Short-Stories

By Becky Brinkerhoff

The two took up the entire wooden bench. There was enough room in
between them to fit another person and the common area was bustling with faces,
but nonetheless, they took up the bench. The girl slowly turned her head to steal a
glance, but it just so happened he was attempting the same theft, so they shifted
their eyes.
“I enjoy my English course this year.” Her hands tugged at her shirt. He had
always hated that nervous habit.
“I know.”
“Did you enjoy it when you took it last year?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Yup.”
She uneasily shifted her position. The wooden bench was becoming
uncomfortable, along with the awkward pauses.
“My classes this year are pretty simple. You know, basics. Except for my
Physics class. That one is a little more challenging. Nothing I can’t handle I’m sure.”
He started to pick at his polo.
“Ah. That sounds nice.”
“It is nice. People here are very slow. They move much slower than me. That
is why I’m learning these different theories of philosophy online. You know, to pass
the time.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, I guess I don’t talk very much. No one here is very interesting. A few
people talk to me. I guess it’s cause I’m smart or something.”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, we got put into groups for Calculus. I’m with these two girls. They
must think I’m pretty smart. One told me she thought so.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“You’ve mentioned her before.”
“Oh, right. Yeah. I forgot.”
She watched the girls meandering across the commons. They all seemed the
same, commonplace. They wore the same Greek letters on their red tee shirts with
their short shorts and ponytails. She wondered which girl she was.
“You okay?” He asked that frequently though he usually knew the real
answer. He usually was the catalyst for that answer. But, he knew she would
lie, as usual. The common area continued its traffic, the slender ponytails swishing
past the couple.
“Yes.”
“Look—“
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Just stop.”
“She isn’t—“
“I know.”
“She’s not—“

“I know.“
“Just listen!”
“I am.” She shifted her gaze again. Suddenly, the yellow grass seemed so much more
fascinating. What made grass turn that shade anyway? Could it be draining of color
when the life goes? Is grass still alive when its yellow and dead when it turns
brown? Or does it die as soon as it isn’t green?
“Look—“
“I have been.”
“You have been what?”
“Looking.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Why do you think grass turns yellow?”
“What? Uh. It is in the process of dying.”
“Is it dead when it hits yellow?”
“I don’t think so, just dying. Something to do with lack of nutrients I’m sure.”
“I wonder if you can revive the grass once it hits the yellow stage.”
“I’m sure if you had the right fertilizers you could. Why are you asking all
this?”
“I was just curious.” She looked off again at the commons. The pretty
ponytails continued to sway by them. She watched their movements as they walked.
The gait was the same for each one. Step, swish, step, swish, step, trip,
glance, swish. He attempted to read her face, but it was closed.
“Look, I just want to—“
“I wonder how many miles per hour these girls are walking.”
“Well the average speed of a normal person’s gait is about two miles an hour.
Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
“Hey, dear, I just—“
“They seem to be walking a little quicker than the average female though.”
“Can you just let me finish what I was going to say, for once?”
“Fine.”
“I just wanted to say—“ He stopped. There was an expectant pause hanging
in the air. What was he supposed to say? How was he to explain? The pause
lengthened. He closed his mouth and stared straight ahead.
“It’s okay. Let’s go to dinner.”
“Alright.”


