Ronny Vladso Learns the World Sucks for Leopards

After months of badgering, Leona Vladso finally gave in to her six-year-old son’s demands. “Fine Ronny, I’ll tell you about your father, but I warn you, it’s not a pretty story.”

Ronny Vladso knew his father was dead, however, he did not know the details of his death or his life. Every time he asked about his old man, he mother would only say, “He’s entertaining God.”

As Ronny sat in a rigid, hardwood, kitchen chair, Leona paced in front of him. “I only knew your dad a short while before he died,” Leona began. “I met Bosco—that was your father's name, Bosco Peppitone—at the corner of Desmond Avenue and 126th Street. I had just finished my laundry and was carrying it back to my apartment. As I neared the corner, I heard this clicking noise…click, click, click. It was semi-rhythmic, and I could tell the sound was a product of wood being struck. Turning the corner on to Desmond, I collided with Bosco. My laundry and your father took a tumble on the sidewalk.”

Ronny’s eyes were wide as he listened to his mother’s account. “What happened then?”

“I asked him if he was hurt, and he said ‘no,’ and then helped me gather my clothes. As I watched him picking up my panties, I noticed for the first time how handsome he was, just like you. I also noticed he was wearing a plaid mini-skirt, high-top sneakers, and a t-shirt from a ZZ Top concert. I gotta tell you Ronny, that was weird, but the really weird thing was the hair on his legs. It was about three inches long. Below his skirt, he looked like a mountain gorilla.”

Ronny’s mouth fell open. “Was he a monster?”

“No honey, in fact he was quite sweet. You might think that someone with gorilla legs would be scary, but I thought his hairy legs were beautiful. He spent a lot of time grooming his legs. He used expensive shampoos and conditioners, and he brushed them every evening.”

“Why was he dressed so silly?” asked Ronny.

“That’s what I wanted to know. I mean he looked like a waiter at a gay biker restaurant.”

“What’s a gay biker?

“Never mind. Anyway, I asked him about his attire, and he told me he was a busker. I had no idea what a busker was, and then he showed me his clanking sticks, began banging them together and starting doing a slow soft shoe. He told me a busker was a professional street performer; a person who plays music or performs some kind of act for tips.”

“Dad was in show business?” asked Ronny.

“Sort of,” said Leona. “So, Bosco asked me out for coffee, and we really hit it off. Next thing I know, Bosco and me had moved in together, and I was pregnant with you.”

“Did you let the hair grow out on your legs?”

“What?”

“Now that you and Bosco…I mean dad…were married, did you grow gorilla legs too?”

“Uh…no honey, I didn’t.” Leona didn’t want to tell the boy she and Bosco never married.

“Ok. So mom, how did Bosco die?”

Leona really didn’t want to get into Bosco’s death, but she knew she would have to deal with it eventually, why not now? “Honey, your daddy was a good man, but he wasn’t a great busker. Between his busking and my job at Penguin-on-a-Stick, we could barely keep food on the table. Bosco was determined to make it as a busker, and he was also determined to provide a good life for us, so he decided to relocate his busking from the corner of Desmond and 125th to Wall Street, just south of the stock exchange. He felt those mega-rich stock traders would surely be a higher-paying audience for his talent.”

Ronny got a quizzical look on his face. “What’s a stock trader?”

Leona’s face grew somber. “It’s just another word for ‘asshole.’ Now listen up, I’m only gonna talk about this once, so pay attention. With the bills piling up at home, Bosco was feeling pressure to increase his business so he started to incorporate new bits into his act. Banging sticks together and doing a soft shoe just wasn’t enough for the jaded stockbrokers. Your daddy learned to yodel and juggle cats. He slid garden snakes up his nose and out his mouth. But what really did Bosco in was his decision to become a stick-banging mime.”

The boy appeared confused. “What’s wrong with being a mime?”

