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Another lunch with the folks. 12:35 and boiling hot with a mild breeze that only pissed me off because it cooled the sweat on my T-shirt, chilling me. I climbed out of my car, locked it, a quick mechanical thwip, thwip ejecting from my black Volkswagon GTi, as I dragged my ass over the melting parking lot towards the smiling doorman stuffed in a beige suit and top hat. I was late and had absolutely no clear idea as to why I was here. My wobbly mind wondered if it had something to do with the e-mail that was sent to me by an unknown source at 5 o’clock in morning. Entitled “Be Born Again” it contained the following cryptic message: “Naturally, in nature, disasters strike no one prepared.” I headed into Prestos my final thought: Here comes another natural fuckin’ disaster.

       Sometime somewhere between the door and the lobby I must have fell into a time machine because I found myself landed in the early twentieth century. Prestos’s decor was pure Titanic chic and I could practically hear the screams of the damned and the drowning. The walls were covered with large flowers on faded yellow wallpaper, fake gold sconces clung to the walls in fifteen foot intervals, and a thick red carpet with a river of footsteps crushed into its center snaked toward the dining room. Everything was awful; a counterpoint to my neon lit night. The maitre d’ informed me that my party had already been seated and with a wave of his hand he leads me down toward the dining area, “Zis way, zir. Follow me.”

       The carpet’s soft anti-gravity feeling reminded me of last night and buying drinks for girls I didn’t know and snorting lines off the back of toilet seats. I smacked my lips. My mouth tasted like chewed rib bones and dried seaweed, flattened and brown, and I had this horrible feeling that I was going to choke. I wanted to spit or throw up so I stuck my finger in my collar to get some breathing room and forced down the lump in my throat. I knocked my shoulders back and slurped up the sopping wet saliva of polite conversation soaking the ballroom-sized dining room and this steeled my nerves. It was familiar territory and I knew how to use it. And I would. This luncheon would require full concentration and commitment.

       My family was seated at a round table by the window, which worried me. Window seats usually meant something big. Or something bad. My mind flipped through its mental planner searching for birthdays and anniversaries and as usual the pages were dog eared and blank. I switched to “Plan Two” and did a quick mental search of all possible excuses as to why I forgot to bring a card or a gift for whatever it is we are here for and I couldn’t seem to settle on anything and I gave up trying. The maitre d’ pulled out my seat and I sat down, surrounded.

       I tried to break the silence and smiling said, “I got stuck in traffic. Those damn tour buses are taking over the city….”

       “You know” my brother Frank broke in, his finger lifting Ghandi-style, “‘Life is a race, where some succeed, while others are beginning….’”

       “Yeah, Frank.” I said. “Spare me the quote. I know how it ends: ‘Tis better late than never.’”

       Frank leaned back tucking his yellow Saks tie into his blue double breasted pinstripe by Ralph Lauren and then, inhaling a deep breath, he folded his arms across his chest careful not to wrinkle his suit and I knew an attack, gooey and jellyfish-like, was coming my way but before the hammer sparks could fly Frank’s Ericsson bleated out a tinny version of Edvard Greig’s In The Hall of the Mountain King. Without taking his eyes off of me Frank let it ring through the first sixteen bars, smiling. I thought again of the e-mail. Could it have been Frank? He was a prick like that. The ringing stopped. Frank picked up the silver knife from off of his crisply folded white napkin and dug the blade into the white table cloth. He spun the knife idly and watched the triangular prisms of light flash across the table top. A full three minutes of this passed before he sent a quick three word text message reply. Wagner came on again and with a smug smile he excused himself from the table. As he walked away he looked at me over his shoulder and flashed me a grin that said–this ain’t over.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

They built a wall in the staff lounge. Standing eight feet high by ten and a half feet long it was quite an impressive sight, although without a primer/sealer coat, a top coat or any other such blandlishments it was whispered around the water coolers that the grayish-brown gyproc added a rather drab note to the room. In fact it was these very whispers that upper management wanted to suppress. It saw something insidious in them and in due course they settled on a decisive course of action: a wall would go up, it would cut through the center of the staff lounge and once a day one employee was to take the hammer provided and put a hole in the wall. 

       But that was not all. There were other rules. “The wall,” it said in a memo that circulated through the lower tiers of power, “is not to be written on or defaced in any way. Furthermore, the individual whose turn it is to put a hole in the wall shall not swing with great force. The swingee must stand an arms length away (approximately one foot) with their shoulders square to the wall, and raise their swinging arm shoulder height so that it is at a right angle with the floor and, when in position, swing the hammer until it taps the wall. Holes must pierce the wall and can be placed anywhere. It is also to be noted that this, The Wall Project, is a one hundred year project. It borrows from the best of the Eastern traditions upon which this great American company is built. A Zen mentality is required. Holes will be counted nightly to ensure that no one staff member shall have more than their due share of swings. To all staff this wall represents unity. Treat it as if it were one of your own.”

       It was a long list of demands and the day before The Wall Project began several keen staff members were practicing their swings, and it was even rumored that a certain click was going to the local pub to practice. Others scorned this.  

