RicoLaser's Stories

Dr. Rosen Who Had No Daughter

2008-11-21T05:39:38Z

Quiet, portly Dr. Rosen lived in the attic with four identical tan suits and a hot plate and that was about it. He smoked peculiar-smelling cigarettes and taught physics.

Or so I’m told. I never saw him on campus. I don’t even think he left his room more than a handful of times while I was there. Nevertheless, he was always on the outskirts of my consciousness in that strange place, loitering in the shadows of my daily life.

Petra knew him a little better, having shared a smoke or two with him. Once, as her father was leaving after one of his frequent visits from the Great White North, she and I were standing on the porch waving our goodbyes when I caught a glimpse of Dr. Rosen rounding the corner of the house. All I saw was the mumbling spectre’s round, tear-streaked face and a flash of tan as he disappeared through the door.

She gave me a decidedly Nordic look of compassion. She was good at those. And at other things.

“He has no daughter.” She shrugged.

I didn’t suppose I needed to know more.

Waiting For Rain

2008-05-09T22:30:08Z

Travis smiled a little, tried not to smirk. “Hey, don’t blame cancer. It’s not the cancer’s fault. Might as well blame the iceberg for the Titanic.” He chuckled casually and turned a sausage link, carefully eyeing Ricky.

The giant in the lawn chair seemed to ignore him, sniffling and trying to hide his tears. At six-eight, 310 pounds, Ricky was the biggest of the Cleary brothers. But he was also the gentlest, and he’d suffered for it as a child. Boyhoods in their town rewarded brashness over depth, cyclones where an hour of rain would do. Ricky had been all subtlety, a drizzle. Travis, by contrast, made it his business to be the family’s comic relief, a badly needed spring shower in the midst of drought.

Their brother Harlan had been a stormbringer.

But Harlan was gone. Hadn’t even been home to watch their mother die (although, truth be told, Travis might have missed out on that himself if given a choice).

It was as Travis was considering all of this that the storm stepped back into their yard….

Why This Might Kind Of Be My Sister's Fault

2008-05-05T07:08:43Z

And that’s where Georgia enters the picture.

The first thing you have to understand about my sister Georgia is that she’s a lunatic. I mean, she doesn’t eat her own feces or converse with mailboxes or anything, but when it comes to everyday living, she definitely does for crazy what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar. And I want to be clear on this: I don’t think the media has taken this into consideration in their coverage of the incident. The girl can’t tie her shoelaces without finding trouble. So, y’know. Maybe lay off a little.

My understanding is that she only went into Ralph’s to buy tampons, so fate played a role here too. I mean, what would you do? Your Aunt Flo is taking up residence, you need to get the situation under control, and as you’re walking into the store you see what seems to be this naked, weirdly-mustachioed homeless dude shrieking in German.

Wouldn’t you at least have some instinct to help this poor guy? Even take him home and feed him?

Well, your name is not Georgia Morrow.

Thicker Than Smoke

2007-10-26T18:26:28Z

Memories didn’t smoke cigarettes, and neither did most twelve-year old boys, but Ken had spent enough time with his nephew Stewart to know that he wasn’t like most twelve-year old boys. And there he was, deathstick hanging from his mouth, wifebeater drenched in sweat.

“I been lookin’ for you,” Stewart said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Stewart stubbed his smoke out on the lawn, now nearly gray with dehydration. Ken was annoyed. The whole yard was a tinderbox about to blow. He wordlessly gave the boy another cigarette anyway. Stewart grunted his appreciation.

Ken found himself saying, “He’d have been 34 today.”

Stewart replied without missing a beat, “And if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass a’ hoppin’.” He chuckled a little. Ken didn’t find it all that funny.

“Your grandfather teach you that?”

“Nah. I think I heard it on TV.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

And for a moment Stewart actually looked his age, a shamed and orphaned twelve-year old boy.

But only for a moment.

Alan & The Babylonian

2007-10-26T00:28:33Z

The tang of the sea was pure, even if this place was not.

This gave Alan some cause for comfort as he watched the Babylonian pack up her bumper stickers – her propaganda. He’d been coming to Third Street to preach since he moved to Los Angeles from a far less degraded place some three years ago. She’d been there then, hocking what the Reverend said were her lies and her sinful filth, right across from Alan’s pulpit, and she was there now, and he didn’t think either of them were going anywhere anytime soon.

She looked up and locked eyes with him, as she sometimes did. She smiled shyly and did not speak, but Alan searched for lasciviousness, as his mother taught him. Her stomach, exposed at the midriff, was tattooed. He broke contact before he drowned in a sea of gray.

The Lord’s work could be dreadfully hard at times like this, and Alan wanted to accost the woman for testing him so. But she was already walking away, her arms loaded with boxes of paper hellfire.