Leona sighed. “You are too young to understand Ronny, but people hate mimes, and stockbrokers hate mimes worse than they hate poor people. After the close of trading on a Wednesday, a month after Bosco’s relocation, he painted his face white and started pretending he was banging sticks together. A large group of stockbrokers came by on their way to their favorite bar, and Bosco jumped in front of them and really started working is stick-banging pantomime. At first, the brokers tried to ignore him, but your dad was relentless. Finally, one of the men had enough and told Bosco to get out of the way. Your dad was a stubborn man, and he was determined to mime his ass off. That was unfortunate. According to witnesses, briefcases began flying and wing-tip shoes lashed out at Bosco. When the group of irate stockbrokers fled, Bosco lay dying on the sidewalk. Before an ambulance could arrive, a woman in a faux leopard-skin coat came by. She picked up Bosco’s real sticks and crushed his skull with them. I’m sorry you had to hear about this Ronny, but you wanted to know. The world can be a cruel place.”

The boy hung his head…thinking. Leona hoped the story hadn’t traumatized her son. Finally, Ronny looked at his mom. “You know mom, the world really is fucked up. Why would someone kill a faux leopard just to make a coat?

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The Story Bridge

(In this 2,700-word story, I've tried to offer an updated take on the "magic shop" type of story.)

After typing “creative writing groups” in the Google search box, Susan Plume sat back in her leather office chair and awaited as the magical algorithms cast their cyber nets, hauled the bounty to her iMac, and displayed them on the 20-inch monitor. Susan blinked, and within the nanosecond her eyes were closed, more than 5 million possible answers to her search queued in the search engine.

Susan Plume had stories to tell. At 35, and after working seven years as a stockbroker, she was starting to feel her true calling was slipping past her. She believed she was destined to write, to be an author, a storyteller. In college, Susan had done well in her creative writing courses, but business was her major, and after graduation, the lure of big money over road her creative dreams. But dreams have a way of resurfacing as years pass, and like a biological clock; Susan’s need to create life out of words had resurfaced like a long-dormant seed. Now, she felt she needed support, encouragement, and nurturing to coax out and polish her tales. She could have enrolled in a writing class at the local college, but preferred to seek help online, anonymously, with veterans and tyros alike.

At first, five million possibilities seemed daunting to Susan. How could she possibly choose a group that was right for her? With so many sites available, some were undoubtedly scams, set up to bleed dreams dry. Susan had done well in her business, making herself and her clients rich. Selling and trading stocks, bonds, and commodities required good research, but the crux of the business was intuition, you put your money down and let the wheel spin. Susan allowed her intuition take over, and on the fifth page of the Google search, an entry titled “The Story Bridge” jumped out at her and wrapped its arms around her head. “We help make your stories come to life,” promised the short description following the title. Susan clicked on the link and was taken to a web page featuring a dark blue background, a graphic keyboard, and an invitation to fill out a form to be considered for membership. The form was simple, aside from basic information such as name, e-mail address, and experience, it asked for a sample story and an answer to the question, “Why do you want to be a writer?”

Susan decided to go ahead with the process. She filled in the basic information, and then pasted in a short story she had written in college about a swimming pool; it was titled “The Swimming Pool.” Before she answered the “why do you want to be a writer,” question, Susan thought for few minutes then wrote, “So I can create new worlds.”

After clicking on the “send” button, a new screen appeared which bore the message: “Thank you for submitting your application to The Story Bridge. Please give us a few days to process your request for membership.”

During the course of the next few days, Susan Plume checked her e-mail more frequently than normal, hoping to hear something from the writing website. In high school and college and in her career, Susan had been popular, athletic, and self-confident, but since sending off her application, she had more empathy for those kids in school who were the last few hoping to be chosen when sides were picked for games and sports. Finally, on Thursday at 3:17 p.m., Susan’s computer notified her she had received a message from The Story Bridge. She clicked on the e-mail and read:

Dear Susan,
Your application has been accepted. Welcome to The Story Bridge. Although your story, “The Swimming Pool,” contained a number of punctuation errors, we thought it was interesting and compelling. We feel you could also use some work on your descriptive language.
The next step in the process for full membership is for you to submit an original story--no more than 5,000 words--to us by Monday afternoon. This will give you four days to write your story. Once your story is posted, our members will review and critique it within two days. Good luck in creating your “new world.”