       One of these rebellious, negative influences upon the company’s general atmosphere was Graham Nivens, the first to take the hammer to the wall. 

       The First Swing, as it became known, was a celebrated event in the company’s history and began to take on such hallowed allure as that attributed to the curse of the Bambino, the records set by Wayne Gretzky, Pele’s moves. Without doubt there was a great hubbub of excitement like had never been known before. The selection process was simple. Names were to be thrown into a hat and the first person selected would be granted the right to swing the hammer and inaugurate the grand vision of The Wall Project’s one hundred year plan, but the Media Guys on floor six objected to this archaic method and with a flurry of emails they contended that there were obvious and clear methods of cheating that could be employed if the staff were to take this route and as a result, they proposed to delay The First Swing contest for another week until they could concoct a highly encrypted computer program that would randomly generate the winner. After that, things would proceed alphabetically. The proposal was agreed upon by all those who cared. A week rolled by like a walrus and great tension, apprehension and excitement spread to all corners of the company. When the day in question finally arrived, it was determined that Graham Nivens would be granted the privilege of The First Swing.

       Talk circulated about where he was going to place the first hole. “Ah, hi Graham,” Aaron Stevens said appearing at Graham’s side as he headed up to the lounge to take his swing. “Have you decided where you’re gonna put it? Huh? The hole, I mean. Huh? Where?”

       “Yeah, yeah,” Ralph Evans piped in. “Where is it going, Graham?”

       Another member walked by and told them to shut up, the bets were in, and they shouldn’t try to tamper with the process. 

        Graham walked on in silence. He had dodged questions all day and now, at the end of his shift and the appointed hour for his swing, he was determined to remain silent.

       Zen even. 

       In the lounge a blue banner proclaiming “Hey! Hey! Its the Big Day!” in bright red letters faced Graham as he entered. He walked passed the cake and bunting and had to push through the wave of people who were supposed to be at their desks. They receded before him as he strode towards the table where the hammer, now known affectionately as “Bunter,” was laid in its cedar wood box and he hoisted it from its velvety blue bed. 

       Except for a holy semicircle of space where he now stood, the area before the wall was crowded with onlookers. He raised the hammer as per the directions and recited the phrase that had been added in an addendum e-mail from those at the top, “I swing, therefore I am!”

       And in a slow easy motion he dropped the hammer and broke the wall’s surface. 

       There in the wall’s one hundred year grandeur was a hole the size of a bottle cap. It stared back into the room. It wasn’t much really but gasps of awe and admiration went up nonetheless. People pushed in, squeezing Graham out of the way like he was yesterday’s news, to discuss the hole; its size and shape dissected in minute detail. In the frenzy that followed, those closest drove their fingers into the hole and others discussed the fact that he had chosen such a bold place at the center of the wall.

       Exhausted and with no one watching him, Graham put the hammer back in its velvety resting place and walked out of the lounge and back to his desk on the third floor. He was the only one there. With his hands shaking and an inability to focus on his work, he reflected on what had just happened. With no clear answers, he packed up and headed home.

       The next day Graham retained some of his celebrity status, but by mid week it had passed onto Jeremy Adams, the next in line. The money in the staff pools swelled. There were side bets; a fever broke over the whole population. Graham acted as though he were happy to have the spotlight off of him, but deep down his heart ached for another swing, another shot at the wall.  

       Indeed over the following months The Wall, which had once been an eyesore and a source of derision, was now the staff’s greatest ally and benefactor, a source of pride and respect. The Wall Project was off an running. And in short order there were larger and larger bets on where the next person would place their hole, leagues dedicated to whether or not the project would last a full one hundred years, and on that score, staff members pledged that their unborn babies would be raised to join the company in order to see the bets through; and there were wagers on whether or not the wall would be defiled and who, if anyone dared, would be the first to do so. 

        Jeremy Adams swung. 

        Ethel Barts swung. 

        Mark Brautigan swung. 

        Sam Dougherty swung. 

        And each time the fervor around the swing grew. Crowds came and stared and watched and returned the next day to their desks to discuss the previous day’s awesome event. Staff no longer gathered around the water coolers and it was even mentioned that they were now redundant features of the office space and that the staff could forgo water. Their was even a buzz going around that the toilets maybe removed. All they needed, it seemed, was the wall. The monthly stats came down from on high reporting that morale was at an all time high. Management even boldly stated that they “were happy.” Production was up. Profits too. 

        The first year of The Wall Project was a great success. Graham got two more swings that year and he placed his holes in the top right and bottom left hand corners, but both swings never really matched up. The First Swing, he began to think, just may have been his life’s defining moment and he began to wonder if he should have milked it for more than he did. 

       The wall was unity. There were those who proclaimed that the scattered holes bore an amazing likeness to the Shroud of Turin, that it was nothing short of a miracle and that the staff room was truly blessed. Pictures quickly shot up all over the Net. Others contended the holes predicted the future and some spent their life’s savings on lottery tickets. There was rumors of a group that wore dark hooded costumes and met on Sundays to purge and pray. They were an exclusive group and not much was known about them.