Maybe tomorrow, Alan thought…

The Courier Waits

2007-10-25T22:48:20Z

We ran out of gas ten miles from town. Three miles short of what I expected.

I tried to sound surprised. “I’ll be damned,” I muttered. “Out of gas.”

She was asleep though, and she didn’t hear me. I considered waking her up to repeat my carefully practiced lie so that a conscious person could appreciate it, but I decided I was okay with plying my deceit only to the moonless sky and the desert and the dashboard and the radio. And anybody else who might be out there.

I unfolded myself from the car and lit a smoke, and I examined the black canopy overhead. No stars tonight. Just as I was told.

I exhaled blue smoke, but it was too dark to see it.

I spent the next half hour trying not to think about her. Stringy blond hair. Thin. Big teeth, like Eleanor Roosevelt. Unbeautiful. Skin so white it was almost translucent. She’d been a pretty good fuck, as most ugly girls were. It’s the one part of this job I like.

They would find her interesting.

I sighed sadly and I looked up in the sky for lights.

Early To Rise

2007-10-25T21:59:59Z

The next day Sarita was back at her corner bright and early. There were many men who would stop to see her on their way into work. Most were married. She almost never had an unmarried client before lunch hour. She didn’t know why, although she often wondered.

She also didn’t know why the wondering gave her a lump in her throat. She hadn’t cried since she was seven and her father was killed at Siachen, but lately every time she reflected on her morning appointments she had to fight to maintain her hard-earned stoicism.

Maybe, she thought. Maybe I won’t come back tomorrow.

But she’d be back. She always was, like her neighbor Mr. Sandrir and her married clients. She was a part of Mumbai, as indelible as the skyscrapers downtown or the dirt of her yard.

She won the battle for stoicism and was smirking in triumph to herself when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She transformed the smirk to a smile and turned around.

Mr. Sandrir. Vague hunger again behind his dim eyes.

“I must speak with you.”

The Girl On The Stairs

2007-10-25T19:48:04Z

It was hot for November, and she’d been out there in front of that fucking library a long time, and she was starting to wonder if this was really a good idea at all.

Georgia didn’t know why she chose to wear something long-sleeved. It was the first thing she pulled off the floor when she got up, she supposed. With all the bullshit she was going to have to cope with today, the last thing she wanted to be worrying about was her clothes. She was starting to regret it though, as sweat was beginning to bead up under her arms and on her back.

Should I care what he thinks? She asked herself. Does it really matter if I’m sweaty for him?

She was surprised to find herself deciding that it did.

It was then that she saw him coming. 6’7 and skinny, bald except for a fringe of greying reddish hair. Dressed in the requisite uniform for tenured professors: sweater, dress shirt, slacks, no tie, wingtips a-clacking. Jacket slung over his shoulder and sleeves rolled up.

It was, after all, pretty hot today…

Listen

2007-10-25T19:22:28Z

Listen very carefully:

I have told the tale I am about to impart to you exactly 17,373 times on various planes of existence and in multiple dimensions over several millennia. I have had to call upon reservoirs of courage that prior to this I did not know I harbored in order to face down over and over the profound mortal dread that pools in my soul – if indeed I am still in possession of such a treasure – when I recall those events that are of such dire import to this time and place. And yet, despite my obvious earnestness and the desperation of the situation, I find that there is not a person living who will believe my story.

You do not know how vexing this is. I fear I am on the precipice of madness. I do not hunger, I do not sleep, I do not thirst. I find I no longer yearn to indulge in the sins of the flesh … a weakness that I fully confess consumed me utterly prior to my recent experiences. My sole desire is to speak and be heard and be believed. It is what survivors do.

So I begin it. Again.

Walls

2007-07-18T23:04:42Z

He stares blankly at the glowing screen in front of him, and then he types a few words. 19, now 21. He feels hollow. How can this be?

When he was a child, writing a story was like swatting a fly or picking leaves from the gutters. There seemed to be thousands upon thousands of stories to tell and he knew exactly how to tell them. He just knew. The same way his heart knew to beat and the same way his eyes knew to blink. It was the simplest, holiest thing in his world.

The stories are all still there. But he has forgotten how to write them. Ten years without finishing anything of consequence. It’s like ten years without prayer.

He blames his father for making him so angry he can’t hear himself think. He blames society for blunting his imagination. He blames politicians for filling his head with infuriating lies that drown out the choirs of sweet music that are surely singing somewhere in his head – if he could only figure out where.

He does not blame himself. This would be too honest even for him.

A (Sort Of) Confession in Lake Derry

2007-04-09T23:04:24Z

For his part Ralph would have been wondering how Jefferson’s end of things was going, but he was too busy staring down the double barrel of Lorraine Coomer’s shotgun, which was now mere inches from his terrified face.

