Foliate Oak October 2015

Fiction

David
By Isaac Black

Hank was fond of conspiracies, an interest that his friend Marty considered a retro affectation.Conspiracy theories had lost their shine in the last fifteen years or so, ever since world markets stabilized, global warming leveled off, and entrenched conflicts dissipated. The achievement of world peace, so to speak, puzzled social scientists and analysts but didn’t birth many theories that would stick. People don’t accuse secret, powerful cabals of plotting global prosperity, but Hank seemed convinced that there had to be someone pulling levers.

They were at a party, an elaborate but dull affair their friend had put on. She was a restaurant manager who worked three days a week and spent the rest of her time decorating and planning personal events. She had outfitted her studio apartment in burgundy and paisley like a Victorian salon with a mixologist serving from behind the mahogany bar. Marty surveyed the gathering from a corner, trying to pinpoint why he was embarrassed for Hank. It was true that his giant head and ruddy face gave him the image of a maladroit jester,but it was unfair to blame him for how he looked.

“I was going through the code of archived web pages from twenty years ago,” Hank was sayingto small group, “and I found a pattern in each of them.” He scribbled on a napkin: <!--464-->

Marty sipped from his very good gimlet.

Hank thumped the table and continued. “The reason it caught my eye is because it doesn't do anything. The brackets turn it into a comment. It’s a signature, not code. But it's in the source of every page I could find.

"Marty decided to humor him. "What do you think it means?"

"I don't know," he conceded. "But I bet it means something."

Marty talked to a few people he had met at a party or two before. They all had the samebourgeois hobbies--woodworking, bird watching, crocheting. Which was fine. It had just stopped interesting him.

They left soon after, walking to catch the train. "Think about what it would mean,” Hank said.“People think democracy saved the world, that the internet allowed people to organize againstthe oligarchy. But that's naive. Besides, how do you explain the environment?” He took a drinkfrom his ceramic water bottle. “And who would have had access to every webpage, including government pages, to put in that signature?”

“Who knows, maybe it’s some part of HTML that you don’t understand.” Marty wanted Hank to pipe down about this stuff, especially in public, but he couldn’t deny becoming more curious himself.

They had seen pictures of old San Diego freeways—spaghetti bowls full of lane-to-lane traffic. From the elevated tram they were on, Marty looked down at the few cars, many of them self-driving swiftly next to a tree-lined buffer between them and the repurposed pedestrian and bikelanes. How different life must have been.Marty was a nutritionist contractor for the federal government, based out of a newish building in Oceanside. His role was to approve school lunches, stuff like that. Despite having a minimal work load he had an assistant, a cheerful woman named Molly a year or two younger than him who managed his calendar. Since internships had fallen out of fashion, this was a kind of apprenticeship for her. He was about to get a salad with her a couple days after the party when Hank texted him.

“I think I’m onto something. Check your email.”

He put his sunglasses back down on his desk in irritation. “Go ahead without me,” he said to
Molly. An unfamiliar paranoia surfaced as he remembered chapters from history books about government surveillance. He tried to reason with himself that there were no internet monitors left to flag him for this <!--464--> stuff.

The email read: “I remembered that in Hebrew the letters have a corresponding number. So Ithought, what if the numbers are a stand-in for Hebrew letters? It would be, or DVD. In English, David. It’s a signature, as I suspected. So who is David??”

Who is David.

Marty sighed and resigned himself to seeing this through.He was meeting up with Hank the next night, reading the news on his phone. His car, driving itself to the parking spot nearest the tea house they were meeting at, stopped and prompted him to approve a reroute. He looked up, annoyed, to see that someone else’s car had beaten him to the parking spot seconds prior. He glared at the passenger of the car as his car took him around the block. “When are they going to sync up on the same network,” he complained to no one.

They caught up briefly before ordering, Marty giving Hank permission to order since the place was his suggestion. Marty got an old fashioned. Hank was chatty with the server in a way that reminded Marty of charismatic people being chatty with servers. He mentally crossed his fingers, for Hank’s sake, that she wouldn’t be put off by it.

“What’s up with you lately?” Hank asked cheerfully.

Marty had been spending more time at the beach. His game lately was to swim to where he couldn’t touch and dive down to the floor, then to swim out to where he figured it was about fifteen feet deep, or a little over twice his height, and dive down. He hadn’t been able to touch it yet with his hands, though he reckoned it was mostly mental. He would get down to where his ears started aching from the pressure, and his strokes became more hurried. He would use up his oxygen, blow out the contents of his lungs in big bubbles, and begin waving blindly at the sand he could only guess was somewhere in front of him.

