Inverted Dream Chess: A New Spin on an Old Classic?

You know when you're dreaming or half asleep and you have that amazing, world-changing idea that you make a point of remembering for when you wake up so you can put it into practice in the real world, but then when you wake up and recall the idea you realize that no, putting milk chocolate inside a manila envelope and molding it into the shape of a walrus would never become the new best-selling taste sensation?  Stuff like that happens to me all the time, though usually more to the tune of "You know what would be a great story idea?  There's this woman made out of dirt, and she's part of the ground, and like, people walk over her all the time, and she falls in love with this guy who's riding a skateboard... and I don't know, we'll figure out the rest of the details later, but dirt lady!"

This is the type of thing that happened to me last night, with one notable exception: upon waking, my first thought was less "Nevermind, that's stupid," and more "Why has nobody else thought of this??"  I then tried to explain it to my fiancee and, judging by her expression, failed miserably so I'll try again here.  Therefore, I give you:

Inverted Dream Chess: A Fun New Way to Play Chess like an Idiot

Image courtesy of podpad/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Choosing the pieces:

The concept is simple really.  Before the game begins, each player puts all their game pieces into a cloth bag or a large hat, shakes them around a bit and then dumps out eight pieces in no particular order.  There is probably a better way to separate the pieces into two random groups of eight; In the event that you are able to come up with a better system for doing so, use that and please tell me about it.  The opposing player then takes these pieces to use as his own, and vise versa, the outcome being that each player has eight random white pieces and eight random black pieces.  The pieces should be marked somehow (like with masking tape, or maybe rubber bands if it's a chess set you're especially attached to) to easily denote which side they belong to.  In my dream the chess set being used was my old Chess Teacher set with the little cheat sheet plaques on the back, so we just used that to tell whose they were.

Setting up:

Naturally, this is where it gets a little confusing; at this stage in the dream the game screeched to a halt because we couldn't figure out where to put everything, but I think that had more to do with the fact that I had about seventeen Pawns, nine Bishops, four Kings (each of a different color) and a Three Musketeers bar on my side.  Unless you are using an especially problematic chess set this will not happen to you, but the question of piece placement still persists, so I had to use some post-dream engineering for this bit.  Therefore, each piece type is ranked on a scale of one to five like so:

Pawn = 2

Bishop = 3

Knight = 4

Rook = 4

Queen = 5

King = 1

The numbers on the grid indicate the maximum ranking of a piece that can be placed there in normal circumstances.  For example, a space marked with a 3 can hold a Bishop, a Pawn or a King.  So yes, a King could be placed in the front line, but given that either player could easily have either both Kings or no Kings, its status as a king is effectively nullified anyway.  

In the event that a player has fewer than eight pieces at a two or lower ranking, the next lowest available ranking pieces may be placed on as many 2-marked spaces that need to be filled.  For instance, if you only have seven Pawns and no Kings, a Bishop may be placed on the final 2-space.  If you have no Bishops either, then you may place a Knight or a Rook there instead, and so on.

Actually Playing the Game:

Following tradition, the player who possesses the White King moves first.  All pieces move as they were originally intended to, and this is where tradition stops.  Every given piece may only capture pieces of the opposing color.  For example, you cannot take an opponents Black Bishop with a Black Rook - you must take said Bishop with a White piece.  Given the randomness of the piece distribution, Castling is not a viable move (if it's even possible), and the standard play method is a free-for-all.  The game ends when one player either loses all his pieces and is therefore defeated, or if one color has been completely eliminated from the board (i.e. if neither player has any White pieces left)*.  In the latter situation, the winner is determined by who has more pieces remaining on the board.  

If you don't like free-for-alls, or just want to add some challenge back into the game, the Kings can be set aside from the initial drawing and used as actual Kings.  And heck, if you get bored with it, don't be afraid to make up your own variations.  Go nuts!

