Callan

THE CROW AND THE EYEBALL

I woke up in the wrong bed. My skin was tight and dry. My head ached.
I longed for an eye patch.
Outside in the mists of the morning I could hear the neighbors engaging in calisthenics, their smug grunts rang out over the hills.

I sighed and rolled over, pressing my lugubrious frame flush with the mattress.
My mother came in the room and began to iron. As she ironed she lectured me about the bed I was in. She had many valid points.
I understood her. But she took my silence as moodiness and was unhappy.
I said to her, “I agree, with you. It’s just that my right eye hurts so much, my head aches. All though the night I tossed and turned in my own bed, till the sheets became tangled and moist with my suffering. Please forgive me, for seeking relief in the cool fresh sheets of the guest bed. Could you open the window, please, let the cool air in.”
She was placated and eagerly flung the heavy leaden window open. Fresh cool morning air poured into the room.
She returned to her ironing and a deep peace set into the guest bedroom. It was not to last.
“Mom, can I borrow an eye-patch,” I asked casually.

“Why would I have an eye-patch? What do you need an eye-patch for?
A dark expression lit my mother’s features as she narrowed her focus to a single stubborn pleat.
I rolled over to face the window. Soon this bed would be as tangled and as damp as the one I had passed the night in.
A large black crow landed on the window seal. My mother yelped,. gathered up her linens and scampered out of the room. She had no fondness for birds.
There are no screens on the windows of this house.
The crow flew in the room and landed softly on the bed. It made its way slowly towards me grasping and tearing the sheets with its claws.
I did not drive it away.
It pounced upon my chest and dug its claws into my flesh.
Blood rushed to the surface of my skin: it ran in rivers between my ribs.
Deep dark splats of blood spread out from me. It stained the sheets.
More to clean. More to scrub.

I attempted to sit up and swat at the bird. Success was not my friend. The crow dug its talons deeper into my chest.
What was the point of further struggle? All was waste, ruin, and, work.
In a fast and fluid motion the crow leaned forward and plucked out my right eye.
My eyeball was so firmly in the crows grip, so clearly at home crushed between its wood colored claws that I did not attempt to recover it. The crow rose on the current of its wings, and, quicker than a thought it was gone.
From the vantage point of the crow’s claw I could see many things I had not seen before. From above I saw the broad wind swept streets of my tiny village. I saw my neighbors engaged in calisthenics.
The content of my immediate world shifted and was replaced by endless miles of blue sky. The endless sky was enhanced by the endless miles of deep blue ocean below.
The rush of flight, of constant motion bubbled up with in me, and the vast insignificance of myself, of the crow, of my dear mother and her ironing, swelled within me. The random careless beauty of all life lifted me and the crow still higher.
My headache was gone. The pain was gone. My vision, my depth of knowledge was expanded.
I set to work scrubbing the sheets clean of my blood.

© Callan 2012

Callan's work is featured at Six Sentences and her blog: theworksofjanecallan.

Callan

ATTACK OF THE FUR

One Monday morning when James woke up, water dripped from an unseen faucet. The low howl of the wind traveled along the plumbing of his building. Outside, down in the street a dog barked and a car door slammed.
Stiffly he rose from his bed. As he crossed the room, he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.
His chifforobe had grown soft white bunny fur in the night. It pulsed gently in the corner of the room cooing and moving within itself. It beckoned to him, seemingly yearning to feel his competent fingers assessing its tactile merits. Who was James to refuse? He knelt and began to caress the chifforobe. It shuttered all over with delight.

The phone rang. Reluctantly, James answered it.
On the other end of the line a mechanical voice warned him of a vicious fur outbreak. It cautioned him not to pet any predatory fur. In the event he was exposed to an outbreak he was instructed to saw his own hands off. James did not own a saw.
He ended the call.
No machine could understand how soft the fur was.
He had to protect the fur. If it was discovered there was a fur outbreak in his tenth floor apartment, they would tent the building. They would advance with chemicals and spray against the poor defenseless fur!
He rushed into his bedroom and fell on his knees before the chifforobe, plunging his rough calloused hand into the soft white fur.
Oh the sensation! The pulsing appreciation of the clean white fur!
It fed off his adoration.

