Jeffrey Albright ~ Joshua David Dunlap ~ Dan Zangerl

Drei Erzählungen

 

 

Jeffrey Albright

Tuck

 

The soft glow and continuous sounds of medical equipment emanated from the rooms lining the ICU. Percy Baggett, an awkwardly skinny man, cleaned with purpose in his neatly pressed janitorial whites taking care not to wake the patients. Working the evening shift at Mercy General, Percy was consumed with anxiety as the clock neared eleven. It was almost time to go home. Percy lived in one of the oldest houses in Fremont; just a few bus transfers away. Percy lived alone with his mother.

 

After stopping at the pharmacy for a few of mother’s many prescriptions, Percy arrived home and entered through the kitchen, being as quiet as possible. Mother’s apnea was music to Percy’s ears. Percy left the paper bag of prescriptions near the sink and retreated to his bedroom, not making a sound.

 

Quickly disrobing, Percy headed to his closet and retrieved an old dress. He held it against himself as he advanced towards a full-length antique mirror.  In harmony with mother’s toothless snore, Percy’s fingers ran up and down the blue velveteen held tight against his tall naked body. That tingling sensation between his legs was back; this annoyed Percy. As the dress fell to the floor, Percy refused to acknowledge his penis in the reflection. Without a glance, Percy tucked his naughty part between his legs and was again admiring the reflection in the mirror. A long red-haired Leona stared back tenderly swinging her arms, wearing only a sheepish smile. Leona’s smile turned to revulsion as she was interrupted by mother’s nasal assault.          

 

“I tell ya, Percy, you better shut that old goat up before I do. Can we not enjoy the silence?”

 

Leona was now admiring her skinny backside as she kicked at the old blue dress lying in a pile at her feet.  

 

“Percy, this stingy blue dress again? I want something really lovely to wear! Did you snatch that old corpse’s dangly silver earrings yet? I don’t know why you are so afraid of her. Why won’t she just die already?”

 

Disregarding Leona’s remarks, Percy grabbed a moth-eaten terrycloth robe hanging near the door and threw it on.

 

“Jesus, Percy, why do you dress me in such ugly garments? Terrycloth, Percy? Of all things!”

 

“You must keep it down, Leona.”

 

He opened the door and stood for a moment…listening. Percy knew his mother had taken two pills by the intensity of her snore. Mother should not be bothering anyone tonight. As Percy made his way across his large bedroom, he was careful not to make a peep. The wood floors were always ready to alert mother, no matter how hard she slept. Slipping into the bathroom, Percy turned on the shower.

 

As steam surrounded Percy, he used a shiny straight razor to remove any signs of body hair. Percy froze when he heard the wooden floor creak.

 

“Well, I’ll be damned!” roared Percy’s mother.

 

“Little Percy Baggett, momma’s little faggot!” Mother chimed as she entered the bathroom with the velveteen dress in hand.

 

Mother snatched the curtain open, causing Percy additional humiliation. Percy swung at his mother, something he had never done. Mother stood staring at Percy in stunned silence. Percy noticed the razor in his hand dripping with blood. Mother’s white flannel gown, taking on multiple shades of red as the slice across her neck became apparent. Mother fell to the floor with a wet thud.

 

“Mother?” questioned Percy as if expecting a response.

 

Through the reflection in the bathroom mirror Leona laughed, then Percy let out a nervous giggle.

 

“You did it, Percy! Get that heifer in the tub before she makes a bigger mess.” Percy did as Leona instructed.

 

Moments later, Percy was sitting in front of his pride and joy, an old Edwardian vanity table. The carved pilasters and decorative top were massive. The slide curtain, designed in damask and untouched by time, concealed a mirror. As Percy slid open the curtain, two small oval lights were activated enhancing his reflection. Leona stared back and smiled.

 

“Now, was that so hard?”

 

Leona carefully clipped a dangly silver earring to each ear. “Don’t momma’s earrings look pretty?”

 

 

Jeffrey Albright has spent the last fourteen years listening to stories, discovering characters and gathering fodder for his stories from behind a salon chair. His dream is to write a bestseller from a reclusive cabin in the woods. For now, Jeffrey continues to run the trendiest salon in downtown Tacoma, Washington and lives with his wonderful husband, James. He enjoys traveling Europe looking for story fodder and continues his quest to find the perfect cappuccino.

 

 

 

Joshua David Dunlap

Life is Breathed Into a Hotel Room

The hotel room is large & the walls are covered with peeling white & blue pinstripe wallpaper; it is desperately clinging on.  The side table is littered with miniature alcohol bottles, scraps of paper, a pack of cigarettes & a lighter.

 

She’s sitting on the bed, bottom-less with a black bra, casually taking drags from a cigarette.

Her legs are modestly crossed with her opposite hand between them, in a nonsexual way.  Her back is to the large window with the beige curtains drawn back.  The room is faintly lit with most of the light casually bleeding in from the outside world.  The living, breathing city down below more than six feet beneath our feet.  All warm bodies coming & going, each with their own existence. 

 

Miniature clouds veil her painted red fingernails for seconds before dissipating. Making this moment in time as fickle & elusive as the smog billowing from the mouth of a smoke stack.  It curls and dances in the air before melting into nothing.  

