From the Shallow to the Deep ~ A Short Story

From the Shallow to the Deep image
From the Shallow to the Deep
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The first lesson was a lecture in a small room that smelled like wet towels. Philip hated it already. He sat in the back of the room observing the fifteen or so other boys who were lucky enough to be learning how to swim. They were all gung-ho types, staunch little men; some were actually taking notes because they wanted to remember everything Boss said, get everything just right. They were excited; couldn’t wait to get their suits on and get into the water.

The swimming instructor insisted on being called Boss as if he had no other name. He was a short, swarthy man in his early forties with a face like a movie gangster. He wore a gray sweatshirt and black swim trunks with a whistle on a string around his neck. His legs were thick and short, disproportionate, covered with black hair. Philip wanted to laugh because he had more hair on his legs than he did on his head.

“Now, none of you are babies,” Boss barked, the gruff drill sergeant whipping the raw recruits into shape. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a baby. Or a sissy. Sissies are even worse. So if there are any sissies or babies among you, you’re welcome to leave now.”

There was a murmur in the room as the boys all attested that they were manly enough for what was coming. Philip sighed loudly and wished he was some place else.

“Everybody must have his own suit and his own towel,” Boss said. “If you arrive for your lesson without either of these two items, you will not be allowed to participate. You will fall behind and end up failing the class and we don’t like failures. Now, do we have any failures here?”

“No!” the boys shouted.

“Good! Now, your suit may be any color you like. Except pink. I wouldn’t recommend pink.”

The boys laughed appreciatively.

“And it must be presentable.”

“What do you mean by ‘presentable’?” somebody asked.

“Well, you don’t want your balls or your ass hanging out, now, do you?” Boss said.

The boys laughed loud and long. Philip hated Boss for his crudity and hated everybody else for laughing.

“Now, we all know what horseplay is, don’t we?” Boss said. “That’s another thing that will not be tolerated here. You will have fun, of course, but you’ll have to follow instructions and do as you are told at all times or you will be sent home. Whenever you hear me blow my whistle, that means that you are to stop what you are doing, whether in or out of the water, and listen to what I’m about to say. The whistle is the signal for you to stop and listen. Is there anybody here who doesn’t understand this?”

“No!”

“All right, then! Over the next eight weeks each and every one of you will learn how to swim like a champion. Are we all champions?”

“Yes!”

“Is there any one of you who doesn’t firmly believe in his heart that he is a champion?”

Philip ached to raise his hand and dismiss himself, that he was sick or was expected somewhere else at that moment, but he was too embarrassed to speak up. They would all laugh at him and he was sure Boss would say something to make it worse.

“Now, at the end of your eight weeks,” Boss continued, “you will take a final exam.”

A collective groan went up.

“It’s not the kind of exam you take sitting at a desk with a pencil in your hand, though. It’s an exam that will consist of swimming the length of the pool, from the shallow to the deep, and back again. And that’s not all. Each of you will be required to dive at least once off the high dive.”

“How high?” somebody asked.

“Thirty feet.”

“What if we can’t do it?”

“Then you fail the class. You will have wasted your time and mine and made a complete ass of yourself in the bargain. Is there anybody here who thinks he can’t do it?”

“No, sir!”

“All right, then. Be here on Friday at two o’clock, suited up and ready to swim. And that doesn’t mean two minutes after two, either. It means two on the dot!”

“Yes, sir!”

After the others had left, Philip hung back to have a word with Boss.

“I won’t be here on Friday, sir,” he said. “Or any other day.”

Boss looked at him with distaste. “And why not, may I ask?”

“I’m not really a pool person. I don’t care for this whole scene.”

“Then why did you sign up?”

“I didn’t. My father signed me up without consulting me first.”

“You won’t get your money back.”

“I don’t care about that, sir.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Philip Jennings.”

“Philip Jennings what?”

“Philip Jennings. Sir!”

He marked Philip’s name off the class roll and left without another word.

That evening at the dinner table, Philip’s father asked, “Wasn’t today your first swim lesson?”

“Yes,” Philip said, looking down at his plate.

“How did it go?”

“I quit.”

“You what?”

“I said I quit the swimming class. I won’t be going back.”

“After the first lesson?”

“It wasn’t really a lesson. It was just talking.”

“I’m not going to let you quit.”

“I already have.”

“You can’t do that! Do you know how hard it was to get you in that class? They have a waiting list. I had to pull some strings to get your named moved up on the list.”

“They can let some other poor sucker take my place,” Philip said.

“Other boys your age would kill for the chance to learn how to swim!”

“I’m not like them, sir.”

“Sometimes I look at you and I wonder what’s wrong with you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me, sir. I just don’t want to learn how to swim.”

“You’re a quitter. Just like your mother.”

“She would never have signed me up to do something she knew I would hate.”

“How do you know you hate it? You’ve never done it!”

“The pool scares me. I see myself dead in it.”

“Nobody is going to let you die!”

“No, sir, they won’t, because I’m not going to do it.”

“When I was fourteen years old, do you know what my father would have done if I had defied him the way you’re defying me now?”

“No, sir.”

“He would have knocked my head off my shoulders!”

“Rather extreme, don’t you think?”

“You’re the weirdest kid I’ve ever seen!”

“You haven’t seen many.”

“When is the next class?”

“Friday, but I won’t be there.”

“You’re going to go if I have to take you myself and stay there the whole time. Do you want the other kids to see what a big baby you are? That you have to have your father there to make sure you do what you’re supposed to do?”

“It couldn’t be any worse than it already is.”

“I think you should leave the table now! I don’t want to have to look at your face any more today.”

Philip stood up and carried his dishes to the sink. As he was scraping the plate under the faucet, he said, “Do you know that new thirty-story office building on the south side of the park?”

“I drive by it every now and then. Why?”

“They have an observation deck on the top floor. Open to the public.”

“So?”

“Anybody can go up there, even a kid. Even me.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. Just that it’s a long way down, that’s all. Just saying.”

After stacking the dishes, Philip went upstairs to his room and locked himself in. He kicked off his shoes and lay on his back on the bed, tired from the awful day. He would take a nap until about dark and then get up and sit at his desk and read to try to keep from thinking about drowning in the pool.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

By Appointment or By Chance ~ A Short Story

By Appointment or By Chance
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

The year was 1899. The old century was in its death spiral and a new century was about to be born. At this auspicious time of new beginning, I opened a business on Main Street in the town of Echo Bend.

I had worked as a teacher, editor at a small newspaper and clerk in a department store, but I dreamed of a profession where I was in sole command. I hated having to be accountable to anybody for anything. I wanted to be accountable only to myself.

I went to a demonstration of photography in a college lecture hall and, after sitting through a lecture and a practical demonstration, I was certain portrait photography was something at which I could make a living. I bought a couple of books and studied them, front to back, with interest. I took my savings and bought a camera and all the necessary equipment. In Echo Bend, I rented commercial space in the heart of the business district. I engaged a carpenter to construct a wall, so that the front part of the space would be public and the back part private. A professional sign painter painted my name across the window and underneath my name these words: Portrait Photographer, By Appointment or By Chance.

Photography had been around for a long time but to most people it was still a novelty. If you had the money to spend, it was all the rage to put on your glad rags and go and sit for your portrait. Then, no matter how poorly time treated you, no matter how ugly and corpulent you became, you would always have the photographic image of yourself to remind you of what you once looked like, when you were at your best. Your descendants would still have your photographic image in a quaint little frame decades after your death, and one day they would sit around and say to each other, “Now, just who was he?” or, “Didn’t she die of diphtheria when she was only about twenty-three?”

Families wanted their portraits taken as a group and then separately. Some families had as many as eight or ten children. Mothers wanted their children to sit for a portrait every year, traditionally on their birthdays. Mantelpieces and chairside tables abounded with portraits in frames. People gave them to relatives as gifts at Christmas. Photography as a business was a modest gold mine for the right sort of fellow.

And then, of course, there was death photography. People wanted portraits of their deceased family members, in a coffin or on a bed, sometimes sitting in a chair, oftentimes posed with the living members of the family or with the family dog. Some photographers painted eyes or rosy cheeks on the finished portraits, but I never employed that vulgar technique. I figured that once a person was dead, it was pointless to try to make him or her seem alive again.