In response to his solicitous petting, it spread. It leapt from the surface of one piece of furniture to another then to another, and then to another.
In a matter of hours it had begun to climb the walls.
In another few hours it covered the floors, the window, the ceiling.
That night a soft and cuddly death patiently began to steal over James, so soothing, he did not suspect that he had become the disease.
He only wanted to be caressed, to respond to the feel, the pressure of warm hands, to spread infinitely outward, always growing, always changing.
James was the virus and the virus was James.
Soft downy fur pushed its way through his follicles, evicting the coarse black human hair.
The white fur spread quickly and within a quarter of an hour he was covered from head to toe. His eyes were changing shape. His vision was both narrowing and expanding.
When he leaned against the wall, he disappeared completely. His pink eyes blinking were the only distinction between him and the soft, white, pulsing fur that covered the walls.
His fingers twisted in their sockets. They were changing shape, merging into one.
He could not keep his hands off himself.
His senses heightened, he could hear the tumblers in the lock of the neighbors’ apartment turning as the door swung open.
He crept out into the hall where a light had burned out providing a theatrical twilight.
He crept on his newly furry feet to stand directly behind Jose, a sweaty Latino he had never cared for.
He snaked his furry hands along his arms and biceps. He flinched and struggled. Then, inside the glory of acceptance, he gave in to the fur.
They cuddled for nearly fifteen minutes, and when James strolled away from Jose soft white fur was rapidly spreading along his skin.
James made his way down the stairs, trailing his rapidly mutating paws along the hand rail, cozy white fur sprouting where his fingers had been.
He burst through the lobby doors and hit the street. He was all impulse—one-hundred percent sensation. Only the sensory experience existed for him. There was only the current moment, nothing before this exact moment and nothing after. No consequences, only movement, only sound.

© Callan 2012

Callan, who left Orange County, Ca. in 2007 and moved to the country to focus full time on her writing, advises she is now living in Avalon on Santa Catalina Island in L.A. county. Her work is featured at Six Sentences and her blog: theworksofjanecallan, where a version of this story appeared in April.

Callan

The Littlest Truck Driver

The family Holiday stood ankle deep in mud outside the gates of the graveyard. The sky rumbled and dark clouds rolled in. In the distance, lightning streaked the horizon. The tallest member of the family flung an arm upward in a futile gesture of frustration. There was an enormous crack of thunder that shook the ground and rattled the gates of the graveyard. The gates were not locked but the wind from the storm had slammed them closed in the night, and now the thunder shook the air, and the gates swung open. The man dropped his arm, startled at the coincidence. He rested his hand on the broad speckled back of his eldest daughter. He gave her a gentle shove. She was the first through the gate. Once on the other side, she turned towards her family and facing them broke into a short routine of light calisthenics. The rain began to fall, and after the applause she jogged towards her grandfather’s grave. The rest of the family followed, stopping at the gatehouse to retrieve the coffin. They marched in the mud with singular purpose through the storm, towards the open grave.
The grave was filled with water, and the coffin would not fit. The senior male member of the family looked skyward and signaled violently with his hands. Planes rushed over head in the distance. The slow pragmatic sound of heavy equipment could be heard. Temporarily the wind and rain slacked a bit. The dark sky hung above the muddy graveyard, and the Holiday family redirected their vapid gaze away from the scarred earth, towards the sound of approaching equipment.
The crew appeared, a flotilla of heavy machinery in the thick sea of mud. The tractor lost its balance and had to back up. “BEEP BEEP BEEP” it cried as it pulled itself free from the heavy mud. The driver had decorated the inside of his cab with cheery Christmas lights. The bulldozer behind him had lashed a pink Christmas tree to its grill and streams of blinking lights were dragged behind it in the mud. The truck with the sump pump pulled abreast of the two greater machines, but what the little truck lacked in stature it made up for in enthusiasm. The entire truck was outlined in lights and a deer shape comprising lights was mounted on top of the cab. It was a marvelous sight and a cheer went up from the Holiday family as they saw assistance approaching.
They were so eager to show their appreciation that they tore flowers from the funeral wreaths and stripped petals form the stalks, tossing them in front of the tractor. The operator was so moved that he leaned out of his cab, and steering with his knees, gave a gentle, magnanimous wave, coquettishly turning and glancing over his shoulder to the delight of the mourners, who laughed and clapped and cheered, until their joy turned on them and became a unified sorrow.
The Holiday family collapsed in a heap and began to wail, so that when the smug, festive little truck driver passed them, they threw no flowers and raised no cheers, and he took it to heart, and was wounded by their apathy. After all, he thought, I am the one who will drain the grave of water so that they can commend their grandfather to the earth.
He pulled alongside the bigger machines, exited the cab of his truck and approached the heavy equipment operators who were loathe to help him unload the sump pump. The heavy equipment operators didn’t want to know the driver of the little truck. They haphazardly helped him to unload. Then, they walked away without a word, leaving the driver of the little truck alone to complete the arduous task of drainage.
The family Holiday continued to weep as a group, finding consolation in their shared misery.
The driver of the little truck had to work furiously, against time, against the weather, all alone, soaked through to the skin, while the heavy equipment operators relaxed, waiting until they were needed.

