we failed

November's Topic

Ruminations of a cloud!

I wonder what faithfulness smells like.

I wonder what faithfulness smells like. Does it smell like the worn cedar of a pulpit pockmarked by forty-nine years of preaching? A half-century of being assaulted by the wedding ring this preacher has worn since back when vows meant something. Or maybe it has the acrid smell of forty-two new garbage can liners that this janitor unfurls every weekday at 4AM, excluding holidays, for the last twenty-five years—one for each of the thirty-six cubicles, two for the conference room, one in the corner office, and three in the copy room that everyone uses to smoke in.

No. Today, I think faithfulness smells like apple turnovers from Hardee’s. The ones you can get two for $1 plus tax. The kind that this elderly couple with matching silver hair sat down to eat after sharing a 6-piece chicken tender meal.
They had shared a similar meal seven children, twenty-five grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren ago. (Sometime between then and now laid a lot of happiness. Her smile wrinkles told me so.) Back then, this place was called Jimmy’s. Sometimes when the sun shines just right, you can see the velvet burgundy peeking through from behind the clinical white walls that characterized this Hardee’s and the others like it strewn across the area like acorns around an oak tree. Back then, you couldn’t you drive three miles down to the road to another Jimmy’s if the waitress looked at you cross. First, because there were no other Jimmy’s. Second, because the road ended two miles away at Clark road; which was more of a gravel trail than it was a road. There was no Bright Meadow Estates or Whispering Willow Plantation to speak of.
A plate of chicken tenders used to cost $2.25 including tax. Back then, he had pretended not to like the chicken tenders here. Instead he ate ketchup sandwiches that he made with saltine crackers. Ketchup and saltine crackers were free.
Jimmy’s mom used to make all the apple pies from scratch. She’d make them from the golden apples she’d pick from the row of apple trees behind the restaurant. Some years they wouldn’t have any if the harvest was particularly bad. They never did get any dessert back then anyway. They’d cut down the trees to make room for more parking spaces when they put in the Hardee’s.

But today, the faithfulness raising from those apple pies hugged two pairs of arthritic hands that seemed like they were going to fall apart if they weren’t being held together by two well-worn wedding bands.

Breaths

I wonder what memories smell like. I wonder how they compare to the real thing.

I find myself clinging to her image, frozen in snapshots lined perfectly on walls we painted not so long ago. They are bland, caricatures of life. These aren’t real. This isn’t sufficient. I look inside myself instead, and when I close my eyes I can imagine the echoes of her voice in these very halls. But this is diluted by memory. I can reach out and imagine the feel of her, but this isn't real. This is a recreation, a farce, a pretense constructed by imagination, hopes, and longing.

Her smell is no memory. There it is, lingering ever so delicately on her vanity. And there, a touch more on her side of the bed, a mess untouched for a little over a week now. Vanilla and a hint of something hers.

I am afraid. One week and I struggle to remember her touch and the sound of her voice. I struggle to truthfully remember, because her reality is evaporating. Another week, another day, or another hour--I don't know--and I lose all of her, dissolved somewhere into the air of this house, dissolved into memories that will never be sufficient.

My breath is shallower here, as if every molecule I inhale is from a dwindling handful. Perhaps these next two breaths will be my last.

This is me shutting the door, gently so as not to perturb those precious atoms, but tightly so that none slip away. This is me moving back into the hallway, visiting her images for solace.

Or so I hope. These are images. Simple images. Reality is filled with vibrancy and spirit, but these are painfully static, distorting her with a paper actor’s interpretation of someone I love. The videos are a door away but they are worse—dulled versions of her voice, digitized, demanding validation by touch and...

Smell. I reach for that door again, something in me aching. I am afraid because when this is gone my memory won't be enough. I am afraid because when that is gone, corrupted and perverted into a blurry dream, I will lose you forever.

I rush in and breathe in a memory. It snaps me into a waking reverie: an image of a park, vivid and shining under an autumn sun; the scent of dried leaves and a familiar vanilla. There is the feel of your caress, slight but emphatic as we hold hands. These are your fingers and palms and the lines that we read for fun. This is the soft of your skin. My arm is around your shoulder now, and I know you. A breeze, and your hair waves beautifully.