Snow-Kissed
By Diana Fernandez
Genre: Romance Fiction

Silence has its own kind of matter.
There’s light silence. Its frothy like the off-white foam at the trembling surface of the hot coffee she clung to with every measure of friction her sweaty palms could muster. It’s creamy, quiet, easily overlooked, not particularly piquant to the taste. The reclusive consider it comfort.
But when sound begins to slow and suffocate, there comes the middle matter, the skipped beat, the liquid hush that rings at the surface. That’s the matter that weaved between her ankles and thighs and stealthily stole the thermal cup from her unaware fingers, allowing its collapse.
This was liquid silence, and she waded in it. Her eyes, oblivious to the flood, somehow caught the light of the single tear on his white cheek as he turned it. The salty, liquid bead was thick like its own ocean, a bullet to her heart. She wanted to run to him, to stop him, wrap her arms around him and beg for him to stay, but all the while her feet remained in place, tangled in water-weeds at the murky floor. She knew how right this was, to let him go. The sleepless hours, the restless mind wondering where he'd gone all those nights as she lay alone in bed... these were all the right reasons, true reasons, quality reasons to want him gone, she convinced herself. After all, he was the one who lied. Still, every inch of her being was fighting her to just move, speak; but there are some words that cannot be said, or unsaid.
Something bitter bit and clawed at the pit of her stomach, twisting it. She could feel her heart’s desperate beating grow louder with each second he strayed, with each poisoned footstep. His pale hand clutched at the crumpled train ticket. The other lingered aimlessly at the tattered pocket of his mahogany sweater as he took a right at the red-brick wall, gliding past the man in the crimson coat. Water lapped at her neck.
"W-wait..." She whispered, but that was all the limp muscles in her lips could do. Was this how it felt to die? To drown? He was the rippling surface above her, and her words were dying last breaths meandering upwards hopelessly, bursting just before him. She watched as he turned the corner into the crowd of insignificant others. His violet scarf whipped around the corner, and he was gone.
"Wait!" She choked. His kiss still lingered on her cheek, tearing a patch through it like frostbite. She thought of his vandalized lips, stripped by the winter thief who had taken the red from them. She peeled herself from the ground and her feet broke free from the cemented path, pushing with all of their strength to take her to the corner where he'd gone. It seemed the longest run of her life. Finally, she reached the end of the street, and stared into the sea of faces, faces that weren't his, eyes that could never meet hers the way his could. She could feel it, the bitter thing inside her trailing up her spine and tearing through her lungs. Its claws clicked against her bones and its elongated fingernails sliced through crimson-leather flesh as it reached out to grab the quivering life inside her chest. She stood and stared as dozens, hundreds of people passed, none of which could save her. Ten, cold, avaricious fingers wrapped around her beating heart, their joints cracking triumphantly, and the final silent matter began to materialize.
This third kind of matter does not suffocate, it envelopes. One moment it rings under the taciturn liquid current, the next it is nothing but the cold lack of noise, and nothing is far worse than anything. Even the ringing is inaudible inside her approaching cocoon.
The ticking of her own watch pulsed through her wrist as she searched. She had never wished so much for a train to run late, but the large clock in the center of the station let out a reverberated gasp. The train had gone, and a woman screamed.
A single shot, a piercing sound, was the last un-abstract echo for miles. Men receded like a grey, stormy sea. Women screeched like gulls feeding on the bloody remains of something half-alive. She waded, waist deep now, slowly pushing through. A tattered train ticket wisped past her cheek. She swam faster, swatting at the savage birds and ice-crusted waves that pecked and pounded against her chilled body. She nearly lost her balance, catching her foot on a lost, purple scarf. As she steadied her feet again, she felt something quiver inside her, as if it were catching its balance too. The tempest ceased and the gulls flew away, and she stared into the pool at her feet. In the still reflection, so perfect, the man in the crimson coat cracked a crooked smile, lips red as blood, skin white as glacial silence. He tucked away the gun and the leather wallet and melted away like frost in the sun.
She fell to her knees and weaved her fingers through his, holding on until the winter wind took the warm from them. Far away she could hear a new train approaching; and something small in the left pocket of the blood-stained, mahogany sweater hooked her eye. She took it out.
The little black box in the palm of her hand did not belong. It did once. Not anymore. As gingerly as her trembling hands could manage, she opened it and stared at the place where the silky white cloth indented into itself, leaving behind an empty, circular depression just large enough in circumference to slide onto a finger.
She swore she could hear the single tear crash against the pavement. At the same time, she heard the subtle sound of an icy crack in her chest.


The Key Of Candyland
By Nikki Grossfeld
Genre: Fiction

The moment she realized what she was looking at, she knew she was as good as dead. Clara had always wondered what would happen when she opened that door, and this was the last thing she had expected. It was supposed to be locked – but it wasn’t. All of those years … She couldn’t believe it: it had been there the entire time. Everything from before; everything she never knew existed in the first place. He told her that there were no lies between them, but even that had been a lie.