While business was booming in town, I was willing, more often than not, to go out of town to take portraits of the deceased, since the deceased were by necessity bound to one spot. I could usually charge any amount for this service and people would pay it willingly because the resultant photo was a blessed remembrance of the departed loved one and money was, where the death sentiment was concerned, no object. This is not to say I cheated people; I charged them what I thought they could pay. If someone lived in a fine house with many rooms and beautiful furnishings, I had no qualms about charging top prices. If, however, they dressed in rags and lived in a falling-down shack, I did the work for practically nothing.

At this time I was still traveling by horse-drawn wagon. I had a specially made enclosed wagon to keep my equipment dry if it should happen to rain, and it rained most days at certain times of the year. Often I found myself slogging over unfamiliar country roads, looking for a place I wasn’t sure existed. Sometimes it took me all day to get to where I needed to go and I would end up staying the night. I wasn’t above bedding down inside my wagon if there was no other choice. I kept telling myself that next year, or maybe the year after, I’d hire an assistant to do the driving, carry the equipment and perform other trivial tasks. I might even train him to go on the out-of-town forays on his own.

Children died more often than adults. There was always a fever or an infection or pneumonia to carry them off. If you thought about it at all, you knew that a competent doctor might have fixed them up with a pill, a bottle of medicine, or just a word of advice, if only a doctor had been around when needed. I photographed dead babies in sateen-covered boxes in the family parlor, surrounded by sprays of forget-me-nots; babies in their mother’s arms, with a brood of older children looking on; babies just ready to go into their graves with smiles on their faces and a toy animal in their arms; twin babies in one tiny coffin with their arms entwined. Once I photographed a baby and a little brown-and-white dog side by side in a wooden box, ready to embark together on their journey through eternity.

Then there were the older children: the tiny six-year-old girl whose father accidentally shot her through the heart while cleaning a gun; the boy, eight years old, who didn’t get out of the way of the train fast enough; the girl, age ten, who died of heart failure when her mother locked her in a basement with rats to punish her. Most parents were good parents, though, and brokenhearted at the loss of a child. I provided them with the photographic remembrance that helped to ease their pain and made the child seem forever close and not so far away after all.

I was on my way back to town after one of these missions to photograph a ten-year-old boy who had fallen on a pitchfork when I saw a woman standing beside the road waving a handkerchief at me. I pulled up with impatience and stopped, ready to growl at her like an old bear.

“You’re the photography man?” she asked.

“I am,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Mrs. Trenton Fairman. I live in that house over there.” She pointed and I looked at a large brick house set back about two hundred feet from the road.

“I’m just coming off a case,” I said. “I’m headed back to town.”

“Well, you might come back in the morning, if you’re agreeable.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” I said. “Just what is it you need?”

She sighed and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Death has paid a call at my house.”

“You want a photograph of the deceased?”

“Yes, but it’s more than that.”

“What, may I ask?”

“You look like a strong man,” she said, “and quite young.”

“Yes?”

“My husband, Trenton Fairman Senior, is lying in his coffin in the bay window between the parlor and the dining room. The sun shines on him most of the day. He hasn’t been embalmed and it’s been three days now.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and bury him?”

“Tomorrow, April twenty-third, would have been his fifty-seventh birthday. When he knew he was dying, he made me promise that I wouldn’t have him buried until that day. He was very superstitious. He studied numerology and he believed that nothing would ever go right for him in the afterlife or for his kinfolk still living on the earth if he did not go into the ground on the day he was born.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that superstition,” I said.

“So, if you could consent to take my dear husband’s photograph before he goes at last into the ground on his birthday, I will make it worth your while.”

“I couldn’t do it for less than fifty dollars,” I said, believing she would balk at the price and that would end the matter.

“All right, but we’ll negotiate terms later on. You see, there’s more to my request than I’ve stated.”

“I haven’t eaten since early this morning,” I said.

“I believe we might deign to find something suitable in the house for you to eat, sir.”

She instructed me to pull my wagon around to the side of the house where she was waiting for me. When she took me inside, there was the unmistakable stench of death.

“I know,” she said. “He’s starting to smell. Nature takes its course.”

I took my handkerchief out of my pocket and held it over my mouth and nose. It was probably a good thing I hadn’t eaten.

She instructed the housemaid, a large, ungainly girl named Myrtle, to fix me a sandwich but I said, “Never mind. A drink of water will do. Just show me where the deceased is and we’ll get this thing over with.”

He was lying in a mahogany casket, very expensive looking, suffused with milky light from a bay window. Enormous potted ferns lay at the head and foot of the casket. Smaller containers of flowers were ranged on the floor along the front.

“He loved the sunlight,” Mrs. Fairman said. “I just couldn’t see blocking out the light with heavy curtains. It’ll be the last earthly light that will ever shine on him.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll bring my equipment in from the wagon and we’ll have this over in no time at all.”

While I got the camera set up and everything ready to take the picture, Mrs. Fairman and the housemaid, Myrtle, hovered in the background, watching my every move. I would have preferred that they go about their business, but they had never seen picture-taking before and were interested in how it worked.

I took two photographs of the deceased from different angles and then Mrs. Fairman wanted one with her standing next to the casket looking down into her husband’s face. When I was finished, I said, “That’ll be fifty dollars, ma’am, if you please. When your photographs are ready, I’ll send you a postcard and you can pick them up in town at your convenience.”

“I believe I mentioned there was something else,” Mrs. Fairman said.

“Yes?”

“My son, Trenton Fairman Junior, died a day and a half after his father. He is upstairs in his room, lying on his bed. He has been bathed and dressed for burial.”

“You want a photograph of him, too?” I asked.

“Yes, I do and then…”

“Then what, ma’am?”

“Myrtle and I are here alone. Neither one of us are very strong. After you take Junior’s picture, I would like to prevail upon you to pick him up and carry him downstairs and place him in the coffin with his father and then close the lid. The boys will be here early in the morning—on my husband’s fifty-seventh birthday, I believe I mentioned—to perform the burial.”

“How old is the boy?”

“He’s fifteen years old, sir, and not very big. I think he could not weigh more than a hundred pounds. I’ll pay you an extra twenty dollars to carry him downstairs and place him in the coffin beside his father and close the lid.”

“Are you sure they’ll both fit in the same coffin?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Comfortably, I think.”

“So, that’ll be fifty to photograph your husband, thirty to photograph your son, and twenty to carry the boy downstairs. That’s a hundred all together.”

“That seems fair, sir. I have the cash in the wall safe in my bedroom.”

“All right, let’s photograph the boy, then.”

Mrs. Fairman took me up a broad carpeted staircase, up one flight and then up another. We went down a hallway to a closed door, Mrs. Fairman first, then me, and then silent Myrtle. Mrs. Fairman turned to look at me before she opened the door.

“Why does God punish us so?” she said.

She opened the door and I saw the boy, Trenton Fairman Junior, lying on his back on the bed. He was a fine-looking boy, nothing like his hatchet-faced father, dressed in a dark suit with knickers, gray stockings and expensive-looking, high-top leather shoes. He wore a high collar with a cravat, just as a grown man would, with a diamond stickpin.

“He looks to be asleep,” I said.

Mrs. Fairman and Myrtle sobbed behind me.

“Maybe it would best if you leave me to my work,” I said.

They went out of the room and I went back downstairs to the parlor where the father lay and got my photographic equipment and carried it back up. I set up to take the picture and, as usual, I photographed the deceased from three different angles.

When I was finished, I carried my equipment back down, out the door, and loaded it into my wagon so I would be ready to leave as soon as Mrs. Fairman paid me the money she owed me.

Mrs. Fairman and Myrtle were waiting for me when I went back inside. Now it was time to carry the boy downstairs. The three of us went silently back up the stairs.

With Mrs. Fairman and Myrtle standing in the doorway, I approached the bed. Cautiously, I slipped my right arm under the boy’s back and my left arm under his knees. As I hefted him off the bed, I got the surprise of my life. His body went rigid, he opened his eyes and looked at me and gasped for air as if he had been under water.

“He’s not dead!” I said, laying him back down.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Mrs. Fairman said and Myrtle screamed.

“What made you think he was dead?” I said.

He continued to revive, moving his arms and legs, pulling at his clothes, as if he had suddenly become animated by the throwing of a switch. When I looked away from him over to Mrs. Fairman, I saw that she had collapsed on the floor. She convulsed violently and then stopped moving.

“Has she also been sick?” I asked Myrtle.

I approached the recumbent woman and took her hand in mine and began patting it because I didn’t know what else to do. I administered these little slaps to her hands and face and after a while I could see she wasn’t breathing. I put my ear to her chest and heard nothing.

