David S. McWilliams

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.

“Have you had a doctor look at that?”

I jerked back to the present. He was asking me a question across the table, and I had stopped paying attention who knows how long ago. I didn’t blame myself. What was his name again? I couldn’t remember—he was Thursday on my calendar.

“What?”

“Your arm,” he said, pointing at my forearm. “Because it doesn’t look okay.”

I hid it under the table, an old reflex dating from back to middle school. That was the year I began wearing oversized sweatshirts and calling in sick to gym on swim days, the year that I started learning to hide, before I decided that I wanted to hunt instead.

“If you cut, that’s fine. I’ve dated girls who cut. That’s something we can talk about if you want to talk about it.”

Jesus Christ. I didn’t cut, and if I did the last person I’d want to talk about it was this guy, this pasty white lump of a man sitting in front of me with glasses that looked like goggles. He was studying me, me and my scars-that-were-not-razor-cuts, not with empathy or concern but with the detached curiosity of a collector examining his specimens under a microscope. His ridiculous eyewear probably provided about the same level of magnification.

“That’s rather rude to ask about, isn’t it?” I asked, putting bite into my voice. Just who did this twerp think he was?

“Well, if you think so,” he said. “I think it’s good to talk about the ways we’re damaged on a first date. That way we can’t disappoint each other later.”

As opposed to disappointing me now. Thursday was going to be so easy to hook it was barely worth my time. What if I took him now, would I have enough time to go out later and find something more interesting? Maybe if I hurried, I could get down to the strip and catch some sharks looking to score around closing time. That was a long shot, but it had to be better than this. Sometimes the fuckboys downtown could have some interesting game, and putting one of those scumbags into the dumpster in a garbage bag was something of a civic duty. Look at me, so responsible.

It wouldn’t take much to finish him and move on. I bet that Thursday hadn’t gotten laid since drama club was a thing. “You want to get out of here?” I asked.

He cocked his head. “No.”

“Yeah, I know a—what?”

“I’ve dated girls who used offers of sex to deflect from attempts at emotional intimacy. Too expensive for me. Also, I don’t want to catch whatever you have.” Thursday got up from the table and left.

Son of a bitch! Had I lost that much off my game? I pulled my arms back up onto the table. Had it been that long? The pores were dilating, larger than quarters now. They were hungry for blood. I needed a plan B.

And he stuck me with the check, too!

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.

These are words. These are words that I write in a little green journal when I don’t know what else to say.

My only fear is that I won’t have a chance to finish them. Which is not a fear that I can do anything about when I don’t know what the words are, or how many there will be, or how many more are left. But know how many wouldn’t help them get out of my head any faster, or onto the page any faster, and so all of this is really beside the point and I’ll keep on writing on from here and into the next paragraph.

I’m in hell. We’re in hell, actually, me and all the others. We’ve stopped saying it. The last time I heard anyone complain about something was in the fall. Boyle was with us in the mess, behind the third trench—this is such a mundane, boring memory, but it’s what I have—he was in the mess with us, and somehow a clod of sod had gotten into his soup. “There’s mud in my soup,” he said, out loud, to no one in particular, and when the words went out among the drenched and silent men and provoked not a single remark that was the moment that I knew we truly were in hell, and not just headed toward it.

Was that day any different than the one before it, or the one after? No. I’ve had worse than mud in my soup. But because hell is a place you carry around with you it’s possible to arrive there without leaving the same mess tent you eat in every day. People talk about things when they’re headed toward them, I’ve realized—you say “I’m tired” when your’e getting tired, you say “I’m hungry” when you’re getting hungry, you say “we’re in hell,” when you can see it coming toward you. Once men arrive there they stop talking about it. And that’s how—

—

—sorry bit of excitement there. Parsons got shot. He’s dead. A detail got called up to carry him back, but they left me off it. Probably because they know I don’t mind being here. Better to send one of the others back, give him a few minutes reprieve, than to waste it on me.

