Short fiction - or is it?

I walked down Wiggly Wort Lane, in that dusky half-light between unconscience-ness and waking, and I saw a little antique shoppe that looked as if it hadn’t changed in decades. Although it was dark and murky as I looked through the window, I decided to go in.

A bell on the door rang as I walked through, and a rude shout came from the back of the shoppe: ‘What do you want?!?’

I hesitated, then answered, ‘I’ll just have a look round, if you don’t mind,’ and I started to wander in and out of the items stacked here and there - dusty books, elaborate furniture, old-fashioned grooming kits with brushes and combs. There were several scale-model buildings - some were houses and others looked to be offices or mercantiles. One was a hotel that included a small green board resembling a golf course. I walked deeper into the shoppe, nearer to the door at the back. There was a shelf with a row of trophies lined up. These had been dusted and polished, gold glinting in the tiny ray of light from a window at the back. I looked closer and saw that they were all shaped like women, dolls really, in decorous poses with affected smiles.

Then an old man came through from the back of the shoppe, ducking a low beam although he was actually quite small. His hair glowed in the back-light of the window, and I noticed he looked a bit jaundiced. His eyes had a strange gleam that would flit from one eye to the other and back again. I wondered if he was entirely well and if I should, perhaps, leave the shoppe and not disturb him, when he suddenly boomed, ‘I have the best antiques! You’ll never find other antiques better than mine. Mine are the best. Everyone says so. I will sell you the best antiques, the best! Mine are the best!’

He had walked quite close to me by this time, and I started to feel uncomfortable. His breath smelled of mint and something rather rank, and he loomed towards me and gestured extravagantly, his voice rising in volume as he repeated his litany of boasts. I became more and more fearful while he continued talking and coming closer to me, manoeuvring me into a corner. Suddenly there was yelling as someone burst through the front door, the bell clanging loudly, the man turning and bellowing, ‘Get ’im out!!! Get ’im out!!!’

The person who had entered was also shouting, trying to drown out the strange little man, crying at me to ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ as the din got louder and louder.

Paralysed, I struggled to move, shaking my head from side to side and trying to wake myself up. My eyes would not obey me as I tried to force them open, tried to find daylight to end this nightmare.

Eventually, the shoppe began to dissolve around me, the noises stopped and I moved my hands. My arms stretched out as I opened my eyes and broke through the miasma into full consciousness. 

And yet, the nightmare lingers.

The Phone Booth

Now for something completely different -

Here's a mini-story I wrote a few months ago while I still lived in the States. In the UK I should probably say The Phone Box (especially with this photo).

She hurried into the phone booth and exhaled. With the door closed, she was alone. It was quiet. No one else was breathing the air. She felt invisible, just like she felt in the car wash. Alone for a moment, away from the friction of other humans, away from everything that can go wrong.

But she wouldn't be going to the car wash anymore. Her car had just been wrecked. She had run from it and into the phone booth without even looking at the other car - and people - she had smashed into.

It had been bad. 

How long did she have before someone came looking for her?

She just couldn't take one more thing! It was impossible that so much had been dumped on her in the last few weeks - betrayal, abandonment, theft.

Liars, cheats, bastards! She had tried to be good, she tried to do the right thing, she worked hard, she was polite. And people just shit on her, no thought for how their actions affected her. Selfish!

Tears never left her eyes. She couldn't see beyond one minute.

Now she could hear the sirens. She screamed out loud and stomped her feet. She hit the sides of the phone booth and wailed. She cursed and swore and cried as she thought about how her life had slipped out of her control.

She opened the door of the phone booth and walked toward the police car.

Heroes and Villains

SpyGirl's 52 Pick-me-up this week is Fairy Tale. It ties in perfectly with Maricel and Selah's T3 prompt to dress like your favorite literary villain. So I'm wearing black and white to represent good and evil, and I'll tell you my own fairy tale that transpired this week.

Once upon a time there were a boy and girl who went to visit a little cottage in the country. They walked up to the porch, which was piled with old boxes and plant pots, and they pulled the clapper on the brass bell hanging by the door. A little troll opened the heavy wooden door and led them inside, then down into the cellar. The room there was piled high with books and boxes and shelves and tools. It smelled horrible, and there were cobwebs covering the windows as thick as curtains. The troll asked them what they wanted, and when they told him he said he could grant their wish for eighty pieces of gold. They left their computer with him and went away.