I’m sitting across the room in an uncomfortable chair, also bottom-less with my legs crossed.  I don’t know how long we’ve been sitting here like this.  I’ve been using the ashtray as a makeshift timepiece; it’s almost full.  I think it’s past midnight.

 

“Those things will fucking kill you.  They’ll kill me just being near them.  What else can you say that about?” I ask.

 

She leans back, resting both elbows on the bed.  Her eyes shoot straight through the ceiling as she exhales into the air like a locomotive barreling down the tracks but can’t slow down, rampant & out of control.

 

“Microwaves,” she says smiling with a child-like confidence.

 

“That’s a myth,” I shoot back.

 

“Well, whatever.  I like smoking.”

“Why?”

“It gives me time to think.”

“You know, you can think without smoking.”

“I know that,” she says glancing through me, “it’s just...”

She pauses & takes a drag; exhale.

 

“Growing up, my mother used to smoke.”

“So?”

“Well, we weren’t allowed to bother her until she finished her cigarette.  It was her time.”

“So, you want privacy? Is that it?”

“No, it’s not that. It's that she would go out onto the porch,"

She takes another drag; exhale.

"She used to love the rain, the summer rain. She told me once that she liked the way it smelled & how the warmth felt on her skin.  Feeling each individual drop melt into you.  Or how in the winter, she’d be out on the porch & she would watch the warm smoke mix with her visible breath, dancing with each other.   The way she spoke about these minute details was so beautiful. Like the time needed to finish the cigarette gave her some kind of clarity. You know?  As if it were long enough to find some kind of meaning.”

“Meaning?”

 

“Yeah, I don’t know.  Some way to cut through the day to day bullshit.  To experience life. The smoke only floats for so long; the cigarette burns out.”

“Some people: religion.  Others cigarettes,” I say jokingly.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Why not religion then?”

“My brain always wins out over my heart.  I barely trust that old pump.”

“Aren’t you worried about dying?”

“No,” she says easily.

“Why not?”

“We’re all going to die someday.”

“Yeah, but…”

“I’ll die trying to find my meaning.”

“But what if you, or I, or we, don’t have a meaning?”

“Then this will be all I had.  This brief moment in a hotel room will have added to whatever meaning there is to life."

"Then...what would it all mean?"

"Nothing and everything; I’ll just die.”

 

 

 

Dan Zangerl

The Rat

 

The damned rat started squeaking again; somehow among all the tireless whirring, sucking, and gulping of all the subterranean machinery, the rodent’s cries still broke the mechanical ambiance.

 

             I was trying to work of course. I was always trying to work, but alas my mind, teeming with ideas was like trying to squeeze tar through a funnel. The dread of stagnation of course led my mind to wander, wandering led to distractions. Oh some distractions were needed, like servicing and maintaining the machines, but the work did not get done.

              I had tried to free myself of these distractions venturing ever further away from the world and its distractions, farther and farther away, deep down, until I had lost sight of the way back. Now amidst the dark, the cold and the damp, among the tireless drones of substrata machinery the mouse continued to cry.

              Images, visualizations, thoughts of a tiny helpless rodent trapped in a whirring cog or sucked into the narrow mouth of a pipe. All of them, distractions!

 

               I had work I needed to do!

 

               Hours turned to days, weeks turned into hours, minutes turned into years! The shunning of the sun took its toll on my concept time. Much of my progress remained stagnant as did what little of the world still sought me,   save for that vile pest, that petty, pathetic little vermin. It and still its cries remained constant.

 

                I needed to work dammit! That’s all there was to it. I didn’t care if the wretched thing died or not. It was distracting me! I tried to concentrate, masking the roar of the machines over the squeaks of the pitiful little mouse. But still it cried on. Thoughts of searching for the thing, finding it, setting it free or putting it out of its mystery plagued my mind.  NO! NO! I had to work! I had to ignore it! No more distractions!

               The thoughts were coming now, I could feel them. A hydraulic piston stamped down and strained before yielding to a wrenching halt. The machines! They’ve stopped! A sudden panic took over me as I wafted into the flooded engine room, waist deep in cold oily water. The main pump had failed and the hydraulics that maintained the pressure hatch to the surface had flooded.  I jogged against the icy black pool, barely touching the bottom now as I looked for a panel, a light, anything! Then I heard, forlornly in the darkness a soft and pathetic squeak.

                It was a sad and mournful squeak, as the mouse lay trapped in the vacuum embrace of an intake hose. The cold, wet, pitiful thing squeaked its last warning too late.

 

                I write these last words knowing that within the hour the unrelenting flood will fill my chamber of isolation, swallowing me and my work in my soon to be watery tomb. Still, I feel no remorse for the loss of my work, what I do regret is the distractions, keeping me from realizing the urgent warnings of my little friend…. 
 

 
“My name is Dan Zangerl, I am a Swiss-American ESL Teacher living in Urbana Illinois, and hold Bachelors in Arts. I come from three generations of scientists and storytellers. Two of my favorite topics are folklore and natural science and how they relate to contemporary narrative. I find "what if" scenarios fun and challenging and try to write stories based on what ideas those questions lead to. All knowledge starts with a question, and all questions, start with imagination.”