I imagine this style of play might ruffle some feathers.  Given the long, proud legacy of the game, some might see this as heresy, a dumbing-down of an old tradition.  However, I think  this is no such thing.  There would still be plenty of tactics involved in besting your opponent, and it would force you to think about chess in new and interesting ways.  Stalemates would still be just as infuriating as they were before, and while those "I'm going to take out your King and only your King" games are impressive, you have to admit that this would level the playing field a little more.  

Obviously, I haven't had a chance to playtest this and work out the kinks, but I'd love to develop it further.  So... anybody up for a game?

*EDIT: On Thanksgiving I had an opportunity to try out this game with my youngest sister and discovered that it would make much more sense for the game to end when one player loses one color.  Otherwise the game tends to drag on, as it did for us, as one player attempts to checkmate a White Queen with two White Pawns, a White Bishop and a single Black Knight.  

Hi!  Just a little filler before the next story/adventure/whatever I do next, but I saw this today and felt like taking a picture.

I CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT IT COULD POSSIBLY BE.  IS IT A STARFISH??  IT'S A STARFISH ISN'T IT.

Okay I'm done.

Miserable Clowne Man

It's been two busy, horrid weeks, and it's time for another post.  I have another Thrift Store Adventure in the works, but it isn't finished, so here's a story.  This one is called "Miserable Clowne Man" and it's a longer piece I made for one of my fiction classes in college.  We were supposed to write a two-or-fewer page story with one surreal element that was a metaphor for something else, but I misunderstood the directions and ended up writing a full-length five page assignment.  Thankfully the professor let it slide.  This was probably my first surreal story that wasn't completely horrible, and it was a lot of fun to write.

      He’d been following me for days— weeks, even— before he had the gall to show himself.  I’d been hearing him flopping around and whispering to himself for so long I’d almost tuned him out entirely… which in retrospect is probably why he stopped hiding.  I think he wanted attention.  I saw him first when I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth.  I squeezed the Colgate onto my toothbrush, looked into the mirror and there he was, staring dismally at his reflection with yellowed, world-weary eyes.

      His appearance didn’t surprise me; I had been well aware of his presence for quite a while.  I just hadn’t anticipated what exactly he would look like, and it came as somewhat of a shock.  I guess I expected him to look evil or at least more malicious than he did.  Really though, he just looked miserable.  I tried not to stare but I couldn’t help it.  I doubt he cared anyway.

      The first thing I noticed was his hat.  It was tall and pointy like a dunce cap, with a small brim and a red pom-pom on the top.  It had insults scribbled messily on it in black marker.  His tan overcoat was also covered in insults and looked like it hadn’t been washed in years.  It had black, white and red-striped fringe sewn onto the sleeves and collar which flopped limp over his hands and shoulders.  His eyes, as I said, were yellowed and miserable, sitting back in his face like rocks thrown into sand, and they had five-pointed stars drawn around them in eyeliner.  The rest of his features were small and pale, except for his red, bulbous nose. 

      I finished brushing my teeth and gave my face a quick wash.  I decided not to take a shower in case he tried to follow me.  I was going to be gardening later anyway… a shower would have been somewhat counterproductive.  So I went into the kitchen to get something to eat, and he shambled after me and moved aimlessly around the kitchen while I toasted a couple pop tarts and poured myself a glass of tomato juice.  At one point I looked up and caught him about to draw on the fridge with a big black magic marker.  I said “Please don’t do that,” and he threw me a very annoyed look, but he put the marker away.  I was going to offer him one of the pop tarts, too, but if he was going to be like that then he wouldn’t get any.  I felt weird eating in front of him, and apparently he felt the same way because he left after a little while.  It was somewhat of a relief, but I could still hear him shuffling about in the foyer, muttering to himself, and I could only hope that he wasn’t writing on the walls. 