       Graham Niven, however, didn’t share the staff’s enthusiasm and his long fall into himself began. He passed through the second year of the project feeling more and more resentful of The First Swing and The Wall Project itself.

        One day he stopped his old buddy Ernie Ersatz in the hallway and asked him to come over to the water cooler to chat. Ernie furrowed his brow and scuttled away. Graham poured himself a paper cup of water and drank it as he leaned on the cooler’s smooth plastic surface. People passed him, eyeing him out of the corners of their eyes. The water cooler was out, the wall in. Everyone worked to get back to the wall and there they could analyze it, figure it out. 

        Right there and then Graham Niven began to formulate a plan for his next swing. He tossed the cup in the wastebasket and headed back to his desk. As he sat down a wry smile cut across his face: there was only two short months until his swing and he knew just what he had to do.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

       The hole count was nearing a thousand and now, a whole two and a half years after the wall was erected and with just a mere ninety-seven and a half years left in The Wall Project, no one had desecrated the wall, no one had cheated. But that wouldn’t last long and Nivens would have to wait. Two weeks later a memo circulated: “It seems that we have a saboteur(s) in our midst. The hole count, which has been carried out with diligence and adroit care, is off by a significant margin. Over night, there has been a total of thirteen holes added to the wall. Beware all vigilante actions! This is in direct opposition to the wishes and demands of upper management. The culprit(s), when caught, will be punished severely and without remorse.”

       Night watches were set, cameras put in place. A thorough investigation into all staff members’s activities over the last three weeks would be initiated. E-mails were tapped and re-read in order to see if they contained information, secret codes, glyphs. Memos were searched. Garbage dug through. People were brought in, or rather up, and questioned. Rumors blazed through the staff of ruthless interrogations and some employees were never seen from again. 

       The wall stood still. 

       Accusations spread through the staff and paranoia spread. Certain individuals suffered through smear campaigns and other people’s cubicles were covered with hateful graffiti. Nivens, too, began to think that the others suspected him and he started looking over his shoulder more and more often. For safety he would sit for hours in front of his computer watching the fish tank screen saver. This calmed him a little but slowly dark circles began to appear under his eyes and he had a hard time eating. He avoided the water cooler, now. Just to be safe.

      The extra holes stopped. And peace was regained in the company.

      Silently, however, Graham Nivens felt cheated. Someone had stolen his limelight and it would be tougher for him to execute his plan. His hatred of “it” grew. Indeed, he could no longer refer to “the wall;” “it” was much better because “it” depersonalized “it” and made “it” more abstract. “It” became a thought that he could mould or discard as he saw fit and in this way, “it” was intangible and removed from the everyday. 

      The weekend before his swing Graham Nivens locked himself in his house watching a barrage of old movies. He started with Taxi Driver. Then moved on to Natural Born Killers. Finished with American Psycho. Inspired, he headed off that Saturday to the barber shop just down the corner from his house and had his head shaved. It was his Zen look. That Monday at work some people mentioned it but only in an offhanded way. In due course, as his day drew nearer, others started to notice and some even came to work with their heads shaved. Some proclaimed that it would improve their oneness with the wall, that their swing would land upon the wall’s surface with perfect, peaceful serenity. 

       Finally, after a one month delay the One Hundred Year Project started up again.

       And Mary Plonkin swung. 

       Zoe Thoms swung. 

       And the day arrived for Graham Nivens’s swing. They were back to the top of the order and as usual curiosity seekers crowded around; reseting the order always brought a certain excitement. He approached the wall and looking about him, Graham held Bunter high over his shoulder and with a final look at the crowd he brought the hammer down in a clean smooth arc while simultaneously extolling the virtuous creed, “I swing, therefore I am!” Just before the point of impact he let out a huge (fake) sneeze and the hammer took flight from his hand. It soared across the foot and a half of space, tumbling end over end until it s truck the wall and stayed there, suspended, the hammer head jutting out of the wall.

       Dead silence brought life to the room.

       The handle faced the room and everyone stared at it. It fell to the ground and pandemonium broke lose. There was a cry at the back and everyone exploded into angry screams and started pushing and shoving each other, wanting to get nearer to the wall. Someone yanked the hammer off of the floor and the violent motion errantly struck the wall gouging a larger hole in the surface. This evoked more cries and calls of foul play. There were more screams and more pushing. In the din of excitement Graham slid out of the room untouched.

       Throughout the next week Graham Nivens was blacklisted.  No one would talk to him and they even took a wide berth when they passed him in the hall. Everyone wondered what would happen. Was it a mistake? How would management deal with this? Was he the one who put in the extra holes? For safety reasons he was given a leave of absence until things “blew over.” That is what the memo said, “until things blew over.”

       That Friday, a third memo was released from the top. It stated that, after extensive research, the party involved, an individual whose name would remain undisclosed for safety reasons, was absolved of any intentional or criminal acts, but, to respect due process and the goals of management and the integrity of the One Hundred Year Wall Project, the aforementioned party will miss his next three swings, being the approximate number of holes that the unidentified party’s erroneous swing accounted for.