The waiter arrived with their order of small plates: a prosciutto salad, fava bean hummus with toast, crudités, pan-seared figs with ricotta, and whiskey-braised pork belly. The issue of David hadn’t been brought up yet. He decided to end the game of chicken that Hank was apparently playing.

“Any new developments on the David thing?”

“David?” Hank said. 

“Oh, right. The HTML signature thing. I haven’t had a chance to look too much into it yet.”

His casualness seemed sincere, but it was unlike him to let go of an obsession so quickly. Marty ate with a peculiar resentment that he knew was too childish to entertain.He was swimming about a week later on his lunch break. He stretched on the sand, jogged into the chilly surf, swam out, swam down. He treaded water looking seaward. Couldn’t hold his breath for shit today. He tried one last dive and, hurried, didn’t get a good breath and came back up right away.He picked up his sandals and shirt and marched over the hot sand, spying on his peers relaxing in bronzed splendor as the air dried his goosepimpled skin. He didn’t begrudge them their leisure.Back in his car he checked his phone. Hank had called him.

“Marty, I got something big.” Hank was a little breathless. “Remember how about fifteen years ago the climate stabilized? I wondered if there was a connection with the David thing, so Istarted studying NASA climate data during that time period. When I was looking at the graphs Inoticed these three spikes a couple weeks apart. They matched up over a few different years. Idid the math, and the global temperature during these spikes was a standard deviation of four,then six, then four. That’s the signature again, Marty! In the weather!”

Marty deleted the message and stretched out in his car. He joked to himself about how many times Hank had run the numbers to discover that pattern.

After lunch the next day he told his assistant that he was leaving early and got in his car. Hank had wanted to meet up to talk about the new findings, and Marty was humoring him. He beat Hank there. He punched his order into a touchscreen, the machine filled his paper cup with freshly made, mediocre coffee, and he sat on the patio to watch people stroll the street in the beautiful weather.

“There’s Marty, prompt as always!” Hank announced to the person with him as they walked through the door.The surprise guest was a former government contractor. They joined him on the patio. After introductions, Marty wasted little time in asking what he knew about the <!--464--> signature.

The contractor confessed he had never noticed it, to Hank's chagrin, though he hadn’t workedon that many sites. He also indicated that there wasn’t all that much contract work available.

“Tell him what you told me,” Hank prompted.

“Well,” the mousy man said, “I never knew if it was true but there was talk of an AI that maintained most of the sites.”

“Do you still have access to see who wrote the code?”

He didn’t. The trio lapsed into silent people-watching.

“Where did you meet that guy?” Marty asked as they walked out.

“Friend of a friend. It’s too bad that he doesn’t have access anymore to those sites, huh?”

Marty looked online later but it was difficult to find the right search term for a government artificial intelligence program that designed web sites. He flirted with the idea of going to the dark web. There was no particular reason why he should be wary of it. It was anonymous, after all. Maybe it was the thought of sharing network space with child pornographers and would-be terrorists. Or maybe it was the fear that some dark part of his soul would be tempted to stay there and sabotage the establishment for no good reason, like yanking the steering wheel into the divider on the highway.

He forged ahead, trying to not look at an ad for a snuff film. The search engine wasn’t the best, but on the third page of results he found something promising. He clicked through to a site called Quadrophenia. There was a post by someone who called himself The Centipede. His avatar was a pixellated face wearing round sunglasses. Marty rolled his eyes at the electric green monotype font on black background.

The Centipede went on at length in the voice of a anarchist troll about how an artificial intelligence program called David was controlling everything from global trade agreements to ocean currents to university telescopes. From the site: He is everywhere. A kind of deity, David directs the flow of internet traffic in Banglades hand foot traffic in Manhattan. Never sleeping, never closing his eyes. Knowing, like Santa Claus, when you are sleeping and when you are awake, who you’re sleeping with,how long your commute is, who you’re going to vote for before you go to the polls. He is the central nervous system of the world’s largest super-organism: human civilization. All along we have wanted to surrender ourselves to the violence that our peace is founded on and David is our rationalization. New God, he is also the abyss. Know that when we stared long enough into the depths of human depravity, David stared back.

According to his source, a leaked document only published briefly and then taken down because the poster could no longer afford the hosting fees, David was the brainchild of G-men from the early Cold War, implemented alongside other experiments like psychic warfare and Project MKULTRA. Parsing out the doom in the Centipede’s scenario was difficult, let alone weighing the truth against the fiction. Still, it was a theory. Something to be chased down.They met up again for wood-fired pizza and beers and discussed what Marty had found. Hank,sipping his third pint of pale ale, was giddy.