      After I’d finished eating, I put my dishes in the sink and went straight to the foyer to check on him, and to get my shoes so I could go outside.  The walls were bare, thankfully.  He was there, staring out through the windows on either side of the door with enough distaste to make you think that sunshine was an affront to nature.  I wasn’t sure if he’d follow me outside or not.  I almost asked him if he would, if for no other reason than I would have been uneasy leaving him in the house by himself.  He looked so deep in his thoughts, though, I would have felt rude disturbing him.  Not that he’d been the perfect gentleman himself exactly, but one must act as an example in these types of situations.  So I left him alone and went to the closet to get my boots on.

      Only they weren’t there.  At least, that is to say that they weren’t on the floor where I’d put them the day before.  It took me a moment of confused rummaging to figure out that they, along with all my other shoes, had been stuffed into the sleeves of my winter coat.  I sighed and glanced around at him.  “You’re not going to make today easy for me, are you?” 

      He ignored me.  I shook my head and removed the various shoes from my coat.  Then, once I finally got my boots on, I headed outside with my miserable clowne man in my wake.  Being out in the open somehow made me think that maybe he’d go somewhere else for a while and leave me alone, but he continued to tail me into the garage.  I tried to ignore him, but it’s very difficult to ignore someone who’s following deliberately close behind you, and especially if that someone is wearing long, floppy shoes.  They kept hitting me in the heels, and every time they did I’d turn around and glare at him and he would back up, pretending it wasn’t him.  So I kept trying to ignore him, and it kept not working.  Eventually I finally retrieved my bushel basket and a pair of clippers from the garage and headed to my tomato patch. 

      My tomato patch is on my front lawn, separated from the sidewalk and the street beyond by a dingy wooden fence.  My lawn is splotchy and unkempt, the paint’s been peeling off my house for years and the fence is about to fall over, but my tomatoes… they are the stuff of legend.  Some men wax sports cars in their driveway during the summer while others put shiny new grills on their porch and have barbecues with their families.  Me?  I grow tomatoes.  But I don’t just grow tomatoes, I grow award-winning tomatoes.  I grow the best tomatoes in town.

      Well… I grow the only tomatoes in town.  But they are magnificent.  Honestly, I don’t understand why more people don’t grow tomatoes.  Seeds are cheap if you know where to get them, the taste can’t be beat, and the work is very cathartic.  When I got down between the cages and started pulling weeds out of the ground, I heard him flip-flopping across the lawn somewhere else.  With a sigh of relief, I pulled up a sprig of purslane and munched on it, tossing aside the less-desirable weeds.  That was more like it… just me and my garden, and no miserable clowne man hanging around. 

      Weeks before he’d appeared I had barely heard him.  His disgruntled whispers were overpowered by the inane chatter of my coworkers at the office, his shuffling footsteps masked by the rustling of a newspaper bearing more news about crooked politicians and natural disasters.  I started noticing him during rush hour when everybody was driving at half the speed limit because of a few drops of rain.  His disgruntled mutterings mingled with my own and it provided some mild comfort against the stupidity coming from the other cars.  It was nice to know I wasn’t alone.

      But it was the weekend.  I had time to relax and unwind.  Why was he still hanging around?  I paused my work and arched my back, catching a glimpse of the sky.  It was almost noon… a clear day, plenty of sun, comfortable and warm.  Wisps of cloud drifted lazily through the blue behind a small group of robins flying through the telephone wires, behind a white helium balloon flittering against its tether in the breeze.  It had “BITE ME” written on it in black marker.  I flinched and brought my eyes back down into my yard.  The balloon was tied to the fence with a length of black ribbon.  There were more of them tied to the fence, a couple to the mailbox…  “RETARD.”  “GET STUFFED.”  “PISS OFF.”  “DICKFACE.”  “WANKER.”  “CONGRESSMAN.” 

      “Ah jeez…” I muttered, standing up and looking around the yard.  I’m not one to care what the neighbors would think, but this was starting to get a little too ridiculous even for me.  My eyes swept the yard quickly, but he was nowhere to be seen.  I checked in the overgrown grass to see if I could follow his tracks, but his floppy footprints were everywhere going in every direction and it was impossible to see where he might have gone.  He’d apparently been running laps around my house while I’d lost myself in my weeding.  I had to find him before he did something really outrageous. 

