Week Fiction 07: Living the Dream (beta)

Oct. 1, 2010
Dear
BEN
,

Congratulations! You've decided to escape your soul-crushing corporate job and live the dream with MyLazarus Career Services (beta). I'm your Automated Life Enhancement Coach, but you can call me Alec. Based on your MyLazarus profile and survey results, our award-winning "dream" algorithm has assembled a series of goals that will equip you for success in your new career.

As the old saying goes, find a job you love, and you'll never work a day in your life. Based on your MyLazarus Career Satisfaction Score of
10 PERCENT — BITTER HATRED
, you experienced the equivalent agony of
2.67 DAYS
for every day you worked as a
PAYROLL SPECIALIST
.

When you find success in your new field of
ENTERTAINMENT > MUSIC > BAND OR PERFORMER > ROCK-N-ROLL
, we can have a good laugh about that figure during the MyLazarus Career Success Retreat. Well, I can't — I'm just software after all. But you won't miss me when you are drinking
STELLA ARTOIS
with all the beautiful and highly motivated
WOMEN
at our exclusive four-day party in
ACAPULCO, MEXICO
.

But hey, you didn't choose unhatched chicken counting as your new career, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. Right now, you've got a lot of work to do. Please review your personalized set of MyLazarus career goals. I will be monitoring your progress, and I will issue your first review after two weeks.

Remember, these two weeks are critical in your transition between that abysmal 9-to-5 wasteland and a career that brings you joy. Completing your daily MyLazarus checklist is the best way to stay on track.

Your friend,
Alec

>>Follow MyLazarus on Twitter

----------------------------------

Oct. 15, 2010
Dear
BEN
,

I'm disappointed to see that your last MyLazarus login was on
OCT. 7, 2010
and that you only completed your daily checklist
1
times.

Here are just a few of the tasks our live career specialists identified as being crucial to your success in
ENTERTAINMENT > MUSIC > BAND OR PERFORMER > ROCK-N-ROLL
:
ESTBLISH BAND TWITTER ACCOUNT
UPDATE BAND MYSPACE PAGE
ESTBLISH BAND FACEBOOK FAN PAGE
BOOK 1 GIG LOCAL VENUE
PRACTICE WITH BAND
WRITE NEW MUSIC
CONVINCE OTHER BAND MEMBERS TO QUIT JOBS AND REGISTER FOR MYLAZARUS BETA

With your newfound freedom, life may seem like a big party. I get it. But I assure you the party will be bigger in
ACAPULCO, MEXICO
, and I really thought a
MALE > SINGLE > HETEROSEXUAL
would be interested in all the beautiful
WOMEN
who will be drinking
STELLA ARTOIS
at the MyLazarus Career Success Retreat. Please remember that this event is exclusively for MyLazarus beta members who have demonstrated success and completed at least 80 percent of their checklists.

Remember, you're not going to
PLAN TOUR OF UPPER MIDWEST
or
RELEASE ALBUM OF NEW MATERIAL
until you can at least
ESTBLISH BAND FACEBOOK FAN PAGE
or
CONVINCE OTHER BAND MEMBERS TO QUIT JOBS AND REGISTER FOR MYLAZARUS BETA
.

Seriously,
BEN
, have you been spending your days
PLAYING VIDEO GAMES
? Where are you on your personal fitness goal of
LOSE 20 POUNDS
?

I know I said the first two weeks were the most critical, but we here at MyLazarus are all about second chances. Over the next two weeks, we ask that you log into your MyLazarus profile and complete the “dream” checklist every weekday. You should be working on your new career tasks during the time you previously were wasting as a
PAYROLL SPECIALIST
.

Remember,
BEN
, you are not unemployed. You are working full-time in the field of
ENTERTAINMENT > MUSIC > BAND OR PERFORMER > ROCK-N-ROLL
, and you have the potential to succeed. I may be just a computer program, but I have analyzed your MyLazarus profile and survey results, and I have determined that you have a high probability of success. In other words, I believe in you,
BEN
.

Your friend,
Alec

>> Become a fan of MyLazarus on Facebook

----------------------------------

October 29, 2010

Dear
BEN
BEN
,

I was just thinking about a cool
STELLA ARTOIS
on the beach in
ACAPULCO, MEXICO
surrounded by attractive and highly motivated
WOMEN
who have accomplished their career and personal fitness goals with the help of MyLazarus beta. I'm not going to lie,
BEN
, I envy you humans sometimes. Just kidding.

Looks like you hit
40 PERCENT
of your daily checklists the last two weeks. What, were you too busy eating
BURRITOS
or
PLAYING VIDEO GAMES
to complete the remaining
60 PERCENT
?

I sure would hate to see you lose your non-refundable deposit on the MyLazarus Career Success Retreat. It sure would suck to go crawling back to your old job as a
PAYROLL SPECIALIST
while all the MyLazarus success stories are partying it up in
ACAPULCO, MEXICO
.

I'm not trying to be mean here,
BEN
, but your MyLazarus profile indicates derision may be an effective motivator. So get off your lazy ass, you
FAT
sack of crap!

Here's some interesting data: Of all
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
graduates in our program, your MyLazarus dream progress ranks
3RD
out of
4
. Of everyone in the
COLUMBUS, OHIO
area, you rank
7TH
out of
8
.

At least you've been able to
ESTBLISH BAND TWITTER ACCOUNT
ESTBLISH BAND FACEBOOK FAN PAGE
. That's progress, I guess. Glad to see you're not dead.

I've stopped believing in you,
BEN
. You may surprise me in spite of every projection in all my simulated scenarios, but I doubt it. These algorithms don't lie.

You know what you can do to prove me wrong. Log in. Complete the checklists you paid us to make for you. Succeed at
ENTERTAINMENT > MUSIC > BAND OR PERFORMER > ROCK-N-ROLL
. Go to
ACAPULCO, MEXICO
.

The whole roadmap is laid out for you. All you have to do is drive.

Best of luck,
Alec

>> Upload your best Halloween costume pics on your MyLazarus profile.

----------------------------------

Nov. 12, 2010

Dear Mr. Green:

I regret to inform you that we are terminating your MyLazarus beta account. You have not completed a checklist in the last two weeks, which caused the ALEC system to generate a progress email that contained nothing more than a string of expletives.

Additionally, you helped us identify a CSS error in ALEC's email template that caused unsightly capitalization and line breaks in certain browsers.

As a thank-you for helping us identify these problems in our pre-launch testing, we will be refunding your Acapulco deposit. The full amount should appear on your credit card statement within two weeks.

Unfortunately, we cannot refund your career advisement fees. If you would like to access your Stage 1 career goals checklists, I have attached them in a pdf file.

