Category: short story

Rise and Shine

Published on by Raud Kennedy1 Comment

On Saturday morning, Marvin was shopping online for some new clothes. Those socks look nice, he thought, and that shirt will look cool with my new jacket. Then a wave of fatigue hit him and he leaned back in his chair. He felt like the website was leading him around like a cow by its nose ring. Buy these socks. “Buy this shirt. It’ll look good with the jacket you bought yesterday.” It was all so performative, like a costume for a play. But he wasn’t an actor going on stage, just a dude going to his 9 to 5. None of it was him. He felt empty, like a poser feigning being ‘Marvin’.

He emptied the shopping cart and turned off his computer, then went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. When it was ready, he poured himself a cup and added some cream. As he watched the cream swirl around the spoon he stirred, an epiphany hit him. Everything in his life, from this morning coffee in front of him, to the toothpaste he used at night before bed, was driven by seeking dopamine. Bright smile, happy face, meant hot girlfriend. Dopamine. Was there anything that he did that didn’t involve it? He wondered about his friendships. Were those driven by it too? How could they not be? He thought. He called the ones who made him happy, dopamine, and dodged the ones who didn’t, which led to relief, a sort of backhanded dopamine.

He took a big sip of his coffee, steam rising around his face. No wonder coffee was so addictive. Like mainlining dopamine. Just like sex, another powerful source. Was he really that superficial? Led around by a chemical in his brain? He thought he was deeper than that. But what if my thoughts aren’t even my own? He wondered and put his coffee down. But that couldn’t be. At least some of his thoughts were his own or else he wouldn’t be thinking what he was. Marvin somehow found relief in that.

The wave of fatigue was pushed back by the caffeine, but he still felt like an empty shell on a beach wishing the tide would come in and take him out to sea. He sensed a creeping hollowness inside his mind and it made his skin crawl, like nails on a chalkboard. He was saved by his dog, Hagler, who came over and leaned against his thigh, saying he wanted to be petted. Marvin decided to do him one better and reached for his leash to go for a walk.

The following morning, Marvin was lying in bed, listening to the gentle patter of the rain against the window. He was in no rush to get out of bed. It was raining outside and he was warm under his covers. But then he found himself sliding out of bed and heading toward the bathroom before he’d actually decided to do so, and it happened so quickly that his mind lay claim to the decision. As he stood at the sink brushing his teeth, he stared back at his eyes in the mirror and knew otherwise.

He tried to dismiss the thought by assuming he was just on morning autopilot, but it felt different than that, more like someone else was in the driver’s seat. No, not someone, but something undefinable. And then that empty feeling started creeping up on him again. He shook his head and spat out the toothpaste.

When it happened again the next morning, he started to question his free will. If it wasn’t him who decided when he got out of bed, then who or what did? When he got to work, it was still on his mind, bugging him. Whenever he took some small action like scratching his ear, he’d ask himself, was that me? So he looked up his experience online and found it had a name. It was called the ‘Libet Experiment’ and it was a documented thing. It said we were playing catch up with our body’s decisions by a half second or more. So much for free will, he thought. Why wasn’t everyone talking about this? Probably because it wasn’t in the best interest of whatever was making the decisions.

He only experienced it in the mornings when his mind was still quiet from sleep. The rest of the day it was business as usual. He was in the driver’s seat, but he sensed that might just be an illusion because the pace of the day was faster and hid the lag.

When he drove home that evening, he was thinking about how the dopamine seeking acted as a cover for a lack of free will. He was seriously spooked out by the thought when Hagler met him at the front door with his leash in his mouth. Marvin stared at the dog, wondering who made Hagler’s decisions for him. Was it the same entity that got him out of bed in the mornings? he wondered. Maybe they were both just two different costumes of the same entity.

Hagler sat and dropped the leash on the floor. He stared back at Marvin and Marvin knew they were going for a walk. Not later, but right now. Marvin shook his head. Maybe Hagler was running the show. Well, if that was the case, Marvin knew at least he’d get his exercise and eat plenty of biscuits.

How to Make a Sandwich

Published on by Raud Kennedy1 Comment

That’s it, put some mayonnaise on it. No, don’t put it away, don’t be cheap, put it on with a spoon. Stop worrying about your arteries. Stress will kill you long before the mayo. What? The jar’s almost empty? Well then, use it up. Oh yeah, there you go. No, don’t put it in the sink, you idiot. Put it on the floor and I’ll get it ready for the recycle bin. I know lettuce is good for you but let’s not over-do it. Okay, I need roughage. You could play eighteen rounds with that last poop. Spray ’em white and sell ’em on eBay. Ooo pickles, I like pickles. I wonder if you could pickle a cat. Mmm, that sounds good. Let’s pickle Buttons and put him on a bun. Might have to get some more mayo though. Tomato slices work, put a few more slices on. Whoops, you dropped one. Here, I’ll get it for you. Slurp. Gosh, I don’t see it. Where’d it go? That damn cat must’ve kiped it. He’s fast for a fat bastard. He might even be enough for two sandwiches.

It needs more ham, more turkey. You might as well be a vegan for what you got on there now. You need protein, boy, lots of it. Okay, now it’s looking good, but it could use some strawberry jam and some whipped cream and some lox. Look at all that stuff you got in the fridge you could put on it. If it won’t fit on the sandwich just use the plate. Plate too small? Get a bigger plate or a serving platter.