      Then I heard a soft hissing in the distance, like air escaping from a compressor hose.  I stopped and strained my ears, and then I heard it again.  It was coming from the garage.  I jumped out of my garden and practically sprinted across the lawn to the garage.  I found him standing around the corner of the garage next to the wall that faced the Grangers’ dining room window with a can of spray paint in his hand.  I don’t know where he had gotten it, but he’d apparently been using it to write “LEON EATS DOG PO” in six-foot high letters on the siding.  He’d just started the second “O” when I found him. 

      “Give me that!” I yelled, pulling the spray paint out of his hand.  He looked at me the way one looks at a yappy dog that’s been following them around all day.  “What the hell do you want from me, anyway!?”  He didn’t say anything and continued to stab me with his eyes.  “You’re not scaring me,” I said.  “Come on.”  I grabbed his wrist, pulled him into the garage and opened the passenger door to my Jeep.  “Get in,” I said to him, “we’re going to the hardware store.”  He rolled his eyes, but got into the car anyway.  I slipped into the driver’s seat, put the key into the ignition and twisted it. 

      The solenoid clicked wildly and all the gauges on the dashboard jumped, but the car didn’t start.  I cocked my head and tried again, but the same thing happened.  Two more tries yielded the same result and I let out a roar, giving the steering wheel a solid whack.  Of all the times for my battery to die…

      I didn’t look at him, but I could feel him watching me, ridiculing me silently with his stupid face.  I could almost hear him laughing.  I set my teeth and opened the door, trying to keep my temper.  I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of getting on my nerves.  “Alright then,” I said evenly, “we’ll just have to walk.” 

      So we did.  Into town we went, with me in front and him following even closer behind than before.  With almost every step, the toe of his floppy shoes would hit the backs of my shins.  About half way to town he started poking me in the back with a piece of broom handle he’d apparently pulled out of his coat.  I’d swat it away and he’d stop for a little while, but then he’d start again not a minute later.  It was worse once we actually got into town.  He’d blow raspberries at almost everyone we’d pass, pull handkerchiefs out of his nose and push them in people’s faces.  Everyone stared at us as we passed by, giving us a wide berth.  They whispered loudly to each other, thinking we couldn’t hear them.  I tried to ignore it.  He just took it as an opportunity to hand out more of his insult balloons. 

      I was very relieved when we finally reached the hardware store.  The only person inside was Brenda, the cashier.  She knew me… she was the one who sold me all my gardening supplies.  She was short and bright with dyed black hair and a willing smile.  She greeted us warmly when we came in.  “Who’s your friend, Leon?” she asked, eyeing my miserable clowne man from head to toe.

      I shrugged.  “He’s been following me around all day,” I replied. 

      Brenda looked at the clowne man and he stuck his tongue out at her.  “Oh… okay then,” she said, turning back to me.  “So what do you need?”

      “Paint,” I said, “for my garage.” 

      Brenda looked skeptical.  “Since when do you paint anything?”

      I pointed at the clowne man with my thumb.  “This guy put graffiti all over the south wall.  I need to do some covering up.”

      Brenda nodded.  “Okay, okay, that makes sense.”  She came out from behind the counter and headed for the row of shelves where the paint was kept.  “Did you have a specific color in mind?”

      “Not really,” I called after her, following her through the shelves.  I paused and turned around to face the clowne man.  “Do not touch anything!” I whispered sternly.  He thumbed his nose at me and we continued walking. 

      “How about this?” Brenda asked as I caught up with her.  She pulled a can of deep red latex paint off of the shelf and showed it to me.  “It’d go with your tomatoes.” 

      I took the can from her and looked it over.  “I’d have to redo the whole garage,” I said. 

      Brenda shrugged.  “Get him to help you,” she said, nodding toward the clowne man.  “If he’s the one who ruined it in the first place.”