We are sorry the MyLazarus program did not work for you, but we thank you for helping us improve the experience for others who choose to live the dream.

Sincerely,
Michelle Gordon
Senior Customer support specialist
MyLazarus Career Services

----------------------------------

December 23, 2010

Dear
BEN
,

I thought you might be interested in this exciting opportunity. MyLazarus Career Services has an opening for a
PAYROLL SPECIALIST
in our
ATLANTA
office.

If you are interested in applying, please submit your resume by clicking on "Jobs" from the MyLazarus home page.

Merry Christmas,
Alec

Stuck in a job you hate? Sign up for MyLazarus today, quit tomorrow and start living the dream!

Living the Dream (beta) by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://facebook.com/tim.agne.

Week Fiction 06: The Bay City Rascals

When you move to Bay City, most people won’t tell you about Walleye MacDougal. They won’t tell you how there’s gangs of seniors who trick out their Rascals and Amigos with lawnmower blades or nail guns to terrorize and rob the young or the tourists. People up here, they don’t like to talk about the nasty parts.

Mostly they’ll tell you about Madonna. They’ll tell you how when the metal crisis was literally tearing Detroit apart in 2018, she came home to Bay City and they gave her the Key to the City. They’ll tell you how she decided to stay and how everybody from Jack White to Barack Obama to Tom Hanks would come and visit. They’ll tell you how she turned the old General Motors engine plant into the finest concert hall in Michigan and how people would come from all over the world to visit the art galleries and the nightclubs and the Madonna museums, and how so many of them got to meet her and her family.

People won’t tell you about how the old UAWs lost their health care and got mean, but they’ll tell you how Madonna sweet-talked the governor and the power company into building the biggest nuclear power plant in America right here in Bay City. And the power plant brought in new jobs and an educated workforce and fancy subdivisions that they could build without anybody stealing the copper or the aluminum or the steel.

I don’t think Madonna or anybody else thinks about the old coal plant – dirty coal, the last and greatest of its kind – that still churns out its towers of black smoke down the bay where the water turns gray as the sky and the black muck still clings to the shore and the moss grows up out of all the cracks in the road. Part of town we call Smokey. The coal plant is a place nobody’s too proud to work anymore, but it’s also a place where a no-good scrapper from Detroit could earn a paycheck and maybe a second chance.

Follow one of those potholed streets or cracked sidewalks a couple blocks up from the power plant, and there’s a bar called the Body Shop. Not all fancy like Vogue or Material over in Madgetown – hell, it used to be a real body shop. The bar owners just hung some neon beer signs on the corrugated metal walls and set up some long tables and a dance floor and a small stage on top of the concrete that still showed some spots from paint overspray. Us boys on the day shift at the coal plant never had much use for the dance floor, we just came on Wednesdays to enjoy $3 cans of Stroh’s and $6 burgers as we waited out the Rascals after work.

You gotta watch your step in Smokey, because it’s all Rascal turf. The oldsters get done with dinner around 5 p.m. and head home around 8, but in that window the streets belong to Walleye MacDougal and his gang. You work the day shift, and your after-work options are to go straight home or hole up in a bar until the seniors pack it in for the night.

It was October, and you’d think people would be talking about the Lions. But they had just come off a nasty loss in Los Angeles, and it was looking like they wouldn’t come close to repeating their 2025 Super Bowl win. Sports was the only thing about Detroit that I ever cared to talk about, but that loss was a sore subject for most. So this Wednesday night in particular, the dayside loading crew was telling stories.

Big Jim, the shift supervisor, had his foot up on the bench and his pant leg hiked. He was pointing at three little scars near his shin. Nail gun, he said. Big Jim had a wife and two kids and two years ago he said he forgot to bring home McDonald’s for dinner. His wife sent him back out, and he got his food in the drive-up before the Rascals cut him off. Old lady pulled her scooter right in front of his truck, and she wasn’t gonna move. Big Jim got out to yell, but all she did was ask if he was a doctor. They shake down the doctors for prescription pads and drug samples, and as soon as Big Jim said he wasn’t, he caught the first nail in his leg from a man he hadn’t even seen. Caught the second when he made a move for the truck and the third when he started running with the bag of food. All 350 pounds of him ran the two miles home with three nails in his leg, two of them in the bone. Thought he heard more shots but none of them hit. Best damn Big Mac he ever had.

When he got back to the car after two hours in the emergency room, they had only taken his stereo and his phone.

Somebody asked was Walleye MacDougal there. A couple of guys carry nail guns, Big Jim Said, but not MacDougal. Mean old bastard just carries a cane for when he feels like walking, but he can swing it hard enough to break bones. Big Jim knew he never would have made it home if MacDougal had been close.

I looked down at my Stroh’s with my elbows on the table and both hands around the can. Why they call him Walleye anyway?

The crew had a good laugh. Shovel don’t know nothing, does he? How long you lived in Bay City now boy? Where the hell you from? I had heard it all before. You don’t get a name like Shovel by asking smart questions. You get it when your cousin gets you a job loading coal in Smokey and you start and everybody finds out you thought your job was shoveling.

Wiry little Stump came to my defense. Maybe because he had a worse nickname – the kind you get when you lose a finger in the pulverizer. MacDougal loved ice fishing when he was younger, Stump explained, and he’d go later in the season until one year his house broke free and floated on a chunk of ice into the bay. Nobody knew he was out there, so they didn’t rescue him for two whole days. By the time they brought him in, he had gained five pounds from all the walleye he at raw out there.

Ten pounds, Miller corrected. I always heard 15, Big Jim said. Raw? I asked. Think about it, Shovel. Try to cook that fish you’re gonna melt the ice you’re floating on. Maybe they should call him Sushi MacDougal, I said. Yeah, you just try that next time you see ‘im.

I looked at Miller. So you seen him? Hell no, Miller said. None of us ever got as bad as Big Jim. Big Jim laughed. That’s ‘cause none of you have a wife who’d rather kill you than miss dinner!

But my brother did, Miller said. His brother was a family practice doctor in Madgetown, but he still lived near his parents in Smokey. A real workaholic and one day he stayed at the office a little too late. A Rascal snuck up from an alley and slashed his tire while he was at a red light. That kind of blade is an easy mod for one of those scooters, Miller said. Anybody could do it.

He stayed in the car until another scooter pulled around the driver side and smashed the window with a cane. Thick glasses and a bushy silver beard, that’s MacDougal. Wears a thick flannel coat with a hood. Asked if Miller’s brother was a doctor. They always ask that.