What? That’s it?! One little sandwich on one little plate? Are you insane? You’ll starve and die and where will that leave me? I’ll end up in the pound because of your tiny sandwich. Okay, let’s go into the living room and sit down. Sure, I’ll sit next to you on the couch. What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to share? What about living your life as an example to others? I doubt Mother Teresa would do this to her dog. Dagnabbit! Give me half. I was the one who showed you how to make it. You’re such a pig.

Oh, the phone, that’s right, go answer it you greedy bastard. Slurp, gobble, slurp, lick, lick.

Sandwich? It was the cat. I warned you he’s fast. Don’t look at me. No, I’m not smacking my lips. No, that’s not mayonnaise on my nose. Lick. See, it was never there. In fact the sandwich was never there. You must be hungry. Come on into the kitchen with me. I’ll show you how to make a sandwich. I know, I get that feeling too sometimes. Déjà vu, like we’ve done all this before.

The Tree House

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Twinkles lived in the West Hills of Portland on Vista Ridge. It was a nice neighborhood in that the houses were expensive and large. Families could live in them without running into each other for days, which was good because many of the families’ members didn’t play well together. Divorce rates were high, affairs a given, and out-of-touch children, who expected life to be sprinkled in front of them like rose petals, were rampant. Twinkles lived in a tree house in the backyard of the Johnsons’ house. It belonged to their children, but they had grown up and moved south to California. It was a good tree house, built by craftsmen and made to last. It needed some paint and caulk because the Johnsons were now elderly and without grandchildren visiting it was neglected. Twinkles wanted to paint it and protect its flaking wood, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Nobody knew he lived there. He was a tree house squatter and he doubted squatter rights would apply to tree houses.

Twinkles liked squatting. It seemed more natural than ownership. You can’t take your house with you, so ownership was really no more than squatting. But people’s laws said otherwise and men with guns enforced them, so Twinkles kept quiet in his tree house and only fixed things that wouldn’t be noticed, like leaks in the roof and squeaky hinges, and these he did in the early hours of the morning when no one was about except for the drunks arriving home after last call. To them he would appear as nothing more than an apparition of an oversized gnome. He even wore a red hat he’d found last Christmas. It was knitted wool, and it may not have kept his head dry, but it did keep his thoughts warm, and it was important to keep his thoughts warm because it was his thoughts that controlled where he traveled at night in his dreams.

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The Hydrant

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When Arthur arrived at the cafe, the hostess seated him outside on the sidewalk patio at his favorite table right in the midst of the diners where the people watching was best. He ordered a glass of wine, not because he liked it but because he didn’t. It would last a long time and he didn’t want to get drunk, not tonight, not with what he’d learned this morning.

The middle-aged couple on his right were discussing current events. He eavesdropped for a bit but they were just boringly parroting talking points they’d picked up from television news like something they’d tracked in on their shoes. Besides, Arthur knew all that was just lies fed to the public to keep them engaged enough to be complacent but not so engaged that they started digging for the truth and got mad. You see, Arthur had found the perfect source for news, one that never lied and was honest to a fault.

A month or so ago at the beginning of spring, he had been weeding around the fire hydrant in his front yard by the curb when he was struck by an odd smell. As he sniffed the air trying to identify it, he started to hear voices in his head and see images in his mind’s eye, as if he was watching other people’s memories, but then he started hearing even stranger voices commenting on what he was hearing and seeing. There he was on all fours, sniffing the air next to the fire hydrant, and he felt like he was watching a show next to someone who was giving a running commentary on what they were watching.

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Portland Towers

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“I was getting headaches until I got the second one,” Dinty said, an earphone in each ear with wires leading to the cell phone in his shirtfront pocket. “Now all my calls come in stereo. Like a voice inside my head, right here.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger. “If it’s my boss, it sounds like the voice of God.” Mimicking his boss’s deep baritone, he said, “Dinty, public toilet five on the ninth floor has crap smears in it. Get up there with your brush.” He scratched the bald spot on the head of the Chihuahua in his lap. “Mr. Orly is like any boss, he’s obsessed with smears.”

Taking the earphones from his ears, he offered them to the dog. “Here, do you want to listen? I’ll call you and I can be the voice of God. ‘Stanley, stop shedding on the man’s uniform.’” Then the phone rang. The caller ID said it was Mr. Orly. “Oops, speak of the devil. I better take this.”

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You Can Be Anything You Want to Be

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I was napping underneath Tina’s dangling feet—she was the smallest of my two-legger family—while she sat on the old red leather couch between her dad and granddad. Every now and then she brushed her toes against the fur on the top of my head. It woke me with a tickle, but I didn’t mind. Tina was my favorite being in the whole world and could do nothing that would bother me. I just lay there dozing and listening to what the old men had to say. When Tina’s dad took her to the park to play with the other two-leggers her size, he was always the oldest dad there, but the other dads seemed to look up to him as if he’d been through this many times before and was full of wisdom, as if he was the dad they’d always wanted. But he’d just gotten a late start and was in the same boat as they were, though he never mentioned this. He did look more like a granddad than a dad, and with Tina sitting between him and her mother’s father, the two men looked like brothers. She sat there and giggled at the silly things they said while her feet rubbed the top of my head.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Tina?” Granddad asked.

She pointed at me, lying on the floor. “I wanna be Charlie.”

Her dad smiled at her. He was a lawyer who had wanted to be a doctor when he was young, but the chemistry classes that first year in college didn’t quite take. “You want to be the dog? But you can be anything you want to be when you grow up, a doctor, a lawyer.”

She shook her head. “No, Charlie.”

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