Chicken Coop

When I found Granny in the chicken coop where she’d been collecting eggs, she was hunched down in the hay as if looking for pennies at the fair and her hair looked like a poodles, tiny curls that hadn’t been combed out yet. I’d said, “Granny—did you get your hair fixed up?” She didn’t answer. So I just watched her, still and leaning over, wondering if the hay was hurting her knees and that’s when I saw the pieces of eggshells crushed underneath her outspread fingers. The clear coagulated ooze surrounding her hands, yellow streaks in the pools. I came closer to her and patted the curls on her head, still wet, but soft. “It looks professional Granny, like a movie star,” I’d whispered. Nothing. Then Momma opened the little door and squeezed in behind me, “What’re you two doing in here? Tryin’ to lay eggs yourself?” And I knew something was wrong, and I knew my Momma didn’t know yet (by her tone), and all I could say was, “Feel Granny’s hair Momma, it feels like a baby-dolls.” The chickens started up the plank toward the opening that Granny was in front of and Momma started throwing hay at them yelling, “Git, Git, Git,” sounding like chicken Morse code and they must have understood, ‘cause they started flapping their wings and walking backwards with the claws of their feet dangling on the walkway, making a terrible scratching sound.

"Stay back," Greg's putting his arm back like he's swiping at me, trying to keep me from getting ahead of him, like a dog zigzagging in front to keep the lead. I can't see the furniture except the faint outline from before the lights went out, the curve of the sofa, the edge of the curtain, the Happy Birthday sign still hanging along the window. The street lights are still on outside, and I start to wonder if this is some kind of joke. Earlier he'd insisted upon camping outside, but we were having turkey and swiss sandwiches for dinner and I'd told him about how the cheese mixed with the fresh air and eating it outside grossed me out, and all he'd said was: Oh brother, 'cause that's what he always said after I gave a little of myself, Oh brother, as if we were family.

Legal Matters

Val hoped, with the money her and Wendy earned, she’d be able to buy two movies a week. Up at Sound Stairway, previously viewed movies were $5.99 and since her allowance was only $10.00 she’d never bought two in the same week. Trying to save the remaining money so she could buy two the next week was never possible, since the candy shop and the dollar store were in the same building. It wasn’t until Wendy offered the two of them up to her step-father to clean his law office every Thursday after school, that Val could imagine having enough money to do as she pleased.

Puzzles

With Gary only half-through the daily crossword puzzle, Anita knew she would be spending the afternoon suspended in yet another wordless bubble. She’d tried to cancel the paper a month ago, but they called two days later and spoke with Gary offering less than what they’d been paying for it for the last three years. She pretended she didn’t know how it had gotten cancelled in the first place. Lately, during the silence, Anita has been wishing she were a dog person—a rambunctious dog-lover who lets the pup run amuck, chewing on furniture and tearing up the newspaper. Obviously she can’t teach Jellybean to do any tricks, unless she considers litter on the end tables some sort of help. Gary wasn’t always into crosswords, in fact when they met he was fascinated by insects and they’d often take day-trips up to Morgan-Lang hill and collect them in old prescription bottles. He’d told Anita being around flying bugs made him feel whimsical. She’d laughed, and just to impress him since they’d just begun their togetherness, she told him they made her feel desirable. Breaking the silence as Anita reminisced; Gary called from his recliner, “What’s a nine letter word for household pest?”


Thanks to The One Minute Writer's daily prompt: What puzzles you? Check out her blog!

The Ghost

She’d said I was like a ghost, and fluttered her hands in the air that looked more like a butterfly. I laughed and did the whole “who me?” bit, but then it sunk through me: a cloud of annoyance, with the top hovering around my head and the bottom coming just under my diaphragm. The whole sensation was unshakable, throwing me into a funk that seemed to last a little over a week. I’d wake up while it was still night, noticing the back porch sensors being triggered by raccoons cleaning up the rest of Mr. Magee’s food dish, and then I’d think of ghosts. Not like Casper or the see-thru versions of my childhood favorite horror movies, but skewed versions of myself when I was thirteen, fourteen, all the way up until now—thirty-eight. I demanded to myself I was no more of a ghost than those portrayed on television—mere special effects—after all who had I ever haunted? Old friends or co-workers? Acquaintances? My ex-husband or past instructors? And is that what she meant when she’d said it, that I’d become a recurring memory for her, or perhaps she only truly wanted to compliment me.

The Talk

The conversation started light. How was I doing? Fine. How was she doing? Okay. George her beagle had died, but now there was Kyle, the German Shepherd, so things were looking up, she'd said. Some comments on the weather and the price of gas weaved through, a bit about the plastic cups we were drinking out of. The necessity of recycling, she'd warned. I didn't bring up my habit of using disposable picnic-ware for my meals. A few words on how bad diet drinks were on the body. I was glad I'd ordered mine before she arrived. Then, when the waiter came by to see if we were ready for the check, he was wearing one of those T-shirts with the fake tuxedo printed on the front with a red tie, we said "not yet" in unison and began talking about Derek as if we'd seen him only yesterday.