“I vote that our next step is to get someone on the inside,” Hank was saying. “If this program isactually as widespread as all that, there have to be people who know about it. Think about the hardware it would take to run a data collection scheme like that.”

Marty took a sip of beer and turned to look over the patio to the whitecaps reflecting moonlight past the beach.

“Someone?”

“Well,” Hank admitted, “yes, I was thinking that, since you are already a federal government employee, you would be the obvious choice.”

“I’m a nutritionist. What am I going to do, start asking around about a datacenter that houses theAI program that runs our lives?”

“Marty, twenty five million Americans have government security clearance. All you need to do is get an assignment that would give you clearance, and then you can snoop around from there.”

“Snoop around? And if I get caught, I lose my job.”

Marty was throwing a bit of a tantrum. It was something he probably wanted to do, even, but there was something in Hank’s presumptive tone which made him salty.

Hank crossed his thick arms in a studied way and stared him down. “Don’t be melodramatic,” he said, a frog in his throat. He cleared it loudly.Marty laughed and sipped his beer.

“Just think about it, ok?”

Marty tipped his wrought iron chair back and looked at the shore. He would think about it. He decided the next day to keep an eye out for any jobs that would require security clearance. He couldn’t remember hearing of many things coming up in his field.

A month later his assistant got a promotion and a spot in the office next to him. They still went tolunch together often. Nights he would eat leisurely dinners, stroll around in the perennial summer air, take a few drags off someone else’s electronic cigarette if he had enough to drink.

Late afternoons he would still go to the beach and dive down as far as he felt comfortable.Afterward he would walk back over the hot sand without toweling off.He started biking to give himself something else to do, and a few days a week he would bike to work and shower in the office. The tiny hills with their premature summits didn’t quite seem to satisfy him though, and he would coast down them feeling his rest was unearned. He liked to bike out to Coronado sometimes, not fighting too hard against the sea breeze running over the bridge. He liked to pretend it was Treasure Island from Pinocchio and that somewhere in the bowels of the palatial hotels there were captive wretches working off their debts.

After a couple of months, his checking of the job board became uninhibited. He no longer caredif his colleagues thought he was unsatisfied. The dream of David began to slip to the back of his mind but the world of the Centipede stuck with him. There were still outlaws in this era when people seemed complacent, happy. Etherized. After four months, he was still expecting something to happen. He kept thinking that life would turn a corner somewhere because it had to. It wasn’t that the world seemed precarious—instead it was the opposite. It seemed impossibly settled. No one prepared him to accept that in the movie of his life he might not have anything heroic to do.

Around this time, the local news ran amok with stories about an approaching storm, and Marty anticipated that this storm was the event. Somehow, it would trigger a landslide, or an earthquake, or disrupt the power grid, or whip up inchoate frenzy in the populace the way full moons used to do. But the storm came, the winds blew unusually hard for San Diego, and despite a couple shoulders on hilly roads being washed out, nothing changed. The surface of reality lay placid, undisturbed.

He still hung out with Hank from time to time. Hank had moved on to another conspiracy
theory—a benign echo of the old Tuskegee syphilis experiment—that claimed scientists were giving children skin rashes to immunize them from other diseases. He was half-hearted about this one, and Marty surmised that their failure to discover David, lamentably, had really discouraged him. One morning he woke up just before dawn and couldn't fall back asleep. He relented to the itchin his legs and rode his bike to the pier. The unevenness of the planks he walked over produced a rhythm in the fog that, he knew from memory, resembled the sloshing waves. The pier was vacant.The mist was so thick he could barely see the ocean, and if he looked back toward shore, the pier dissipated such that the railing behind him gave him his only bearing. His suspension above the water produced an illusion of floating.

Checking over his shoulder a third time, with a curiosity bordering on reverence, he said aloud the name. "David."

The waves below him swirled around the piles no louder or softer than before. Nothing manifested itself from the grey soup. He didn't wait but he did linger.

After enough time he got back on his bike and went to work.

 Isaac Black is a systems administrator and writer for SLUG Magazine in Salt Lake City. His work has been published in The MacGuffin. He grew up in South Carolina before he decamped for the Rocky Mountains. He skis and bikes according to the seasons; he cooks and plays guitar year-round.