The panoramic view of what existed all around her was outstanding. Everything was there. This locked door had held all of the secrets of her life. Thirteen years of lies and deceit, and it had all been there the entire time. How could he have done this to me?, she wondered, how could my own father lie to me like that?

It was apparently thirteen years ago that everything in Clara’s life had changed, and she had never known anything about it. Her own mother and older brother had gone for a ride for his birthday, but Clara was too young to remember where they had headed off to. Three hours later, she and her father had received a phone call from the paramedics. There had been a car accident, and everything in Clara’s life had instantly been flipped upside down – destroyed, and gone forever. Clara had forgotten everything, until today. Today, the most dramatic memories penetrated her forgotten past that had been blocked because of her father.

Her brother had been her best friend. There had been one year separating them, and her last memory with him was at age three: they were playing Candyland, and she was winning. Clara could never beat her brother at any game, but so far, she was winning... and he was happy for her.

She focused back on her surroundings, trying to forget the misfortunes of her past – realizing how difficult that would be as she continued to look at everything that was practically reliving itself right before her eyes. Clara couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her heart was racing, beating in disbelief. Her father had lied to her, about everything, and she knew that she shouldn’t stay there and dig through the past – her forgotten past – but after thirteen years of secrets, she couldn’t – and didn’t have the willpower – just to turn away.

Footsteps overhead sounded, seeming to get closer. Did I close the door behind me? she asked herself. Her heart continued throbbing as she hoped she would be able to stay in this room longer – this extension of her mother and brother. Everything around her resembled them. Everything around her was them. The footsteps above her passed over the entrance and began to fade off into the distance. Her heart went back to its original fluttering that occurred upon discovering this addition in their house.

After walking around for a minute, running her hands along the old memories, Clara decided to open one of the dust-covered, worn-out boxes. In doing so, she found pictures that were stuck to one another, dusty and faded. Working through the pies of faded memories, a letter lay at the bottom. Opening its crusty creases, it read:

 

Dear Clara,
If you're reading this, that means you've found the secret addition. I guess you now understand why I refused to move so many tmes. Also, if you're reading this, I'm sure I'm gone by now... Knowing me, I am very protective of thsi room and would in no circumstances let you find it while I was around. I guess I won't ever be able to explain that to you, but I hope you don't blame me.
I'm sorry I kept the memories from you. I'm sorry I kept Gineene and Ralphy from you. I never intended to hurt you, but I couldn't let you discover the truth, Clara. There was never a car accident - and I'm sorry I could never be a good enough father to you in order to tell you ths to your face: Your mother did not hit that truck as the papers and doctors led you to believe. I'm sorry I can't bring myself to tell you teh complete truth even in words, but I can show you.
 Inside the envelope where you found this letter, there is a key. I'm sure you'll figure out what it is for.
I've always loved you, Clara, and I'm sorry I couldn't be the father you needed.
Try to forgive me,
- Your father.
Tears trickling down her fair skin, she tried to understand what he had meant in his letter. How could they have not been in a car accident? What else happened to them? Where are they? she wondered. Obviously he had been wrong about his protectiveness of the room, as he was just upstairs and she had in fact found the mysterious hiding place.

Remembering the mentioning of a key, Clara realized that she hadn’t found the letter in an envelope. Looking back in the box, she noticed a small crevice in the corner – the perfect size for a small key. Giving the box a bit of a shake, the key popped out of the crevice. Too small to be for a door, the key resembled the one Clara used to use for her jewelry box as a child. The fact that the key was hidden made sense to her, as Clara’s father had brought her up, training her to look at the unexpected as he had done throughout his life as a reporter.

Pocketing the key in her shirt pocket and the slightly damp letter in her back jeans’ pocket, Clara continued to look through other boxes. Few were titled “Home Videos”, others: “Pictures”. Not having a VCR available, there wasn’t much she could do with the videos, but opening the box, she realized they were all from before she was three-years-old. Closing the boxes and putting them back where she found them, she decided to move onto the photographs.