Award Speech

He scribbled it on the grocery receipt Laura left in the fruit bowl on the table. The oranges were starting to go soft, so a discolored smudge was at the top of the thin paper, near the store name and date: Frederick's Foodsaver, February 23, 2009. In his neat handwriting he began writing: Jimmy, Tom, Lucy, macaroni and cheese, chess, Japan, Twinkies (not low-fat), and the late Jim Henson. He stuffed it inside his jean jacket, put on his stocking cap and as he got into his car he wished he would have remembered to get the rest of the Twinkies back from Laura, those award shows never had Hostess.

This paragraph was prompted by The One-Minute Writer's prompt for today: You've just won an Academy Award. What will you say in your acceptance speech?
Check out her blog: http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/

The Makeshift Treehouse

Mattie hadn't been back to the treehouse since the weekend her step-grandmother came to visit and then ended up leaving in an ambulance. At the dinner table the six of them, Mattie, her mother and step-father, Greg and his friend Tommy and Grandma Jess, ate hamburger pie made with Bisquick and green beans. Greg was the first to see Grandma Jess roll her eyes back and open her mouth just wide enough to allow the gray-colored sludge to roll down her chin. He watched with his own mouth open, eyes wide, frozen as if seeing the water in a stopped up toliet creep to the top of the bowl. Mattie saw Greg and poked him in the arm to get him to close his mouth. Then Grandma Jess started to shrug her shoulders in fast, jittery movements and Mattie's mom jumped up and put both arms around her to keep her from falling out of the chair. Later, when Greg was put in charge while their parents stayed at the hospital until after dark, Mattie went out to the treehouse with the leftover hamburger pie. She divided it out onto her plastic dinner plates, mashing each portion with a wooden spoon, trying to get it to look like it had on Grandma Jess's face.

Personalized

Faye was a horror. A selfish, passive-aggressive, black-haired beauty that stayed with Neil just until he dropped out of the welding program at the community college and then she left him. She broke every personalized coffee mug that he had given her. She washed his clothes with olive oil. She even threw his Macadamia nuts on the floor and crushed them with her tiny little feet. But Neil just sat at the kitchen table, legs crossed, reading the letters to the editor and sucking on a handful of sunflower seeds. And finally when he heard her car door shut, Neil spit his seeds on the floor and uncrossed his legs, resting them up on the table—right next to the broken handle of the first mug he gave Faye.

Desserts

"Ice cream," she whined.
"Cake!" he pounded his fists on the counter.
"Rainbow Sherbert!" she insisted.
"Devil's food." he plugged his ears.
"I'm allergic to chocolate." she screamed in his face.
"I'm allergic to you." he kept his ears plugged so the words sounded funny only to him. He laughed.
"You think this is funny?" she pried his hands away from his head. One slipped and he slapped himself.
"Yes." But he didn't really.
"Forget it. Fine. Devil's food." she grabbed her keys.
"You're driving?" he rubbed the side of his face.
"So?" she put her hands on her hips.
"Okay." he shrugged his shoulders.
"What?"
"Nothing. I was just thinking."
"Thinking what?
"I'm not sure Devil's food sounds that good anymore."

The Day Trip

She'd gone over it in her head enough that by the time she left the kids, she felt okay with the situation. Dixie's thirteenth birthday was on Monday and Diane was four months away from her eighth birthday, and according to a magazine she flipped through at the grocery store, the maturity level of teenagers was increasing faster than it had twenty years ago. Of course she hadn't heard what Diane whispered to Dixie just as she reminded them to bolt the door as she closed it. Maybe if she did, she wouldn't have gone or maybe if she did, she wouldn't have come back.

And she stepped on one of those fortune weight scales in the bathroom--you know the kind that predict your life--but by the time you're interested it's just words bobbing back and forth like they aren't even sure they should be there. And she wasn't sure she should be there anyway. Yes, she could predict how the movie would end, and yes she thought it would have an oscar nod, but really, all she cared about was why Gwen was standing on the quarter scale and what she could have done to stop it.

The Foreclosure

When Richard got the fourth notice about the foreclosure he opened it on his way over to the condo. The first letter he placed in a horror novel he was reading on the weekends, the second he rolled up and used to fish his keys from underneath the kitchen hutch, and the third he lined the bottom of Slim’s cage. He decided it would do him better to recycle the paper, since he knew there was nothing he could do to stop the process the bank had already begun.

Cat Litter

It wasn’t because she was lazy, that’s what she was trying to explain to Olivia. The cat litter fight was coming again, turds rolled in gravely pieces of dusty chalk and the goddamn cat on the window sill watching the argument escalate.
“What if I’m pregnant?”
“Oh cut out the pregnant shit, what if I am?”
“You don’t even fuck.”
Gayle wasn’t entirely sure if she meant her last outburst. She had never seen Olivia bring any men over, except her own brother—who she was certain was mentally ill, perhaps bi-polar. They had played an online poker game until after 2:00 a.m. and it was Adam who had complained the next morning of the smell coming from the cat box. Still, she was pretty certain that Olivia didn’t have a sex partner—let alone any chance that she could be pregnant—which brought her to where they were right now, and she didn’t want to take any chances of losing this imaginary baby by changing the litter.
“It’s your cat.” Olivia pointed at Ginger who was at this point licking her right paw looking bored with the situation.
“Who paid the deposit?” Gayle crossed her arms, looking smug.
“I only paid it because you said you were waiting for your kicker. Which by the way I saw an envelope in the trash a week ago.”