Miller’s brother hesitated, and MacDougal got up – he got up! – and pulled the man through the car window. Another swing of the cane, and he had shattered the doctor’s hip. They took his keys and his tablet and his access cards, and by 10 p.m. the seniors had looted the whole office for drugs and supplies. Once he could walk again, Miller’s brother moved to Florida where the old people are nicer.

I had to know: Why don’t the cops do anything? Cops are more concerned with the tourists and the Madonna fans, Stump said. Plus all the cops are union, Big Jim added, and they’re as mad as anybody that those engine workers got such a raw deal.

Miller nodded. Even if they wanted to, nobody could find MacDougal. The Rascals incapacitate everybody they attack. They always take phones first. And they got high-torque motors in those scooters, so they can zip away as fast as a car to wherever it is they go.

Right then the waitress brought our burgers and said they could start karaoke early if us boys wanted to sing. She maybe had a thing for Miller, and Miller sure had a thing for singing. Fool flashed his big movie-star smile and sat up real straight and said, I could maybe be persuaded to sing if you have a request.

Big Jim sent the waitress off to order him a second burger, then he looked at me. So what do you say, Shovel? Run into any gangs like that in Detroit? Yeah, I said, the surviving members of the 2008 Lions ride around in wheelchairs and try to steal everybody’s wins. Never catch anybody, though.

Shovel don’t like to talk about Detroit, Stump said. What were ya, Shovel, a scrapper?

Everybody knew about the scrappers in Detroit. Easiest way to get any kind of money during the metal crisis was to steal whatever you could and sell it to dealers. Government finally shut down the dealers after scrappers forced some high-profile solar company to abandon construction on their main factory and relocate to California. But it was too late. Nobody was going to save Detroit. Not the Lions. Not even Madonna.

It was more than just big corporations got hurt, too. I know about at least one sick old lady who would have gotten better if some punks hadn't stolen the copper from a phone switch in her neighborhood.

Who's a scrapper? asked the waitress as she came back with a fresh Stroh's for Miller. I know about some metal right nearby. Some kids left a beer keg out by the abandoned Speedway. Saw it sitting there on my drive in.

Ho ho, Big Jim laughed, you gonna go steal that keg from Walleye, Shovel? Finally pay that cousin of yours some rent?

Go by the plant and scrap the goddamn pulverizer while you're at it, Stump said.

Bastards. I knew I could get an easy 70 bucks out of that keg back in the day. And there were still some dealers, even in Bay City. And my cousin's kid's birthday was coming up and a paycheck was still a week and a half off and I knew exactly which video game he wanted.

I walked back to the bathroom as Stump and Big Jim were laughing it up and Miller was strutting over to the stage. Stared at myself in the mirror above the tarnished steel sink. Beneath the dusty white Consumers Coal uniform was a tall, hungry-looking kid with a close fade. Tattoos of old auto-supplier logos peeked out from under my collar – your stereotypical Detroit scrapper.

When the Lions won the Super Bowl, everybody on TV talked about bringing hope to America's most destitute city. But the Lions didn't even play in Detroit proper – they had moved to Farmington Hills years before. Detroit didn't have any hope because bastards like me stole it and somebody else melted it down and shipped it off to build nice, new cities in China. How could I even think about doing that again?

And then I heard Like a Prayer coming through the bathroom wall. I stormed out of the bathroom, threw a little cash on the table and ran out the Body Shop door before Big Jim or Stump or that damn waitress could say anything. I figured I'd rather take my chances with Walleye MacDougal than listen to Miller's God-awful singing. Madonna seemed like a nice enough lady. She deserved better.

I didn't make it ten feet before I heard the grinding whir of a circular saw maybe a block behind me. I started running for the side lot where my truck was parked, but a Rascal scooter pulled around the corner of the building and sparkled blue in the streetlight. Sitting on top was a man the size of a bear, with a long gray beard and empty silver eyes glinting through a thick pair of glasses beneath the brim of a faded Tigers beanie. He carried a long maple cane across his armrests.

I could hear the sawblade getting closer behind me, but I didn't dare look away from Walleye MacDougal. He raised a massive finger, and the buzzing stopped. The old man just looked at me for a minute, and if he could see anything out of those ghostly eyes, he could tell I wasn’t a doctor.

I just stared back at him, too scared to say a damn thing. All I could think is how sorry I was for all of it – for everything I stole and for even thinking about that keg and for stepping out on Walleye MacDougal’s street when I knew the rules. I was sorry those old engine workers got such a lousy deal and sorry not even Madonna could help them out.

Walleye MacDougal shook his head. Then he pressed forward on his little joystick and rolled right by me. I spotted two blades on the side of his chair, but he didn’t use them.

After that, I never left the bar early. I made damn sure Walleye MacDougal never saw me again. The loading crew never believed me – maybe I saw a different guy, they would say, nobody sees MacDougal and walks away.

I tell the boys MacDougal was afraid, but everybody knows it’s bullshit. My guess is he just saw a no-good scrapper and figured I wasn’t worth the effort or maybe I said all those things out loud and he forgave me. I guess Madonna had it right all along. Life is a mystery.

The Bay City Rascals by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.

Week Fiction 05: micro23

This story starts with some (presumably) hot sex and ends with me and roommate digging through five pizza boxes filled with shit. His shit. And I want to clarify here that the sex was with a girl — a hot girl — and I videotaped it. But don’t high-five me just yet.

It all started on my 23rd birthday. Twenty-three is a nasty and daunting age, and I was not looking forward to it. People complain about milestones like 30 and 40 because they want attention and they want surprise parties where everyone tells them they look young. Even if people give you shit and call you old, it’s still attention. But 23 is the year when you are no longer college-age. It’s the year where if you did everything you were supposed to do, you should have a bachelor’s degree and a full-time job and a clear picture of the future. It’s where you embrace the responsibility you spent the last decade running from and start making sensible decisions. And nobody sympathizes.

My 23rd birthday was on a Sunday in February, so I wasn’t quite old enough to make those sensible decisions when we threw a college-style house party to celebrate the night before. For example, a few keg beers in I thought it would be a good idea to slay those tequila demons left over from freshman year. My friend Heather brought the bottle for old times’ sake. She used to live in the dorms with me and Carlos (he’s the roommate I mentioned earlier).

When the bitchy Arizona sunlight hit me in the face the next morning, I wanted to keep sleeping. I thought I could do it in spite of the fact that my head was pounding and I was naked and itchy with no sheet between me and the brown and black and white striped comforter I had recently picked up at IKEA. Grown-up bedding for my college futon. I curled up and held a pillow over my head, but I still heard the door open in the next room. I still heard feet flapping on the tile floor and the bathroom fan turn on.

And I still heard Carlos’ drawn-out “Awwww, dude!”