The reverie ends as quickly as it began. I hunger for so much more. Another breath for another infallible memory. I breathe...

An image begins to coalesce: a scene of blues and greens blurred by a persistent orange from a setting sun. As your outline comes into view the scene collapses. I collapse. The return is whiplash. Fear and shock. And pain. I struggle to breathe again.

Nothing. I ignore restraint and rationality and bury myself in your resting place, desperate for that last molecule, hidden under the covers or beneath the untouched pillow. What's there isn't enough. A pittance. A waft of nothing. The breaths are haggard now but I breathe again.

A remembrance comes but you're not there. Just your image, the scent of a hospital, and the feel of tears.

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something bothers me about this title. i reserve the right to ninja-edit. may also be posting this premature, but overcooking is bad. like undercooking. bla bla bla bla. may make many edits.

and what is with this memory thing i keep writing about. mindbug. yeah.

October Prompt

Start a story with this sentence: I wonder what __________ smells like.

Note: You do not have to necessarily fill the blank with a noun.

The Walls at Applebees

Andrea strikes fear into waitresses. She claims the booth like a queen on her throne, posture perfect, the very image of corporate decorum. She is the lady inspecting her fiefdom; a clipboard appears in front of her while a pen clicks in her hand. It clicks again. A clock clacking away. Or worse yet, a stopwatch beeping as the seconds pass.

“I am having the Asiago Peppercorn Steak.”

This is a command and nothing less. The late-teen before her wilts away, as if curtsying. And this is Andrea inspecting her subject: her eyes ravage the girl’s figure and mannerisms. But she is not interested in appearance. She objectifies the girl as only she can:

Economics.

Andrea knows this waitress’ value. On instinct, she has reduced the girl’s existence to an algorithm based on simple sunk and prospective costs and returns, and had she had the time or inclination to do so, she could calculate that value to four decimal places. This is peasant work though—so long as this girl maintains some semblance of efficiency, Andrea lets that algorithm fizzle into the recesses of her mind. An estimation will suffice for now.

All of these things have value. From the bartender to the hostess, the kitchen to the tacky decor—every corner of this establishment was allotted a slot in the larger machine, each one another variable in a tremendous equation. This subtle economic operation is almost elegant in its efficiency. She almost smiles.

It was her idea after all. This was just another barely mediocre neighborhood chain before she arrived. But then she studied it, she reduced it, repackaged it, and finally re-engineered a dying franchise into a calculated and terribly, terrifically efficient experience. Décor? A premeditated attempt at establishing a familial atmosphere. The strangely warm color scheme? A nod to research correlating warmer colors with hunger. Use of glass throughout the dining area? To promote the illusion of openness, encouraging diners to eat faster since they lacked the ambience for private conversation. Even the adjectives in the menu were carefully selected to draw one into the more profitable items. And of course the high school theme was an attempt at capturing the most romanticized memories—easy emotions to capitalize on. Walls were lined with local high school memorabilia, each one carefully harvested from…

A curiosity.

Photos line the wall to her left. A boy and a girl grace each one, with some variation of the words “Homecoming King & Queen” under each. Numbers follow: 2009, 2008, 2007… Her eyes stop at 1991.

She stares at a younger girl, one with a starry, bemused look. She is pretty. Not beautiful yet, but pretty. The girl’s eyes are wide with a sense of…quiet satisfaction and amusement. She knows she doesn’t quite belong in that picture. A calculated fluke in the voting process. Her arm is wrapped around the Homecoming King awkwardly, as if the very idea of embracing the character were repulsive. It was repulsive. Andrea remembers.

“Jeanette let me tell you something about moving people,” a younger girl was saying. “Most people want to be led. Most of the rest don’t care. A few people think they know where they want to go when really they’re more lost than everybody else. Barely anybody actually has any idea what they’re doing.”

“Whatever Ann. We are people. We aren’t little pieces to be moved. We know what we want. Do you read at all in English class? 1984 ring a bell? Identity was a big theme. And how the hell did we end up on this topic anyway?”

“We always argue this and I always win.”

“Whatever Ann.”

A pause.

“I’ll make a bet with you Jean. I’m going to be homecoming queen.”