Medical Records

I found out Mike Slater from my senior English class was tested for herpes but I never found out if it was positive or negative. I mean obviously it’s negative if it’s positive. There’s nothing positive about a positive test. I also stumbled across Megan Albright’s abnormal Pap smear results. Just a follow up appointment was scheduled. The weirdest thing I had discovered so far was that Mrs. Bromwell, the junior counselor I was sent to years ago because I left a nasty note in Judy Casterman’s P.E. locker, had bipolar disorder. This explains a lot since half of the class liked her as a counselor and the other half hated her. She told her doctor she had been diagnosed three years earlier by a psychiatrist but refused medication because she didn’t want to gain weight, but judging by her weight chart I don’t think it would have mattered. HavH hhejHaving all this information helped me stay awake at work; otherwise the medical records could be a real bore.

The Prescription

She didn’t intended on taking a vacation with Sumner, not at first anyway. When he invited her she thought he was joking. After all, he had been dealing with the family in room five and took thirty minutes to write three pages of orders on the newest chest pain admit. He seemed too busy to be thinking of anything but the normal quickness of a doctor on call. It wasn’t until he asked her for a prescription pad, scribbled a line and then handed it to her when Katherine sat for more than a minute trying to make out the last word: Maui.

The Call

When Jerry was lost, not in the oh crap I can't find my keys lost, but more of the today I don't know who I am lost, he stopping drinking and called Evette at 2:00 in the morning. Of course she thought he had been drinking when he called, that's all she knew of him when they had worked together at the bar. Although they never slept together, the one time they went hiking brought them as close as someone you would share a bed with. However sometimes, and Jerry knew this too well, lying next to someone often didn't equal closeness.

Florida

The humidity is becoming normal for Alice. She’s gotten used to wearing tank tops and flip-flops, but her father is still wearing the flannel work shirts and Levis that he wore on his construction sites in Oregon. Today she has to sweep out a house he is almost finished building, his last here in Florida. The carpet people will be coming the next day he tells her, the nails must be picked up, and the splinters swept, not to mention the stickers on the windows need to be scrubbed and then scraped. Alice is sorry she tried to run away yesterday; otherwise she could be at home, watching “One Life to Live” and eating popsicles from the freezer. Or better yet, swimming in the pool (everyone has a pool on the island.) Now she is stuck on the jobsite, broom in hand, staring at the back of her father’s flannel as he talks to the new owners, wondering if she should try to run away again tonight or wait until the weekend.

The Hole in Our Lives

The police stayed for nearly an hour, crouching in the kitchen, looking under the couch in the living room and asking if we had moved any of the furniture, or if this was the way the apartment always looked. The hole in the wall facing the recliner was small, but larger than a pushpin would make, and the plaster around the circle was crumbling, a little more each time a different officer went to measure the length of the bullet hole. The television remained on, an infomercial about trimming pet claws hung in the room like the lopsided quilt and a frameless picture of the Maui sunset we both agreed was the vacation that saved our marriage, for how long I was still uncertain. What I did know was that neither Gus nor I wanted to sit in the recliner after the shooting, and no amount of rearranging the room could change our minds. It was as if the bullet had turned the chair against us, but we pretended as if we were the ones with the problem (not the wounded chair), and we wanted to distance ourselves from its velvety arms, wooden handle, even the faint pinstriped design I swore would always look good in our lives.

Eloise

Eloise could just barely see the silver tip of the key, but the grate was bolted down on both sides, making it impossible to open. She had already tried three times to fit her hand through the metal grooves, pinching her fingers in the same way she did when trying to get the cherry at the bottom of her favorite drink, but the slots were too small. It wasn’t the first time she had lost her house key, not even close. And as she stood up, wiping at the criss-cross indents in her knees, she could picture her father when he arrived home to find her on the bench swing, still in her school clothes, and this is when her stomach began to hurt.

Walter Sprigg

Walter Sprigg was my seventh and last boyfriend. He used to tell me to smell his feet after he worked in his father’s seed mill for ten hours each day. He drove a fork-lift and carried pallets weighed down by bags of grass seed. After he came home to our studio apartment, he would untie his shoelaces, scoot his socks down and wiggle his toes, insisting that I take a deep breath and take in the aroma. The grass seed would stick on top of his swollen feet, resembling a sesame seed hamburger bun, and yes, Monday through Saturday, I would bend and indulge Walter Sprigg, right there in the center of that tiny space while he hopped and balanced on one foot, holding the other parallel to my nose.

Why the first paragraph is so important

I started this blog so I could write the first paragraph of a short story on a regular basis. When I decide whether or not to read a book, the first paragraph is what grabs me. I'd like to get feedback from other bloggers on whether they would continue to read the story based on the first paragraph.

I'll try to write these at least weekly, maybe more. All comments are welcome and appreciated!