “I just need a little time.”
“Jesus, it’s eating you up, you don’t sleep, you don’t eat, your labeling the god damn eggs based on how long they were cooked, you see that? I’m walking around on eggshells around here because I don’t want to tell you you’re really flipping your shit on this one.” His knuckles are white as he grips the top of the chair.
“Do you feel better now?” She looks at him and smiles, “how long have been waiting to say that to me?”
“Look, I didn’t mean that.”
She made eye contact with him. “Yes, you did. I need you to say things like that to me, can you see that?”
“I didn’t just want to move here for peace and quite, you know that.” He said
“I know, and I wanted it too, maybe not forever, but for a while. We were getting worn down.”
“I was so worried about you.” he said
She laughed, “I love how you don’t even see what it does to you.”
“Hey, I’m not the one painting rooms and polishing sinks over and over.”
“Maybe you should try it.”
He laughed, “Maybe I should.”

Explosian

It is, to be sure, a matter not to be discussed even in the most discreet of company. I had an intimate appreciation of this fact, being the esteemed sir’s confidant. Knowing this you can imagine how my cheeks flushed red with a kind of shock as I heard myself revealing his secret to his wife.
That we were in bed together at the time is no excuse. It is an unspoken agreement of people of a certain distinction that one won’t reveal these little embarrassments under any circumstances, sober or no, especially not to the mans wife for God sakes.
That she did not have a prior knowledge, that she showed no giggles of comprehension when I hinted at the good sir’s peculiarity, this is what made me do it. She must know, I thought. When it became apparent she did not I had an overwhelming desire to tell, to watch her high arched eyebrows rise perhaps even higher and see her thoroughbred nose flair in a high spirited sign of surprise.
I did not expect her high pitched shriek, her distorted and mad facial expressions. These things transformed her into a kind of ogre hyena lady. She howled like a she-banshee shattering the glass face on the clock. She jerked her head back violently and let her tongue protrude, gagging her and pointing straight up at the ceiling. She lurched and clutched and convulsed and spat. Her hair turned gray, then white, then fell out. Her gleaming bald head shook with rage and her eyes went bright red and dripped blood. She began to frantically gnaw on her hands.
“Calm yourself my dear,” I implored her. “You are making yourself unseemly”
………..I have no idea where to go with this………………..

wanting

I have wanted. It rips me inside. When I look into eyes and their bodies two step back from me. It rips me from wanting. I have felt the unwanted specks of spit, fickle on my lips. I see my hunched posture, bent apart; I am a shape that should not be. I need, like you need to breathe. I need like ointment over a burn. I need to be different.
I sit in front of the home, wheeled out like a bag of garbage. I sit in the sunlight. I have been dressed in a dull gray sweater by an orderly who doesn’t talk to me. I have a bright red hat pulled over my ears. My head hangs to the side. They line us up in a row. We sit. The only look I get is pity. Everyone is so sorry I am not as good as them. Everyone is so embarrassed I am not as good as them.
All the time she walks by, she is my wanting. She of the sandy brown hair cut to her shoulders, thick as the sunlight I sit in. Her red wool jacket down past her knees. Her jacket will hold her in and warm from the world. She looks at me without repulsion. She looks at me without fear. She looks at me like I am a helpless baby, something to be held and cooed to, like I a drowning beetle she would swoop from a lake with her too perfect hand.
I love her like a real man would. I want to love her like a real man would. My wanting is maggots eating little bloody holes into my stomach. She has made me small with her smile. I need to rise up powerful, like Poseidon from the ocean. I need, like you need to breathe, I need to rise up from this chair and tower whole over her.
I would pull the red wool jacket from her, the buttons popping off. With one downward motion of my arm I would tare her silk undershirt in half. She would gasp in pleasure as her breasts rolled free. I would take her on the sidewalk. I would be all control and all man. I would take her to a home I had built with my too perfect hands. I would cook her dinner and I would wash the dishes and I would take her on the dining room table like a man does.
I try to hurl myself out of my chair. I need for my atrophied husk to summon one miracle and pitch itself at the sidewalk just hard enough to split my skull and let this mistake leek out from me. I need them to come out and know I have moved myself. I have moved myself to a place where no more applesauce will spooned through my lips.
Everyday at nine fifteen she walks by. Every day I try to tip towards freedom until they roll me inside at ten thirty.
I am wanting. It rips me inside.

bear at the door

"Harold, My brakes don't work," she said. They were riding rented bicycles on their honeymoon in Ireland.
"Those bastards," said Harold, "I knew they hated us because were American."
"Harold, My brakes don't work."
"just pull onto the grass up there where it flattens out."
"where, where?
"there, there, right there, you missed it."
They were on a hill. On one side were cliff that dropped down two hundred feet to the ocean. On the other side there were cliffs going up fifty feet.
"Harold." The hill was getting steeper.
"Stay calm, we just have to think. Maybe there will be another place to pull off." Harold wasn't braking in order to keep up with her. His face was bright red.
"There isn't one, Harold there's a corner down there."
"Harold, I don't think I can make the turn going this fast"
"Harold, I'm scared." Her hat blew off and her hair was streaming behind her. her fingers were white with bright red knuckles where she gripped the handle bars.
"I think you might have to tip over before the cliff," Harold said.
"What?"
"Put you feet down, try to scrape your feet along the ground."
"I'm going too fast to."
"Do it, do it anyway." The cliff was one hundred feet away. they we thirty miles an hour.
"I'll scrape myself really bad."
"Tip over, tip over." Harold yelled at her.
He was still yelling it as they sailed off the cliff together. She was silent, a look of chock on her face.

Dialogue 3.