Pictures of Ralphy – pictures she thought had forever been destroyed, were right in front of her. Photographs of her hugging her older brother, being held by her mother, holding onto her father’s pants leg – never wanting to let go … all of these memories began to overwhelm her. Her father had told her everything had been destroyed and that he couldn’t handle looking at their faces every day after the accident. He told her that he had destroyed all memories of them in order to make the pain less. So why did he lie?

Footsteps overhead sounded again, except this time doors were slamming and someone was running. Clara’s heart was racing and she realized that it was getting late – and she hadn’t checked in with her dad since that morning. She heard every door in their two-floor, three-bedroom condo open with a gust, and slam with heartbreak. After five minutes of the consistent slamming, the footsteps died down and she realized she was safe in the room – for now. Pulling out her lavender Motorola Rival, Clara realized it was 9:42 P.M. – practically three hours late for dinner. Flipping the phone open, Clara found her dad’s number in her contact list and dialed.
Hearing the ring overhead, she knew it wouldn't be long before she heard his worried gasps through her speaker.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Dad!"
"CLARA! I've been worried sick! Where are you? Are you OK?"
"Yeah, Dad. I'm fine. I'm sorry I never called you... I got distracted. I'm at Sasha's house. Can I stay the night?"
"I don't know, Clara... I haven't seen you all day. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Yes, Dad! I'm fine. Please? We're... we're working on a project for school. It'd help our grade if I could stay longer...."
"I guess..."
"Thanks, Dad! I'll talk to you tomorrow! Night!"Hanging up her phone, Clara took a deep breath and was thankful that the lying was over for now. She hated lying to her dad. He had always been there for her; always looking to help her whenever she needed or wanted – but she felt as though the circumstances had changed and it wasn’t such a horrible thing to fib a little bit this time. She was, after-al,l supposed to be at Sasha’s … she just never went.

Pocketing her phone, Clara remembered the key in her button-down shirt pocket. What truth could this thing show me? she pondered. Closing the box of photographs of Ralphy, Clara took a few steps forward, until she saw a gleaming piece of metal in the corner. Lodged between two stacks of dusty boxes, was a briefcase.

Yanking it out of its hiding place, Clara realized it needed a key to be opened. Remembering the one her dad had left for her, she pulled it out of her shirt pocket, and placed it in the shiny keyhole. With a twist, the buckles released and a gap remained between the top and the bottom of the briefcase. Placing the key back into her pocket, Clara slipped her fingers into the gap and pried the briefcase open with a sharp tug.Newspaper cut-outs cluttered the floor. Clara had never seen these before, but they were about her mother and Ralphy. Picking up one specific "dog-eared" article, Clara began to read...

KINGSBURY, NEVADA - MARCH 1998: Local Fitzpatrick family faces tragedy. Mother and wife. Gineene Fitzpatrick was driving withher son, Ralph Fitzpatrick, 4, on his birthday towards the local petting zoo when an oncoming moving truck strayed into the lane and hit mother and son in a head-on collision. Mother of two children and wife of six years killed instantly. Son was declared dead upon fatal injuries to his cerebellum. Father claims no commet and remains in his Kingsbury home wih his daughter, Clara.

Questioning this article, Clara realized it had been written by her father and submitted to the Kings Journal for publication. But this doesn’t make sense, Clara thought to herself. He wrote in the letter that there had been no accident. If that was true, then why would he have written this article? Fidgeting through the other papers, different headlines filled her sight: “Daughter Raised By Father … Does She Know?”, “Father and Daughter Live In Denial”, “The Truth Exposed!”. Confused by this, Clara picked up the article with the heading: “Truth Is Out! Daughter Knows Nothing!” and began reading...

KINGSBURY, NEVADA – MAY 1998: Local family has recently been exposed. Father, Roger Fitzpatrick, submitted an article to the Kings Journal describing the fatal events in his family. Upon further investigation, against the wishes of the family, it turns out the article had been a fraud – as had the accident. Due to the inability to locate death certificates for supposedly deceased family members Gineene and Ralph, Roger Fitzpatick provided the Kings Journal with proper commentary on the matter.

