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(1.)
MEMORY
The year was 1986. I was all alone working late taking pallets of printing paper up the freight elevator to the fourth floor warehouse. On the eighth trip up, the elevator stopped short of the fourth floor. The door didn't open. I tried to push the it open with as much strength as possible. It wouldn't budge. I began to get nervous. I decided if I wanted to go home, I would have to get out of this situation. I was athletic then, so I was able to to straddle my feet on the side of the car to get more height. Pushing open the exit door in the ceiling, I managed to pull myself on top of the car. I was almost level with the fourth floor. I pulled on the lock bar to open the outside of the door and climb out. All I had to do was take the stairs down and out the door.
FICTION:
FICTION:
Craig was appointed to move generator motors from the seventh floor to the first floor, using the freight elevator. He was the best man for the job. If all went well, he planned to be home shortly after midnight.
Each time the elevator car went up or down, the safety door had to be closed. The elevator wouldn't move unless the door latch on the top and bottom met. OSHA came by periodically to check the plant for safety violations. The plant never seemed to pass an inspection. They paid the fine and moved on.
Craig was loading two big motors on the elevator to go down to the first floor. He slid the oversized pallets onto the freight elevator. Then he would back away the forklift.
He got on the elevator car and closed the door so it locked. The elevator started to move down to the first floor. It didn't get far when there was a sudden jerking motion. Craig was getting a little concerned. He never experienced this before. Then everything was deathly silent.
Craig knew something bad was going to happen. He fought frantically trying to open the door but it wouldn't budge. The car broke loose and went into a dead fall. The emergency brakes were supposed to activate as soon as the car moved more than six inches but never did.
The elevator shaft went down into the basement floor of the plant. There were four huge steel springs to take up the shock if the elevator car ever did hit the bottom. With both motors weighing 24,000 pounds, dropping straight down from the seventh floor without the emergency brakes being applied, there wasn't much the emergency shock absorbers could do.
They found Craig Saturday morning entombed in the elevator car like a sardine.
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(2.)
MEMORY:
They say you never forget your first sexual experience. I can’t say it amounted to much but it stays with me all these years. Her name was Deborah. It was a hot August day, and it happened behind a barn in the Catskills. I was nine years old.
She was around the same age, I don’t know. The Catskills, a country place where New Yorkers went for a week or two to get away from the city heat, to breathe some clean air.
In those days no one in our neighborhood had an air conditioner. To get cooli you went to a local pool or to a movie house that was “deliciously refrigerated.” Every year my parents rented a room and a designated space in the community kitchen and dining room. The women and their kids went up for the week or two, the husbands joined them for the weekend. I remember the movie playing at the local theatre fifteen miles away. It was a Barbara Stanwyck movie, “Stella Dallas.”
It must have happened during a weekday, my father wasn’t with us, he was in the city. My mother was in the kitchen, cooking. Deborah and I were out playing.
We played mother and father. We played doctor and nurse. There was a lot of touching and poking. I don’t remember any kissing. I remember feeling anxious and I remember feeling it was fun too.
Later, when my mother asked what I did all afternoon I lied and told her some story about animals in the woods. Deborah? It was a summer thing and I never saw her again..
FICTION:
Valerie is not the kind of girl you take home to your mother. Valerie is the kind of girl you pass around. You don’t tell her about Valerie either, the less said the better. If she asks about your Saturday evening you lie and say you were out with the guys. For a long while she didn’t know about Rita, but the telephone calls and the letters and the gifts gave us away. “What?” she screamed, shaking her head, waving her arms. “A girl from Spanish Harlem1 What’s the matter with someone from the neighborhood? What are you doing, trying to kill me?” My father, who usually remains quiet during my mother’s emotional outbursts, looked up from his newspaper and said to her, “Leave him alone, she’s probably a great dancer.”
I once brought home a student nurse. Real stature, she was a Bellevue
After she left my mother put her hands on her hips and said, “How long do you think this will last? I give it two months. Who do you think you are? What are you? An accountant with a firm that hires thousands of accountants. Not even a CPA. Besides, she takes milk in her coffee. With meat still on her plate.” Once again my father looked up from his newspaper, this time he said,” I don’t want you to think you have to check with us with every girl you bring around, but did you see how she crosses her legs?”
My mother got along with Laura. I don’t know why, maybe because she was plain .She was over for weekends one summer. My mother would watch old movies on TV, she loved Barbara Stanwyck movies, We’d be in my room, just a wall separating us. I was a bit anxious at first, but it was fun too. August came, as usual too soon, and she had to get back to school, somewhere upstate. After she left, my mother gave me one of her looks and said, “Why did you let her go?”
My parents are much older now. My mother never did take to Marsha. It’s been 30 years now and she still stays her distance. But she loves the kids, all four of them, grown up now but she still calls them her babies. Even now when she looks at my wife she looks at me and says, “ What are you doing, trying to kill me?”
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(3.)
MEMORY:
My college roommate and I exchanged frequent hand-written letters after we graduated, over the course of some 25 years. They were very personal, containing intimate and explicit details about our lives. I never kept hers, but two years ago she showed me the box that my many hundreds of letters to her were stored in. She asked if I wanted them back and I accepted. I spent many weeks reading about people and adventures I’d forgotten. They were terribly embarrassing! I worried that someone might find them and destroy my good reputation. So when I was done reading, I shredded them all.
FICTION:
Deleted because this story was submitted to FlashFictionPress.org and will appear on their website on October 1, 2015!
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(4.)
MEMORY:
On a gray January evening I discovered my lover in the closet with a loaded weapon pointed at his head. I tried to talk him down and convince him to hand the weapon over to me. At one point I placed my hand over the muzzle of the loaded gun, never considering that he would die and I would lose at least my hand were he to pull the trigger. I was able to convince him to speak with his brother on the telephone. After speaking with his brother, he turned the rifle over to me.
FICTION:
“I know you like me to wear my red heels, but is it really necessary for you to climb through my closet to find them?” Elizabeth quipped.
She received no response from Gabriel.
“Gabriel? Gabriel! Get out of there.”
Again, no response from Gabriel.
Elizabeth peered into the long, narrow bedroom closet. Gabriel was sitting on a storage bin amongst her collection of suits, blouses, jackets and their matching shoes and handbags. Elizabeth’s heart skipped a beat and then began an erratic jackhammering in her chest when she realized what he was doing.
Gabriel was balancing his M-14 between his knees with the muzzle pointing directly at the soft underside of his jaw. He gave no indication he knew she was watching him. Tears slid down his handsome cheeks to wet the weapon. A quiet sobbing shook his frame and the rifle.
“Gabriel?”
“I don’t know what to do anymore. I have no job. No prospects. I need to feed the horses and I can’t afford to do that. I can’t pay my bills. I’m living off you because I can’t make the rent. What’s the point in trying?”
“Please. Please put down the rifle and come out of there. We can talk, we’ll figure it out together,” Elizabeth pleaded.
“No, no, no, no, no!
“You can’t help. Nobody can,” he replied sotto voce.
“Can I come into the closet … just to talk to you?”
“You can come in, but don’t do anything else. I’m locked. I’m loaded. I’m ready.”
Elizabeth eased into the narrow space. Her blood was pounding like booming timpani in her head and chest. Tears clouded her vision. “Can I call your brother? Would it help to talk to him?”
“No. No phone calls.”
“OK, no phone calls. Please come out of the closet,” she begged, her voice as soft as night.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I just want out.”
Gabriel took a deep breath, locked eyes with Elizabeth and pulled the trigger.
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