Sincerely,
H.P.

Susan did not expect a second audition and felt a bit of ire rising within her. It did not last long. She decided this development was a good thing; after all if the group was this picky about its membership, it was probably a place where she would learn to hone her chops. Before she left her office for the day, Susan told her boss she was taking Friday and Monday off.

New worlds moved through Susan’s head the rest of the afternoon, making it hard for her to concentrate on her work. Her mind was searching for stories, not stock deals. That evening, in her apartment, she sketched out plots and scenarios and characters, discarding some, retaining others until she felt she had aligned the right sequence of literary DNA that would help her create a formidable tale by which her critics would judge her. After a glass of Pinot Grigio, Susan fell asleep and let the chemistry of creation bubble away in her mind.

Friday morning, fortified with yogurt, toast, and strong Columbian coffee, Susan Plume pulled words out of her head and deposited them on the keyboard of her iMac. With a clear picture of the finished product in her head and the tools of a writer’s trade on her desk, Susan spent the next two days crafting her story. The magic of writing engulfed her. The art of giving an idea life took hold, and she pursued it doggedly.

By late Sunday afternoon, Susan Plume had given birth to a 4,700-word story. It has all its limbs and fingers and toes, and it seemed healthy. It would, however, need to be cleaned. Susan spent Sunday night and Monday morning scrubbing her story, washing away unnecessary bits and pieces and dressing it in the right punctuation.

At 12:27 p.m. on Monday, Susan typed “The Crash” at the top of the first page of her story, and then sent it off to The Story Bridge. Immediately after she hit the “send” key, she felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment and confidence. Susan ordered in Chinese food to celebrate, but by the time it arrived, her confidence level had dropped dramatically. It irritated her that she wanted to please a group of people she didn’t know; they could be a group of high-school students after all, or, the group might not be a group at all, just some weirdo with the initials H.P. But the fact remained, she did want to be accepted into the group; she wanted to be—even at a distance—among people who bled words.

Susan puttered about her apartment the rest of the afternoon tidying up and doing laundry, anything to keep her from thinking about the story and whether it would be accepted. A little past 7:00 that evening, after a light meal and a long bath, Susan decided to catch up on some correspondence and returned to her computer. Upon opening her mailbox, she began scanning her inbox. The third entry, just below an offer of penis enlargement and above a notice that she had won the Swedish lottery, she saw the words, “The Story Bridge.” This was highly unexpected; the last e-mail from H.G. stated it would take two days for the group to read and critique her story. She was sure this was not a good sign. Click.

Dear Susan,
Thank you for submitting your story, “The Crash.” Although we normally take a few days to assess submissions for full membership, we found your story to be exceptional and would be honored to have you as a member.
In less than 5,000 words, you’ve managed to create a compelling magical-realism thriller, complete with finely drawn characters. Using a timely subject such as stock market manipulation to explore the depths of evil even the most altruistic of us can descend was brilliant.
Congratulations for a job well done. We are going to publish “The Crash” tomorrow. Welcome to the writer’s world.

Best of luck,
H.G.

Susan Plume was stunned. She was going to be published. She was a real author. Of course, she thought, there was no mention of pay, but that doesn’t matter for now. What mattered to her was people who knew good writing had accepted her, and now she was considered by them to be a peer. “Brilliant” was the word H.G. had used to describe her story. It was then that Susan knew in her heart it would not be long before she would make the transition from stockbroker to fulltime author.

Buoyed by her success, Susan spent the remainder of the evening e-mailing friends and family about the news of story being published. She attached a copy of “The Crash” to every e-mail she sent. By the time midnight rolled around, Susan had written and sent 47 e-mails and drank a bottle of Yellowtail merlot. She undressed and floated beneath the sheets on her bed, soon drifting off to dream of book tours.