I’m either broken or fixed, and I don’t know which. The other men break, going crazy and stripping out of their clothes, jumping up above the trench and getting shot, gibbering into madness as the shells come down, lying down and dying of nothing one afternoon and leaving their boots and jacket to the company to fight over. I don’t break that way. I don’t even feel my body any more, except in some distant way, it’s cold and hungry now that much I know but I can’t seem to feel any of it with any urgency. I’m sure there are men in the other trench who will be ordered to try and kill us today or tomorrow, but I can’t much be bothered by it. I’m just a watcher. I’m just observing something beautiful.

Beautiful? Here, in hell? I know that the others will know I’ve broken when they read this. But there’s a beautiful purity to the front in winter. We are at the nadir of human experience. No greater degree of physical, mental, or spiritual torture could be devised than what we have created here. Our bodies rot in our boots, we’re fed just enough to keep alive, constant shelling makes sleep impossible, and in the only possible realm of refuge—the spiritual one—we have damned ourselves over and over again to eternal torment by committing the one crime that God puts above all others: murder. And yet I think none of the company particularly fear that God, now.

Propelling us lucky few to such a dark peak is a stunning achievement, and entire nations are devoting their might to keeping us here. The legend of Icarus warns humanity not to stray too close to the sun, but no one has warned us against the depths. Here we find our real strength.

The beauty of humanity. It cannot be worse than this. And I could never leave it. Once you have been to such a place, how can you ever return? I will stay here as long as I can, and if by some miracle the war should end before I do I think I will blow my brains out on the last day.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.

“You look like you’d float right out of your shoes if they weren’t tied tight enough.”

Does he know?

I panic, strain my fingers against the rock face, wedge them into the crevice tighter than I thought I could, welcoming the pain as it keeps my heart from racing away with me. There’s no way he can know that I get lighter the faster my heartbeat is.

Sleeping, I barely make a dent in the mattress. During a nightmare, I can float up to the ceiling fan if my sheets aren’t tucked in. Weighted boots keep me on the ground at school. Terror, though, might be enough to send me up into the jet stream. I’m the only person on this rock face who’s trying not to fall up, instead of down.

Terror, or … ?

No. I have to stop myself again. He’s cute, sure, but I can’t … not again. It was such a disaster the first time, the way that he met my parents, the screaming and yelling after, the way my mom was rattling around the rafters for a half an hour, the guilt, the recriminations, the days of feeling like I weighed nearly as much as the rest of humanity.

“You climb this face often?”

Good lord, he’s flirting with me. Here, of all place, with both of us straining to avoid a deadly fall, and he’s decided to flirt. Why is it that men can only think with one organ?

But wait, I have to stop and think again as I puzzle out how he managed to get over to me. There’s no way up on his side, unless he came from the top. But it’s so much further, and I would’ve seen him when I started. And there’s no way he’s this relaxed at this point in his climb.

It can’t be. It can’t fucking be.

As I watch, he lets go with one hand, and then the other. His boots are the only thing connecting him to the rock face, and the rest of his body hangs impossibly up like a balloon tugging at its string.

“Son of a bitch,” are the first words I speak to my future husband.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.

I take the bottle from Chad, hiding my thirst, looking cool, with what I hope is an air of detached diffidence.

It won’t do for the rest of the team to know how thirsty I am. My dealer said that this might happen, that I would probably see some side effects, the increased thirst, above-average body temperature, racing pulse, light-headedness. He was right, he was beyond right but it’s worth it. I chug the entire bottle in the hallway where not too many can see me. Does it have a flavor? I can’t take the time to notice. The only thing I feel is a splitting headache as the icy electrolyte slush swirls past the bottom of my brain stem. Even that passes quickly, more quickly than is natural. I think the stimulant blocks it.

Which reminds me. I go down the hall and lock myself in the bathroom. First, I drink straight from the sink for a minute or two. Chug, chug, chug. This water is the opposite, warm, with a hint of plastic and fluoride, the finest city tap water. Not that it stops me. When I can finally think straight again, I pull off my shirt and look in the mirror.