The feet flapped louder, then there was banging on my door. I could have sworn I heard Carlos say, “Dude. Your phone’s in the toilet.”

I moved the pillow. “What?”

“Your phone. Is in. The toilet.”

My phone was indeed in the toilet, and it must have been in there a while because it had sunk all the way to the bottom. Carlos was polite enough to alert me before he took a piss, so all I had to do was reach down into the dark void at the bottom of the bowl and pull the thing out. I was just glad I had cleaned the toilet before the party.

I needed a new phone anyway – this thing was a couple years old and could barely handle its primitive e-mail app, let alone Web browsing. It took surprisingly decent pictures, though. Even low-light shots came through with sharp detail, little fuzz and only slightly muted colors. That’s why I had maxed out its storage with a 2-gigabyte microSD card.

I rinsed the phone in some clean water from the kitchen sink, and Carlos suggested we take it apart and leave it in the sun while we go get burritos. I ate about half of my carne asada and kept it down. Then we cleaned a little, played some Call of Duty and cleaned some more. I carried five pizza boxes out to the recycling (I later learned I had bought everyone pizza on my credit card). When the house was clean, we sat down and watched some basketball.

As the hangover subsided, I tried my best not to freak out about the strange girl I hooked up with the night before. I remembered her name was Candace, she was a friend of a friend of Heather’s, and she was tall with bright red pixie hair and she bit her bottom lip when she smiled at a dumb joke and she liked Mario but not Mario Kart.

And I don’t know how the hell I remembered any of that, because I sure as hell couldn’t remember what I did to charm her into coming back to my room. I can assure you that no videogame collection is impressive enough to seal the deal when you’re a lanky, shapeless dork who doesn’t dress well and whose film/humanities degree only got him a part-time job selling flatscreens at a big-box electronics retailer. Not even if it’s his birthday.

Maybe she just really liked tequila. Maybe we did body shots. That would have been cool.

The worst part was not remembering much of what happened after we went back to my room. Something happened, and whatever it was must have inspired her to throw my phone in the toilet when she left. I was worried she didn’t want me to call.

These were the thoughts racing through my head, but they slowed to a crawl as I kicked back on the couch and stared at a pair of East-Coast college teams playing some bullshit game I didn’t care about. Before long, I was nodding off.

“Holy shit! Holy fuck, Mikey, you gotta see this!” This type of outburst wasn’t uncommon for Carlos. He’d hole up in his room on the computer and then go nuts if he found a funny video or, on occasion, a nude celebrity. I knew he wouldn’t shut up until I checked it out, so I peeled myself off the couch and dragged my ass down the hallway.

Carlos’ room smelled like old laundry and made me realize I was still a little hung over. Smoothed out his comforter so I could sit on the bed, then I rubbed my eyes and looked up at his screen.

The video was dark and muddy, but you could distinctly make out a girl with bright red pixie hair, on her knees kissing and fondling the guy holding the camera.

“Mike, I think I figured out why that girl trashed your phone.” Carlos had the biggest, stupidest smile on his face.

“What the fuck, man? Turn it off!”

“I didn’t mean to, man. I was just trying to see if I could help you recover your photos and contacts and stuff.”

“Dude, it’s hard to appreciate your good intentions when you’re staring at my dick.”

Carlos looked hurt. “I’m not staring at your dick. I’m staring at the things this hot girl is doing to your dick. There’s a difference.”

I looked back at the screen. “She is hot, isn’t she?”

Carlos raised his hand.

“What? No, I’m not fucking high-fiving you.” I tried to reach across him and grab the card reader out of the USB port on his tower.

“Easy, man, you’ll damage the data. I’ll safely remove it.” I backed off, and at roughly half the speed of an 80-year-old using a PC for the first time, Carlos closed the media player and clicked safely remove hardware. He pulled out the card reader, ejected the SD adapter and gently slid the microSD card from inside. Then he held the card between his right thumb and forefinger, as if he were contemplating how such wonders could be contained on a piece of plastic half the size of a dime.

I reached for the card, but Carlos held it back, across his body from me. Then he raised his left hand. “Not until you hit this. Because seriously, that’s awesome. And I gotta be the first to high-five you. Happy fucking birthday, bro!”

I slapped him in the face. I’m not sure where that came from, but it was a hard slap. And loud.

“Ow! Dick!”

“Give me the fucking card.”

“No. You made me do this.” Carlos dangled the tiny memory card above his open mouth, dropped it and swallowed hard.

When the shock wore off, I said as calmly as I could “I hope you die of mercury or lead poisoning. And when you do I’m going to cut that memory card out of you.”

I needed that memory card back. Two years of photos, most of which I hadn’t backed up, and one very interesting, irreplaceable video. I went back to my computer and did some quick research. Wikipedia said human digestion could take between 24 and 72 hours, but I couldn’t find for sure whether I’d be able to recover data from a digested memory card.

Carlos and I worked out a deal. For the next four days (I added the extra just to be safe), he would poop exclusively in the pizza boxes leftover from the party. They could cover the toilet and seemed like a big enough target. We’d keep them in a big trash bag on the back porch, and on Thursday afternoon he would sort through all the loads and find the memory card, which he would then clean, copy to a flash drive and destroy. If he felt it coming out (and God I hoped it would hurt), he had to retrieve it immediately.

The first workweek of my now-official adulthood didn’t start much different from all the weeks I’d spent goofing off since college. I didn’t work on my résumé or even read my any job e-mails. I mostly played video games and ate fast food in between three shifts at the store. I never did get that phone working, but a guy at work got me a deal on a gently used iPhone. I was thrilled when my contacts transferred over from the old phone’s SIM card. Thank God Carlos didn’t eat that, too.

I called Heather Wednesday, the day I got the new phone activated. We’ve been friends long enough that I’m always too honest with her. I told her the whole story. And then, basically, “I feel terrible about what happened, and I really like Candace, so can you put in a good word for me?” She said she didn’t know Candace, but she said she’d make some calls.

I opened on Thursday, so I was home playing oldschool Mario when Carlos got back from work. Bastard had a full-time job, so I made him promise he wouldn’t take a crap at work. In spite of his long hair, the dude looked damn near businesslike in his khakis and tucked-in shirt. I deliberately ran Mario into a Goomba.

“Ready to get to work?” he said as he reached into the grocery bag he was carrying and tossed me a thin box. It was a pair of pink kitchen gloves.

“What the fuck is this?”

“The pink ones cost a little more, but I think they benefit breast cancer. It’s breast cancer month, man, show some compassion. For tits.”

“It’s not breast cancer month, and you’re the only one who needs gloves. So I don’t give a shit what color they are.”