The other girl bursts out laughing. “You? You and what cheerleading squad?”

Andrea remembers a younger girl planning. She remembers a girl outlining the words “split the vote” in one of her many, many notebooks. She remembers talking to some friends and not talking to others. A push in the right direction there and a word of discouragement could do wonders. The cheerleading squad would have three people vying for the spot, the powerful honors student voting block would have five wistfully yearning for the title for college application purposes, but the drama club, the bohemians, and a few others would only have her. Other groups had their splits. In the end, it was enough. And it was too easy.

Jeanette saw this as some sort of miracle, but she would. She was always too simple for these things. While she was the student council president (a situation which afforded a friend like her fascinating social perks), she was surely more preacher than politician. It was always broad strokes with her—big events and loads upon loads of excitement. Simple, blunt, and visceral. That one never appreciated the slight machinations of life.

“Fireworks Ann! They’re going to get in so much trouble.”

For an illegal display, the show was impressive. These weren’t simple bottle rockets but roman candles, mortars, fountains, and cones all set off in quick succession. There was no sense in prolonging the show when the police were already on the way. That was the charm of course. No one set off that many at once. It was a powerful display of chaos, shocking and awe-inspiring.

The girl looked up once and sniffed, “Fireworks. So crude.” A not-so-subtle explosion punctuated the statement. Jeanette clapped with excitement.

“Ann they’re going to set off a second batch before they run! Ann! Ann?”

Ann was already leaving. These things couldn’t hold her interest for long.

Lost in her thoughts, Andrea does not notice the waitress come by with her food. Neither does she notice steak disappearing into her mouth with every idle bite. She looks down now, staring at an empty plate. A pair of numbers appears over the dish, one for how much the item cost and the other for how much it cost to buy the product from the purveyors. A third and fourth float down indicating reported sales volume and predicted sales volume with her new menu design, to be released in the Fall. Her estimates are always correct.

There would be a dessert order of course. Portions were designed such that dessert was an option for the average American family. She orders simply to keep the kitchen sharp. As she waits, she notes that she still has a clipboard to attend to.

The evaluation is of her design. It is not complicated: a column of questions with a column of empty space for simple answers. How long between order and delivery for each course? Quality of food? Bar service? Rate items that apply from one to five. Decimal values are encouraged. There are twenty questions in total for this type of visit. Another visit for kitchen efficacy would follow in a week or so. The final question slides into view:

Your overall experience?

She pauses for a moment. Her hand is already drawing a “3” next to question twenty, but she finds herself glancing at the upper-right corner, reading the rating scale she herself devised:

3 - Adequate: Pleasant and effective, but delivery lacking in enthusiasm and/or excitement.

She leaves Applebees thinking about that rating. She ponders it as she drives home; muses over it as she unlocks the door to the simple studio she owns downtown. She turns on the lights, openly wondering at her own blank, white walls.

Out of Place

The last time he'd been to this particular Applebee's had been almost two years ago, some time after his college graduation. He'd never had any real memories of the place, having been there very rarely in his four years at college and not at all during high school. In fact, he had almost forgotten that there was an Applebee's there.

It was a typical Applebee's at first glance. A small bar in a large central sort of area, with the main dining sections located around it. This late at night the crowd was mostly high school and college kids taking advantage of the half price appetizers. Which he was also here for, he reminded himself. Waiters and waitresses drifted around the restaurant, never really hurrying, seeming to not even pay attention to what was happening around them. The noise was at that particular level where you noticed it and ignored it at the same time.

The hostess motioned him over to a table near the back. After voicing the required litany about the waitress coming shortly, she left him with the menu. It wasn't really necessary for him to look at the appetizers, but he did so anyway out of habit. After confirming that his choices still existed and finding to his surprise that there were a few new ones, he closed the menu and looked around bored.

That was when he noticed the unusual decor. The restaurant was decorated with murals and pictures of the local high schools. Interesting, he was sitting right by the wall with his high school on it. Taking his time to study the pictures, he suddenly realized that he didn't recognize anyone.

It made sense; after all, it had been about 6 years, but he just didn't want to believe it. This was his hometown. He'd been here all his life. Where had the time gone? And where were his friends now? He couldn't quite shake the feeling of being very alone.