Freewriting: Black Pants

            You came to me in a work setting and we were bound by circumstances. Well, at least I think we were. I know I was. And even though it was a lifetime ago I can still remember those black pants. They were over there. By the copy machine. You rooted through the file folders and they were on you, calling to me in a whisper so loud I scanned the room twice, unsure if others’d heard.

            Across a handful of months we crossed paths from time to time, never without mutual smiles. Seeing your name on the computer always brightened my day and the few live conversations we had I cherished. You were good at your job, I think, but that wasn’t why; our dialogue always turned my motivation on its head.

            After a time I was gone and the same would soon be true for you, too, both of us returning to the grinds from which we came. And the tiniest connection we had evaporated into the skies of our respective lives.

            Trying to quantify everything that has transpired since feels like an attempt to assess your cloud-flanked altitude before the pilot announces it. There’s just…too much of everything.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XIII: 700-676

After a productive February and a promising start to March, I hit a lull last week. Having a busy home calendar, everyone fighting bugs of one sort or another, and some combination of fatigue/apathy, I wrote but a couple hundred words. Back at it this morning, though, and lucky you -- you get to read about a bunch of the hats I've worn in the last 25 years.

Feel free to skip it. I know I would.

Seven Hundred: Exchange City

Dream Fiction no. 2: Alice the Merchandiser

It hadn’t been the alarm. Those fast-paced electronic wails don’t wake our neighbors but on the rare occasion that they sound, we leap -- frenzied -- from our slumber. It could have been a phone chime, the baby crying, or perhaps just a hunch. Either way, I moved, quasi-upright, toward the bedroom door where I’d seen her exit, disappear into the hallway. Courtesy of the minimal light reflecting up the staircase, I saw Alice the Merchandiser vanish again -- this time into the foyer. The flash of her movement that I caught was quick and hunched, creepy like one of those alien snippets from Signs. It should have frightened me more than it did.

            I should’ve been afraid for what she might be doing or what her intentions were. Instead, sordid motivations sent me -- grumpy at being awakened, startled and pissed by her presence -- after her. As is my tendency, I hadn’t thought it through and had no plan regarding what I’d do if I caught her.

            For what seemed like an hour, though, I couldn’t find her. She was nowhere on the main floor and the more the time passed, the more I panicked. No doors had chimed; she wasn’t outside or in the basement or garage. Still, I could pick up no trace of Alice.