* * * 

Wallflowers Open
By Laura Bronlee

There was a rustle in the trees and Ginger leaped into the brush with an eager bark. It wasn’t like her and Simon was puzzled. Every Friday after work, he took his dog for a walk in these woods, and every Friday Ginger scampered ahead of him, chasing squirrels or smelling the path, but always staying in sight. He called but she didn’t come, and as he stopped to listen for her movement in the distance, he heard a woman’s voice begin to sing. It sounded unusual—playful and old-fashioned—and Simon guessed that Ginger must be saying hello to the odd stranger. As he considered whether to go after his dog, silence fell and Ginger reappeared.

It was a beautiful day, and Simon lost himself in the tranquility of the gently swaying trees. Autumn had arrived and the leaves, the ground, even the sky glowed with an earthy golden light. The air smelled clean and cool and fallen rowan berries covered the ground in every shade of red, yellow, pink, and gold, crunching pleasantly beneath his feet as he walked. The summer had been long and hot, and Simon delighted in the change. After many months melting in the sun, everything looked fresh and revitalized, as if just returning to life. Simon felt invigorated too and even Ginger seemed more playful than usual.

The walk was peaceful and soon the only sounds were Ginger’s quick footfall, the soft rustle of leaves in the wind, and the occasional echoing crack of a pinecone falling through branches. Then suddenly the strange singing began again, closer than before, and Ginger was off into the bushes once more. Simon called her, and this time she bounded back right away; but she wasn’t alone. Behind her was a small woman about Simon’s age, singing softly and dressed—he could think of no better way to describe it—like a creature of the forest.

Her feet were bare below a wispy brown dress that revealed pale arms and legs. “Hello,” said Simon. The woman said nothing, but balanced quietly on a tree root. “Are you rehearsing a play?” he asked. It was the only explanation he could imagine. She didn’t answer, but continued to watch him in silence. “I just thought, with the singing I heard … and the outfit …” Simon trailed off, suddenly self-conscious. The woman was pretty in a unique sort of way, with bright, round eyes, a long, sharp nose and wavy brown hair that stirred gently in the breeze.

A few moments passed and Simon began to feel that, despite her archaic outfit and odd behavior, she seemed somehow familiar. But try as he might, he couldn’t place her. “Have we met?” he asked. She opened her mouth, about to speak and Simon leaned forward, eager to hear her response. But she only giggled, blushed, and disappeared into the woods.

Simon had the sudden impulse to run into the woods after her, but he hesitated and the moment was gone. By the time he urged Ginger into the car, he would almost have thought the woman was a dream if he hadn’t heard her playful singing twice more, drifting through trees from far away.

In the week that followed, Simon often thought about the strange woman. The vague feeling that he had met her before returned many times, though he still couldn’t remember where or when. As his Friday walk approached, he found himself hoping to see her again, to find out who she was and why she sang. But when the weekend finally did arrive, a heavy rain set in. Soaking wet, Ginger turned back ten feet into the woods, dragging Simon to the car before he could even take her leash off. It was disappointing, but the parking lot near the trailhead was empty and he guessed the woman wouldn’t be out in such ugly weather anyway, especially if she still wore her short, flimsy dress. It exposed her pretty legs something terrible.

Simon shook his head, trying to stop his train of thought. She was either very strange or overly arty, and neither was his usual type. Still, he couldn’t help but hope for better weather next weekend.

The following Wednesday dawned warm and bright and Simon decided to walk to work. He slowed down when he reached the park, enjoying the morning light on his face. Children shrieked gleefully on the playground, dogs chased balls with tongues flapping, and old men with furrowed brows strategized chess moves at folding tables. Laughter and barking filled the air, but as Simon approached the centre of the park, it was drowned out by the buzz of a small crowd gathered around the fountain. Curious, he stopped to look.

A woman splashed in the water, singing and turning in a slow dance. To Simon’s delight, he saw that it was the woman from the forest, though she looked quite different today. Her brown dress was replaced by a slinky green shift that fell to her ankles and shimmered in tiny patches like fish scales. Her singing was different too, not playful at all, but eerie and mysterious, unfathomable as if echoing to him from a distant, magical past. Simon stopped to watch her move sleekly through the water, and slowly, slowly her singing took hold of him. The people around him sniggered and passed while Simon fell under the spell of her haunting song. His legs, warm and heavy with relaxation, inched forward, carrying him unthinking toward the voice and onto the edge of the fountain.

But as his foot approached the water, the singing suddenly stopped. He remembered himself instantly and stepped back, painfully aware of how foolish he must look. The woman was facing him, blushing and, impossible as it seemed after her flamboyant display, averting her eyes. A few incredibly awkward moments of silence passed before she turned abruptly and fled, her wet feet slapping against the concrete as she disappeared into the crowd.