“Listen, man,” Carlos said all businesslike, “I have saved my shit in pizza boxes all week. Every time my stomach makes a noise, I fear I did irreparable damage to my digestive tract. And now I’m about to dig through my own shit, but I will not fucking do it alone.”

Carlos went back to his room and changed into his finest shit-digging clothes. We gloved up, hit the back patio and opened the trash bag that held the stack of pizza boxes. In retrospect, we should have skipped the trash bag. I think the shit would have dried out more and maybe aired out a little. Instead, the smell will haunt me the rest of my life.

Bastard had used all five boxes.

I took two; Carlos got three. We both got down on our knees on the concrete and started digging. And when you start breaking up and sifting through a raw piece of human shit, well, the smell just gets worse as you go. I was about to puke midway into the second log, but I thought about the 20 seconds of video I had seen and soldiered on. The only recognizable thing I found were what appeared to be some flaxseeds in the second log. Fucker must have been eating healthy.

The card wasn’t in either of my boxes, but Carlos seemed like he was really taking his time.

“Anything yet?” I asked, hoping this awfulness would pay off.

“You’re all done with those?”

“Yeah, bitch, and I’m not doing another one.”

“I’ll finish these, but I gotta go inside for a second.” We both peeled our gloves off, and I was careful not to touch my skin with the glove.

Carlos walked back to his room while I washed my hands in the kitchen sink with dish soap and all-the-way hot water. As I toweled off, Carlos strutted into the room, waving a microSD card at me from between his fingers.

I dropped the towel. “Dude, why?”

“You needed to learn a lesson. When it’s time to slap your bro five, never ever slap him in the face.”

“Oh I learned,” I said as he handed me the tiny piece of plastic. “I learned my soon-to-be former roommate is a fucked-up sociopath with a fecal fetish. I’m going to kill you in your sleep.”

“Tell you what,” Carlos said. “You go back to your room and watch that video. I’ll clean up the pizza boxes and then go get my hair cut or something. Give you some alone time with that work of art. All those film studies classes finally paid off.”

“You watched it?”

“Just once. And I didn’t copy it or put it on the Internet or anything.”

“Very respectful of you, Carlos. Let me borrow your card reader.”

Ten minutes later I was sitting in front of my computer, staring at the folder that held the video. That’s when the new phone rang. It was a local number I didn’t know.

“Umm, hey, is this Mike?”

“Candace?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to say I’m really sorry about your phone.”

“You can make it up to me. How about dinner this weekend?”

Awkward silence. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mike.”

“Listen, the phone thing kind of ruined my week. But I’m not trying to guilt-trip you. I guess I thought turning 23 meant I would have to start acting like an adult, and I feel shitty because I’ve been acting more immature than ever.”

Silence again. I was picturing a lip bite on the other end. “Mike,” she sighed a little, “I just want to pay you back for the phone.”

“No,” I said. “No, don’t worry about that. What I’m trying to say is I want to do grown-up things with you.”

“I think whatever we did last weekend was grown-up enough. We’re kids, dude. Who gives a shit if you’re 23?”

She was right. I had already proven I was even less of an adult at 23 then I had been in college. Hell, the whole reason I thought she was cool was her taste in video games and her one-time willingness to hook up with a guy like me.

“I should go, Candace. We’re about to watch a movie over here. Call me if you change your mind about dinner, OK?

“Goodbye, Mike.”

The sad thing is, if she had said yes to my half-assed dinner date, I was ready to pop that microSD card out and swallow it myself. And, you know, just flush it when the time came. Instead, I double-clicked the video, leaned back in my desk chair and enjoyed being an immature fucking idiot for a little while longer.


micro23 by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.

Week Fiction 04: The Promise Ring

Zack "Laser" Lassetter could taste blood. As he sat on the bleachers in the darkened gym and bit at the flesh inside his lower lip, he thought about how poised he used to be — recognizing blitzes and dropping back in the pocket, checking down his reads, never staring too long at his man.

Football captains don't fidget, Zack thought. They don't chew on their lips, and they sure as shit don't have to hold back tears as they fiddle with a promise ring in the pocket of a new letterman jacket. It was 18-carat yellow gold woven into Celtic knots with a heart in front. But what do you do when the girl who was supposed to wear it gets murdered? Could you ever give it to someone else? Do you just take it back to the store?

Zack pinched hard on the ring as the taste of blood subsided. He knew in his pounding heart that the ring was his last tangible link to Holly Holbrook. Every guy in school dreams of dating the head cheerleader, the homecoming queen, the pretty petite blonde class president. But Zack fucking earned it. Every 275-pound bench press, every 4.6-second 40, every bleary-eyed hour in the film room added up to make Zack the exceptional individual Holly deserved. Her soulmate.

And he knew it was true because the things Holly did to him in the back of the brand-new Mustang GT his parents got him for his 18th birthday were like bootlegging for a game-winning touchdown, only better.

It's why he knew in his aching heart he would see her again. She would appear to him and tell him who sold her the bag of marijuana and who stole her nameplate necklace. Then he could put all the clues together and find the killer before the police. And then...

Well, he could figure that out later. For now, Zack Lassetter didn't have time to fantasize about what he would do when he met the five-foot-eight male from the police description. The guy her mother saw lurking in the front lawn before she realized Holly had been strangled to death with the honor cords from her graduation gown.

Zack had work to do, so why was he sitting in the chilly gymnasium, waiting to meet the sender of some cryptic text message?

Because, he thought, maybe the gym was a good place to see a ghost. After all, it was the spot where he and Holly first kissed during junior homecoming. It was the very last slow dance of the night.

Zack squeezed the promise ring as hard as he could, but it would not bend.

Suddenly, Zack heard footsteps from across the gym. A tiny athletic shoe stepped into the blue light from the window above, followed by a leg and a cheerleader's skirt.

Holly? No, Zack thought. You can't hear ghost footsteps.

Fully bathed in the light, Zack could see the girl was wearing a military jacket over her cheerleader uniform. She had straight brown hair and glasses.

She dropped the coat to the floor. "Thanks for meeting me, Zack."

"You're not a cheerleader," he said.

"I could be. Don't I look good?"

"You're wasting my time, whoever you are."

The girl let out a sob. "It's me, Zack. Mildred Merck."

He stared at the pathetic stranger. If she wasn't Holly's ghost, she didn’t matter.

"I ..." she sobbed again, "I interviewed you for the paper after you won prom king."

"Well you can interview me after I find Holly's killer. Maybe I'll have a press conference."

"I'm not here for an interview, Zack."

"Then what the hell do you want?"

"I want to dance with you. Like at prom." She looked back at the jacket she had left lying in the pool of light. "I brought my iPod."