*     *     *

At last, the grave was drained, and the driver of the little truck was exhausted. He slogged through the heavy mud to inform the Holiday family, who were moaning and flailing their arms in a demonstration of sorrow. But they had grown weary of their own show, and only wanted to get out of the elements, and when the senior member of the family saw the approach of the driver, he broke off from the group and met the man, rested a heavy hand on one of his shoulders and passed a damp twenty dollar bill into his hand. The little truck driver’s spirits were lifted. Anyone could see how empty the construction show was. People needed him. He should not get so down; he was the one people needed. He strode back to his little truck and hopped into its little cab and sped away from the graveyard. He moved so swiftly that the deer mounted on the top of the cab fell off, but he did not stop for it--only chased the rest of the morning through the graveyard gate, leaving behind the family Holiday, and the vainglorious heavy equipment operators.

© Callan 2011

Callan left Orange County, Ca. in 2007 and moved to the country to focus full time on her writing. Her work is featured at Six Sentences and her blog: theworksofjanecallan

Callan

The Apparatus

I am floating, above an orange sea, unfinished, unborn, free. There is a hole inside me, but I am tethered to myself. I float above myself, above my hot and narrow bed. I see myself twisting unconscious in damp sweaty sheets. I see my own flesh my, own twisted body. There is a grinding screech, then, a violent pull.
Long metal nails against an old-fashioned sign, the teacher is demanding attention, but the class room is outside, in the dusty abandoned parking lot of an old drive-in. All the desks are empty. There are no students. I am seated in the center of the row, in the center of the bank of empty desks. The teacher with the long metal nails drags them across the sign. What does she want? What answer is she looking for? She wears a beehive and a tight dress. She has no eyeballs. Blood streams like tears from where her eyeballs should be.
I wake, but the sound, the horrible sound, of metal against metal comes again.
It is the apparatus. It is in need of secrecy oil. I climb out of bed and walk to the window. I lean out shading my eyes with my hand and eyeball the suffering metal components of the machine.
My upstairs neighbor flings open a window and shouts down at me, “Oil your apparatus I am trying to take a nap.”
I yell back at the neighbor, “I am out of oil. Could you give me a ride into a town?”
“No, I will not give you a ride into town, I hate you! I hate your irresponsibility, your sloth and laziness, and most of all I hate your reckless treatment of your apparatus. Some of us don’t have an apparatus. How could you! How could you allow yours to run out of oil! Why, didn’t you buy extra secrecy oil? You must have known it was low on oil, yet you did not prepare for the future. If I had an apparatus, you can be certain it would never, ever run out of oil.”
With that, the upstairs neighbor slammed the window shut, retreating behind a musty red curtain, possibly forever.

.........................................................................................................................

I had to get secrecy oil for my apparatus. With no other alternative, I set out walking. The journey proved insurmountable in the unrelenting heat. When momentary lapses in traffic occurred, I could see pools of water that did not exist. The longer I walked, the harder it became. The breaks in traffic came more often, and the hallucinations of the road grew more detailed, more menacing.
First, the mirages consisted only of small pools of water, but as I walked, the hallucination became more elaborate. The pools widened and took on depth. Palm trees bristled on the road. Camels dotted the immediate horizon. Mermaids appeared. They caressed their sleek cold bodies with white and perfect hands, tempting the camels.
I became discouraged. I stopped in order to assess where I was. To my dismay, I discovered that I had traveled only a block and a half from my apartment. I checked my watch and saw that a mere fifteen minutes had passed. It was the heat, of course. It was so hot outside that time had melted.
These walks had a tendency to rend my sanity. I gave up. The walk home was a gentle slope. The dry wind was at my back. I was bothered no more by visions of bestiality-laden oases.
As I approached the apartment complex, I caught site of the apparatus. It labored and twitched in the brittle grass of the side yard. It groaned horribly. I ran towards it and watched as it sputtered and spat, its lubricated springs straining with the effort of production. What my neighbor had shouted at me was true. I had known the apparatus would soon be out of oil, but had done nothing. I had failed the machine. Still, it struggled on my behalf.
As I watched, it began to turn itself in a slow circle, cutting an agonizing swathe in the half-dead grass. Its springs came loose. Sparks flew. The dry grass caught fire. It spread, consuming the apartment building. The neighbors’ window flew open, and they called down to me, but the roar of the flames swallowed their voices. They fell to earth with vapid, accusing eyes, pitifully grasping empty air with empty hands. I did not move, I did not cry out. I was glad to burn.

© Callan 2011

Callan left Orange County, Ca. in 2007 and moved to the country to focus full time on her writing. Her work is featured at Six Sentences and her blog: theworksofjanecallan