At 10:02 Tuesday morning, Susan Plume opened her left eye and swiveled it towards the nightstand next to her bed. She blinked. She blinked again. A third blink wiped away enough overnight eye slime for her to see the digital readout on the nightstand clock. “Damn,” she yelled, “I’m late for work.”

Speed dressing and rapid makeup application were not Susan’s strong points, but after a quick shower, she completed both tasks as rapidly as possible. Grabbing her briefcase, she left her 12th floor apartment, waited briefly for the elevator to arrive, and made it out of the building and into a taxi. By the time she reached the offices of Bricklin & Sutton, the brokerage for which she worked, it was a few minutes shy of 11:00. As Susan rushed past the reception area of the firm, Tina, the receptionist, called out, “Anna, there are two policemen waiting in your office. They’ve been there for a while.”

“Anna? Who is Anna?” thought Susan as she stopped by the coffee machine long enough to fill a Styrofoam cup with late-morning java dregs. When she opened her office door, Susan stopped short. There were two men sitting inside. One of them, a slender, redhead with hollow cheeks and a cheap suit was sitting at her desk scrolling through her computer files. The other man, dark, bulky and seemingly asleep was in one of the chairs in front of her desk. At the sound of her entrance, the redhead looked up.

“What, what the hell is going on here?” demanded Susan. “There are confidential files on that computer. Who are you people?”

The redhead looked at her for a moment. “I’m Agent Bellflower, and that’s my partner, Agent Cano. We’re from the Treasury Department. Have a seat next to my partner Miss Caffington. We need to ask you a few questions.”

Puzzlement flooded Susan’s face. “Please, Anna,” said Bellflower, “this is quite serious. Have a seat.”

“I think you have the wrong person,” Susan tried to explain. “I’m not Anna Caffington. I’m Susan Plume. This is my office. I don’t know any Anna Caffington.” As Susan spoke those words, something at the back of her mind began to itch. “It’s the wine,” she thought, remembering last night’s celebratory bottle of merlot. God, I must have the worst hangover imaginable; I’m hearing things.”

“Save the B.S. Anna,” said Agent Cano, who still appeared to be sleeping. “We know who you are. Now sit down.”

“You guys have made a hell of a mistake, or someone has put you up to this, but I am not this Anna person. Now this is my office, and I’ve got work to do, so please leave.”

“What does it say on your office door, Anna?”

The door was still open, and Susan turned her head to look. About five feet from the floor, in the middle of the door, was a brass plate that read, “Anna Caffington, Stockbroker.” Susan’s mouth dropped open, and the itching got worse.

Confused, Susan closed the door and sat next to Agent Cano. It was Agent Bellflower who delivered the next bit of news. “We know who you are Anna. In fact, we know all about you. For instance, we know you’ve been having an affair with your boss, Jeremy Steiner.”

Susan started to tell them her boss’s name was Roger Twain, not Jeremy Steiner, and Roger was gay. However, the name Jeremy Steiner sounded familiar, so she waited to hear what was coming next.

Agent Bellflower casually leaned back in Susan’s leather chair. “We also know Steiner conspired with three sub-prime lenders, an administration official, and two of the most powerful banks in the country to manipulate the stock market and cause financial devastation for millions of people. We know for a fact that Steiner illegally profited to the tune of 4 billion dollars.”

All this information was coming too fast. In her hung over condition and with no morning coffee, Susan was having difficulty processing all of it. What was worse, some of it rang true.

“One other thing we know is Jeremy Steiner is dead. He was shot through his right eye with a small caliber weapon in his bedroom, sometime late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Interestingly enough, his wife was out of town and has a solid alibi. Luckily for us, Mr. Steiner’s eyes were open when he was shot. Although the right eye was decimated, the boys from the Federal Department of Memories were able to scan the left eye and should be able to tell us in a day or two who was in the bedroom with him.”

Susan shook her head. “You are absolutely crazy. Department of memories? There’s no such thing. As for the rest of your story….” Susan halted in mid sentence.

“Tell us Anna, where were you Saturday night?”

Susan’s mind felt like it had rubbed up against poison ivy. “I, uh, uh, I was at my apartment writing. I was writing a short story about…. Oh my God!”