A stranger stares back. He could be the brother I never had, I think. “He’s the sporty one,” I hear my dad say in my imagination, introducing us to extended family by reducing each of us to a single flat characteristic. That’s how he would’ve done it. He doesn’t understand that anyone can be more complex than himself.

But that’s not what I’m after. I want to see: are the bruises gone? 

“Shit.”

I took a nasty tackle, my whole side should be purple. It isn’t, it’s as fresh as a newborn baby’s skin, and I know I have to leave. This was not something I had prepared for. The stimulant is too good, it’s transformed me too completely. I have to leave before the others notice. They’re bleeding, bruised, reveling in pain the way I always wanted to be able to. I think Chad lost a tooth in the second half.

I want to laugh at myself, but I can’t yet. Here I wanted to blend in with the team, and it wasn’t copying their strength that was too difficult. It was copying their weakness that’s eluded me.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.  Prompts are supplied at the bottom in case you want to try your own hand at one of them.

“We can repair this.”

I stifled a laugh. Jeremy—sorry, not Jeremy, Officer Burgess—was staring down at the remains of a doll, smashed beneath the wheels of a patrol car. He’d somehow managed to destroy not only the doll, but also every single one the doll’s accessories, flattening a set tiny of metal silverware and shattering a bowl that now looked like a crushed skittle. The whole setup was now a pink plastic pancake in the gutter, a melted flesh soup waiting for plastic scavengers to come across it and suck up little Betty or Barbie or Belinda with a straw. Only the obvious tread marks ruined the impression.

Beatrice’s owner stood on the curb, her lips curled in an imitation of her doll’s death grimace and an uncontrollable onslaught of brief already crashing down, about to engulf passerby and parent alike in a tsunami of tears. They would know her pain, dammit, she would make them feel the death of her child like it was their own.

All of them except for me, that is. Fuck dolls. I’m not about to get brainwashed into spawning, unlike my mom. Look how she turned out.

They used to give me dolls as a kid, you know. I’d bite and tear at them around the neck, starting right where the jaw met the cheek, until their heads came off, and it got a lot easier when you made it about halfway through and it would all flop back away from the torso completely. You can’t eat the plastic flesh, unfortunately, but you’d be amazed at how much doll clothing you can eat in a day when you take it one thread at a time. The hair was trickier, as it tickled my throat going down, but I give it credit for teaching me how to control my gag reflex. Most eyes come off, too, if you really work at them, and they’re not too big to pass.

Like I said. They stopped giving me dolls.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.  Prompts are supplied at the bottom in case you want to try your own hand at one of them.

The best way to cut the woman down to size would be to flirt with her husband.

It couldn’t be done publicly—at least, not at first. That would be recognized for what it was, a simple and ineffective strike in retaliation. It needed to begin as something private, so that when the inevitable exposure came there would be repercussions. There had to be secrets to uncover. There was nothing more insatiable than the court’s lust for secrets.

“Lust is the right word, too,” Geraldine muttered to herself.

But she stopped herself after a time. This was a game she had played before—the simple meeting, the unplanned encounter, the moment of shared embarrassment, the deniable but undeniable rush of desire carefully cultivated to be equal parts forbidden and alluring. She had taken husbands before. It would not be hard to do so again. But for some reason her heart wasn’t in it … something inside told her to wait.

The answer came in a rush three weeks later.

“Not her husband. Her son,” said Geraldine in their carriage. The idea had struck her down like a thunderbolt on a clear day.

“What’s that, dear?” Asked her husband.

Could she do it? He was young, but he was a man, wasn’t he? Barring an interest in other men, shouldn’t he function much the same way?

“Nothing, nothing,” she said.

She’d never taken someone’s son before. The thought made her feel old for a moment, a feeling that she immediately extracted and dispensed with.

