Crazy Advice

“Fuck anyone who tells you not to quit yer day job! You just fuck ‘em!” It was really disconcerting advice. Not only because it was being yelled in my ear by a panhandling old man, but also because I’d just self-published my first children’s book, Cats With Laser Eyes. It had just gone to print that afternoon. The timing was uncanny.

It followed me back to my day job. Staffing a pump isn’t glamorous work, but it pays the bills in a way I doubt the kid lit ever will. One keeps my body alive, the other sustains my soul. It’ll do.

Around mid-shift, a friend called me and mentioned a party, so that’s where I ended up after work. I think I knew whose house it was, but I couldn’t pick him out of the crowd. The drink was bad, but it was free. I ended up in a corner of the house behind a potted tree, sharing an overstuffed chair with a pretty librarian who looked like an actress making time as a waitress. I told her about my book. “Don’t quit your day job,” she teased.

I decided to take the crazy old man’s advice.

Tale of a Young Shepherd

He was a shepherd, known because he was handsome and clever, and because his father was the valley’s sharpest sheep trader. One day, pursuing a lost lamb, a storm forced him to shelter in a cave. But the cave was not empty. A devil lived there in the guise of a man-eating bear. To save his lamb, the shepherd challenged the devil to a game. He won, and magical powers were his prize.

Others didn’t understand when he healed sheep or made food from nothing. They cursed him and chased him with pitchforks. The earth cried to be commanded to swallow them up, but he refused. Weeping at their distrust, he fled.

The shepherd traveled the world. Years later, the shepherd returned leading many people his magic had saved from a great disaster, who needed a home. He hoped his old valley could be their home, but the people there refused. They called him devil-spawn and his people thralls.

Weeping, the shepherd made the earth swallow the evil people of the valley, and his people settled there and named the shepherd their leader in gratitude.

Heart heavy, the shepherd sat down to write the history of the valley.

Natural Assassin

Born wealthy, she had a taste for opulence. Cheated of her birthright, she developed a thirst for revenge. And she had a favorite knife, so she naturally became an assassin. She waited outside the gentleman’s club for her first victim. She hid across the street, huddled in a pile of stolen blankets against the cold of the night’s rain, channeled down the city’s narrow streets by rows of enormous buildings. Invisible among the city’s detritus, she gripped and regripped her knife deep in the grimy blankets’ folds.

Inside, he sat amid rich wood paneling and elegant suits and crackling fires. He sipped brandy and laughed with friends he didn’t really like, and perhaps played cards. She had been among them. She gripped the knife. He would soon step out and wait for his car. The car always took a few minutes. She had waited for the car hundreds of times, a step away from the rain, the club’s warmth clinging to her.

When he stepped out, a knife waited for him on the stoop. It had a few spots of rust, the first blooms of ill care. Underneath, written on grease-stained paper in weak pencil: “Someone wants you dead.”

One Drink

One drink. Nope, everything's still terrible and impossible. Drink two. Still hate everyone, especially myself. Worse, still remember everything.

Third time's the charm. I should just stay here.

Four. Only one way out, and it isn’t gonna bring her back. So why fucking bother?

Five. I think I just told someone about it. How our brains are actually cosmic worm nests, and we’re symbiotic parasitical hosts that evolved around ‘em. God, I hope it wasn't the bartender. I want to be shitfaceder than this when they wake up.

Five. People say stupid things when they're drunk, right? Ignore me.

6ix. Of course the cops are in on it. Why else would they let the mayor in the big car and get to the cemetery in the when it's raining? At night? Coincidence? Right.

What number is this? Fine. I'm gonna. She's dead. Her body's not her. Just a bundle of worm wrappings anyway. Get ammonia, mix in the shavings, and burn it at the alignment, and I can save the world. Or prove I’m crazy and go to jail.

One for the road. And if I see the mayor in the cemetery I'm gonna kill him in his worm meats.

Attention

“I found your car on Google Street View,” said the email. He followed the link. Yup, it was, indeed, his car. The scratch on the back made it clear. He was amused, and he wrote back to say so. Curious, he clicked on the image,and it blurred. His car was still a couple lengths ahead of the recording vehicle.

A couple more clicks. It was gaining on him. This was fun, a kind of little race. Who’ll win, our hero or the spy car? A dozen clicks later, and it was alongside him. He turned the view and saw himself, blithely driving a secret race that would be resolved who knows how much later. It stayed alongside for a few clicks, and then fell behind.

His exit was coming up. He’d peel away, the race would end, and his car would disappear. Click. The imaging car also pulled off at the exit. How random. He wondered when it would turn away, and he kept clicking. Right onto 120th. Two miles, left on 34th. Right on Cherry Lane. It wouldn’t... left, into his cul-de-sac.

He turned, and looked out at where he’d parked. Was someone watching him... now?

Uncommon Gesture

She was rich, and the man before her had nothing. On her way to the subway, circumstance had confronted her with this paragon of homelessness, and she was torn. She had made her fortune inventing a machine that printed toilet paper that shed somewhat less dust when you tore it. She thought it was a singularly absurd way to come to be rich. How had this man come to have nothing? Had he been born with nothing? Or had it been the long work of a lifetime to accrue so much destitution? The longer she looked at him, the sillier she felt for having so much much while he had so much nothing. What kind of society rewards someone for building a better mousetrap. When all that mousetrap means is sweeping behind the toilet once a month instead of every two weeks?

She wrote a check for the entirety of her wealth, signed it, and pressed it into the man’s hand. She was gone before he could respond substantially.

It was uncashable, of course. Most of her money wasn’t in a checking account. But the symbolism meant a lot to her. She continued to her train with a lighter heart.

Little Black Box

Every night he spoke into a little black box. The black box never responded to him, but he spoke into just the same. No one else ever got to see the black box, and he liked it that way. The things he said to the box were only for him. One night the little black box had a post-it note on it. The note said “funny.” He stared at the note until the word lost meaning. He didn't know what to make of it, so he threw it in the trash. He didn't speak to the box that night. He didn't know what was funny.

The next night all was as he expected, and again he spoke to the little black box. But the night after that there was again a little note: “intriguing.” He didn't touch it. He stared at it, but it didn't go anywhere. After he started speaking to the box the next week, it was “really loved the finish.”

He couldn’t just speak into it. He asked, “Who are you?” and the next night he found two post-it notes. “a little black box,” and “sorry it took me forever to get some post-its.”