“I’m afraid she’s dead,” I said. “The shock was too much for her.”

Myrtle gasped and ran from the room. I heard her shoes clomping all the way down the stairs.

I turned to the boy, Trenton Fairman Junior, sitting on the bed, feet on the floor. “Are you all right?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I photograph the dead. Your mother asked me to come up here and take your picture.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She believed you to be dead for the last day and half.”

“Oh, yes. That’s right.”

“You know your father is dead, lying downstairs in the parlor?”

“Yes, we were going to have a funeral.”

“I’m afraid your mother is dead, too.”

He looked over at her lying on the floor and shook his head.

“Where is the nearest doctor?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure there is one.”

“What about that girl? Myrtle? Does she live in the house with the family?”

“I don’t know where she lives.”

“She’s the only one left.”

“She’s ignorant,” he said.

“Would she be able find a doctor?”

“She wouldn’t be able to find her bunghole with both hands.”

“I’m going back to town now,” I said. “I’ll go to the sheriff and tell him what happened. Do you want to stay here do you want to go with me?”

“I’ll go.”

“You don’t want to stay here with your mother?”

“She wasn’t my mother. She was only play-acting.”

He asked me to wait while he changed his clothes and got a drink of water. I went outside and leaned against a tree in the front yard. In five minutes he came out of the house wearing a dress suit, carrying a small valise. He locked the door and we departed in my carriage.

It was late afternoon and the sky was threatening rain. I didn’t like the way the day had turned out. On top of everything else, I hadn’t collected the hundred dollars that was owed me and there would be no way to get it now.

For the first couple of miles, Trenton Fairman Junior said nothing, so after a while I turned to him to see how he was faring. With both of his parents dead, I expected him at least to need a reassuring adult to speak to.

“Do you have any family in town?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“You’ll have to have somebody to stay with,” I said.

“After the dead bodies are removed from my house, I can stay there. The house belongs to me now.”

“I don’t think they’ll let you stay in that big house all by yourself without an adult present.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a minor.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re underage. Still a child.”

“I’ll bet I’m more grown up than you.”

“It’s not a subject for argument. I’m just telling you the law won’t let you live in the house alone until you’re old enough.”

“I’d like to see them try and stop me.”

“Didn’t your father have a lawyer who handled his estate?”

“Yes, I think so. A lawyer in town. I think him name was Henry something.”

“Well, that’s a start. There can’t be that many lawyers in Echo Bend with Henry for a first name.”

He was silent then. He looked straight ahead as if I wasn’t even there.

“Your mother thought you were dead,” I said. “How’s that for irony?”

“She wasn’t my mother, I told you. She was my stepmother.”

“Well, whatever she was, she thought you were dead.”

“I was dead.”

“As you stated earlier. You were dead and then what happened? You just came back to life?”

“I don’t have any explanation for it, but that’s what happened. Not everything is explainable.”

“What happened while you were dead? Do you remember anything?”

“I saw God. He spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

“I would expect you to ask a silly question like that.”

“Don’t you think anybody would want to know what God says when he speaks.”

“God is a compact man with thin lips and a small mustache, almost as if it had been drawn on. People think of him as being big and old and having a long white beard, but he isn’t any of those things.”

“I don’t think I would have known him,” I said.

“He wears a black dress suit with a gray cravat and a ruby stickpin. And a monocle in his right eye.”

“Don’t tell me God has an eye deficiency! Or is the monocle just more of an affectation?”

“Go ahead and make fun of me. I don’t care.”

“All right. What did God say to you?”

“He said the Saints are with him in heaven.”

“Is that all?”

“He told me to await further instructions.”

“What did He mean by that?”

“You tell me.”

I sighed. I was starting to get bored with the conversation. “You must be hungry,” I said for a change of subject.

“Why must I be hungry?” he asked.

“You were dead for a day and a half. Dead people don’t eat.”

“Yes, I suppose I’m hungry,” he said. “I could eat.”

“When we get to town, we’ll get you a good dinner.”

“In the morning I’ll go see Henry what’s-his-name and tell him my stepmother decided to die along with my father. He’ll advise me what to do.”

“You’ll need a place to stay tonight,” I said.

“I can manage.”

“We’ll get you a room in the hotel for tonight.”

“I don’t have any money. I know that she had money in the safe, my father’s money, but she never told me the combination.”

“I’ll advance you the money.”

“Forget it. I’ll just walk around until morning. I’ve done it before.”

“That doesn’t seem the right thing to do,” I said.

When we got back to town, I went straight to the sheriff’s office, went inside and told him what had happened at the Fairman place, that there were two dead bodies there and nobody to tend to them. He asked me a dozen questions, where I might be reached for further questioning, and then he told me I could go. I went back out to my carriage and drove to the hotel. I stabled my horse and locked my wagon so nobody would become curious about what might be inside worth stealing. These trivial matters tended to, Trenton Fairman Junior and I went into the crowded hotel dining room and sat at a round table in the middle of the room. After we placed our order, I noticed the people in the restaurant looking at us and then I realized they were looking at him.

“You see the way they’re looking at me?” he said.

“They’re not used to seeing a young fellow all dressed up in a dress suit. Not in this town. You look like you just got here from someplace else.”

“It isn’t what I’m wearing.”

“What is it then?”

“They know I’ve seen God and will see Him again.”

“They don’t know any such thing.”

The food came, huge amounts of beefsteak, fried potatoes, carrots and green beans. After we ate, the boy said he was tired and wanted to go to bed. I figured he must be upset at the strange turn of events his life had taken that day, but he seemed perfectly calm and unemotional.

After I paid for our meal, we went into the hotel, where I engaged a room for him for the night. I asked him if he was afraid to stay by himself in a strange hotel room and he laughed. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “I’ve always been by myself. Since the day I was born.”

He had such a grownup way about him that I sometimes forgot I was dealing with a child.

He signed his name in the hotel register and the clerk handed him the key. Before he went upstairs to his room, I put my hand on his shoulder and told him I’d come by in the morning at eight-thirty to take him to his father’s lawyer and for him to meet me in the lobby. He nodded and turned and went up the stairs.

When I got home, I took a hot bath and fell into bed and slept soundly until thunder woke me up at seven in the morning. I dressed and consumed a light breakfast and then I set out for the hotel. I was sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper at twenty minutes after eight. I expected Trenton Fairman Junior to come down the stairs at any moment.

At eight forty-five he still hadn’t made an appearance and at nine o’clock I was still sitting there holding the newspaper in my foolish hands. At ten minutes after nine, I went over to the desk and asked the clerk if he could check on the boy in room three-twelve for me. He had been supposed to meet me and he never appeared.

The clerk checked his book and looked up at me and said, “A boy, you say?”

“Yes, a boy,” I said.

“A small boy?”

“No, a big boy. Almost an adult.”

The clerk looked down and then looked back at me and sighed. “Room three-twelve has not been occupied for several days,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I was with the boy last night. I engaged the room for him to spend the night in and he was supposed to meet me here, in the lobby, this morning at eight-thirty.”

“Are you sure it was this hotel?” the clerk asked.

“Will you let me take the key and go up to room three-twelve and check for myself?”

“That would be against regulations, sir.”

“Then open the door yourself to make sure the boy is all right.”

The clerk went with me up to the third floor. We walked to the door of room three-twelve and he inserted the key into the lock and pushed the door open for me to enter. The bed was neatly made up. The window shades were drawn. It was clear the room had not been occupied the night before.

“He signed the register last night,” I said to the clerk. “I was with him. His name, Trenton Fairman Junior, will be there if you only bother yourself to look.”

We went back down to the lobby and the clerk checked the register from the night before. “No such name here,” he said.

“Can I look?”

He turned the register around and I read over the four or five names from the night before. The name Trenton Fairman Junior was indeed not there.

So much for Trenton Fairman Junior. I had no explanation for why his name wasn’t in the hotel register, but I figured he didn’t need or want my help any more and had gone to find his father’s lawyer on his own.

I thanked the clerk and went back out into the rain. I went to my photography studio and opened for business. It was a slow morning, so I had a chance to process my plates from the day before: two shots from different angles of the boy who died of the pitchfork wound through the stomach, two of Trenton Fairman Senior lying in his coffin, one of Mrs. Fairman standing next to her husband’s coffin. They all turned out beautifully.