       It now burned Graham Nivens in both his waking and sleeping life and he plotted once and for all for its demise. His new plan would not fail. This new plan would change everything.

       And he would do it tonight.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

Nixon Burroughs shuffled down the street, a slight limp in his left leg pulling his pace back a step from the rest of the crowd. Eighteen months ago a car accident left his right leg broken in several places and now, in the late stages of his recovery, he still shuffled at a sloth’s pace. But that is not all. From time to time his mind would glaze over and wander back to the curious dread he felt when he lost control of his black Volkswagen GTi and relive the awful sound of screeching tires and grinding metal, the soft, stomach churning lift over the embankment and hanging like a magician’s handkerchief at the height of its mid-flight trajectory, the wait, and the emptiness that followed the long descent down to the point of impact. A hush. And the crunch of his skull on the windshield.

       That is where his memories ended: a quarter of an inch before the windshield. It was at this point that time and motion melted down to a slow candle wax drip. The windshield elongating before his eyes, he saw it as a large sheet of blue ice hovering there before him, a wide, bright surface with mysterious things swimming just beyond it. And then it engulfed his whole world and he crashed through it. And submerged.

       According to Sergeant MacClusky they found him four days later in a ditch about 25 miles from the crash site, somewhere just outside of Pittsfield, face down, bruised and scarred, with his green Army Surplus jacket on inside out and only one shoe on his left foot. They found the other one about eighteen meters from the crushed car. He saw the photos. Dark grainy pictures of the crushed hood and the shattered windshield with its web of white and blue lines and the shredded tires hanging like melted wax from the wheel wells. There were dents and scrapes over the whole thing. It reminded him of a piece of discarded tinfoil. 

       But no one could figure it out. how had he survived for four days without human contact and no food and water? According to reports, he had pulled himself out of the driver’s side window tearing great hunks of flesh out of his back and then crawled up through the bramble and stinger nettles to the main road where, with shards of glass still lodged in his face and blood oozing out of the large gashes behind his ears, and wrists, and legs, and the ones crisscrossing his chest, he wandered aimlessly without food or water in the general vicinity of Pittsfield, population fourteen thousand. And no one noticed him. For four whole days and no one saw a thing.

        Nixon Burroughs couldn’t explain it either. So he had to trust what they told him. He dug around but nothing came up. While recovering in the hospital he’d read and re-read the news clippings from The Pittsfield Press, The Telegram, The Tribute straining to remember something, to read a comment or see a familiar detail in the background of some photo that would stir something in his mind. But nothing came of it. He followed up on the police investigation (for whatever that was worth) but was met with terse facts and polite brush-offs that he should “take it easy” and “get well soon.” 

       He shook his head to keep the memories back and crept up to the corner of Fifth and Davis and waited there with the others for the light to change. A faint gust of cold wind curled around him and he drew his used parka closer around his thin frame, trying to forget. When his memories overtook his waking life he would black out and there were times when he was submerged for a full ten, twenty, even thirty minutes–his longest so far was almost an hour–and once he swam back to consciousness, he would find himself a full block away from where the submerging started, other times he was in the same spot, barely registering the traffic and the stiff grumbles of people elbowing passed him on their way down the street.

      Every time this happened, he awoke to blistering headaches. The screws holding his right leg together felt as if they were tightening deeper and deeper in his bones and ligaments and he would be immobilized with the pain. Lately, his ribs started to hurt as well and the pain seemed to be creeping back towards his spine, a part of his body that was almost permanently damaged in the accident. 

       So he had to keep moving, keep body limber and his mind distracted. Waiting there on the corner of Fifth and Davis he tuned into the noise across the street, taking in the faint voices and hammers drifting out from behind the barricaded construction site and turned to watch a large flatbed truck back up onto a ramp, beep beep beeping, and drop off a large load of rebar. 

       The light changed and the crowd surged forward leaving Nixon Burroughs alone at the curb. He joined the flow a half step behind and headed across the street towards the construction site which was surrounded by a protective ten foot high barricade. Finally on the other side of the street he ran his hands along the iron fence sometimes grazing the posters that were slapped up on the barricade, not really reading them just sort of absorbing them as he passed by. He winced as a horn blasted from inside the construction site. Men with yellow hardhats leapt from their trucks and headed off through the wide entrance, silver lunch pails swinging by their side. He was curious. Construction sites always made him feel that way and he wanted a peek inside. Just see what they were doing, take a guess at what was going up. He picked up his pace and headed towards the entrance, the wind snapping the posters’s dog-eared corners as he passed. 

        Just before the entrance, he stopped. Something was different. Out of place. He took one slow step backwards and shot a glance at a cluster of posters that hung at crooked angles. There amid the jumble was a single poster with a black and white photo on it. It was centered and perfectly squared as if it were hung in an art gallery. 

