FFP#21 – Countdown

Since she had learned to count, she couldn’t stop. It wasn’t as though she counted out loud so everyone could hear her, but almost every waking moment she was thinking, One, two, three, four, five, six — and on and on. After the second grade, she counted by fives when she was nervous. In middle school, she counted her teeth over and over during English. When a boy in her health class tried to snap her bra, she repeated her locker number to herself and then punched him in the nose. She only had to count to one before his nose started bleeding. In high school, she fell in love with a skinny boy who sat in front of her in math class. She scrawled wet and rounded numbers on the roof of her mouth with her tongue. One day, he turned around and said, “What are you saying?” She looked at him, confused. Had she started counting out loud, without being conscious of it? “Are you reciting the Fibonacci sequence?” he asked her, more amused than annoyed. “Maybe,” she said. He laughed and turned back around. This was when she realized that if he kissed her, if she felt his body pressed against hers, if they melded into one, if one plus one could somehow equal one, she could finally stop counting. This was when she started counting backwards from one million.

FFP#20 – The Fisherman

“Fish with faces, men without limbs” pulled from the sea, hidden like secrets. There’s comfort in recalling these aberrations, realizing he’s met the unknown before.

FFP#19 – Penny for Your Thoughts

I place a parade of pennies on the sidewalk. Mom picks up each one, shouting, “Penny!” It’s the only way she remembers my name anymore.

FFP#18 – This Is What They Say

They say she walks the highway at night, wearing a white dress with a high ruffled collar, barefoot. The usual. Every man who sees her pulls over, anxious to help a young woman, a beautiful woman. A woman. As soon as they ask, “Do you need some help?” “Do you need a ride?” “Hello?” she disappears. But in her place, wholly visible in the dark, illuminated by the moon or by headlights or by the aura of some other life, some other world pushing its way through the cracks and weaknesses of our vaporous walls, all that remains in her place is a rounded stack of smooth white stones. A pile of stones, a mound, a swell, a breast of rock.

Every man who sees these stones has the urge to gather them up, to hide and protect them. If they took all the stones, they know they’d be haunted forever. Who was the woman? What did she want? What do the stones mean? But if they take just one stone, they could easily carry it in their pocket, as a reminder, a story, a glimpse of the supernatural. One stone weighs practically nothing at all. One stone is equal to a few spare quarters: there if needed, but otherwise not really thought about. So some men take a single stone and the others just drive away.

They say that when the men who took the stones are near death, the woman in the white dress appears. She holds out her hand, gently, slowly, and the dying man, regardless of how weak he is or how much pain he is in, will get out of bed and frantically search his pockets for the stone. He will search and search no matter what his family or nurses or doctors tell him. No one sees the woman except the man and when he finally finds the stone, finds it and kisses it and kisses it again, he asks her to have it -– “Please, please take it!” he pleads with her –- and at long last he dies. But his is not a normal death. Very quickly, the man’s skin begins to thin and peel away (the way the skin of roasted almonds might flake off), revealing a body of gray pebbles in his place.

No one knows what to do with these pebbles. It seems silly to pour the rocks into a cushioned coffin, and it’s impossible to burn them into ash. In the end, all the pebbles end up in the same spot: scattered between and among the tombstones in the church graveyard, covering dirt and weeds, forming a clean path for visitors.

They say that early in the morning, just before dawn breaks, if you happen to walk through the graveyard, you’ll hear a thousand men singing softly. There are no words to the song, it’s just a simple tune really, but once you hear it you’ll hum along to it for days, and at night you’ll dream of the woman, you will see her walking in the dark, in a white dress, barefoot. She’ll turn, but her face will be a blur, as though her tears have smeared the contour and details of her facial features. She’ll remove her gown, exposing a nude body underneath, a living body, a human body. But soon this body begins to deteriorate. Fingers fall off, hair is shed, and as each part hits the ground it turns into rock.

Eventually, a canal of rocks is formed from her body and you become water, pouring fast and quickly into a stream. You carry each other along. You don’t know where you’re going, but you feel everyone and everything there with you. You’re no longer alone, you are the world and together you’re flowing, and you think to yourself, “It all began with one woman,” and you hum the tune, now realizing that this is the same song every bird sings, every wind whistles, every tree whispers. This is the sound of water flowing over rock.

They say we’re lucky to live in this town, to live near the highway where the woman walks. Maybe, I think, maybe if you’re a man. I drive the highway almost every night, and I’ve never seen this woman, this woman who makes this world more mysterious. I look for white stones along the road and all I find is pumice and broken glass. All I know is nothing. All I know is being alone. All I know is what they say and that what they say goes. Who are they, anyway? I’m planning my escape to the city, to another life, in the opposite direction of wherever the woman in white is headed.

FFP#17 – Sorry We’re Closed

He liked to go to stores ten minutes before closing. There was something about the way the store clerks said, “Sir, we’re closing in ten minutes,” that made him feel secure. At five ‘til, the gentle warning. Then a second warning, sometimes a third. Finally, at closing, a firm, slightly nasally, “Sir, we’re closed now, you’ll have to leave,” all the clerks standing together watching him. His favorite was the “we’ll have to call the police” warning. He liked to see just how far he could push, just how far he could get away with it. One time, a clerk — a twenty-something pimply faced kid with long hair — said, “Get the fuck out of here, you decaying freak.” The kid’s coworkers laughed. That he didn’t like and he considered waiting outside for the kid, maybe push him around a bit. Instead, he said, “No, you get the fuck out of here,” and left. He had other places to be, anyway, like that one restaurant that was open all night long with the cute waitress who never asked him to leave and brought him coffee until the sun came up. The morning rays flooded the table with a yellow brightness, leaving him feeling sleepy and mellow and a lot less lonely.