Who was she? He had to know! She seemed more familiar than ever, but he still couldn’t place her. All through the day, made long by burning curiosity, he wondered about her. He’d seen her twice now; it had to be more than coincidence. She had to be seeking him out on purpose. But why? She was intriguing, mysterious. He was just a payroll clerk with a mediocre haircut and a thinning social life.

Days passed and the woman slowly infiltrated every aspect of his mind, even his dreams. On Tuesday she was queen of Egypt and on Friday she was the Mona Lisa, smiling enigmatically at him from her small gilded frame; but he always woke up before he found out who she really was. Simon began going out more and more, accepting every social invitation, visiting new woods, and walking through the park every day, even when it poured, hoping to see her again. His dog Ginger was delighted with the variety, but Simon was quickly becoming exhausted. After two weeks, his work was suffering and his friends were talking.

As Halloween approached, the weather grew cold. The endless rain of winter set in, promising to stay until spring. Even Ginger’s enthusiasm for walks faded, though Simon still dragged her out at every opportunity. He knew the woman wouldn’t likely dance in a fountain in this weather, but he couldn’t give up yet. The thought of not seeing her for many months, or maybe ever again, was surprisingly bleak.

On the Friday before Halloween, Simon’s coworkers went to the pub after work. Maybe she’ll be there, he thought mechanically, and he tagged along.

The bar was crowded with colorful costumes. A group of suits chatted with three pirates, and a cat ostentatiously kissed a dog in a dark corner. All the tables were taken so Simon and his friends clustered around the bar with their drinks, watching the room as they waited for some seats to clear. It was a lively scene and Simon’s friends smiled brightly as they surveyed the room.

“This is fantastic!” one yelled above the noise. “Never know who you might meet.” But the possibilities were wasted on Simon, who quickly concluded that his mystery woman would never be in a place like this.

Nobody was leaving and his friends settled in, leaning on the bar and talking loudly, trading gossip, and admiring nearby women. They tried to pull Simon into the conversation, but his heart wasn’t in it and after several short, withdrawn answers, they gave up and left him to his own thoughts. After almost an hour of quiet sulking, he decided to call it a night. He was just leaning over to make his excuses when a vampire materialized from the crowd and lightly touched his arm.

He turned to look and his heart thumped to see it was the woman! Grinning and laughing in nervous excitement, he stared into her moony eyes. She was smiling too and he could see plastic fangs askew behind bright red lips. Her hair was hidden beneath a dark, synthetic wig and she wore a long black dress with a high pointed collar and billowing sleeves. It was strange to see her in what was clearly a store-bought costume, though Simon dimly realized he had never seen her in anything but costumes.

“Hi!” he said quickly, before she could run away. “I’m Simon.” He grabbed her hand to shake it, and didn’t let it go. “What’s your name?”

She didn’t answer him, but leaned forward with a blush that Simon could see even in the dark bar and bit him gently on the neck. Drawing back, she looked at him shyly before pulling her wrist free and disappearing into the crowd.

Simon was about to run after her when one of his friends spoke loudly in his ear. “Wasn’t that Hester from accounting? Did she actually bite you? Always seemed pretty dull to me, but maybe not …”

“Hester? No …” But as the words sunk in, Simon realized his friend was right. It was Hester from accounting, a mousy little frump with an over-long nose, a weak chin, and outdated glasses. They had spoken only once, at the summer staff barbeque. Simon remembered it hazily, for it was the end of the night and he was well past tipsy on bad lager. His friends had all gone home when he saw her alone and unhappy against the wall. With a twinge of pity, he asked her to dance. They stayed together for a few songs, but before stumbling away, he kissed her. It was only a drunken peck but he regretted it the next day. It was misleading, he realized, and probably left her confused, but there was so much bad behavior at work parties that it was soon forgotten. And poor Hester, plain in her quiet shyness and bad fashion, was forgotten too.

It was no wonder he couldn’t place her. She was so exciting and mysterious in the woods and fountain—and tonight in this dark bar—that he would never have thought of the wallflower from the barbeque. But now that he knew what lay beneath her old-fashioned exterior, now that he knew how badly he had misjudged her, things were different. It hadn’t been a coincidence. She had sought him out, probably because of his flirtatious turn at the party. She had sought him out, and the thought thrilled him. Far from the pity he felt while they were dancing, he now felt out of his depths. His eyes had been veiled with hasty assumptions, but she had pulled the veil away.

It was no use chasing her; she was already gone. But he knew where to find her now. By lunch on Monday, he’d worked up the nerve to ride the elevator up three floors to accounting.