      I smiled.  “Right… I don’t think he’d be much help.”

      “It never hurts to ask,” she replied.  She looked around me at the clowne man.  “You will help him, won’t you?”  He crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.  Brenda looked back at me.  “See?” she said brightly, “I told you he’d help.”

      I looked back at the clowne man.  He had straightened and was now looking quite angry with Brenda, who was smiling sweetly back at him.  “Here,” she said, “I’ll ring a couple of these up for you.  My shift’s almost done… I can come by if you want to make sure he’s holding up his end of the deal.”  She pulled another can of paint off the shelf and slipped down the rows of shelves back to the counter.  I followed her, looking back at the clowne man.  He looked dazed, like he’d just lost a hand of poker to someone who had been bluffing. 

      I paid for the paint and Brenda made the clowne man carry one of the cans.  We were about to leave when Brenda stopped us.  “Did you guys walk the whole way?” she asked.

      “Yeah, why?”

      She raised her finger.  “Hang on a minute.”  She went through the door behind the counter that led to the back room.  The clowne man and I looked at each other and then back at the door.  A little while later, Brenda emerged without her apron on, jingling a key ring.  “Here, I’ll give you a ride home.” 

      The clowne man and I followed her outside and we all got into her station wagon.  I sat in the front with Brenda and we talked about gardening and food and things.  I looked into the back every now and then to make sure the clowne man wasn’t drawing on anything.  When we got back to my house, I retrieved some old paint brushes from the garage and we all set to work.  Brenda and I worked fairly quickly, talking all the while.  We worked much faster than the clowne man, who was looking more and more dismal the more we painted.  Halfway through the first wall, Brenda watched him for a little while.  “He looks hungry, Leon,” she said.  “When did you see him eat last?”

      “He hasn’t eaten all day as far as I know.”

      “Aww, poor guy,” she muttered.  She set her brush down on the edge of the paint can and put her hand on his shoulder.  “Hey, you wanna get something to eat?” 

      He looked like he was trying to be indignant, but he couldn’t quite manage it.  Finally he nodded, his pointy hat flopping oddly on his head. 

      Brenda smiled.  “Come on inside, we’ll get you some food.” 

      I watched her lead him into the house and stood there, dumbfounded.  Is that really all it took?  Why hadn’t I thought of that?  I’d been trying to avoid him, trying to get him to go away and do something else for the whole day, and Brenda had done it in a moment or two.  I would have been frustrated if it weren’t for the fact that I felt a lot better now that he was gone. 

      I continued painting.  It was a little after noon now.  The sun felt good and warm on my head, and it was helping the paint to dry quite nicely.  I liked the red… it really did go with my tomatoes. 

      I’d just finished painting the south wall when Brenda came back out of the house.  I watched her approach, waiting for the clowne man to come out the door at any second, following her.  He didn’t, though.  Brenda smiled at me, squinting in the light.  “He was really hungry,” she said.  “He ate three tuna sandwiches and had five glasses of milk.”

      “Where is he now?”

      “I left him napping on the couch.”

      “Oh okay.”  I thought a moment.  “How was he?”

      “He behaved very nicely.  The food cheered him up a lot.”

      “Well good,” I said.  I looked across the street where the roofs of the houses and the tops of the trees gave way to the sky.  “I hope he’ll be okay.”

      “He’ll be fine, I’m sure.” 

      We stood there and looked at the bottom of the sky for a while.  A breeze sprang up and caught the insult balloons, making them sway.  I walked quietly to the garden and picked up the clippers I’d left in the bushel basket.  One by one, I went to each balloon and clipped their black ribbons, letting the insults float away into the sky.

Thrift Store Adventures

                Since childhood I have always loved going to thrift stores.  My reasons have changed over the years- When I was small my favorite thing was to empty the box of second hand toys in the creepy back room of the Salvation Army and play with all of them for what seemed like hours, only interrupted when Mom came back to pull me away into a changing room to try on all the clothes she’d picked out while I was occupied.  When I was a teenager my focus shifted to the music and literature sections for cheap 45 rpm records and paperbacks.  Later still, I found that thrift stores were a great resource for trench coats.