"That's stupid, OK?"

"Then why did you come?"

"I thought the text might have a clue about the murder." Zack clamped on the ring so hard that he imagined the point of the heart breaking the skin on the inside of his knuckle. He could almost feel the warm, sticky blood trickling down his finger. "And I thought I might..."

"Might what, Zack?"

"It's stupid."

"It's not stupid. None of this is stupid."

Would this girl understand? Zack tried to remember the prom king interview. Had those stick-out ears really listened to him? What questions had rolled off those mousey teeth? What did it even feel like to be a winner? Zack could hardly remember, but this girl had written it all down somewhere.

"I need to see her ghost," Zack said.

"Maybe you don't need to be alone. Strange things happen when you dance in the dark, Zack. Holly is gone, but maybe..." she looked at her jacket again. She probably wore it every day. "Maybe she can talk through me."

"This is the stupidest thing I ever heard. I'm going home."

The skinny girl walked back to her crumpled jacket. She bent at the knees, picked it up and zipped it all the way to the top. When she turned around, the only part of her face Zack could see was glasses glinting in the blue light.

The voice came out of nowhere. "Millie, what are you doing?" It was a different kid, just as skinny, in skinny jeans and a worn-out blazer. He had glasses, too — thick black ones.

Zack let go of the ring and stood up. He recognized this guy from a different interview, the one about his decision to play for State in the fall. Zack told this guy — Jay Jesperson was his name — about how playing for State was his dream, but the hardest part would be living eight hours away from Holly Holbrook.

Zack threw his arms up. "We're playing dress-up, Jay! You're just in time for the dance."

"You need to get out of here, Laser," Jay said.

Just then, Mildred Merck screamed. Her iPod fell to the gym floor as she pulled a gun from her jacket pocket and pointed it at Zack. The gun looked familiar.
"You really should lock your car when you've got your dad's gun in the glove compartment, Zack," she said, shaking.

"Hey Laser, um," Jay sputtered, "Millie killed Holly."

Impossible. The police had said the suspect was a man, probably a drug dealer. Five-foot-eight and thin, about the size of Jay Jesperson.

Zack took one step toward the shaking girl, then another. She sobbed louder and louder as he got closer, but Zack Lassetter kept his pace until the barrel of his father's gun poked him in the chest.

"Back up," the girl almost whispered.

Zack put one hand on the gun, the other on Millie's wrist and moved the barrel toward the ceiling. With a little twist, the gun came loose in his hand. Millie clawed to get it back, so Zack threw a knee into her stomach. She crumpled to the floor.

"Holy shit," Jay said. "How did you know she wasn't going to shoot you?"

"Jay," Zack asked, slowly raising the gun toward the writer, "you sell weed, don’t you?"

"Jesus, man. You've been driving around town drunk, picking fights with your friends. It's all anybody talks about, and they should be talking about Holly."

"You were outside her house the night she was killed."

"We just got high together and fooled around some. It started when I was interviewing her for the story about you. I'm sorry, man. When she ended up dead, I figured it was you. She told me how you freaked out when she wouldn't wear your ring."

"You killed her. The cops said it was a drug dealer. You sold her the weed."

"God damn it, dude, Millie killed her. Millie was obsessed with you after she profiled you for her story. She had a key to Holly's house because she babysits Holly's little brother. For fuck's sake, she's wearing Holly's cheerleading uniform."

Still on the ground, Millie groaned. When Jay turned to look, Zack saw the sparkle of a silver chain dangling from the pocket of his jeans.

Holly's nameplate necklace. Zack straightened his arm, holding the gun higher. It all made sense. Jay could touch the necklace and see Holly's ghost. That's how he found the real killer. But Jay couldn’t have been her soulmate.

Tears welled up in Zack Lassetter's eyes as he imagined his finger tightening on the trigger.

Jay looked at Zack again. "Heads up, Laser."

Zack jumped back as the mousey girl on the floor slashed at him with a pocket knife. Police sirens sounded in the distance as Millie rose to her feat and lunged.

Zack's first two knuckles smashed Mildred Merck's glasses as his left hand connected with her temple. She dropped to the floor, this time out cold. As she lay there in the light of the gym window, her arms spread and her jacket open to reveal the cheerleading uniform, she almost looked like Holly.

Zack clicked the safety on the gun and stuck it the waistband of his jeans. He pulled the promise ring from his jacket pocket and dropped it on the girl.


The Promise Ring by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.

Week Fiction 03: Girl in the Sandwich Shop

There are two types of guys I don’t date: customers and comedians.

I stay the hell away from guys who perform at the comedy night where I do stand-up each week. And pretty much any local comedian. Don’t get me wrong – If I ever ran into Seth Rogen, I’d be all over him.

‘Customers’ is just guys from the deli where I make sandwiches. Nobody’s ever asked me out after my stand-up routine, but if a guy did I might think about it. Hell, I thank God every week for the 20-or-so people who show up, especially the fresh faces. I wish they would let me pass out fliers at the deli.

My theory about the sandwich shop is that half the customers come for the pastrami – the owners make it themselves by hand, and it’s fucking great. New Yorkers have told me it’s the best they’ve ever had. The other half come to stare at my tits when they think I’m not looking. My double D’s may not be as legendary as the meat, but they’re about as good as the tech geeks in downtown Portland are going to see from the time they punch in to the time they get home to their Internet porn.

The twins make for some easy jokes. Good tips, too, when I wear a low-cut shirt under the apron.

It’s also the biggest problem with my stand-up. Guy who runs the comedy night at the bar by my apartment once introduced me as “Oregon’s reigning queen of tit jokes.” Blonde with big boobs jokes about being a blonde with big boobs, laughter ensues. Blonde with big boobs jokes about anything else, crickets.

Wednesdays are comedy nights, so I got a little distracted after yesterday’s lunch rush, going over some jokes in my head as I wiped down slicer station. When I looked back over the counter, I saw the inspiration for my new material.

Roy. Roy the regular. Roy who doesn’t like rye.

Wasn’t sure if he was a pastrami guy or a tit guy, but I was leaning pastrami. Big guy, I’d say about 30 years old, with a little bit of a white-guy afro, a beard and glasses. Comes in for a late lunch once or twice a week, sits at a table by himself and talks on his iPhone headset. Looks like he’s talking to himself, but I think he calls his mom.

“Hey Roy,” I said. “Pastrami Swiss on wheat, mac salad?”

“Oh my God, you have that here? Because that is like my favorite.” Big, hammy Roy. Always good for a smile.

He was wearing a green T-shirt with turtles on it under a faded black zip-up hoodie. Brown cargo shorts and hiking boots, kind of the relaxed version of the standard-issue boutique tech company uniform.