       He leaned in to get a better look and saw his own face staring back at him.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

     The surface details of life the around him surged and rippled. The road wobbled and the trees sagged, the sidewalk buckled and bent. He felt the air grow thick around him and he thought he felt the sting of a million malignant germs, tiny but with a billion teeth. He staggered back and crashed into the fence then slumped to the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut  trying to control the nausea but a display of fireworks shot off behind his eyelids and this made him feel dizzy. He focused instead on the the rhythmic tap of the footsteps flowing passed him and this calmed him down. With a slow reptilian grace, he opened his eyes and stared at a pebble. After a few minutes of this, he looked up and over his shoulder at the black and white poster. It seemed to be staring back at him.

      He peered back at the eyes on the poster and they seemed to life right off of the page and tear through him. Is that me? He ran his hands over his face feeling the contours of his nose and cheek bones in order to reassure himself that he was still really there, to anchor himself into his self. 

       A sudden yoke of anxiety broke him. He jumped up from the ground and scanned the neighborhood expecting to see someone watching him. He looked at the windows in a row of hunched brownstones searching for a flash of light from the reflection of a pair of binoculars, a man in a black trenchcoat, a…a…a what?

      He turned in circles looking back down the street, up ahead, at the far corner but nothing struck him as unusual. It was Fifth and Davis draped with the typical Saturday afternoon activity: people in suits held briefcases while waiting for the walk signal, a mother hunched over a stroller snapping the plastic cover down in order to protect her child from the from the biting wind, a jogger in black spandex running on the spot, finger to neck taking her pulse. A delivery truck rumbled by. Trees whispered secrets to the wind.

      He headed around the construction site looking for a duplicate. There had to be another one; this was a prank or something. There had to be an explanation for it. But after covering the gated area for a full hour, he found nothing but the usual announcements for the events happening around town: the Cirque de Soliel halloween special, bands playing at The MIxture, reminders that there were only three days left for the Picasso exhibit at the Arts and Culture Center.   

      He went back to the original and tore it down. He stuffed it in his parka and headed down Davis, occasionally peering over his shoulder as he slid along. 

      Four blocks later he reached Burrard Street where he spotted a cafe among a row of undistinguished buildings. The Mug SHot Cafe was wedged between a stationary shop and a butcher’s market. It was a run down shop with a clever window display of two grim looking coffee cups standing in a police line with the caption How You Seen This Mug? written in black letters and forming a circle around the sinister coffee mugs. It looked like a good enough place where he could sit and regroup. 

      It was busy but quiet. A group of university students sat in a booth laughing and chatting over a table scattered with novels and notebooks, at another table a couple hunched forward and talked in hushed tones; a man sat in the front window, a ray of sunshine slanting across his table while he read the newspaper. He shuffled passed a couple who were paying at the cash register and towards the back of the cafe.

      The store was lined with old black and white mug shots of John Dilinger, Ted Kaczynski and a young and defiant Al Capone number C28169. He slid in a booth with Lee Harvey Oswald on the wall. A waitress came. She was dressed in a prison orange shirt and a black skirt. According to the stenciling over her left breast her name was Eva and her number was Nf7533061. She laid a paper place mat with a sedated Jimi Hendrix after his Toronto bust, a wild eyed and frizzy haired Nick Nolte, and Anna Nicole Smith front of him. “What can I get ya?”

      ”I’ll have a cup of coffee. Two cream, one sugar,” he said lighting a cigarette. 

      ”Will that be all?”

      He nodded and she sped of into the kitchen. Burroughs took the poster out and spread it on the table. It was a typical, nondescript and slightly yellowed 81/2 by 10 inch poster. The picture had a grainy quality. The coal black pits where his eyes were supposed to be made him think of the sinister gaze of biblical prophets, Charles Manson, Raasputin. The jaw was chiseled and the chin more pronounced, nut even with these subtle gradations of of light and dark, there was no mistaking it. It was him. Or was it? 

      His coffee arrived. The waitress left. he sipped his drink and decided to call the waitress back. He put the poster on the edge of the table in order for her to see it. Maybe she would say something; give him the objective verification he needed that it was–or wasn’t–him. But he had no idea what he would say if said it was him. Who carries around a poster of themselves? he figured he’d just pass it off as art or something. The bigger problem was if she said she recognized the person in the poster; that was her roommate from college or her brother’s friend. How would he react to that?

      He waved her over.

      ”Yeah?”

      ”You guys sell bagels?” he asked, dropping his eyes to the poster in the hope that hers would follow.  

      ”Yeah,” she said without looking down. 

      ”Okay,” he said trying to stall. He needed her to see it. It just had to seem natural. He didn’t want to ask her directly. Who asks if a picture of themselves is really them? “I’ll have one then.” 

      ”Cream cheese?”

      ”Got garlic and chives?”

      ”Uh-huh.” She left and he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. He felt stupid and shoved the poster back in his parka. A new plan struck him. He crumbled the place mat and tossed it under the booth’s long seat. He put the poster in its place. She would have to notice it there. 

      She returned. “Here’s your ba-”

      The plate hung over the table top and she shot a look at the poster. for a split second a thought crinkled her face but it disappeared as soon as it came. Burroughs looked at her trying to read her but she flashed him a friendly smile and laid the plate down. 

       “Bagel,” she finished and dashed off. 