When I processed the plates I had taken of Trenton Fairman Junior lying dead on his bed, I saw only a dim outline of a bed and that’s all. No Trenton Fairman Junior. Why would I have taken photographs of just a bed? I tried to recall the events of the day before to make some sense of it. I began to think I had experienced a kind of lapse while I was in the Fairman house. Had Trenton Fairman Junior even existed outside of my own mind? Was he a ghost? I couldn’t be sure. Not all things, as had recently been pointed out to me, are explainable.

After that I didn’t do any more work. I was beginning to feel tired and lightheaded so I closed the shop for the rest of the day and went home.

That night I was sick and was sure I was dying. I ached in every joint and was having trouble swallowing. I couldn’t keep anything on my stomach, not even a sip of water. I knew I had a fever.

When I was trying to think what might be the matter with me, the truth came to me as if spoken by a voice inside my head. I had failed to ask the reason for Trenton Fairman Senior’s death. He had obviously died of something catching and I had caught it. I had spent two hours at least inside a house breathing in disease germs and death.

I didn’t want to die alone and have my bloated body found only after the neighbors noticed the smell, so I checked myself into the nearest hospital. The doctor examined me briefly and put me in the isolation ward. I was sure I was going to die; if not that night, then very soon.

For two days and nights I passed in and out of consciousness. I was barely aware of anything but I knew there were other people moving at all hours around the bed on which I lay. I didn’t know who they were, or care: I only wanted them to go away and let me die in peace.

Hours passed, maybe days, but I had no real sense of time. The light at my window went from light to dark and back to light. I was aware of the sounds of rain and thunder, the perfect accompaniment, I thought, to dying.

Once when I woke up from one of my naps, Trenton Fairman Junior was standing at the foot of my bed, smiling at me.

“I wondered what happened to you!” I said. “I’m happy to know you made it all right.”

Then I realized that somebody else was standing beside Trenton Fairman Junior. He was a compact man with thin lips and a small mustache, almost as if it had been drawn on. He had a Continental air about him, rather than an American one.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He smiled and said, “It’s time for me to ask you a question.”

“What is it?”

“Do you want to go or do you want to stay?”

“What? Go where?”

“I asked you if you want to go or if you want to stay?”

“I think I’d like to stay if it’s all the same to you,” I said.

I must have drifted off to sleep after that because when I came to myself again, Trenton Fairman Junior and the man with the monocle were gone.

I was several more days in the hospital and then they said I was well enough to go home. As I was getting dressed to leave, one of the nurses told me how lucky I was to be alive because I had come so close to dying.

“I saw God,” I said. “He spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me if I wanted to go or if I wanted to stay.”

“What did you say?”

I thought it an unnecessary question, but I answered all the same.

“I said I wanted to stay.”

“You’re not usually given a choice, I believe,” she said.

After a few days at home by myself I felt almost well again. On Sunday morning I rode out to the Fairman place, for what reason I don’t know. It looked abandoned. Grass and weeds had grown up in the yard. The windows were shuttered. A large for-sale sign was placed so that people would see it coming from either direction on the road. Just being near the house made me start to feel ill again, so I left.

In a month or so I moved to the city. I borrowed some money from a bank and set up a photography studio in a fashionable location (fashionable meaning people with money). I did well and moved into expensive lodgings with maid service. I bought myself a motor car, something every man of means was doing. I paid back the money I borrowed and was as happy as I ever expected to be.

My photographic subjects now were all living. I wanted nothing more to do with death. My own would be coming for me soon enough.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Every Little Breeze Seems to Whisper Louise ~ A Short Story

Every Little Breeze Seems to Whisper Louise

Every Little Breeze Seems to Whisper Louise
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

Already a little seasick, Heaton declined to eat or drink on the first day out. Instead he stayed in his stateroom until he thought most of the other passengers would be occupied with dinner and cocktails and then he put on his coat and hat and went up onto the deck, like a thief in the night, without making a sound. He was pleased that he met no one, and, when he was standing at the railing in the cold night, alone, he looked down at the roiling water and tried to dispel the wave of nausea that crept over him. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply of the ocean air and, when he was certain the sickness was dissipating, he withdrew from his coat a small canvas bag.

The bag contained the ashes of one recently deceased. Looking over his shoulder to make sure he was not being observed, he dumped the ashes into the sea, element to element. He watched the ashes until they dispersed into the air and water and then, as an afterthought, dropped the canvas bag over the side, too. With one stroke, it was all over, so simple and clean. The last earthly vestiges of a life, gone in an instant. He hadn’t realized until that moment how satisfying it would be.

He was about to return to his stateroom when someone came and stood beside him at the railing.

“Bon voyage!” a man’s voice said.

“What?” Heaton asked, a little irritated at having his privacy intruded upon.

“I said those words today for the first time in my life.”

“Oh. Yes. We’re on a big boat, aren’t we? I suppose the right word is ship. And we’re on our way to an exotic foreign destination.”

“Care for a smoke?” the man asked.

Although Heaton had never smoked in his life, he reached for the cigarette as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do. He put it in his mouth and the man lit it expertly with a shiny lighter and then lit his own.

“I just said goodbye to my mother,” Heaton said.

“Push her overboard?”

“In a way, I suppose I did. I just dumped her ashes.”

“According to her wishes?”

“No. She had no wishes regarding her ashes. I don’t think she would have cared what I did with them. She never saw the sea or was anywhere near it, so in a way it’s a new experience for her.”

“Release her to the elements?”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Heaton said. He took a puff on the cigarette and looked at the end of it curiously.

“Are you traveling alone?” the man asked and Heaton turned and looked at him in the dim light. He wasn’t young but not exactly old, either. He wore an expensive-looking wool coat and a brown hat that perfectly matched his physiognomy.  Everything about him seemed in perfect harmony: the placement of his nose in the middle of his face and his perfectly arched lips.

“Yes, alone,” Heaton said, resenting only slightly the forwardness of the question.

“First time at sea?”

“Oh, yes! I’ve never been anywhere or done anything in my life.”

“So now that your mother is gone you’re striking out on your own.”

“Something like that.”

“Good for you!”

Heaton was a little surprised at himself that he was opening up to a stranger on such short acquaintance, but that didn’t stop him.

“My mother was a very strong and forthright woman,” he said. “Even as an adult, I always found myself bending to her will.”

“And now that she’s gone and you’re on your own, it’s a little frightening?”

“I hadn’t thought about it in that way, but I suppose it is.”

The man threw away his cigarette and right away lit another one. Heaton found himself looking at the side of the man’s face and at the little wrinkles that radiated outward from his eyes.

“I’m traveling with my sister, you know,” the man said.

“Your sister?” Heaton asked, finding the idea rather appalling.

“Yes. Her name is Louise.”

“Well, that’s funny!” Heaton said. “That was my mother’s name.”

“Well, maybe that’s some kind of omen.”

“I don’t believe in omens.”

“Louise is unattached and you’re unattached. I think she would be awfully interested in meeting a nice fellow like you.”

“I’m not a nice fellow. I don’t know why I’m even standing here talking to you. Nobody likes me. I’m a terrible person. My mother would tell you so if she was here.”

The man laughed and slapped Heaton on the back. “Is that what you call ‘self-deprecating humor’? My sister would love you for it!”

“I really hadn’t planned on meeting anybody this trip. It’s been a long time since I’ve been truly alone, and I’m just looking forward to some solitude.”

“I would guess you haven’t had much romance in your life,” the man said.

“I’ve always been very busy with my work. I never had much time for that sort of thing.”

“I hope you’ll at least have a drink with us. Louise and me.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

“Well, I’ll see you again,” the man said. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

After he was gone, Heaton spit over the railing. He found it hard to believe that anybody would like the taste of cigarettes.

When he got back to his stateroom and turned on the light, he wasn’t surprised to see his mother sitting there in the dark.

“Go away, mother!” he said. “You’re dead!”

“You make me sick!” she said.

“So you’ve told me many times.”

“I heard every word that man said to you, and you’re too naïve to see what his game is.”

“I thought he was very nice to talk to me. I wasn’t aware that he had a game.”

“He knows you’ve got money!”

“Now how could he know that?”

“You’re traveling first-class on a luxury liner. Take a survey and see how many of the people in first-class are millionaires.”

“I’m not going to take any surveys, mother.”

“A funny little man traveling by himself in first-class. They smell you from a mile off. They smell money.”

“I wasn’t aware that money had a smell, mother.”

“They know you’re lonely and shallow and naïve and know nothing of the world.”

“People can tell all that just from looking at me?”

“They know you’d be vulnerable to the charms of a woman because no woman has ever paid any attention to you.”