Lorraine’s own exotic, strangely beautiful visage was streaked with a mother’s (guilty?) tears. “You think I killed my boy, Ralph?” She nearly pleaded. There was something of the child in her tone now.

“Hell no, Lorraine,” Ralph whimpered. “Hell no, we all know you loved that boy.”

Lorraine began to laugh, tears still falling out of her eyes. “Loved him. Yeh. Surely did. Loved him enough to pull the trigger on him.”

Ralph’s eyes widened. “Y-you didn’t.”

She shook her head, deeply grieved. “No. But I may as well have.”

Her eyes locked onto Ralph’s over the gun. She was searching for something, Ralph knew that, some kind of excuse for her to put her gun down and let Ralph live. He aimed to find her one just as he aimed to help Jefferson put all this together when the time came.

Mourning and Madness in Lake Derry

2007-04-04T23:27:39Z

Looking into the bartender’s dusky, serpentine eyes, Ralph found it hard to use his voice. “Whiskey,” he managed to murmur, his voice rasping.

Lorraine put the drink down in front of him without a word, then sat down and lit her cigarette.

Ralph found his voice yet again. “I got some questions fer ye, Lorraine. Official police bidness.”

Lorraine didn’t look at him.

“Y’all upset about yer boy? Funny you workin’ the same afternoon he turns up dead. I’d think you’d close up, go home, have yerself a cry and a prayer.”

Lorraine exhaled a cloud of acrid, blue smoke through her nose and didn’t answer for a moment. There were no tears in her eyes, just a peculiar deadness. If her eyes were dead, her voice was anything but. “You think I shot my own son, Ralph Ames?” There was something unhinged now in her tone, something frenzied and calamitous as she stood and turned her eyes on Ralph.

Ralph found himself, for not the first time today, speechless as he watched Lorraine Coomer’s mind break loose ….

The Criminal

2007-04-03T00:48:19Z

He’d cold-bloodedly, unashamedly killed four people, and he’d done it methodically and with immortal patience over the course of eight hours before the police finally stopped him. It was the same kind of patience with which he served his time, a year for each victim, another brown face in a sea of the same.

You know what? He wasn’t even a little sorry.

But Ulysses had been lucky because he’d had a friend who understood what he did, who’d made sure he didn’t serve more time, or die with a needle in his arm. And now his friend was gone and he was coming home.

He hadn’t been to New York since he’d done what had to be done. He didn’t find it very much changed as he stepped out of Grand Central Station, but it did feel like an element was missing without his benefactor in it. Life? Maybe. Or vibrance. Who knew? It was like the city was dead or something. Dead but still moving, seeking something.

A zombie city …

He chortled darkly. The bitch would have loved that.

He hailed a taxi, home at last.

The Painter

2007-04-03T00:26:03Z

Callie knelt in front of the blank canvas, squinting through the smoke that now drifted in front of her eyes. She always kept a lit cigarette in her mouth while she worked. It made her feel like an ancient Greek seeking truth from an oracle. Also, Donna thought it was quite sexy. That was reason enough.

Speaking of Donna, the blond Aphrodite of Callie’s affection had now pulled her onto her rear end, her chest pressed against Callie’s back, legs wrapped around her waist. She snaked a hand around Callie’s breast, a teasing finger playing with her nipple ring.

“Quick,” she whispered urgently. “Before you start working.”

Callie grinned sheepishly. “I have to go.”

Silence.

“I really do.”

She could feel Donna pull away, though her warmth was still at Callie’s back.

“She was my friend.”

“She was more than that.”

Callie didn’t know what to say to a truth so plainly spoken. She kissed Donna’s alabaster neck.

“I’ll be back,” she said, and walked out to the silent sound of love reproached.

The Femme Fatale of Lake Derry

2007-04-02T21:55:16Z

Having fled Pearl’s disturbing presence, Ralph was now sitting in a bar stool in Big Jimmy Badger’s Tavern and Grill (although the grill part had been inoperable since Jimmy died in 1988). The place had fallen into disrepair since Ralph had last visited many years ago.

Jimmy’s daughter and Fred Coomer’s mother Lorraine ran it now. She was tall, with legs like a flamingo Ralph’d once seen in the Birmingham zoo. Her torso was long too, and somewhat flat – not shaped by the gods of lust the way the Chief’s current wife’s was. She was an odd-looking woman with a strange, broad face.

Nonetheless, Lorraine Coomer bled sex.

It was the realest thing about her. Ralph figured it might have been Jimmy’s Cherokee blood in her, but he didn’t know. She constantly had an American Spirit clutched between her painted lips, and most men had a hard time not imagining what it’d be like if she had something else clutched there.

Lorraine looked at him.

“What is it?” She scowled. Ralph had never wanted anything more.