       He finished his bagel and coffee in silence, left five bucks on the table and slid back into the city.  

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

       They sipped coffee together, the salesman seated back on the mattress and Brimm in the recliner. The bread and Heinz 57 stayed on the tray. So did the knife. During the slurping silence Brimm’s eyes kept darting back and forth between the man and the knife, the man and the knife. After a couple of minutes the salesman thanked Brimm for the coffee and walked over to the desk where he picked up Brimm’s notebook, turned it over, and asked Brimm if he wanted to buy the bibles. 

         “I don’t think so,” Brimm replied and picked up the knife. He sliced the bread in two. “Break bread with me?” he asked.

         “No thanks.”

        ”Are you sure?”

        ”Yes, sir. And the bibles?

        ”No thanks. Bread?”

        ”But it can help you with your–”

        ”Its not going to help me with any goddamned problems,” Brimm growled.

        ”But, sir, all problems are God delivered. And we all have our problems,” he said looking around the room and frowning at the filth and squalor. “I mean, look: you are alone on Christmas Day in this dingy apartment–”

        ”So are you, Stephen, so are you.”

       The salesman looked around and shifted from side to side then squared hmself and looked back at Brimm. “Haven’t you heard of Deuteronomy–” 

        ”Fuck Deuteronomy.”

        The boning knife became real then and he fought it back. “Look, you’re wasting your time on me,” Brimm said getting out of his chair and facing the salesman. “I think you should leave now.” 

         “Excuse me, sir?”

         “Leave now,” he said pointing at the door with the boning knife. 

         “But this is the Word of God,” the salesman said his voice high and cracked and his eyebrows low. He picked up a Bible and walked across the room towards the desk. “God speaks to you through this book,” he said leaning on the desk. “

        ”Get. Out. Now” he said slowly. 

        The two men stared at each other. The salesman broke the deadlock and Brimm followed the salesman’s eyes as they snuck over to the door with the briefcase leaning on it. The room’s air was stale and sweating and it felt hard for Brimm to breathe. 

         The salesman fidgeted then stood up straight, his chin leaning forward. “You know,” he asked bouncing the notebook in his hand, “that I can’t do that.”

         Brimm stared.

         “I can’t do that, sir. Those who are lost are never a waste of one’s time; but rather the ones who waste it.” He reached out to Brimm, his hand hovering just over the knife. “Let me help you, sire. Let God help you.” 

          Brimm crushed his cigarette on the floor. His teeth bit into each other. “Why were you walking outside last night?”

         “Sorry, sir?” The salesman said looking around the room.  

          ”I asked: why were you walking around the street, spying on me.”

          ”I’m sorry sir. I think you must have the wrong person. I wasn’t spyi–”

          ”I saw you.”

          ”N-no, sir, you’re mistaken. I was at church.” Again the salesman looked at the briefcase leaning onto the door and then back at Thomas Brimm with the knife waving lazily below his bloodshot eyes. Suddenly, Brimm charged at the man toppling the bibles stacked in the middle of the floor, but the salesman was quicker and darted over to the door where he kicked aside the briefcase and grabbed the door handle. He turned back to face Brimm. “Sir, I….”

         “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t!”

         “Sir, I think–”

         Brimm charged again but the salesman scrambled out of the apartment slamming the door behind him. A second later, Brimm yanked the door open and threw the knife down the stairwell where it crashed against the wall and barely missed the salesman as he took the stairs three at a time, practically breaking his neck as he left.

         Brimm returned to his room full of bibles. It was three hours before he noticed that the notebook was missing.

[Note: Rubble Reader, if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

            Near midnight, with a new mellenium stretching ahead for miles and miles and the snow whipping all around her, a woman named Hilary Thomas leaned onto the wrought iron railing and pulled herself up the stairs to her tiny craft store. A snowdrift the size of a Manhattan tower leaned into the entrance and she shoveled it aside, then grabbed a thick wad of mail out of her mailbox and trundled inside. She shrugged off her coat and tossed it over her chair and sat down to shuffle through the large lump of mail. There were bills, always bills, and a request for a handmade ledger for a wedding, at the bottom of the stack a simple cardboard notebook stared up at her. 

           She turned the leather bound book in her hand. 

           She recognized it. It was an older notebook that she had made sometime in the early nineties when she was working with the German long stitch technique and trying to use recycled products. She opened it and flipped through the pages, which were empty except for one strange word written in a scratchy, nearly desperate handwritting.

          She read the word aloud–”Botswain”–unsure of whether to punctuate it as a flat statement or a curious lifting question.

          Then she repeated it–”Botswain.”

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

Bill “Bunson” Edwards had always been the top cook at the Atomic Cafe. People from all over came to eat his ox tail and gravy stew and they would all compliment him on the potatoes being just right and that the turnips were “to die for.” Over the last twenty years or so, tucked away in the back of the restaurant amid the grease stained white tiles and the stainless steel ovens and stoves, Bill heard the same thing again and again, “tell that cook in the back there that this stew is to die for!” But lately, things were just not the same for Bill “Bunsun” Edwards. More and more over the last four months he thought about what those words–”to die for”–really meant.