 

On Ralph’s birthday (4), Gineene took him out on a car ride for ice cream and a trip to the zoo. Six days later, Gineene returned home, greeted by a worried husband. Upon questioning by Roger, Gineene explained why she returned late – and without her son.

 

Gineene confessed to taking an extensive detour in order to abandon her son in hopes of “getting rid of the stress in her life.” Roger immediately filed a Missing Person’s Report, which is another part of what led us to realize there was no car accident. No responses were ever returned to the family on Ralph’s behalf.

 

Upon explaining her circumstances for abandoning her one and only son, Gineene refused to disclose any information of the whereabouts in which she left him (police have reason to believe it was out of state). After further refusal, Roger locked her out, and wrote the false story as to allow his daughter, Clara, to grow up without hard feelings of her mother.

Clara’s jaw hit the cement floor with a smack. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The real truth was hidden in a briefcase?! Flipping through other articles, she realized they were all the same: Mother abandons child – daughter knows nothing. All read the same way – except for one. At the bottom of the pile of newspaper clippings, was a ragged and taped piece of rustic paper reading “Fake Story Comes True?”. Unfolding it, Clara began to read:

KINGSBURY, NEVADA – JUNE 1998: Three months ago former reporter, Roger Fitzpatrick, published a false account of the occurrences in his family pertaining to his wife and son. On the other hand, yesterday marked the death of Gineene Fitzgerald, who was recently found guilty for abandoning her son on his birthday. Gineene, upon downing nine shots of tequila, proceeded to get into her rustic 1996 Oldsmobile and drive an increasing 97 miles per hour on Interstate 80 and managed to drive through the guardrail, down the mountain, and smash into an evergreen tree. She was declared dead at the scene. Have past events come back to haunt us?

How could he have done this to me? Clara wondered. The words from his letter flashing before her eyes: “I couldn’t let you discover the truth Clara” … “I can show you” … “I’m sorry I couldn’t be the father you needed” …


Tears rolled down her freckled skin. Slipping down to the grimy floor, Clara wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled her legs close to her chest. I miss Ralphy, she thought.

Moments passed as she sat on the unfinished basement floor, leaning against a knobby dirt wall. Tears ran down her face, moisturizing the patches of earth that were scattered between blobs of cement below her. Her father’s hand on her shoulder was the last thing she expected; Clara knew she was as good as dead.


It’s Not An Excuse
By Nikki Grossfeld
Genre: Nonfiction

One pill destroys the pain. Just one to pop, and then it’s gone. It’s true what they say: it can all go away with the pop of a pill.

Everyone asked me to describe the torture. They asked me to describe it on a scale of one to ten. They told me they couldn’t help me unless I told them what I was feeling. So I told them I was feeling pain. What would a one mean? A tack in the sole of my foot? What about a ten? An anvil landing on my ribs? Yeah, definitely a ten.

It’s impossible to describe the pain that resonated throughout my silicone organs, so gentle and incapable of fighting the outside world.

How would they know if I was telling the truth anyway? If I told them my rating of my torture, that is. How can someone rate their pain anyway? Is it possible? Is it accurate? My rating could mean something entirely different than theirs. So what does a rating truly matter?

My perception is different than yours. That’s a fact. There are millions of sides of the topic, but no matter which point of view you take, this fact is true.

My experiences are mine and you can only merely observe what I go through – but even observations don’t give you the privilege to judge my adventures. You can’t claim I’m a goody-two-shoes, a risk-taker, a neurotic mess, or a mentally deranged person just from a mere observation.

The five year monster that I’ve been fighting for a large portion of my life has come back to haunt me – but a mere pop of a pill seems to destroy the monster from within.

They suggested it awhile ago, but the side-effects were simply too obvious to the masked eye. I couldn’t do that to myself: not with Prom right around the corner. The last thing I wanted was for my face to resemble that of a blow fish; I decided to endure the pain.