He couldn’t keep from laughing. “I think you’d better go now, mother. Satan is probably wondering where you are.”

“You think you’re rid of me, don’t you?”

“I just poured your ashes into the sea, mother.”

“Why didn’t you just flush me down the toilet?”

“I thought of that, but I thought dumping you overboard into the sea from a moving sea-going vessel was more dignified and more final.”

“And now that you’re on your own, what do you think you’re going to do with yourself?”

“Did I tell you I quit my job the day after you died? I’m not going to work anymore. I’m going to take a vacation now, a real rest.”

“On my money?”

“It’s not your money anymore, mother. It’s my money. You’re dead. Dead people don’t have money.”

“If I had it to do over again, I would sign all my assets over to charity.”

“Hah-hah! Too late now!”

“You’re in the middle of the ocean. If you had any sense at all, you’d jump in.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You know you can’t get along without your mother.”

“I’m going to have such fun spending the money that used to be yours but is now mine! I’m going to see all the sights and experience all the things I’ve missed out on in forty-four years on this earth, and you can’t stop me. That’s why you’re so sore at me.”

“You’ll end up squandering all of my money!”

“You don’t need to worry about it, mother. You’ll never know. You’re dead.”

“You will never be rid of me!”

“Oh, no?”

He kicked the chair she was sitting in with such force that it turned over backwards against the wall.

“You stupid ass!” she said. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“You’ll never call me ‘stupid’ again or anything else!”

When he saw her struggling to get up off the floor, he laughed and, like a child playing a game, ran into the bathroom, closed and locked the door and turned on the water. When he came out a few minutes later, she was gone. Gone forever this time, he was sure.

Now that he had her taken care of, he was going to put on his pajamas and get into bed and read for a while, but that’s what the old Heaton would have done. The new Heaton would get out and overcome his squeamishness and his seasickness, mix with people and have some fun.

He checked himself in the mirror and went out of his room again and went to the cocktail lounge. He took a seat at the bar and ordered a pack of cigarettes and a drink. When he told the bartender what he wanted, he didn’t even stammer or hesitate. It was as though he had been ordering drinks his whole life.

“First time across?” the bartender asked as he lit his cigarette for him.

“Yes, and I’m celebrating my freedom,” Heaton said.

“Divorce?” the bartender asked.

“Oh, no! I’ve never been married. It’s a different kind of freedom.”

The bartender smiled at him and he drank his drink in one gulp and ordered another one. Over to his right, someone was looking at him and when he turned his head slightly, he saw it was a woman with breasts exposed in a plunging neckline. She smiled at him and lifted her glass and he looked away quickly and took a nervous puff on his cigarette. He didn’t know how interested he was going to be or if he was going to be interested at all, but nobody had ever looked at him before and he found that he liked it more than he ever thought he would.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Happy Starfish ~ A Short Story

Happy Starfish
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story was published in Halfway Down the Stairs.)

Did I tell you how I hate school? This morning in zoology I had to dissect a starfish. The inside of the starfish is green. That’s disgusting enough, but the thing that got to me is the fishy smell. It’s a smell that lingers in my head and my nose. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat any kind of fish or seafood again for as long as I live without being reminded of the green insides of a starfish.

The world is very cruel. That little starfish was probably just minding its own business on a beach somewhere when somebody picked it up and put it in pickling solution where it instantly died. One minute a happy starfish and the next minute a laboratory specimen to be cut open and have its insides probed. If I was a starfish, I would want to live on a faraway island where there were no people and I could die of old age.

After zoology was American history, but I skipped. I thought I was going to vomit and I didn’t want anybody to see me. I went to the boys’ toilet on the third floor where it was quiet and went into a stall and latched the door. I put my hands on my knees, leaned forward and closed my eyes, trying not to think about that starfish.

In a minute somebody came into the toilet whistling. I hate to hear people whistle. It spoiled my concentration, so I just spit into the toilet and flushed without vomiting. I opened the stall door and went to the sink and started to wash my hands.

“What do you think you’re doing?” somebody to my left said.

I turned and saw it was Claude Qualls. If there’s anybody in school I hate, it’s Claude. He’s the class president and a snitch. Mr. Do-Gooder. Mr. Over-Achiever. Mr. Perfect. He has somehow taken it upon himself to keep the rest of us in line. Probably someday he’ll be a congressman or a senator or something if somebody doesn’t kill him first.

“Washing my hands,” I said. “What does it look like?”

“That’s not what I meant, smartass! What are you doing out of class?”

“I’m sick.”

“You don’t look sick.”

He took his eyes off himself in the mirror and leaned in close to me, sniffing.

“Get away from me!” I said. “What I have is probably contagious.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in American history?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“As class president, I’m supposed to report anybody skipping class.”

“Go to hell!” I said.

He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me toward him, holding his right arm back like he was going to hit me in the face. “What did you just say to me?” he said.

“You heard me. I said: Go to hell, bitch!”

He roughed me up a little bit but didn’t hit me. He finished by pushing me into the sink. The fingers on my left hand bent back painfully.

“You stupid little baby!” he said. “You can be sure that this little episode will be reported.”

“You’re the big man, aren’t you?” I said. “The big man will always be there to tell the rest of us what to do, won’t he?”

“Shut up, you little freak!”

“No, you’re the freak, Claude! Not me! Everybody hates your guts!”

“I’m going down to Mr. Ludlow’s office right now and write up a report stating that you’re loitering in the bathroom when you’re supposed to be in class.”

“I hope you break your leg going down the steps,” I said.

I went to the library to hide out for the rest of the period. I knew that if I sat at one of the tables out front, anybody coming in would spot me right away, so I wandered around in the dusty stacks for a while and then went all the way to the back where nobody ever ventured and sat down on the floor in the corner. I opened a book on my knees so if I heard anybody coming I’d pretend to be reading.

I was starting to feel a little less like vomiting. The quiet and the smell of old books made me sleepy, so I leaned my head against the wall and dozed off like a bum sleeping it off in an alley.

“Here he is!” I heard somebody say in a loud voice.

I jerked awake and saw Claude Qualls looking down at me. Behind him was Mr. Ludlow, the principal.

“I was sure he’d be hiding out somewhere!” Claude said.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Ludlow scolded. “Sleeping on the floor in the library!”

“I was feeling sick,” I said, standing up.

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“Of course not!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“American history class,” Claude said.

“I was going to vomit,” I said. “I didn’t want to be in class when it happened.”

Mr. Ludlow took hold of my arm above the elbow and squeezed. I was sure I would have a bruise there and I was sorry that Claude was the only one present to witness this rough treatment.

“Skipping class will not be tolerated in this school,” Mr. Ludlow snarled in his best warden-of-the-big-house voice. I could smell his cologne and it was worse than the starfish. “Do you want a suspension?”

“No,” I said. “I just want my high school years to be over.”

“Do you need me to help you with him?” Claude asked.

“No, thanks, Claude,” Mr. Ludlow said. “I can take it from here.”

“Before you tell somebody else to go to hell,” Claude said to me with his demonic smile, “think about who you’re talking to.”

“That’s fine, Claude,” Mr. Ludlow said. “You may go now.” To me Mr. Ludlow said, “Proper disciplinary action will be taken at the appropriate time but, for now, you may go to your next class, and if you even think about skipping class again you’ll be faced with a three-day suspension. Think what that will do to your scholastic record and to your chances of getting into a good college.”

My next class was gym class, which I hated more than all my other classes put together. I went to the locker room and changed out of my “street clothes” into the ridiculous gym togs: baggy red shorts that hung down to my knees, a stretched-out tee shirt and grass-stained high-top tennis shoes that were too small for me and made my toes hurt.

While we were all standing around waiting for the teacher to arrive so the class could begin, I spotted Claude Qualls about twenty feet away, bouncing a basketball. When he saw me, he gave me a look of bemused hatred and I mouthed the words go to hell. There wasn’t any way he could not know what I was saying.

The physical education teacher was Mr. Upjohn, or “coach,” as he liked to be called. He was four feet, eleven inches tall and he looked like a troll in a fairy story who hides under a bridge.

“All right now, everybody!” he yelled and blew his whistle. “Time for warm-up!”

As bad as the warm-up was, it wasn’t as bad as the game of volleyball or basketball that followed. We stood in rows as Mr. Upjohn faced us and directed us in the knee bends, sit-ups, pushups, and jumping jacks.