“Can anyone verify you were there? Did you have anyone over; did you go out to eat or to the grocer’s?”

Susan was afraid to breathe, afraid to make the slightest movement. Finally, closed her eyes and asked, “Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet,” replied Agent Cano.

“If I’m not under arrest, I want to go home and call a lawyer.”

The two agents exchanged glances. “Ok, Anna, you can go for now,” said the redhead. “Agent Cano will drive you.” He produced a folder. “This is a federal warrant. It gives me the right to go through all your computer records and anything else I find in your office. We have also applied for a search warrant for your apartment, so well be visiting you at home soon. And Anna, please don’t get any ideas about leaving the city. That would end badly for you.”

On the way back to her apartment, Agent Cano tried to ask more questions, but Susan refused to answer, keeping her eyes shut, and chanting the mantra, “I can’t believe this is really happening.”

As Susan was exiting the federal agent’s car, he leaned over and said, “You know Anna, I don’t really care that this guy Steiner is dead. His greed will probably cause a stock market crash that will shake the financial foundation of this country. What I don’t like is murderers, especially those who murder for money.” As Susan started to turn, Agent Cano winked at her and added, “You have any offshore bank accounts Anna?”

Inside her apartment, Susan threw her briefcase on the sofa, ran into her home office, and powered up the iMac. While waiting for the machine to come alive, she said over and over, “I just wanted to create stories, not a life.”

When the iMac was operational, she typed www.thestorybridge into the address box. Within seconds she was taken to a plain, white page on which the following words were displayed, “Error 404. This page does not exist.”

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Soldier on the Rim

Read on, and it will quickly become evident that I am not a poet. However, I was challenged to write on from a list of words (in bold).

Identity revoked
He walked an unknown horizon

Consumed with rage at a land he loved
exempt from freedom

Provide and they will consume
and the years will run out.

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The Great Swaddling Debacle

Virginia is depressed. It seems apparent to her that the years and money she put into fashion-design school and starting her own line would soon be wasted unless Christians came to their senses and borderline psychos lost more of theirs.
After graduating in the top of her class at from the Raymondo Dior School of Fashion in Topeka, Kansas, Virginia took the inheritance her grandmother had left her, borrowed some more money from her parents, and took her dreams and designs to Kansas City to break into the big time fashion world. She prayed about her fashion future a lot and felt with money and God behind her, success would be in front of her.
Virginia’s business plan included the knowledge that about 90 percent of Americans were Christians, and Satan was spreading a lot of mental illness around to try and destroy them. Vowing to use her design gifts for a higher purpose, Virginia prayed some more and was rewarded with a divine inspiration: swaddling clothes. A voice came to her in the night and said, “Virginia, make some swaddling clothes.”
When Virginia arrived in Kansas City, she rented a small studio and set about creating a line of swaddling clothes she felt sure the country would embrace. Of course, she began with baby clothes because swaddling babies was a biblical tradition; what better endorsement could swaddling clothes have than Jesus himself? Virginia worked day and night sketching her visions of modern swaddles; she even produced styles such as punk, hip-hop, redneck and neo-Arabic. However, Virginia didn’t limit herself to designing baby swaddles, she decided to bring swaddling clothes into haute couture. Gold lame, silk, velvet, linen, seersucker and cheap polyester were but a few of the materials she stitched and sewed and puckered and hemmed in an effort to create new, young, hip, old-testament fashion for a modern world.
Since the word swaddling also means, “to restrict,” Virginia, in order to broaden her chances at financial success, started a line of institutional swaddles she felt would replace straightjackets. The rise in Satan-caused mental illness had increased the demand for restrictive garments for lunatics, and Virginia felt being embraced by a terrycloth swaddle would have a more calming effect on the insane and make it easier for them to find Jesus.
After months of preparation, Virginia opened a retail store in the Big Corn Shopping Mall and hired a sales manager named Sammy Dandy to handle the institutional part of the business. She named her store “Swaddles” and took out ads in the Kansas City Star to promote the grand opening.
That was three months ago. Since that time, the inventory at Swaddles has only diminished by two baby-swaddling outfits and one swaddling chemise (which was sold to an S&M transvestite). The institutional line fared worse. On his first, and last, sales call, as Sammy Dandy was demonstrating the terry-cloth, lunatic swaddle, he was viciously attacked by a schizophrenic patient named Mr. Cheese, and had his ear bitten off. Mr. Cheese thought Sammy was Satan.
So, Virginia is depressed. She knows she is going to have to close her store and pack her dreams, but she also knows there is hope. She’s been praying a lot, and the other night, the same voice came to her and said, “Swimming suits for dogs.”