Five years isn’t very long when compared to a lifespan of one-hundred and ten, but a lot can happen within that small chunk of time. It all seems like a dream to me, though. I guess it was, being as how I was asleep for the majority of it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was real. The pain was real. The memories were real. And the monster survived.

My mother remembers it vividly. She wasn’t asleep at the time. She has memories of my structure and my pain; she witnessed everything she could except for the physical characteristics she couldn’t have felt had she wanted to – a want that would clearly classify a person crazy. I would never wish my pain or experiences on any other soul – not even for an understanding. Not even for a moment of time in the spectrum of life. Many people often claim that they wish they knew what I was going through, but not one of them could have truly ever meant such a statement. The truth behind an assertion as strong as this would be far more than they could ever bargain for.

I know there are far worse things in life. I know there’s hunger and animal abuse and oppression and poverty and genocide, but all of these can’t mask the pain I feel within. It can’t mask the tearing and shredding that my intestines are experiencing. Children in third world countries are dying from world hunger and poverty, but I’m dying because my system wants to believe it should.

Bacteria is meant to be rejected by the immune system, right? But food isn’t supposed to be considered a bacteria, so why does my system reject it? Why does it reject the nutrients and refuse my body its right to work properly?

My speech may seem vague and utterly metaphorical for a topic of such drastic measures, but that is due to the experiences I have encountered and the complete fact that none of them are truthfully explainable. I could spend days upon days explaining each horrific and horrendous day that I’ve encountered with my disease, but even after all of my descriptions, you’d still ask the most basic question: “How do you get nutrients?”

They don’t seem to understand. They don’t seem to realize that I don’t get nutrients. I don’t get food. I don’t ingest anything and I can’t digest anything. Depression ensues and all I can manage to do is fade away into oblivion and sleep my days and nights away while having medication after medication shoved down my throat.

Six years ago I had never experienced real pain. I had broken bones, sprained limbs, fallen down stairs, hit my head, dented walls, and kicked metal, but I had never experienced pain before the monster came to the surface within me just five years ago.

I couldn’t walk without stumbling; I couldn’t sit up straight without falling over; I couldn’t watch television without falling asleep; I couldn’t live my life without being a ghost that was hanging on a thread.

Doctors claim that no one has ever died from this disease, but I don’t believe them. Another month or two and I wouldn’t be here writing this bland story about the knife that cut up my insides and left me to heal in a way no human being can without some form of aid – aid that “they” weren’t able to provide me with. Another month of two of being forced to starve and losing all forms of mass on my bones would have caused me to whither away into nothing more than a barely-breathing corpse ready for her coffin.

I have pictures to prove it, but even those cause doubts amongst the listeners. No one believes that I went through such pain at an age as young as twelve – even when many people experience pain even younger. They told me I was using it as an excuse. They told people that I was making it up. My “friends” disappointed me and walked away from me when I could have used a shoulder for support.

My body was bones. My stomach was a deflated whoopee cushion that had millions of punctured holes in it and would require help to be re-flated. My intestines were shredded, and my life was no different than death.

My doctors eventually realized what was wrong, and they began helping me. The single pop of a microscopic pill and I had started to feel better. I was in remission. I was being healed. But this was five years ago.

Five years ago, I survived. Five years ago, I was able to live to tell the tale. Five years ago, I pushed the monster under my bed and gave it a good kicking until it was welded into the filthy carpeting. But that was five years ago.

It’s now 2011 and I’m now seventeen years old and the monster has returned. My intestines are deteriorating, sleep overwhelms me, and I strongly disagree when people tell me that no one has died from this disease.

I have Crohn’s Disease. It is incurable, I will have it for life, and my doctors are limited in what they can do for me. I have Crohn’s Disease: it’s not an excuse or a story for a passing grade. It’s my life and often my death. I have Crohn’s Disease, and that’s why I can’t rank my pain. I have Crohn’s Disease, and no one knows how I feel, because everyone perceives pain differently. I have Crohn’s Disease, and the only thing that can help me is the magical, microscopic pill that inflates my face.