“Her son’s name is Bartholomew,” said her husband, continuing to examine his paper.

“You always know what I’m thinking, dear.” Geraldine rewarded him with a smile.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.  Prompts are supplied at the bottom in case you want to try your own hand at one of them.

The sound of laughter drifted up from the street below, making him feel very alone in this new town.

“Petra?”

She couldn’t hear him, or she was out. He didn’t know. Her violin case was in the corner, instrument inside.

“Petra?”

He tried the bathroom, where water clattered against tile and splashed echos against the tall ceiling. Empty. Same as the kitchen.

She was gone somewhere, but there was no note. And so he had nothing to do but to go back out onto the balcony.

Sleep had come to him so easily in the afternoon, and now it eluded him completely. He sat in the old hammock, watching the people come and go below. The storefront below was open now, and children darted in and out. An old radio played inside. Across the street, two old men played dominos. He enjoyed the crack of the plays, the sharp snap that came each time the ivory struck the table. Though it was getting dark, he could see some of the board, but they didn’t seem to be playing any game he could recognize.

The sun set over the palms.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.  Prompts are supplied at the bottom in case you want to try your own hand at one of them.

On the Livingstone estate, flies were sometimes the first indication that someone had died.

The heat was too much for the carrion birds. The drought had been good for them, at first. They gorged until their sick bellies were twisted and swollen, and no small number died to desperate predators that they could no longer escape. Those same predators met an ironic fate in the next few weeks, going into the stomachs of their own prey’s brothers. But then even the vultures and crows could not find food, except for one another. And so they either died or flew on.

But the flies? The flies could never be starved out — only discouraged for a time, maybe. Jack thought it was no small wonder that medieval scholars had thought flies simply arose from rotting meat. He couldn’t fathom where they were hiding between deaths. But they were there—they were always there, swarming in the doorways of the huts in a small, dark cloud, mimicking or mocking the rains that would not come.

The flies would come for him, eventually. And so, after a while, he and the flies were the only ones left.

Jack had a decision to make.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in two five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.  Prompts are supplied at the bottom in case you want to try your own hand at one of them.

There had been many theories about how she had been murdered — all of them wrong. You see, they’d gotten a key fact of the whole affair wrong from the very beginning.

Lisa Blatner had never been murdered. In fact, she’d never been dead to begin with. She was living quite happily at 29 Whimsbury Lane with two cats and an electric kettle. The mail came every day but Sunday, and when her crossword puzzle was finished it was usually just about time for a cup of tea. She even had a gentleman caller, a wiry old man named Albert who had come highly recommended when her roof began to leak. Their seduction of one another had been a slow, quiet thing, and by the time he finally shucked out of his underwear and stood naked for inspection in her bedroom (with a matter of fact statement like “well, here’s me, then”) Albert had been over nearly every inch of 29 Whimsbury Lane, and some of them more than once. Indeed, the depths of her prodigious bosom proved to be the last nooks and crannies he got to explore on the entire property.

And so they did things to one another that would’ve provoked scandal if they’d been younger, and now generated merely remark. All the while, the Turk never knew that she still lived. And it was better for both of them that way, in the end.

“Two-Minute Tuesdays” are a series of micro-stories written in five minutes or less. Consider them “public practice,” like shooting free throws in the park.  Prompts are supplied at the bottom in case you want to try your own hand at one of them.

The dream of home went sideways.

Sean woke hanging from the wall, wrapped in his bunk sheets. They were slipping out of the frame even as he was slipping out of his dream, and it was enough motivation to get him to let go of the warm dinner that he was about to sit down to in his subconscious.

Oily black water bubbled up through the porthole that was now below him. What in tarnation was going on? Something thumped against the deck next to his head just as he got his arms free. Clinging to the bulkhead, he managed to get up to the fishing boat’s deck just in time to see the bridge that they were hung up on.

Write for two minutes using these three nouns: comfort, fishing boat, bridge