                These days I’m drawn to thrift stores for the more adult reasons of filling gaps in my wardrobe for cheap, but also just for the sheer fun of seeing what I can find.  Jess and I are fortunate to live near several thrift stores but our favorite is AmVets, which has by far the lowest prices and the best selection of obscure stuff you could ever hope to find.  It’s the only thrift store I’ve ever been to that’s had an antique arc welder available, and oh hey, who needs a motorcycle seat? 

 It's for exactly this reason that I’ve wanted to document one of our AmVets excursions for some time now, and I finally did earlier this week when we went out with my sister Anna.  There were of course the usual shenanigans; Anna briefly entertained the notion of dressing up as Bill Cosby for Halloween,  Jess fanned herself with sophistication, and I found something sharp and heavy which I wasn’t sure what to do with. 

Jess kept telling me to put it back.  Killjoy.

                Then I paid a visit to the place where they keep all the figurines.  I always like visiting this section because sometimes you can pose or head-swap them, which entertains my childish side to no end.  I found some soulless ice skaters and some weird looking elves.  Unsettling, sure, but unfortunately not really anything I could mess with.

I also found the back half of an elephant, though, so there's that. 

                We did find a couple of treasures, too.  Sitting among several knick knacks, I found a three-deck Canasta set, which I snapped up quickly.  I don’t know how to play Canasta, but I have vivid memories of card boxes very similar to this at my grandma’s house, and it sort of called to me (anyone who is familiar with my obsession with clocks will understand why).  Plus, it was only ninety nine cents!  

[Insert Macklemore soundclip here]

                The other treasure we found tucked way in the back, past all the obsolete computer parts and the miscellaneous power tools:  

  Know what that is?  It’s a centrifuge, complete with biohazard warning on the front!  I’m tempted to ask where they find this stuff, and though I’m certain the answer has something to do with the surrounding college, hospital, and combinations of the two, it still doesn’t really explain who would donate a piece of lab equipment like this, nor why they would price it at just under seven dollars.  So, does anybody need a cheap centrifuge?  Because I know where you can find one.

(NOTE: At the time of this posting, these events took place almost exactly a week ago.  We have another AmVets excursion planned for this Tuesday.  Hopefully the next post won’t take me so long to finish.)

Flash Fiction Piece: The Motion of the Earth

Another week, another flash story I wrote a while ago and never showed anyone.  I hope I finish something new soon, I'm beginning to worry I'll run out of these.

      A quarter of a mile from the tip of the massive slope where my family’s house was, we’d abandoned our antique runner sleds to frolic in the snowdrifts.  She’d been talking almost nonstop about something she’d seen on the internet so I pegged her with a snowball.  Her rambling turned into amused shrieks as we flung bits of hard packed snow at each other’s heads.  She chased me out into the field, heaving a collection of hard chunks the snow plow had left behind.  I ran away from the path laughing and she followed, childish threats issuing carelessly from her mouth.  Our legs burned and we collapsed breathless into the snow.  I rolled onto my back, the snow cradling my body better than any memory foam mattress ever could.  My breath joined the clouds, excess heat was leeched from my coat, and I was left motionless and perfectly neutral.  I could have stayed like that forever.  I could have become the Ice Man, and I wouldn’t have minded.

      “…and yeah, it’s understandable that she was angry, and the reporter shouldn’t have been bugging her like that, but her son was right there.  She should have shown more restraint.”

      It could have been seconds later, or it could have been hours.  Either way, I hadn’t been listening.  “Mm hmm.”

      “And of course all her fans were cheering for her, and it was kind of funny to see her go nuts like that, but I couldn’t help but think, like, what kind of example is she setting for him?”

      “Uh huh.”

      “You know?”