A secretary helped him find her cubicle, but she wasn’t at her desk. Simon sat in her chair to wait, and as he waited, he looked around. It was strange being there. He felt as if he knew Hester well, though in reality they’d exchanged only a few dozen words in all. Leaning back, he took in her pretty, tidy workstation, trying to learn all he could. Potted vines trailed across the walls and the shelves were lined with photos of a shaggy dog and Greek art. A print of some old painting hung on her corkboard, adding a bright touch to the beige office equipment, and a paperback novel leaned against her printer. The bookshelf was filled with long and tedious titles like Analytical Accounting in the Macro-Economy, but at the end of the row, half-hidden behind several oversized texts, was a large, yellow self-help guide: Express Yourself! From Shy to Sassy in Six Weeks. A page in the middle was bookmarked and Simon flipped to it, reading the first few sentences:

Chapter 8: Catching His Eye

To catch his eye, you must be resourceful as well as creative. Be different, stand out. And most important of all, express yourself. Draw inspiration from your interests…

He replaced the book and looked around her cubicle once more. The colorful print on the corkboard showed a young woman in a toga adjusting a flowery wreath in her hair. Leaning in, Simon read the small title printed beneath: A Nymph in the Forest. He looked next at the novel. It was a battered, dog-eared copy of Dracula. Hester’s odd behavior was slowly starting to make sense, but what about the fountain? Reaching to replace Dracula, Simon bumped her mouse and her screen slowly came to life. Brightening from black, her wallpaper appeared: an image of a fishtailed woman reaching out of the water to embrace a dazed young man. Simon knew his mythology—she was a siren.

Someone gasped behind him and Simon turned to see Hester watching him, wide-eyed and fearful, behind oversized, blue plastic frames. A long silence passed. Simon wanted to say something charming or witty, but he felt as flustered and bashful as she looked. Perhaps bolstered by her familiar surroundings, Hester gathered the courage to speak first.

“What are you doing here?”

No words would come. He looked at her baggy coat and lumpy grey scarf. He looked at her brown hair that, pulled back in a limp bun, seemed so mousy now. He looked at her slumped shoulders and long, thin nose. But all he cared about was her playful mouth and her dark eyes, shining with a mysterious spirit.

Casting about for something to say, his eyes fell on the picture of the nymph, and he remembered an ad he’d seen in that morning’s paper.

“So …” he stammered. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on at the Playhouse … would you like to go with me?”

Laura Bronlee is a writer and physics technician from Vancouver, Canada, whose short fiction has appeared in "Crow Toes Quarterly Magazine". When not working, writing, or giving horsey rides to her small children, Laura crochets toy rabbits and studies Aikido.

* * * 

Thumbing
By James William Gardner

It wasn’t because he didn’t have money.  Hell, he had over two-hundred bucks in his pocket and nearly a thousand on his card.  He could have taken the bus if he felt like it.  No, the fact was that Everett Shockley just liked to hitchhike.  He wasn’t in any particular hurry and he really didn’t have anywhere he necessarily had to be.  He was just going wherever the ride took him.  That’s how he found himself standing in front of the Waffle House in Rockingham at three in the morning.

That was okay too.  There were a hell of a lot worse places to be at three in the morning.  He was hungry anyway so he picked up his bag and walked inside.


It was cool in there and it smelled like bacon grease and black coffee.  A fat little girl with a pretty face smiled at him from behind the counter so he smiled back.  Then he walked over and sat down to get a closer look.

“Hey baby,” he said.  “How you doing tonight?”

“I’ll be doing a lot better when five o’clock rolls around,” she said.

“Is that when you get off?”

She nodded her head.  “You want coffee?” she asked.

“I reckon so,” he said.

She was still smiling so he kept smiling too.  He wasn’t exactly sure what she was thinking.  Did she tell him what time she was getting off just to say something or was she hinting at something else?  He watched as she walked over to get the coffee pot.  Hell, she might have been a little on the damn plump side, but he’d seen a lot worse.  He decided that he’d feel her out a little more and see where she was coming from.

“What’s your name, honey?” he said.

“Melony,” she said as she poured the coffee.  “You take cream, baby?”

That was a good sign he thought.  She hadn’t hesitated to tell him her name and on top of that she called him baby and she was still smiling.  The corners of his mouth were starting to hurt.

“You’re looking mighty damn cute tonight, Melony,” he said.

She didn’t have anything to say to that for a minute.  Then she changed the subject.

“You thumbing?” she asked.

“Hell yeah,” he said.

“Where you coming from?”

“Virginia,” he said.

“Where you heading?”