      He never considered himself a chef, no that was too lofty a title for him; instead he preferred to be called a “cook,” thinking that the title suited his style and personality much more. It was utilitarian and blue collar, suggested hard work and sweat. For this was the life Bill had known. Oh sure, he had the respect of the prep cooks and the waiters but no one really ever bothered with him, so he felt good about that. It was like he had a little slice of protection around him and sometimes he even felt like he was his own boss. 

     So it was in a silent shadowy way, that Bill cooked and went about his business. And he was well aware of the stereotypes surrounding cooks, knew full well that for most people cooks were considered spidery figures with quick tempers. But not me, he thought one day long ago as he tossed a handful of bay leaves into a broth. I’m never going to be like any of those guys. Those prima donna chefs, whoever they think they are. 

      And over the years he had kept true to his oath. He was a cook. Content to get food off the line and into people’s belly’s. And at first the compliments came in and pleased him. Now and then a black and white clad waiter with a slightly soiled apron would whizz by and pat him on the back, “table five loved the pot pies! To Die for, Bill! To die for!” and Bill would smile and hitch up his rag hanging around his waistline and get at it, stirring his sauces with even more vigor than before.

      There was a dance and timing to it all, a rhythm that, as the cook and conductor, he set for the Cafe and it was this that he loved most. Snapping on the coffee pot early in the morning and letting the coffee’s rolling aroma drip into the silver pot, its acrid scent carrying to all corners of the kitchen as he started about his day, heating the sauces, chopping the onions, firing up the stoves. The coffee was the cure all. It hid the smell of the putrid boils of rotten food that clung to the countertops and the salty sting of vinegar that arose from the two gallon buckets of butchered hunks of beef; beef that was once a herd of cows forced into cannibalism and who were now mad beyond belief. According to Bill the cow had really jumped over the moon. But Bill still didn’t get it. How could cows be mad if they didn’t think in the first place?

       He loved this time alone, the music blasting from the little plastic radio perched on the shelf next to the bottles of paprika, thyme, cayenne. Sometimes he sang along to an Elvis tune or some other oldie from the past as he diced onions or chopped fresh parsley. He liked those kinds of songs, the oldies. Because he was starting to feel old; the knives had molded their hilts to his hands, the pots, like Bunsun, were slightly dented and deformed. 

      The work wore him down, but he kept at it in his slow shuffling way. Always silent, in the back with the pots and pans, hoping the customers liked the latest daily special. The years greased passed him and he never grew jaded, just rounder around the stomach and more hunched at the shoulders. His hair thinned and his hands thickened. And so was life for Bill “Bunsun” Edwards at the Atomic Cafe. 

      Bill’s slow simmering reduction through life lasted a smooth and creamy twenty two years, until three years ago when a new manager, Dick Cheevers, took control of the Atomic Cafe. 

      Dick Cheevers was a self-stylized cowboy, a bombastic cigar smoking Boss Hog figure who proclaimed that he was “the man with the plan.” His new plan? To squeeze the Atomic Cafe for all it was worth.  

      ”We gonna squeeze this puppy–squeeze and squeeze boys–squeeze’r for all she’s worth,” Dick would exclaim. “For Christ sakes, Bill. We just a few short miles from Area 51! If we can’t exploit that, then gosh darn it, Billy, we ain’t worth a fart in hell.”

      But no one had, really; exploited it that is. The Atomic Cafe had always done well, but never to the extend that, Sal, the previous owner had ever dreamed of. For one thing, it had been fifty years since the interior had changed. The bar was a long stretch of currugated steel that curved gently at on end and the mirror behind it had a skyline of soda pop bottles along its bottom edge and throughout the day the mirror caught the sunlight and cast a rectangular beam of white light across the room which, on slower days, highlighted the floating whorls of dust. Bar stools with highly rounded plastic seats colored Coca-Cola red and white were spread out at equal intervals along the bar. Nothing had been done since the fifties. The booths had little dime juke boxes at the end.

      The menu also varied little over the years. The number one seller was the Atomic Burger with a side of Fission Fries and Cruise Missile Chili. The burger was loaded with beef stuffed with chillis and onions and toped with lettuce and tomatoes and this whole thing was drenched in none other than Billy’s own secret hot sauce which he called “The Reactor.” 

      ”First orders in, Billy. Three breakfast specials and an Atomic Bomb!”

      ”Comin’ up, Gord.”

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

       The world underground was nothing like the one above. Down in the depths there were no city grids or right angles, no trees or theaters, no signs other than the ones that read “High Voltage,” “Authorized Personnel Only,” or “Danger.” It was all darkness; a deep intestinal darkness. Jack squinted against the thick sooty darkness but it obscured any easy reading of depth and distance. He guessed the tunnels were about five and a half feet high by four feet wide and at just over six feet tall he had to crane his neck in order to navigate. The walls were at once damp and slimy and in short order his neck began to singe with pain and several times he had to plunk his body down on a pipe or a valve and massage his neck.