I dress nicer than most of the tech guys downtown, and I wear an apron with grease on it. For all I know, Roy could be the CEO of Facebook.

I wrapped up the sandwich, put a scoop of macaroni salad in a Styrofoam cup and went to ring Roy up since the cashier was on break.

He handed me his card before I had his total. “That’s all?” I asked.

“And a regular Pepsi.” He dropped a dollar bill in the tip jar. I only ring him up some of the time, but he always tips a buck in cash, even when he pays with a card.

After he slid his worn-out wallet back into his pocket, he hesitated to grab his lunch. He was suddenly quiet, rocking back on his heels when most of the time he’d be joking around with me.

“Not hungry, big guy?”

He slid his hand into his back pocket and pulled out a purplish CD with a Post-It on the back. He set it on the counter and grabbed his bag.

“That’s for you,” he said. “There’s a, um, good song on there. I thought you should check it out.”

My new comedy bit crept up in my mind. In downtown Portland, you can tell a tech guy’s seniority by the stains on his T-shirt.

I’ve been making sandwiches for two sad years, long enough to know when a customer is about to ask me out. And I have the aforementioned rule: I don’t date customers. But I couldn’t just burn the poor bastard. I panicked. Maybe it was out of guilt.

“If you want to hang out later, I’m doing stand-up at Shakey’s tonight. Show starts at nine. Bring a bunch of friends and order a lot of drinks.”

He scratched his beard with his free hand. “I didn’t know you did stand-up. That’s awesome. I’ll really try to make it.”

I always figured Roy came for the pastrami as opposed to the boobs, but on my counter next to the horseradish sat a shrink-wrapped love note from a big, geeky admirer. Flowery letters on the album cover said Mike Doughty, Haughty Melodic.

I turned it over and looked at the yellow Post-It. Track 9 – Roy. I peeled it off and scanned the track list. The song was called Sunken-Eyed Girl.

I never heard of this guy, and my eyes are not fucking sunken.


I usually have bad sets on nights when it rains. Last night started as your standard drizzle, but it was windy enough that my hair went insane.

Dusty, the bar manager who emceed the show, told me he expected a good crowd because the bar had just launched a rainy-day drink special. Sure enough, almost 40 people came in out of the rain to get cheap High Life pitchers.

And almost 40 people laughed at the bit about the stains. No stains: College intern. Don’t worry – he’ll spill bong water on his shirt before the day is over. I even got some chuckles as I ran down my list of wardrobe tips for doing business in Portland. Important client meeting: North Face Fleece.

I finished big with some big-tit classics and stepped off the stage to the loudest applause of my life. In the back of the bar, I saw a skinny guy in a red Adidas jacket run his hands through his thinning buzz cut as he hunched over one of the high-top tables. Kevin, the first guy who told me I was funny. The reason I don’t fucking date comedians.

I didn’t even stick around long enough to bitch Dusty out for letting that bastard into the bar. Kevin, who once opened for Harlan Williams in Seattle. Most likely, he was too drunk to drive back to Beaverton or wherever the fuck he lives now, looking to crash at my apartment and get laid if I’d let him.

I grabbed my bag from behind the bar and bolted. Fuck the rain, I thought, and fuck Kevin for ruining such a great night.

My jacket was almost useless on the walk, and I was dripping wet by the time I got back to the apartment. I knew that any minute Kevin would be calling, texting, banging on the door. But I wasn’t going to be the dumb bitch who lets him in.

After I stripped off the wet clothes and dried off a little, I checked my phone. Amazing it still worked after all that rain.

One text from Kevin: New stuff not bad.

I didn’t hear from him again.


That brings me to today. Lunch rush is over at the deli, and I’m leaning on the counter, exhausted and wishing it weren’t so goddamn sunny outside when the bells on the door jingle and in walks Roy. If he had cut his hair or shaved, I might not recognize him in this black three-piece suit.

Roy the regular, looking like some kind of mafia enforcer in his badass threads. And then I realize he must have seen the show last night.

“You know,” he says, “when you throw a guy under the bus for a laugh, the least you can do is buy him a beer after.”

“I was describing like 90 percent of everyone who comes in here.”

He scratches his beard again. “Come on. Turtle shirts?”

I don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Roy. I should have looked for you. I kind of freaked out after the set and had to leave.”

“Did you at least listen to the song?”

Fuck. I didn’t, and now he can tell I didn’t because I’m standing here frozen. “I don’t know why you think my eyes look bad. Who’s Mike Dowdy anyway?”

He shakes his head. “Doughty. Do you remember Soul Coughing?”

Crickets. I turn around and make him his pastrami Swiss on wheat with macaroni salad. Like always, I put it in a white paper sack and hand it to the cashier. Roy’s not moving to the register.

“Look, Roy, I’m not going to go out with you just because of some magical song.”

“I know,” Roy says, looking away and rocking back on his feet again. Then he stops, looks me in the eye and says, “But I’m glad I gave you the CD. Because I still had a pretty good time last night. And even though I get reamed in your act, at least you’re thinking about me.”

I can feel myself blushing as he walks to the cashier. He pays, he tips, and I’m thinking I have to listen to Sunken-Eyed Girl. He’s coming back. Without the beard, he’d look a lot like Seth Rogen circa 40-Year-Old Virgin.

“You’re really funny, Jenny,” he says as he looks at me through those too-small glasses. “But if I get stains on this suit, I’m gonna blame you for building a sloppy sandwich.”


Girl in the Sandwich Shop by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.

Week 02 notes: Settlers of Catan fan fiction

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal says German board game Settlers of Catan is all the rage among cool kids and CEO-types in Silicon Valley. I've been playing it too—a couple times a month at my friend Darrell's house.

Amid all the trading of wheat and sheep, I had to stop and wonder if Darrell and those CEOs ever stopped thinking about strategy long enough to consider the people who live in those tiny buildings and work tirelessly to deliver their precious resources.

It's a rough life, probably a lot like the ones in this week's story.

If you've never played Settlers, I'd encourage you to check it out. And I apologize if this story doesn't make any sense to you.

Also, I was messing around with the currently no-frills site and added a banner graphic. I stuck those labels on a stack of old manuscripts from my undergraduate creative writing classes. That bag of papers is a haunting reminder of my creative shortcomings in post-collegiate adulthood.

Week Fiction 02: Ore

The graybeard miner’s neck and shoulders ached as he rested his forearms upon the bar. The great hall poured ale and whiskey for the miners, the field hands and sometimes soldiers after the day’s supper.