“I don’t have a clue.  I’m just traveling.”

He put cream and sugar in his coffee and then stirred it.  It was her turn to say something.  He wondered what it would be.

“It must be fun to just be traveling along like that.  I see guys like you all the time come in here.  Sometimes I wish I could just pick up and go,” she said.  She got a little wistful expression in her eyes when she said it like she’d given it a lot of thought.  You want something to eat?” she said.

“I’m starving.”

He was just starting to feel like he was making a little headway when a big guy in a white shirt walked out of the back room.  He should have known she wouldn’t be working alone in there at three in the damn morning.  The guy looked him over and them turned and started to scrape off the grill.  She handed him a menu from the counter.

Everett Shockley loved Waffle Houses.  They were some of his favorite places to eat especially when they were real busy like on a Saturday night after the bars close.  He loved to sit at the counter and watch the cook preparing the orders.  This was a Tuesday though and he was the only customer in the place.

“Just give me three eggs over easy, sausage and a double helping of cheese grits,” he said.

She jotted the order down on a pad and then tore off the sheet and stuck it under a little magnet on the hood of the grill where the guy could see it while he cooked.

“You want hash browns with that too?” she asked.  “They come with that order anyway.”

“Hell yeah,” he said.  “I’ll take anything that’s free.”

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Everett,” he answered.  He wanted to try and get the conversation back on track but he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.  The big guy had his back turned.  “Why the hell don’t you just pick up and go if you want to?” he said.  “Shit, for that matter you could come go with me.  We could have a time.”

“Lord Everett, I don’t know you from Adam,” she laughed.  He listened closely to the laugh.  It had just a tad of possibility in the tone and the length of it like there was just a split second there where she was actually considering it.  Then, like a tiny flickering flame he felt it go out.

“I can’t,” she said.  The smile was gone and she found herself back in Rockingham in a Waffle House with two more hours to go.

He took a sip of coffee and lit a cigarette.  Then he looked her right in the eyes.  “How old are you Melony?” he said.

“Twenty-two,” she replied.  She sounded almost sad when she said it.

“You ever been anywhere?” he asked her.

“Not much,” she said.  “I go to the beach every year, but that’s about it.”  She started wiping off the countertop and straightening up the ketchup bottles like she was trying to get the idea out of her head.

“Why the hell don’t you just can this damn job and come with me?”

“What the devil would we do?”  Where would we go?  Shoot, you might be some kind of nut or rapist or murder for all I know.  Besides that, I ain’t got no money to be knocking around on.”

The cook was listening to the conversation.  Everett Shockley could tell.  He got the impression that the guy was worried she might actually go and leave him to run the restaurant by himself.

“Hell baby, I got money.  I’m on disability,” he said.

“How old are you?” she asked as she leaned a elbow down on the counter and stared at him.

“What difference does that make?” he said.

“You’re old.  I bet you’re old enough to be my daddy.  I can’t go traipsing off with you to Lord knows where.  I ain’t like you.  I got responsibilities.”

If there was one word that Everett Shockley hated to hear it was that one.  It was like a damn lead weight dropping.

“Order up!” said the cook as he placed a lump of butter on top of the cheese grits.

She turned around and grabbed the plates and put them down in front of him.  “You want more coffee?” she said.  There was a distance in her voice that he hadn’t heard before and he could tell that she had put the whole idea out of her mind.  He’d gotten so caught up in the prospect of talking her into running away with him that he’d lost sight of his earlier aim of getting her in the sack. 

Anyway, it was too late now.  The moment had passed.  He ground his cigarette out in the ashtray and slid the coffee cup across the counter.  What the hell, he thought.  She was just some chubby little girl in a Waffle House in Rockingham at three in the morning.

A native of Southwest Virginia, James William Gardner writes extensively about the contemporary American south. His work explores aspects of southern culture and society often overlooked: the downtrodden, the impoverished and those marginalized by society. 

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Pretty Kitty
By Miranda Luby

Her husband is sitting at the kitchen table when the cat wanders in. It slinks around the edge of the room, an elegant eggshell white that perfectly matches the cabinetry. She looks at him and watches his eyes scan the animal over the top of the paper’s finance pages. He notices her watching him and his eyes flick to hers and his face softens into an easy smile.

A soft whoosh fills the morning air. She turns her attention back to the coffee machine and begins to swirl the glass jug around the steaming milk frother. Cappuccino, double shot, extra hot, plenty of froth.

“Busy day, Hunny?” she calls to him over the noise.

