Ceelie was always one for a boiled potato facial over the steel pot on the stove.  I don’t remember a time I didn’t warn her that she would burn herself.  She’d laugh, her eyes squinting against the steam running up her face like a waterfall turned back on itself.  Salting a piece of raw potato, I’d try and tempt her away from her beauty regimen teasing her I would eat it myself.  “I’d chase you, but that ages me.  I’m planning for people to ask if I’m your daughter.”  I fed her potatoes so they wouldn’t.

The room was filled with words.  Not books, words.  There were words to be tripped over and words to be sat upon as a chair, a ladder, a protrusion of significant magnitude.   (It’s funny how they always arranged themselves in hackneyed double entendres like an old whore trying to look younger by applying clownish amounts of rouge).   

She forced her way in and was assaulted by the ten dollar words first – ones that began with un and ended in ism.  They were followed by the flurry of rapidly rising adverbs which pelted her face like the frenzied beating of a crow’s wings.  And then there was the curious word prolix which wound itself around her feet and grew upward ending at the tip of her tongue. 

She got out the broom.

Crane’s “The Open Boat” went swimmingly.

The only named man died.  The captain

Bossed everyone else around.  They

Still called him ‘sir’.  Funny, the traditions

We hold on to, even in a dinghy, even

With the phosphorous of a shark fin

That visits nightly.  The captain held the water jar.

Maybe that was his job.  The jar survived

When they went overboard.  The correspondent

Rowed and slept, rowed, and rowed, the cook

Bailed and slept and slept and slept

And talked about ham sandwiches

Much to the oiler’s dismay.  The oiler’s

Name was Billie.  In the end he ate the sand-wich.

She never believed in a different river.  This water, as the property of the mass, was the same river as yesterday, the same molecules.  At which angle she approached was the only variant, but since the river was the same that didn’t matter.  It was still wet. 

She swam upstream but it may have been downstream.  She went where the current took her.  She stepped out and in again.  At times she felt she was the river but at times they fought and she never felt as removed.  Her own matter was an elusiveness, even to her.

I’ve never been in a war.  Not personally.  I suppose if you count my involvement in changing the channel during Desert Storm and again for this battle for Iran’s ‘democracy’, I suppose I’ve been involved.  I’ve waded through the many parasite infested mud puddles that bosses like to call ‘safe work practices’ and I’ve made it through alive, if not exactly clean.  I struggled to keep the team together while dodging bullets, while climbing fences.  I thought we were working as one. 

Someone slipped a hand grenade into my backpack.  I may be gone, but karma wins the bloodiest war.

I am speaking to you.  This is important.  Pay attention.  The following message is vital to your health.  There is a book of stories circulating that contains dangerous material.  Pay attention.  This material will cause the reader to become so engrossed in the words that they will be susceptible to any subliminal message.    This is important.   These messages  are instructing people to jump off high ledges.  Pay attention.  Do not continue reading this story.  You will want to jump off a high ledge.  This is important.   High Ledges.  The material to be aware of begins, “I am speaking to you”…

He passed the age to thrash one night on the highway.  He wrinkled his nose as if he smelled skunk faintly, stinkweed maybe.  In a moment it was gone.  His mouth opened, tongue lolled toward the front of his puffy face.   

These scars are stories, he liked to say to first time but soon forgotten friends.  He had taken to making up the stories, getting more unbelievable with every telling.  

There was no one along for the ride tonight.  This wasn’t his car anymore.  It never was to begin.  It was something youth borrowed and was now returning overdue.

There are 177 words left today and I’ve run out.  I can’t concentrate, there are marshmallows cramming out every last available parking spot upstairs.

And now I’m thinking of Ghostbusters.  What ever happened to Rick Moranis?  Sigourney Weaver’s parents must have been flower children.  What type of name is that anyway, Sigourney?

And now I’m thinking of Alien.  Putting an ‘s’ on the sequel was confusing for most movie-goers, I think.  Very inventive, but confusing.

And now I’m think I’m just wasting time, procrastinating, moving marshmallows, making S’mores.

And now I’m thinking about chocolate.

And now I’m thinking about you.

She was determined to make up a story without introspection.  Already, reading her last sentence, her previous thought, her prior promise, she had already failed. 

“Foiled again!” she yelled throwing herself off a twelve story building. 

Just at that precise moment, some big helicopter that she was sure had a more technical name with fancy dashes swooped down and a strikingly handsome rescuer grabbed her by her petite waist and swung them both gracefully to safety. 

It’s a good thing I remembered to apply mascara today, she thought.  I wonder if he has a girlfriend?

Damn, she thought.  Foiled again.

When the strip of skin came curling off the bottom of her foot it reminded her of slicing hard cheddar (of shaving chocolate for cake) though the texture was as rubbery as beef jerky.  It was the damn boots, the ‘clonkers’, her son called them, the steel-toed wonders that protected her from nothing.  There was no known danger, none at all.  Yet, the boots were to be worn at all times.  Life -a shifting of heavy objects. 

The bright pink skin that revealed itself on the ball of her foot knew nothing, but at once hardened itself against the world.