      “Mm hmm.”  I could see her out of the corner of my eye, kneeling in the snow, playing with a pile of snow, packing it into itself.  I couldn’t take my eyes off the sky.  I was moving, the earth was moving, and the clouds were standing still.

      “I guess you could say she was just standing up for herself, and yeah, that’s a valuable thing to know, but you don’t teach it to a kid by just attacking a reporter out of—”

      “Hey Em.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Come over here and lie down for a minute.”

      She hesitated a moment then moved over to where I was.  She let herself fall down in the snow next to me and propped herself up on her elbow, her scarf-wrapped face looming over mine. 

      “No, on your back,” I said.

      She looked at me like I was crazy but did it anyway, and suddenly she was part of the earth, like me.  The sky was motionless with us moving.  The air was silent except for our breathing.

      “What am I supposed to be looking at?” she asked.

      “That,” I said, pointing up at nothing in particular. 

      “What?  That cloud?”

      “No, just that.”  I held my breath and listened.  There was nothing to hear, and it was perfect. 

      “I don’t get it,” she said.  I wasn’t surprised.

Flash Fiction Piece: She Called Me Sweetheart

It's been a week and I feel overdue, so here's another flash fiction story.

I am working on something not-flash-fiction-y, but it isn't done yet.  Hoping it'll be the first of many installments, but we'll see where it goes.  Anyway, enjoy!

      It was about ten in the morning, maybe ten fifteen or so.  I had Modest Mouse going on my mp3 player.  I’m on my way to God don’t know, my brain’s the burger and my heart’s the coal.  I was wearing my ratty winter coat and a bandana on my head, even though it was too cold for that.  I had my guitar strapped to my back and I was heading to my buddy Jim Walker’s house.  We were going to jam before we had to perform that evening; we’d never done an acoustic set before and we wanted to get some practice in.

      It was bright and crisp, the air was biting my ears.  There were two people ahead of me across the street.  I could see them silhouetted against the sunlight reflecting off the side of the Catholic church.  One of them was spinning around, arms wide, holding something small with handles.  It looked like one of those cases the Mormon missionaries carried their scripture in.  I thought they were Mormon missionaries at first and almost waved to them.  I’d met them going that way before so it wouldn’t have surprised me.  One of them had offered me a card, but I declined.  I was a member already, they just hadn’t met me yet.  We had a good laugh about it afterwards.

      The spinning one had a ponytail.  It was a woman with a purse, and so was her companion.  Definitely not the Mormons.  They were both wearing black jackets which could have been leather.  They weren’t white women, but they weren’t black either.  I’m bad with ethnicities.  The spinning one stopped, facing me.  She yelled something across the street and her friend looked at her.

      I pulled one of my earbuds out.  “Wuwazat?”

      “I say, sweetheart, you have a kind of cigarette on you?”

      I shook my head.  “Nah, sorry.”  I don’t smoke.  It’s a filthy habit.  Did I look like I smoked?  I carry a lighter, but not for cigarettes.  If she’d asked for a light, I would have obliged.  I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, I hate the smell of cigarette smoke, but I would have done it, even if one of us had to cross the street. 

      “Shit.”  She turned back around and kept walking.  I heard the two women start talking again as I put my earbud back in.  I don’t know what they were saying.  For a moment I entertained the notion that they were talking about me, but I’m sure they weren’t.  I was just a means to an end.  She wanted a cigarette and I didn’t have one. 

      But she called me “sweetheart.”

      I went on my way and met up with Jim at his house.  He opened the door and smiled.  “Hey man, how’s it going?”  He stepped aside to let me in.

      “Not too bad,” I replied.  “Some lady asked me for a cigarette.”

      Jim just shrugged and looked at me, waiting for me to tell him more, like my story wasn’t finished. 

      “Yeah… I don’t know,” I muttered.  He laughed. 