It was during the jumping jacks that I vomited on the floor, a thick green mass that looked exactly like the insides of the starfish. Everybody stopped jumping up and down and looked at me. I bent forward to vomit again and fainted face down in what I had just deposited on the floor. It was only the second time in my life that I had ever fainted. The first time was when I was eight and had the flu.

When I regained consciousness, they were all standing around in a circle watching me. I had really spiced up their boring old gym class. Mr. Upjohn was kneeling beside me, waving a bottle of smelling salts under my nose.

“He’s coming around,” he said.

“I want to go home,” I said.

“Can you make it to the nurse’s office?”

“She doesn’t like me. I pushed her down the stairs once.”

As I stood up, Mr. Upjohn took hold of my arm. “Go get dressed,” he said, “and go see the nurse.”

“I don’t know,” I said, wobbling for effect. “I feel like I’m going to faint again.”

“Claude!” he barked. “Go with him and help him get dressed!”

Claude stepped forward, ready once again to fulfill his role as student leader.

“I don’t need any help from him!” I said. “Just give me time!”

I went down to the deserted locker room, cleaned the vomit off my face and out of my hair and put my clothes back on. As I was leaving the locker room, I noticed the door to Claude’s locker was partway open. I approached the locker, pulled the door open all the way and looked inside. There, on the top shelf, was Claude’s expensive gold wrist watch. I slipped the watch into my pocket and deposited it in a trashcan on my way to the nurse’s office.

I walked into her office and vomited again, all over the floor. Now, I have to tell you, there’s nothing like vomiting to get people’s attention. You can say you’re sick, but dramatic vomiting leaves no room for doubt.

The nurse dropped what she was doing and came running with a kidney-shaped metal pan. She told me to lie back on the cot and she put a wet cloth on my head. When she took my temperature and saw I had a fever, she called my mother and told her to come and get me.

When I got home, I kicked off my shoes and got into bed. My mother stood in the doorway and harangued me, as usual.

“Why did you choose today of all days to be sick?” she asked.

“I figured it was time,” I said.

“Algebra test today?”

“No, I failed that last week.”

“Well, I have to tell you,” she said, “sometimes when you say you’re sick I don’t believe you, but today you look sick.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She called the doctor and described my symptoms. From my bed, I could hear her yapping into the phone in the other room for a good ten minutes. After she hung up, she came back into my room. I pretended to be asleep until I heard her breathing and opened my eyes.

“He said it sounds like you have a virus that’s making the rounds,” she said. “It’s contagious and he said to keep you at home in bed for a few days.”

“I always liked Dr. Fain,” I said.

“He said that after the nausea passes I’m to give you anything you want to eat or drink.”

“I want a champagne cocktail,” I said, “and a steak medium rare.”

“But the main thing,” my mother said, “is to keep you quiet and in bed.”

I groaned for good effect and my mother went out of the room and closed the door.

I remembered my conversation earlier in the day with Claude Qualls in the boys’ toilet. He had stuck his snoot in my face and I hope he caught what I had, only ten times worse. He would be distraught at the thought of missing any school, while I, on the other hand, loved it better than anything.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Million-Year Experiment ~ A Short Story

The Million-Year Experiment
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

The struggle now is over. Everything else will be easy. Hidden away in my room I have food for five days. When it’s gone, I’ll be gone too. I could probably go on longer than five days, but I don’t want to go on. I’m tired and I’m sick. I’ll be ready to go in five days. And I have no more fear. There’s comfort in knowing exactly when and how I will die.

I have my euthanasia pill that people from the hospital were passing out on street corners. I’ve had it for three months. I could have taken the pill right away—it was entirely up to me—but I still had hope back then that something—I don’t know what—would happen and somebody would emerge as a savior and come up with a way to save the few of us remaining. Of course, it didn’t happen. It was never going to happen. Go ahead and take the pill. And may God have mercy on your soul.

Speaking of God, He has decided in His infinite wisdom to end the human species on earth, after about a million years. When you think that the Earth is billions of years old, a million years is really nothing. Now God has decided it’s time to extinguish the humans, make them extinct, and try something else. Something better and wiser, let us hope. I can’t say I blame Him.

So, those of us still remaining have the unique distinction of being the last humans on Earth. After the countless billions who have lived and died, it all comes down to us. Close the door and turn off the lights. Nothing more to be said. All of human history has been written in books, but there’ll be nobody around to read it anymore. No more Mozart or Beethoven, no more Mona Lisa, no more Shakespeare, no more Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo, no more Agatha Christie, Tennessee Williams or Charles Dickens. No more Superman, Chevrolets or lemon meringue pies. I could go on and on, but I won’t.

I get up from the bed and walk over to the window and look out. I’m on the fifth floor of this old building. The building still stands, while a lot of other buildings have been burned or torn apart. I still have the glass in my window because it’s up too high to be broken easily by somebody on the street. A lot of people seem to have this instinct to destroy, if only because they can.

I don’t pay rent anymore because there’s nobody to pay it to and nobody to care. Money doesn’t mean anything anymore. Most of the people in the building are already gone. There are so few people left that when I hear somebody on the stairs, it scares me because I think somebody knows I have a little bit of food and water left and have followed me home to kill me for it.  That doesn’t scare me as much as it makes me mad.

I’ve been collecting rainwater on my little balcony at the back of the building in a washtub. Luckily there has been quite a lot of rain lately. I use this water mostly for bathing. Yes, I still like to keep myself clean, whereas most people have given up on this pursuit entirely. I just can’t stand being filthy, but what does it matter now? Just let everything go, they say. It’s only for a little while longer.

The government—what’s left of it—has been handing out drinking water at distribution sites around the city. The last time I picked up drinking water was a couple of weeks ago at a place about six blocks from my building. I’m not sure if they have any water left, but I leave my building and begin the walk over there.

I don’t have a gun or a weapon, but I have what used to be called a Billy club. If anybody tries to mess with me or bother me, I can at least hit them in the head to deter them. If I hit them hard enough, I might kill them. I’ve never killed anybody, but I can see myself doing it under the right circumstances.

I only go out during daylight hours. After dark, roving gangs go around killing strangers they come across, just because they can and there’s nobody to stop them. Nobody will come to your aid if you find yourself in trouble. You either run or you fight them, in which case you’ll lose because you’ll be outnumbered. Some of the gangs are made up of children ten years old or younger: vicious killers who will laugh at you while you’re bleeding to death or writhing on the ground in pain. What kind of a world has the world become?

There are bricks and debris in the road. You can hardly tell where the road is. There are no sidewalks anymore. Glass storefronts are smashed in. People have done this looking for food, of which there is none. If we could eat bricks and glass and old boards, we’d have all the food we could ever need.

I climb over one pile of bricks, to the top, and down the other side. Then I do it again with the next pile over. My shoes are practically worn out, but so is everything else. My feet hurt. I’m moving so slow I’m hardly moving at all. I meet a few other people, but they are intent on their own business, as I am intent on mine, and pay no attention to me.

I meet an old man who comes toward me with his hand out. He wants me to give him something that I am sure not to have. I raise my club up over my head and let him know I will smack him with it if I have to. He recoils with a  hurt look and I feel sorry for him. If I had anything to give that would help him, I’d gladly give it, but I’m just as bad off as he is.

Finally I come to the place where people were giving out water before, but there’s nobody there. The makeshift stand they were using as a little shelter has been broken up for firewood. All that’s left is a hand-lettered sign: No Water! Go to Steeple Church on Carolina Street at Top of Hill.

I’ve lived in the neighborhood for seven years, so I know where the steeple church is. It’s about six blocks farther on. If I go there, that means I’ll be twelve blocks from my building. I don’t know what time it is. My legs feel weak. I’m not sure if I can make it twelve more blocks, and, if I do, I’m not sure I can get back home before dark. But does it really matter, anyway? I’m going to die, everybody’s going to die, and I don’t mean die eventually but in a very short time, a matter of hours or days. How could it possibly matter in what manner I die? All I ask is that my death be quick, and I believe it will be. God will grant me that one final grace, I’m sure.

I rest for a while and then I trudge on in the direction of the steeple church. I don’t see anybody else. I could be the only person left alive. I wield my club in case anybody is watching me without my knowing it.

When I get to the steeple church, the doors are open, but I don’t see anybody. I hear faint organ music coming from inside. It’s not church music; it isn’t anything I recognize. I like the way it sounds. It sounds welcoming.

The church is cavernous; after the sunlight it seems dark; it takes time for my eyes to adjust. I stand at the back for a couple of minutes and then I walk down the aisle and take a seat. Several people turn and look at me. I look at the floor.