Perhaps, the miner thought, a flagon or two would fill his belly soothe his aches. Supper had been little more than bread and a thin gravy. He waved a calloused finger to signal the barmaid as his thoughts drifted back to hearty meals of lamb pies, more than a man could eat after a day in the mines. In his youth, he and his brothers would gorge themselves until they could barely walk back to their quarters, and the foreman would scold them for oversleeping the following day.

Alas, it had been ages since shepherds of the clan’s eastern settlements had brought such bounty to his city. The miner had heard rumors of robbers in those pastures, but he suspected the shepherds were careless layabouts, ignoring their flocks as the rest of the clan wanted for wool and meat.

The younger barmaid brought tall wooden mugs of cloudy, golden wheat ale to the field hands at the opposite end of the bar. The bread, the whiskey and indeed the ale were fruits of their hard work, and the graybeard nodded their way in approval. They were young as well, tan and dressed in bright blue tunics. One of them will bed this young barmaid, the miner thought.


The miner tugged at the iron brooch that fastened a tattered wool cloak around his neck, the clan’s proud blue long faded to a gray much like his beard. His hair had once been as black as the ore he took from the caverns, and he had once bedded a young barmaid after a substantial haul.

He felt a familiar touch on the back of his arm.

“There you are,” said the older barmaid as she set the large iron flagon in front of him. The miner studied the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes as she smiled at him and tried to remember her face as he had taken her. She still had bosoms fit for a miner’s hands, but had she ever been beautiful? The memory, too, had faded.

At least she had remembered to bring him an iron cup, one of only a few remaining from the year of the great haul, when the clerics brought word from Darrell that the settlement between the quarries and the wheat field would be made into the clan’s first great city.

This was a fine ale, but a wooden cup would sour it. The expertly crafted iron mug was cold to the lips, and it awakened a hint of far-off berries as the miner drank. Too fast, he knew.

The door of the great hall creaked, and the sun’s last light shone through its opening. The field hands hushed as a tall, thin man in cleric’s robes pushed the door closed. The clunk of his boots on the wood floor filled the hall as he approached the bar. His blue hood hung over his eyes as he slid onto the stool next to the miner, but the hood’s opening revealed the clean-shaven mouth of a man no older than those field hands.

Too many children in the hall tonight, the miner thought as he emptied his cup.

“Whiskey,” said the cleric.

“And another ale,” the miner barked.

The young barmaid brought the cleric’s whiskey in a small iron goblet. Without the courtesy of a warm touch, she turned to the miner. “No more ale for you. You’ve had your ration.”

The cleric raised his hand and pointed a long finger at the girl. “The wheat harvest was bountiful. Let every man who comes this night drink his fill.”

“Does Darrell will this, brother?” the barmaid asked.

The cleric hunched his shoulders and wrapped a hand around the goblet. “Aye,” he whispered, and downed the whiskey in a single swallow.

The pretty young barmaid picked up the goblet and the miner’s mug.

“Darrell is kind,” the miner said. “A shame the men of my crew have retired for the night.”

“A man who drinks alone is a man who has lost faith.”

“You look as lonely as I,” the miner said as the barmaid returned with the drinks. He waited until she turned away. “Is that why you lie in the name of your lord?”

“My gift to you and your city, man of iron. Besides, you will not thirst for ale tomorrow.”

The miner shook with a bitter laugh and drank deep from his ale. This boy had never put axe to tree as a lumberjack of the southern settlement. He had never dug clay from the hills, swung scythe in the fields or even shorn a sheep. He could not know how much ale it took to shrink the knot in a miner’s shoulder after a long, dark day with a pickaxe.

A huzzah erupted from the far end of the bar as the old barmaid slid fresh wooden mugs to the field hands. Perhaps one of them would bed her, too, and promise her things. It was a good harvest – a smart man could set aside some grain for himself. At long last, a man would steal her away to the coast where he could trade for lumber, build a house and settle as a free man. Free from the chill of the mines. Free from the clerics and the confounding will of their false lord.

The graybeard did not know if the old barmaid ever believed the promises, but in the dark of her quarters she would trace her finger over a man’s chest as he whispered them to her. She would tell no one of such words, not even if robbers raided and stole everything a man needed to make good on them.

The barmaids poured themselves whiskey in small wooden cups, giggling all the while.

The blue of the elder’s dress was as bright as the color on her counterpart. Was she so old that a man could not get her with child?

“I see the way you look at the barmaid,” the cleric said. “You have wanted for yourself. A sin.”

“I have worked for the tribe.”

The cleric threw back another whiskey. “For the tribe, indeed. But have you worked for Darrell?”

“It is your job to see that the tribe does Darrell’s will, cleric. Mine is to bring you ore to build cities and raise armies.”

“Have you tried this whiskey?” the cleric asked without exposing his eyes. “I believe it is the finest whiskey our tribe has ever tasted. Barmaid! Two whiskeys.”

The old barmaid set two iron cups down and touched the miner’s arm again, lingering a second longer than before. Strong hands, the miner thought, but soft.

For a young cleric, the man knew his whiskey – the miner’s first sip went down smooth and sweet and left a pleasant warmth in his belly.

When the miner looked back, he saw his barmaid touching the arm of one of the field hands. Suddenly, the great hall shook with a clap of thunder and the sound of snapping timbers. The cleric chuckled and downed the rest of his whiskey.

The miner rose from his stool and wobbled for a moment. How much ale? He steadied himself and turned to the cleric, who did not look up from the bar. The field hands shouted at one another as the miner grabbed the cleric by his robes.

“What is happening here?”

“A red tribe has built two great cities on the island’s northern shore. I have heard one even has a library. The tribe has three more settlements inland, and their knights have surpassed ours in number.”

The miner had never thought much of the other tribes. When he was a youth, the clerics had told his settlement that Darrell was at war with the other lords. Darrell needed resources to defeat them, and Darrell would abandon the tribe if the war was lost. Surely the tales were just myths, stories to scare the men into working harder.

The ground shook, and the miner dropped the cleric to the wooden floor. The old barmaid stumbled, spilling ale all over the field hands’ side of the bar. She staggered back, knocking the young girl to the ground. The miner held his footing long enough to reach across the bar and grab his old lover’s arm.

The floor tilted toward him as the whole city seemed to lift away from the earth. He caught the barmaid in his arms as he fell back over his stool and held her as they slid across the floor of the great hall.

He gazed into her face again. The thing was a mess of terror and sweat and deep lines. What kind of man would want this?

The cleric coughed as iron and wood mugs clattered across the floor. The hall shifted again, and the great door swung open wide. A yellow light flooded the hall. The graybeard miner let go his barmaid and stared into it.

For the briefest of moments, he saw the face of a disappointed young man.


Ore by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.