       Touch took over. It ruled his world and he felt eyeballs growing on his fingertips. The fine grain of the concrete became a map, a country unto itself. Sometimes it was rough and he would cry out when it cut his hands; at other times it was smooth and he would glide his hands over it thinking of beach rocks and sliver wear, but whenever he came upon a patch of some slimy sewage material he yanked his hand away in disgust. Bit by bit he began to discern the differences in heat and cold. Minute differences in degrees were classified. He could feel the blue heat of a water pipe and tell it was slightly different from other ones.  

       He walked like a zombie. Slow, with one hand on the walls and the other swiping the darkness. He tried to keep a mental note of various distinctive features. Directions repeated and repeated and he chanted to himself things like, “turned left at the pipe with the green duct tape then slid under a low red pipe, turned right, then went straight. A quick left at the red water pressure valve and straight ahead for thirty meters.” But the list became too long and after an hour of lurching through the dark, he became utterly confused and abandoned this tactic. The tunnel system was not to be pinned down.

       Thirst and hunger grew into his stomach. In his mind the drip (drip, drip) had sprung into an oasis and he dragged himself towards it with the half stoned slump of a man crushed by the elements. His throat burned. At times, water (and freedom) seemed just around the corner and at other times it leapt away.

        He was soaked in the city’s refuse. Several times he had slipped and fell in the sluice way’s ebony waters. He thought about drinking from it, but each time he lowered himself to drink the sewer’s smell overcame him and he wretched violently.

       Drip. Drip. Drip.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]

Brimm sat in his recliner, rocking. The salesman, Steven James, sat perched across from him on the mattress’s edge, several bibles stacked between them and the salesman was pointing at them, explaining. The salesman’s black briefcase lay propped up against the door. 

       “This cover is made of a simple, synthetic plastic–it’s just made to look like the real thing, but this one, this one here? This one is made of real Moroccoan leather and it gets better with age, but it will cost ya’ a tidy bundle.”

       “Uh-huh,” Brimm muttered and lit a Player’s Light, studying the salesman. His face was smooth, almost youngish, with a light stubble sandpapering his face, while the light in the salesman’s dark beady eyes stared just up and over Brimm’s shoulder–never directly at him. Brimm watched the man smiling and warbling on about psalms and prayers and the Lord and all the while staring just up over Brimm’s shoulder.

       “Of course,” the salesman pitched, “these ones here are only samples and it will take a few weeks to get’em to you, if you order them that is.” He grabbed a Bible with a Morrocooan cover and opened it to show Brimm the stylized New Times Roman typeface, which he explained, was unique to this series and by all accounts had been well received by the millions of people who have filled out the subscription, which he was presently sliding in front of Brimm. 

       Brimm took the sheet and thought of killing the man. It was a cold blooded thought that slithered in, hissing. I could do it, he reasoned pretending to analyze the form. I could go into the kitchen and grab a knife–just have to tell him I’m making coffee or something. Brimm looked up from the form and watched the salesman’s mouth form words, but they were soundless and unconnected to anything, that drifted towards him in a liquid form and his ears, ill equipped, could not discern a word of it. Besides what difference would it make? I’d be doing that sorry sack of shit a favor. And anyways, he took my story. 

       “So…do you?” the salesman asked smiling, his eyes gazing over and beyond Brimm’s right shoulder. 

        ”Do I what, exactly?” Brimm replied shaking his head.

        ”Hey, come on now,” the salesman asked his eyes darting around the room. “Are you fooling with me? Do you have one here already?” 

        ”Have what?”

         “A Bible.”

        ”No, no I don’t.”

         “Oh, Come on now. There has got to be one here somewhere,” the salesman said and leaned across the mattress to look in the milk carton night table. 

         “I don’t have one,” Brimm said spreading his hands, smiling. I mean, if a guy is wandering the streets at night, he must be alone, no family to miss him. No baboom-boom buddy….

         “I see-ee,” the salesman said curling his lip into the corner of his mouth and exposing a cracked front tooth. It seemed to Brimm to be an uneven thing for a Bible salesman. Probably got it trying to sell this crap. 

         The salesman got up from the mattress and stomped over towards the desk. One of the bibles tipped over and tumbled to the ground. Brimm looked at it and then back to his notebook. He recalled the notebook tumbling out of the bookrack back at The Write Tools Stationary Shop. 

          ”I think I need a drink,” Brimm said getting up from his chair. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

          ”Why that’d be great, sir.”

           “Indeed it would,” Brimm said and headed into the kitchen, the salesman droning on behind him about shepherds and their flock. Brimm set about making the coffee mechanically heating the water, opening the cupboard, pulling out a jar of Maxwell House, scooping two lumps of instant into two cups and pouring the hot water glug, glug, glug into the cups which he put on a tray with two slices of bread and the Hienz 57. Next to these he put a large boning knife.

[Note to the Rubble Reader: if you like this story and need to find out more click on the story's title below or you can go to the right hand side of this page where you will see a "tag cloud."  Simply select the title you want to read. Better yet, you can find the complete story under the "Stories" option at the top of the right hand side of the page. Thanks--One Penny]