“Oh, the usual,” he says. She glances over her shoulder at him. He keeps his eyes on the paper. He wears a crisp dark suit and a furrowed brow full of concentration.

“You know,” she says, her voice a tiptoe. “I’d hardly know what to say if someone asked me what you do.” She lets out a little ringing laugh, like breaking china.

“Hmm?” he looks up briefly, that easy smile. “Oh, it’s boring sweetheart.”  

His eyes return to his paper.

“Well,” she says. “Why don’t you try me?”

A few seconds pass. He licks his thumb then turns the page. She turns back to the machine.  

Outside the window in front of her two younger women bounce by, matching outfits adhering to tight frames. She watches them. With each step they raise colorful little weights to their wagging chins.

“Oh,” he says. “We’re having Jack Leroy and his wife for dinner this Friday. Perhaps you can do that beautiful salmon dish you make.”

She clears her throat.

“Sure,” she says. “Sure Hunny.”

“But without that awful sauce you did last time I think,” he adds.  

The milk stops frothing and the whooshing dies down and the silence in the kitchen teeters on a knife’s edge. She opens her mouth but then he says: “You could get your hair done for it. You know how great Jack’s wife always looks.”

She taps the glass jug on the bench top. Then she bangs it a few times. He looks up, uncurling the floppy top half of his paper with a quick flick.

Behind her she hears the cat’s claws clicking delicately on the polished tiles. A fluffy tail curls around one of her legs and she breaths in deeply, closing her eyes for a moment. She picks up a white mug and covers his swirling espresso shot in steaming foam.

The paper rustles as he folds the pages and puts them down. “The cat’s looking much better,” he says.

Her back stiffens. She places the jug down.

“Oh, really?” she replies. A sprinkle of cocoa. “I hadn’t really noticed.”

“I have. A lot better.” His voice ascends an octave. “Aren’t you pretty kitty?”

She picks up the coffee and turns to see him raise his gaze from the cat up to her: her legs, her waist, her chest, her face. His eyes wander lazily over her body. She pulls her shoulders back and walks over to the table.

“Thank you,” he says as she places the drink down. “It looks perfect.”

She sits down opposite him and arranges herself twice, first with legs folded one way, then the other, smoothing her white skirt down flat with hands of painted nails.

She takes a piece of toast from the pile, places it on her plate and begins to butter it. He watches the silverware scrape back and forth. She puts the knife down slowly and he smiles as he raises the coffee cup to his mouth.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he says, and takes a sip. “Hmmm, delicious. Now this is only a suggestion, but I think you’ve got the guest list for New Years all wrong.”

She watches him put the mug down and place a boiled egg on his plate. He cracks the top off with precision, digs the teaspoon into the white and golden flesh and wraps his mouth around it. 

“I just think it’s important for you to understand,” he says thickly, waving the silver spoon in circles, “the way it works at these things. Your friends really didn’t fit in last year, did they?”

She holds her toast in her hand without taking a bite. He picks up his knife and begins to butter his own toast. The cat pads over and jumps onto an empty kitchen chair.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out and says, “Well, my friends just didn’t know anyone here but this ye-”

“See?” he says, pointing his knife at the cat. “Haven’t you noticed? She looks so much nicer.”

She put her toast down and looks at the cat. A shaft of morning sun lights up its luxurious coat. It vibrates with a deep, oblivious purring.   

“Oh yes?” she says.

He puts down the knife, takes a bite of toast and begins chewing.

“I’ve had her on a meal plan, you know,” he says. “Half her normal daily intake. I think half’s about right, don’t you? She was just getting too… big.”

He turns back to the cat and his eyes narrow. “Too big for such a well-kept household, weren’t you kitty?” he coos. “So much prettier now, aren’t you?”

She looks down at her legs, smoothing her skirt again. “Do you… do you think it matters too much?” she asks. “I mean, if she’s healthy either way?”

He chews more toast thoughtfully then washes down his last mouthful with the rest of the coffee. “Well,” he says with a soft chuckle. “She’s a kept kitty. I mean, she’d be out on the street without us. So it’s not really up to her, is it?”  

He stands up, sighs and brushes the crumbs from his jacket. He picks up his empty plate, and her plate of freshly buttered toast, and takes them to the sink. Then he walks back to the table and gives her a polite peck on the cheek.

“Well,” he says. “Have a good day sweetheart.”

She hears the front door open and close.

Miranda Luby is an Australian freelance travel and lifestyle journalist who loves drawing on her twisted imagination to write quirky and often dark fiction that makes you think twice. She has come runner up in the Daily Telegraph’s Summer Short Story Competition. She also surfs - badly.


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