He has been back from Iraq for a week. He’s sitting in the bed smoking. His legs are crossed and his shirt is off. His eyes are closed.
“You’re there again,” she says.
He opens one eye and looks at her. She is standing by the window in a thin white nightgown. He can see the outline of her body through it.
“I’m here now,” he says.
“Is it bad there, does it hurt to be there?” She walks to the bedside table to pick up the pack of cigarettes. She moves like a dancer.
“Maybe it’s sad,” he says.
“What do you remember the most?”
“It’s more of a feeling,” he says.
“But what do you picture in your head, what do you see when you close your eyes like that?” she sits on the bed next to him. Her legs hang off and do not touch the floor. She points her toes down and moves her ankles in circles as they talk. She is holding an unlit cigarette.
“You know how you feel right when a good soprano starts to sing Ave Maria?” He stands up and reaches into his jean pockets. “The feeling right at the beginning, after the first line, but before anything else, right in that first pause.” He hands her the lighter.
“So you don’t see anything?”
“Of course I see things,” He says.
“What do you see?” She lights the cigarette and inhales. He watches the smoke come out of her mouth before he answers.
“But I never hear anything.” He bends over and leans the pillows up against the bed board so he can sit against them.
“What do you see?” she says.
“All the moments you remember are in silence,” he says. “Like when you take a shot in a basketball game and time slows down. You can see it all, the crowd, the ball, the hoop. You can never hear a god damn thing.”
“I don’t play basketball.” She says.
They both laugh.
“Like when you dance.” He says
“I don’t see a thing when I dance,” she says. “I only hear music.”
“And does it feel good?” He reaches over to the table and puts out the cigarette.”
“The best,” she says.
“Then where I go is the exact opposite of when you dance.”
“But the Ave Maria is beautiful.” She says.
“I’m talking about the feeling, he says.” When the hair is up on the back of your neck, right after that first pause. You don’t feel beautiful.”
“What do you feel?” She hands him her cigarette to put out.
“You feel too awake. All the time there you have that too awake feeling, and you can never hear anything.”
“Let’s go to bed,” she says.
“I would like that,” he says.

Story of map

Every night the old people gathered at the church. It was an old brick building at the very top of the hill. the bricks were leaching out minerals, decomposing, this gave them a scaly white surface. Boston Ivy covered one side of the building. the side that had windows. Because the town was next to the ocean sand was everywhere; sweeping was a full time job. the church floor, large enough to seat only forty people, was covered in sand. the pews were stained so dark one might think they were painted black. It was dark inside, lit only by huge white candles that gave off the smell of old onions while they burned.
The preacher would start from his house at the bottom of the hill at five o'clock every day. He was a tall and stooped man in a ratty black suit. In the dim light of the candles he resembled a giant spider. He would close the door of his house and lock it. he was the only one in town who locked his door. His house looked like all the other houses in town. Once painted white it had been polished by time and sand to a dull gray. the color of the exposed wood siding blending into the ground, blending even into the dead grasses that sprouted in tall clumps in lieu of lawns. little work had gotten done since the disease had come.
It had come five years ago. the Crawford's baby had been the first one to start coughing. then a day later his fever peaked and he started to bleed out of his nose and ears. he was dead by the third day. some people tried to run, but you couldn't outrun it. Tom Nathon, the town doctor, was out of morphine in a week. people were dying in severe pain. Tom was dead in two weeks. In three weeks everyone under sixty five was dead. No one over sixty had been effected.
the preacher would start up main street, one of three streets in the town, walking with his cane. he move slow. He shuffled and clutched a bible in his claw hand. Behind him the old people would slide silently out of there houses. They lurched and sputtered and coughed up the hill. Main street may have been paved before the disease, who could remember. Now it was covered with a good half foot of sand. The sand was filled not with footsteps but with lines, as body's too stubborn to die dragged themselves upwards. As the silent procession passed the shops, kept open more out of habit than necessity, the shop keepers would close for the day. they would pull the door and shutters closed, having to fight against the salty sea winds. they would wrap shawls and scarves tight. They would lean on each other, drag each other, will each other towards the church.

map

http://www.fmft.net/Wiltshire%20old%20maps.bmp

MSF Visitation

Stan was dozing in his favorite armchair, (that lime green one Myrtal had alway hated,) when the phone rang. people had no right to be calling Stan at this hour, what hour was it? Oh dear, only 2 pm. he humphed and harumphed and let his glasses drop down to the bridge of his rather bulbous nose. He picked up the phone, "Hello?"
"Listen, I've lost a box and it had some rather important materials in it. I need your help to get it back."
"Hello?"
"I think you heard me, look, it's a very rotten way to start off a working relationship, pretending you can't hear you partner. Now, where was I, ah yes, If you could meet me at the back of, Bag of Bones Books and Bargains, we can get started."
Stan pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. He raised his eyebrows. "I think you have the wrong number."
"Is this Stan Mcgumphy, 72 year old retired plumber who's wife recently died and ever since that happened the days seem grayer and you nap a lot more and find yourself not caring if the vikings win the game?"
"Who is this, how do you know all that?"
"Why my word in heaven, I do believe I have failed to introduce myself, what atrocious manners. My name was Menchkin, but that was before the box was stolen, I haven't decided what I should be called now that we are detectives."
"I'm not a detective," Stan told him. He was standing up and looking for his slippers as if the phone call would make sense if he just knew where they were.
"Well, no, I mean technically speaking not yet, you're not on the case yet, and I don't mean to seem rude, but, have I already said are very important materials in the box?"
"You did mention it."
"Well then I think the quicker we get on the case the better, don't you."
"I'm not on any cases."
"Oh dear me, I really don't have the time to go in circles with you on this. Tell you what, I'm going to hang up the phone and get our, what do they say, our case files in order, see you when you get here."
The line went dead.