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Panic

He was unusually quiet that evening. The words from his dinner companions passed through his ears, but once inside his head they fell apart into disconnected vowels and consonants. “I’m sorry, what did you say,” was an oft-repeated phrase he spoke throughout out the meal. His pulse quickened, and a slight discomfort scratched at his chest. He began to withdraw from the reality of the gathering, and once he had his fill of pasta and chicken with cream sauce, he excused himself, went outside to the back yard, and lit a cigarette.
As he paced and dosed himself with tobacco, short, staccato moans punctuated his breathing, and a slight unsteadiness assaulted his balance. He became conscious of his breathing, short rapid cycles followed by deep gulps of the warm, humid night air. His mental perceptions tilted a degree or two but not enough distort his memory of the feelings and physical reactions that were occurring. They had happened all too often in the past that their imprint would be with him forever. It had been years, however, since they had so aggressively made their presence known. He was unprepared to feel them again; he had stopped looking over his shoulder.
The illuminated pool water glowed an eerie blue, a fitting backdrop for the world into which he had slipped. Standing in the shadows, he watched his wife and friends inside, chatting about France and relatives and plans for visiting the Brittany coast in two years time. Inside his head, a liquid language was rising, and small-craft warnings echoed along the shore. “Jump in the boat and ride it out,” he told himself and re-entered the house.
“Are you OK?” they asked.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
They drank wine, and he plugged his ears with lemonade. He stood and said, “I need to lay down for a minute.” The living room was only a few paces away, and he made it easily, and then stretched out on the leather couch.
“Are you sure you’re OK?” they asked again.
“I’m fine.”
He was not fine, but at least he was now prone and with his forearm draped across his eyes it made being not fine easier. Ever since he was a child, he had known that demons would not hurt you if you don’t look at them. With his vision arrested, his nervous system attacked him from within. It sent out small, electrical hand grenades, causing his hands to twitch and legs to spasm. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted to himself, hoping to curse the demons into submission. It was a mantra of frustration, a song of sorrow, and empty linguistic talisman that had never worked before, but he clung to it like a holy relic.
The sound of chairs at work, the movement of familiar feet, his wife and friends were coming into the living room for more comfort and conversation. He knew they could see the spasms, hear the occasional low moan, but they also knew his past and left him alone.
The words, the electric tics, and the mind slips became too much, and he went back outside to stand in the pool glow. He hugged a gazebo post like it was his mother, cheek on grain, longing to be an uncut block of wood. Crickets complained loudly about the night heat, raccoon patrols noisily made their evening rounds on the other side of the fence, the moon smelled of ginger. The sliding glass door swept open, and the woman he has lived with forever stepped out into the night world and said, “Do you want to go?”
He does want to go, but he is trapped inside himself. “No, I’m Ok,” he says. She doesn’t believe him…she knows.
The hosts come out, and he tries desperately to quell the riot in his head. Sitting at the patio table, he is asked a question. He knows it is a question, but has no idea what it is about. A garbled hand full of words escapes his mouth, but he doesn’t understand them. His mind is now fixated on a dog, and he begins to cry. He hates crying. Embarrassment and humiliation pool on the ground in front of him, and he asks himself, “Why now?” It’s been so long. Why now?”
He should know better; he gave up asking “why” long ago. “I think it is time to go,” he sobs, I’m very sorry, but I need to go unconscious.”

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