      We played our instruments together for most of the day, then headed to the gig around six.  Our act went over well, even better than we would have hoped.  The whole crowd clapped enthusiastically for us at the end of each song.  When we were done with our set, they called for an encore.  We hadn’t had anything planned, so I stepped up and did a cover of the song “I Save Cigarette Butts” by Daniel Johnston.  They really seemed to like it.  People approached us as we were packing up and told us that we sounded really good and they liked our music. 

      That night, after I got home, I played the song again.  I save cigarette butts for a poor girl… across town… 

      She wasn’t anyone I knew or recognized, I’d never seen her before and I knew I’d never see her again, but I was still thinking about her.  She called me “sweetheart.”  I was certain she’d forgotten about me.  Maybe I’ll go out and buy a pack of cigarettes just to have on me in case somebody asks.  I doubt the missionaries would like that.

Flash Fiction piece: Jefferson and Wade

          I wrote this during my last semester in college.  It was kind of a weird time for me.

     The giant tar ball had been growing steadily since it had pushed its way out of the sewer at eight o’clock that morning.  It had pushed against the grating, lifting it up from the bottom; it was too thick to ooze through the slots.  That was how it started, as a small mound of thick, heavy tar pushing its way out from the ground in the middle of the intersection.  It didn’t stink, it didn’t make any gross noises.  By twelve o’clock it had blocked the entire intersection, going from diverting traffic to the sidewalks, then to the lawns and plazas around nearby office buildings, finally stopping the traffic altogether.  The police got involved, establishing detours for people to travel on to avoid the giant tar ball, and to keep back the crowds of onlookers and allow room for the firefighters who had been called to rescue some foolhardy folks who had (for some reason) tried driving through the ball and gotten hopelessly stuck not a tenth of the way through.  A haz-mat team was called at one point to see what they could make of the tar ball.  However there wasn’t anything toxic about it.  It was just a very big, very sticky glob of a black, tar-like substance expanding slowly out over the intersection of Jefferson and Wade.

      Naturally, this worried a large number of people who realized that if this continued the tar ball would engulf the city in a matter of days.  Some chose to leave the city, packing up their cars or renting trailers or moving vans to carry the things they couldn’t do without.  They went in all directions, an unofficial evacuation to wherever.  More people stayed in their homes, barricading doors and windows and watching the thing expand on the news.  Still more, however, decided to picket the Mayor’s office with signs hastily crafted from brooms and poster board, under the misguided assumption that the Good Mayor knew exactly how to stop it and was just choosing not to.  By two o’clock there were over a thousand people outside the mayor’s office with signs that read “LESS BLOB, MORE JOBS” and “BAN THE BALL,” scrawled across them in sign marker.  The police were called, though none came— they were too busy trying to control the even larger crowds gathered around the still-swelling tar ball.  A local environmentalist group, firmly convinced that the pollution they’d been warning everybody about for the past ten years was finally manifesting itself (albeit in a very strange manner), and joined the crowd around the mayor’s office, introducing their own signs, which they had apparently been saving for a moment such as this.  They brought with them megaphones and shouted slogans about protesting oil spills.  Meanwhile, the mayor was sitting in his office, not knowing what to do besides trying to reassure everyone (via television and radio, because the people outside were certainly not going to listen) that everything was going to be alright.  After all, the rest of the city was perfectly normal despite a slight increase in traffic.  It was just the intersection of Jefferson and Wade that had been blocked by the giant tar ball.  The picketing persisted. 

      At four o’clock, the tar ball stopped expanding.  It had rolled slowly across the signs and sidewalks, the small trees and carefully manicured lawns until it had reached the walls of the buildings that lined the streets.  At that point it stopped, and at 4:08 pm precisely it began to recede, and for the next four hours it slipped back into the sewer at twice the rate it had expanded.  Back, over the lawns and walkways, pulling up the grass and dirt as it went, stripping leaves and branches off the small trees, uncovering flattened trash cans and street signs and the two or three unlucky vehicles that it had caught and stopped and rolled over.  By 8:15 that evening, the tar had completely disappeared, leaving nothing but its wreckage and a ring of very confused onlookers in its wake.