The troll is the hero in this story. He loaded Windows 7 onto my computer so I can work on my new client's cloud server.

The thing is, heroes look like ordinary people. (Although computer nerds who work out of their own homes are generally a little, shall we say extraordinary. I wasn't kidding about the smell and the cobwebs.)

My own knight in shining armor had already spent hours trying to install Windows 7 and then reloading all my other programs. As day turned to night, we found out that the copy of Windows 7 he had bought from eBay was counterfeit, sold to us by an evil villainess in North Miami Beach!

I imagine her with a bald head, bad skin and snaggly teeth (the bitch!), but she could just as easily look like a cheerleader or a soccer mom. Because villains can look like ordinary people, too, like Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird or Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca or Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Villains suck.

If you want to know the ending of my story, the evil bitch, I mean the seller, responded after about 36 hours with a poorly typed message saying she's sorry for our "bad experience" and she'll refund the money in a few days. Doesn't matter what she does now, we've reported her to eBay and Microsoft. They can throw her in a dungeon for all I care.

Because good always triumphs over evil.

Val

La Professoressa

How much would you put up with to have a dream job? Would you work in a tiny cubicle without windows, take a cut in pay, move to a strange town? Would you work for a crazy person? Would you be her close, personal assistant if it meant you had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

I was studying in Rome, my last quarter before I completed my Bachelors degree (at the age of 32). My field was Art History and I spoke Italian, so, yeah, I was up for new experiences and a job, and would definitely be interested in staying in Rome. Then I met La Professoressa.

It started with Caravaggio, the bad boy of Italian Baroque painting. While I was in Rome I wanted to see as many of his paintings as I could. It's not hard - they're in churches and museums all over the city. But one of his big ones, Deposition from the Cross, was in a part of the Vatican Museums that was closed.

Most of my fellow students were Classicists and were indifferent to the Baroque art and architecture of Rome, but Karen shared my interest. The two of us were walking towards the Campo dei Fiori and talking about how disappointed we were to not be able to see this one painting because that part of the museum was in restauro. A woman ahead of us whipped around to look at us and said, in a British accent, "I can get you in to see it!"

She was middle-aged and hyperactive. Her graying hair was pulled back into a classic ponytail. She had large, round glasses, orange lipstick, and a leopard-print jacket. Her accent was what I later learned to describe as "posh." She spoke in an animated manner and explained that she was an art historian who lived in Rome, and she was working on a project photographing ceiling murals. She introduced her extremely meek daughter, who I hadn't even noticed and who was carrying the camera equipment. La Professoressa chatted excitedly for awhile, and we made plans to meet soon.

I really can't remember the sequence of events, and the minor details are unimportant. But over the course of the next few weeks I saw her four or five times. She was generous - she took Karen and I out to see some sights and also got us invited to a reception for Roy Lichtenstein at the American Academy in Rome. She took me along when she and her daughter went to photograph a mural at a private palazzo, and another time I had lunch with her at a tiny local ristorante where there was no sign on the door, and we were led into the kitchen to see what they were cooking that day.

La Professoressa was fluent in Italian, and seemed to create a whirlwind wherever she went. When she spoke her arms waved wildly and foamy spittle collected at the sides of her mouth.

I came to learn she had been born in Malay to British ex-pats, and claimed to have stabbed to death a man who raped her during the war when she was nine years old. She had studied at the Sorbonne, or else the Sorbonne had financed her current project. Her quiet daughter was her eldest and, I believe, the only one who still spoke to her. Another daughter had allegedly performed a sex act with an animal for a porn video, which she sent to her mother for spite.

The last time I saw her, I had been invited along with another student, Tyler, to join her on a tour of the Quirinale Palace, the official home of the Italian president. There were others in the group - American Army officers and their families who were recently posted to Rome - and La Professoressa wanted us along to soften them up. She was hoping to get American financing for her research.

Tyler and I went to her apartment before going to the Quirinale, and she looked over what we were wearing to see if we would make a good impression on the military men. She asked Tyler to remove his earring, which he refused to do. All this time she was also talking about the work I would do for her if I stayed in Rome - her daughter wanted to return to England, and La Professoressa needed an assistant. She implied that I would eventually acquire the photographs if I worked for her. I would catalog them, and help carry the cameras and film and tripod on shoots. I would make sure she got the pictures she needed, and that she wouldn't forget to eat. I would help her get home at night after a long day on her feet - and put her to bed!