There are about thirty people in the church, some together but mostly by themselves. Some are here, I think, seeking solace, while others just want a place where they can come in off the street and sit down. One woman, I see, holds a tiny baby. She’s too old to have a baby that young, so she must be the grandmother.

The organ music stops and the man doing the playing gets up and walks slowly to the altar at the front of the church. He is gaunt and dressed all in black. He looks out over the small crowd and then looks away, as if deciding what to say.

Finally he speaks: “I won’t see any of you again after today. I’m going away tonight. When anybody asks me how I feel, I tell them the peace of the Lord is upon me. I hope the peace of the Lord is upon you also, now and forever.”

“Amen!” an old woman shouts at the front of the church, lifting her arms. “The peace of the Lord be upon you!” Now and forever!”

“We have come now to an end,” the man in black says quietly. “The dark days are behind us. Our suffering is over. The only message of hope I have for you is for the next life. You have only to ask God for the forgiveness you seek. You have nothing to gain but eternal life.”

“Eternal life!” the old woman screams, and then she stands up and moves down the rows, but, instead of passing the collection plate, she begins handing out little bottles of water to everybody in the church.

“Peace be with you, Brother!” she says with every bottle. “Peace be with you, Sister!”

The man in black disappears at the back of the church behind the altar. I take the bottle from the old woman and when I stand up to leave the church, I pitch forward onto the floor, hitting my head on the back of the pew in front of me. I’m aware of people lifting me off the floor and placing me in a reclining position on the pew, and then I lose consciousness. It feels like being dead.

When I wake up, all the people have left. The church is dark except for some lighted candles on the other side of the nave. I sit quietly for a couple of minutes with my head in my hands, trying to summon the strength to walk the twelve blocks home.

I must have been unconscious longer than I thought, because when I open the door to leave the church, it’s completely dark outside and the street is deserted. There are no streetlights anymore, so when I say dark, I mean as dark as a night can be, with no moon and low-flying clouds in the sky, a smell of rain in the air.

The night feels momentous to me, significant in some way. My skin prickles. I feel a chill, even though it’s a warm night. My hands are shaking. I drink half the bottle of water, replace the lid and carry the bottle in my hand. The water has somehow revived me. I believe now I can make it all the way home.

I walk three or four blocks away from the church. I don’t see those who attack me in the dark. They come up behind me. I don’t know how many there are, but it feels like five or six. They pull me backwards off my feet. They hit me with their fists, in the face and the stomach, and when that’s not enough they begin kicking me. They steal my shoes and the half-bottle of water I’m carrying. They scream a high-pitched animal scream, or maybe it’s something I don’t hear but only believe I hear.

For the second time in a few hours, I’m unconscious. It’s funny, because I don’t remember ever being unconscious in my life before, not even when I was sick with pneumonia or when I had surgery for appendicitis. I lay on the sidewalk like a dead man; maybe my assailants, when they leave me, believe I am dead.

But I wake up again—this time to a brilliantly blue sky with a few fleecy clouds. There are beautiful birds wheeling in the sky. They have spotted me. They call to me. They fly down to me. Before I know what’s happening, they pick me up in their gentle claws and bear me skyward. I feel nothing now except the most exquisite joy.

Copyright 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Most Beautiful Suicide ~ A Short Story

The Most Beautiful Suicide
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Angela McNeill traveled down by train to see Harry Vance and they spent that last Sunday together. They walked in the park, holding hands, and sat for a long time watching the swans gliding back and forth across the lake. It was a day in April and the weather could not have been finer.

He took her hand and said he wanted to marry her in June.

She avoided looking directly at him. “That doesn’t give me much time,” she said.

“Time for what?” he asked.

“A wedding takes a lot of planning,” she said.

“It’s going to be a small wedding,” he said.

“Yes, but I want everything to be just right.”

It was a conversation they had had many times before. She was in “no hurry” to get married, while he couldn’t get it done fast enough. He was a college student and wanted to get the wedding out of the way in June, between semesters. Then, by the beginning of the fall semester, they would have found a place to live and would be “settled.” His parents were giving them a thousand dollars as a wedding gift to “get started” on.

“I don’t think your parents like me very much,” she said.

“Of course they like you! Why wouldn’t they?”

“They think I’m not right for you.”

“Nobody said any such thing! You’re just looking for complications that don’t exist.”

“I just want everything to be right, that’s all.”

“You’re thinking about your parents, aren’t you?” he said.

“No. Why should I?”

“You’re afraid you’ll have a bad marriage just because they did.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to say it. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” she said. “Let’s not spoil the day.”

Angela hadn’t told Harry the whole truth about her mother. When Angela was little, her mother cast a pall over her family with her dark moods and sudden emotional shifts. In one evening or one afternoon, she would go from laughing and happy to raging and accusing. She’s just high-strung and emotional, Angela’s father used to say. She doesn’t mean anything by it.

Angela thought for years her mother was evil but then she found out the truth: she suffered from hereditary mental illness, passed down to her from her mother and grandmother. Feckless doctors gave her pills that were supposed to “calm her down,” but they only seemed to make her worse. When the pills didn’t provide the kick she wanted, she began supplementing them with whiskey. Soon she was an alcoholic in addition to being a drug abuser. She smoked countless cigarettes and had started at least two small fires in the house.

A divorce followed soon after. Angela and her brothers and sisters (nine all together) went with their father and moved to another city to make a fresh start. Angela’s mother, unable to take care of herself, went to live with her sister, who ran a kind of boarding house.

Angela was certain she was following in her mother’s footsteps. She would not escape the mental illness. She felt it, like a cancer inside her, that would one day consume her: the black moods, the despair, the hopelessness, the days when she couldn’t get out of bed. Could she marry Harry Vance and let him find out too late what she was going on inside her? The answer was no. She wasn’t going to inflict such pain on Harry or any children they might have.

That last Sunday evening they had a lavish, candlelit dinner together, paid for by money that Harry’s father gave him. When they were finished eating, it was almost time for Angela’s train.

“You can spend the night if you want to,” Harry said.

“I have a job to go to in the morning, dear,” she said. “I have to get up early.”

“When we’re married, you’re going to quit that job.”

“And what will we do for money until you graduate and get a job?”

“I don’t know. I can always rob a bank, I guess.”

“I don’t think that’s a very practical idea.”

He got her to the station just in time. She boarded her train and waved to him from the window. It was the last time they would ever see each other.

The next morning she arose at the usual time and ate a light breakfast. She dressed herself with care, making sure everything was exactly right. Before she was ready to go, she sat down at the kitchen table and wrote out a quick note. She didn’t even have to think before she wrote because she had thought it all out beforehand.

When it was time to leave for work, she put the note in her purse, put on her new spring jacket, slipped on her shoes and left her apartment. She didn’t go to her job, though, and didn’t bother to call to say she wasn’t coming.

She took a cab to the tallest building in the city, about twelve blocks from where she lived. She tipped the driver generously and he helped her out of the car and wished her a good day.

As usual, there were lots of people everywhere. Always a busy city. She took the crowded elevator to the eighty-sixth floor. She had been there before and knew there was an observation deck on that floor.

The people on the observation deck were so enthralled by the exhilarating view at more than eight hundred feet (it was like looking down from the top of a mountain) that nobody looked at her.

After standing at the rail for a few minutes, looking down, she took off her coat, folded it neatly and placed it over the rail, putting her purse on the floor underneath the coat. She then swung her legs over the rail, first the left and then the right, until she was sitting on the rail. Before anybody had a chance to see what she was doing and try to stop her, she let go of the railing and leaned forward slightly. Gravity did the rest.

She landed, feet first, on the roof of a parked limousine. Hardly anybody saw it. It happened so fast. Somebody called for an ambulance. In a minute or two, a couple hundred people knew that something had happened and wanted to see what it was.

A student photographer happened to be nearby with his camera. Approximately four minutes after Angela died, the student photographer took her picture. Instead of a grisly, horrifying scene of a smashed body, the picture was of a young woman with her shoes off, her stockings down around her ankles, her clothing barely disarranged. The expression on her face was one of peace and composure. The picture, when printed in the newspaper, bore the caption: The Most Beautiful Suicide.

In her purse was the note she had written right before leaving her apartment: I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family—don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiancé asked me to marry him in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. Tell my father I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.