While she was chattering, she was trying to get me to wear some jewelry of hers, a choker that she was going to let me borrow. I already knew I didn't want to see her again. Tyler and I were going to make our excuses and leave after the tour, and I did not intend to return to La Professoressa's apartment to return the choker. I demurred on the jewelry, and I told her that I appreciated all she had done for me, but I also did not want to work for her. She sputtered about how it was a wonderful opportunity, and why didn't I want to take it? I said, "Because I don't want to wear the choker."

There was silence. But she knew what I meant. She was cool to us during the tour, while she turned her charm on the officers and their wives. After we left the Quirinale, Tyler and I had a peaceful afternoon in Rome, and I never saw La Professoressa again.

But a few weeks ago I was curious. I wanted to find out if she had ever published her photographs - or anything, for that matter. The only references I found to her on Google were old news stories about a court case in Britain a couple of years before I met her. Her husband's family was quite wealthy, and her father-in-law had left a certain amount of money to each of his adult grandchildren. To spite her own children, she claimed that her younger three were not the offspring of her husband and did not have a right to the inheritance. She said they had been fathered by three different men! The judge more or less threw the case out, saying the children had been accepted as part of the family for their entire lives.

You can't make this stuff up, folks!

She never got me in to see Deposition from the Cross, but I did see it on another trip. And I tell you now, I have never regretted walking away from that "dream" job.

Val

The Sneetches - T3

The prompt for T3 – Favorite Childhood Read –

Had me thinking and blinking,

Oh, what shall it be?

I quite liked the mysteries of Mary C. Jane,

Curious George was a fave, but maybe inane.

Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys all compete,

But one book was always my favorite treat.

The book that I knew that I just had to do

For T3 was The Sneetches and Other Stories, too.

There were Sneetches and stars and Mrs. McCave,

And Zax and Green Pants and twenty-three Daves,

There were morals and lessons I learned by osmosis,

And laughter that shook me right down to my toes-es.

Dr. Seuss was a genius with his rhymes and his hooks,

Kids are happy for hours while reading his books.

Pages worn and torn from reading and use,

My choice for T3 will be Dr. Seuss!

The story of the Sneetches tells us about the snobby star-bellied Sneetches who had bellies with stars, and the plain-bellied Sneetches who had none upon thars. 

So I'm being a star-bellied Sneetch, using a Christmas ornament for my star, and showing it off proudly!

The plain-bellied Sneetches always felt like second-class citizens, until a stranger came to town and offered to give them stars on their bellies. Well, the star-bellied Sneetches didn't like that, so they decided to have their stars taken off, and that would be the best style! Eventually no one could remember who really had stars and who didn't, and they all learned to get along and be happy the way they were.

See, a lesson I learned by osmosis.

The Sneetches were all yellow with green stars, so I'm wearing yellow jeans (with paler yellow zipper!) and shoes, thrifted, and the green top is part of a twin set and matches the cardi you saw last week here.

Come over and join the T3 book club at My Closet Catalogue and A Bibliophile's Style!

Val

The long and short of it

When I started Muse Fondue I really liked the new name. Now, I love it! It feels more me, more forward, more expansive. My creative juices are melting in the pot, and the muse and I just keep forkin' around and having a good time! Photos, collages, dioramas, and altered clothes have seduced me, and I'm also tempted to face up to the challenge of more vigorous writing. Therefore, I've created (if I get this right) a new page for stories.

Have you noticed that you uncover blog links just when your mind is going in that direction anyway?

Thanks to Tami, I found In Jayne's World. Drat, I was too late to take part in the link-up for Hint Fiction, where you write a suggestive tale that hints at a deeper story. In 25 words or less.

I may have missed the link-up, but I started making up ultra-short stories anyway, so herewith are a few. And look to this page in the future for further writing excursions.

 - Although she was passionately in love with her husband, she was technically a virgin.

 - They both loved their new house. He knew it would be a good family home; she knew it would be a good place to disappear.

 - One final thing to pack before he left the office for the last time - the backup disk from January 18.

 - When she moved back to her hometown, she left behind a garden in bloom, a husband in jail, and a pregnancy test in the garbage.