Harry Vance saw no hint (he told everybody), not the slightest suggestion, in all the time he spent with her on Sunday, that she was contemplating such a move. If he had known, he would never have let her out of his sight. She was the one he wanted to marry. The only one. There would be nobody else. Sixty years later, when he went to his grave, it was as a man who had never married.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

At the Rise of the Hill ~ A Short Story

At the Rise of the Hill
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Freddy Chickwell’s mother called him at seven o’clock on Sunday morning, before he was even out of bed.

“I need you to come over right away!” she said.

“I can’t, mother!” Freddy said. “It’s too early. I don’t even have my eyes open yet.”

“You’re going to want to see this.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you on the phone. You have to see for yourself.”

“I’m going back to bed, mother. Please don’t call me until the sun is all the way up.”

“I never ask you for anything,” she said pitifully. “I’m asking you this one thing politely.”

“I’ll come, but only if there’s bacon and French toast.”

“How can you think of food at a time like this?” she asked.

“A time like what?”

He lay back on the bed and groaned. He had planned on going back to sleep but now that he was wide awake, he got up and dressed himself. He hated jumping out of bed and driving someplace first thing in the morning, but it appeared he had no other choice.

As he drove the six miles to his mother’s house, he thought of the different things that might have elicited such a call at an early hour: a large rat (spider) in the basement (bathtub); a bill that came in the mail for a large sum that she says she doesn’t owe and has no intention of paying; Aunt Jeanette has a tumor on her gallbladder; a large crack has appeared overnight in the foundation.

He pulled into the driveway and his mother came out the front door and down the steps, toward his car in a pink terrycloth bathrobe and fuzzy slippers; her hair was sticking out in spikes.

“Prepare yourself!” she said.

“For what?” he asked.

“He’s come back!”

“Who has?”

“Need you ask?”

Freddy walked into the house behind her and there, sitting in the living room in the middle of the couch, was his father, who had been dead for a year. Freddy looked at his father and his father looked at him. There were no words.

His mother motioned Freddy into the kitchen. “What do you suppose is going on?” she asked.

“Who is that?” Freddy asked.

“Who do you think it is?”

“Well, I know who it looks like!”

“He’s been raising all kinds of Cain with me ever since he came back.”

“Why?”

“He says I went off and left him.”

“Left him where?”

“I told him I would never do that.”

“Mother, something’s not right here,” Freddy said. “People don’t just come back from the dead after a year.”

“Apparently some of them do!”

“Is he a ghost?”

“I don’t think so. He ate a big breakfast and then had to go to the bathroom. I don’t think ghosts do that.”

“If he’s not a ghost,” Freddy said, “it must mean he was never dead in the first place. How do you account for it?”

“I don’t account for it! I saw him go into his grave.”

“The only other explanation I can think of is that he’s a zombie come back to eat our flesh.”

“Oh, I don’t think he would ever do that!”

“I’m calling the police,” Freddy said.

“And what could they do?” mother asked. “They’d never believe he was dead in the first place. They’d just think we were a bunch of lunatics.”

“Then call his doctor.”

“He died, too. Right after your father.”

“Maybe he’s a hallucination that we’re both having,” Freddy said. “We were both so poisoned by the man all the years he was alive that we’re being affected by him from beyond the grave.”

“I just don’t know,” mother said. She sat down at the table with her cup of tea, lit a Pall Mall cigarette, and sniffled back tears. “I cared for your father while he was alive—truly I did—and I missed him after he was gone, but now that I’ve become used to having my freedom, I just don’t think I can go back to the way things were before.”

“I’m hungry,” Freddy said. “I haven’t had any breakfast.”

He ate quickly, pushed the plate back when he was finished eating, and fanned away his mother’s cigarette smoke. “Now that I’ve had a little time to think about this dispassionately,” he said, “I’ve decided on a plan of action.”

“What is it?” she asked anxiously.

“We’ll kill him. It’s as simple as that.”

“Oh, Freddy! Your own father?”

“Well, he’s already dead, isn’t he? If you kill somebody who’s already dead, it’s not really wrong, is it? Not really a crime?”

“I’m not sure how the law would look at it,” mother said. “Killing is killing, whether the person you kill is already dead or not.”

“I don’t expect you to do any killing. I’ll do it.”

“But how? I don’t want a mess in the house that I’ll have trouble explaining later.”

“Remember Echo Hill?”

“That old place? I haven’t been there for years.”

“I haven’t, either. If it’s like it was when I was in high school, it would be the perfect place to kill a person that’s already dead.”

“Oh, Freddy, I just don’t know about this.”

“Remember how they used to tell us kids how dangerous it was to go up there because of the air holes?”

“What are air holes?”

“It’s places where you can fall through the earth down into the old mine if you’re not careful. There are probably some new ones that have formed since.”

“That sounds dangerous!”

“Yes, but it’s the perfect place to hide a body. If a body falls down an air hole, it would never be found. The old mine is as big as the whole town and there’s deep water in places.”

“It sounds very forbidding.”

“We can take him for a Sunday drive up to Echo Hill. We’ll get him out of the car and walking around, and—boom!—he’s gone down an air hole. Just like that.”

“And what if somebody sees us?”

“They won’t, and if they do they won’t know what they’re seeing.”

“While I’m getting dressed,” she said, “you go in and visit with your father.”

Freddy went into the living room and sat down in the chair facing the couch. “How have you been doing?” he asked father.

“There’s some weeds growing along the back fence,” the old man said. “Somebody needs to get out there and pull them up, and I guess that somebody is going to be me.”

“I wouldn’t worry about any weeds, if I were you,” Freddy said.

“The whole place is goin’ to hell!”

“So, tell me. What have you been doing this past year?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve been…away, haven’t you? I just wondered what things were like where you were.”

The old man looked at Freddy with something like contempt. “What things?” he asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mother came down from upstairs wearing a yellow pantsuit and matching wig that made her look like Doris Day. “Well!” she said brightly. “How are we getting along?”

“About like always,” Freddy said. “Not much in the way of communication.”

She bent over toward the old man and said very loud, as if being dead for a year might have made him partially deaf, “We thought it would be lovely to go for a little drive! It’s such a beautiful day!”

“Huh?” the old man said.

“Remember Echo Hill? We used to go up there for picnics with Betty and Waldo when we were young.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the old man said. “I never did.”

“Wouldn’t you like to get out of the house? Go for a little drive?”

The two of them together helped the old man off the couch, out the door and into the car. With him installed in the back seat, mother got into the front seat with Freddy.

“I just don’t know about this,” she said as Freddy started the car.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “I think I know what I’m doing.”

He drove out to the edge of town, past the bowling alley, the abandoned funeral home, the roller rink, a used car lot, a couple of taverns, and into farm country, where there were barns, silos, cows and young horses grazing in fields.

“Not much traffic today,” Freddy said.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the old man was asleep in the back seat, his head lolled to the side.

“Isn’t this fun?” mother said. “I just love going for a drive in the country on a pretty day!”

Freddy came to the turnoff to go to Echo Hill, and it was exactly as he remembered it. “Won’t be long now!” he said.

He took a couple of turns onto old country roads that became narrower and more tree-encroached. Finally, he came to the end of the blacktop and turned onto a dirt road. There was a gate across the road, long-since fallen into disuse.

“Just like pioneering days!” mother said. “This reminds me of my childhood!”

At the big hill, the road was very rough; Freddy slowed to ten miles an hour to prevent any damage to the tires.

Mother rolled down the window. “Just smell that country air!” she said. A bumble bee flew in and she screamed.

After what seemed a very long, slow climb, Freddy came to the top of the hill from which one could see into the next state. The dirt road ended there, so he pulled the car onto a little rise off to the right that seemed dry and firm and didn’t have a lot of weeds growing on it. It was a place where he could easily turn around when the time came.

“How about if we get out here and scout around a bit?” Freddy said, giving mother a wink.

He started to open the door but was arrested by a sound that he didn’t identify, a sound of dirt sifting. Then the front end of the car lurched forward significantly.

“What on earth!” mother said.

Freddy wanted to see what was happening to the front end but, as he put his hand out to open the door, the ground gave way and the car slid downward, front end first, into a hole just big enough to admit one mid-sized car.

Down, down, down went the car, into darkness complete. Mother gasped and grabbed onto the dashboard as if she could arrest the car in its flight. The old man in the back didn’t make a sound. Freddy had a few seconds before the car hit the water in which it all became clear, all the pieces of the puzzle fit into place. Everything that had ever happened—his whole life—had been preparing him for this moment when it would all come to end.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997