Author Archives: tim

Down below, in the cold waters of Lake Salina, there lived a school of beautiful fish. They were painted with the most brilliant colors you could dream up, and their tails were long and graceful. They danced every night to the songs of the water and enjoyed themselves greatly. In the middle of the night, in the middle of their dance, the fish would jump out of the water and fly through the air. Some say that on a well-lit night, you can see their colors glow in the moonlight.

One of these fish, whose name was Simon, was known for being a dreamer. His wife, Kaya, always scolded him for daydreaming and told him that the he thought too much. One night, while Simon was dancing with his friends, he jumped out of the water and noticed something he had never noticed before. Now the moon was especially bright that night, and Simon saw some parts of the dry world that he didn’t know existed. He started to dream, and he wished that he could, somehow, see more of this glorious world. The dance continued, and when Simon jumped out of the water again, he noticed that he wasn’t falling back in. He was flying! He couldn’t believe it, but he had wings and feathers. He flapped his new appendages and went higher and higher and flew across the land.

He was enjoying himself a great deal when he noticed how lovely the dry world looked. He especially noticed the large plants with lots of leaves. These were bigger than anything he had ever seen under water. Simon got to dream again, and he wished that, somehow, he could get to know these large plants better. He flew down to a branch and kept dreaming when, all the sudden, he became a tree! He was very excited to see how big his many arms were, and he began to talk with other trees, asking them what it was like being a tree. His companions didn’t say much – just, “it’s alright.” And so Simon went on being a tree. But it got tiring, and Simon found that life as a big plant wasn’t very eventful.

Then he saw a strange animal running across the land. It was a coyote, but Simon didn’t know that. He watched the animal run fast and free, and he longed to run and move freely. So then what do you think happened? That’s right, Simon became a coyote. For a few days, he loved it. He ran across the plains and yelled at the moon until something else caught his eye.

It was a man. He saw the man sitting alone, thinking, and wondered what it would be like to think like a man. Many times, he had seen men, but they were so powerful and dangerous that he never ever tried to get near one. He daydreamed about being a man and wished he knew what it was like when . . . Poof! He turned into one.

Simon thought he would be happy now, and he did many wonderful things. He used his hands to make tools, he used his legs to travel across the land, and he used his powerful mind to bargain in the cities. Then one day, he was sitting alone near the beach thinking, when he saw a fish jump out of the water. The fish looked very familiar, but he didn’t know how he could have known it before. It was painted with the most brilliant colors you could dream up, and its tail was long and graceful. He looked up and saw the moon emerge from the clouds. When he looked back down, his eyes beheld the most beautiful creature on earth. It was glowing in the moonlight! Simon reached out and caught the fish and held it near. He wished he could be as beautiful sight as that radiant animal. As he was holding the fish, he became struck with an amazing familiarity. He shrugged it off, though, thinking that there was probably an explanation for it, and he kissed the fish and threw it back in the water.

Simon closed his eyes there on the beach and dreamed. But when he opened them, things were different. He was swimming through the water, dancing in a whirl of color and grace, when he turned around and saw a familiar face. It was Kaya. “Welcome back,” she said, and kissed Simon on the cheek. Simon looked at his colorful body and long tail and jumped out of the water. He swam and swam and loved being a fish.

Down below, in the cold waters of Lake Salina, there lived a school of beautiful fish. They were painted with the most brilliant colors you could dream up, and their tails were long and graceful. They danced every night to the songs of the water and enjoyed themselves greatly. In the middle of the night, in the middle of their dance, the fish would jump out of the water and fly through the air. Some say that on a well-lit night, you can see their colors glow in the moonlight.

*just found this one. i wrote it in my “Fairy Tales and the Literary Imagination” class freshman year of college

Draft #1

Brett was on his way to propose to Heather when he ran over the animal. He saw a white streak enter the road, caught a glimpse of reflective eyes, then felt the thump.

He was hoping it was a squirrel or a rabbit, but when he got out to look, he found a cat, a calico. Maybe it was just a stray barn cat that wouldn’t have been missed. But maybe it belonged to a little girl who’d smothered it with attention or a boy who’d hand picked it from a litter of kittens at his neighbor’s house.

Brett bent down to examine the casualty, and against his better judgment, he scratched the dead cat behind the ears. He’d had a short-haired calico when he was eight. Since he believed all house cats were called tabby cats, he’d named it Tabby. His dad had smiled and told him it was a great name.

Tabby was a fearless little creature. He’d bound through the tall grass in the back yard, chasing after the dogs or flushing out pheasants. He was a horrible mouser, incapable of stealth, but he could make everyone smile. Even Mom.

By the time Brett turned ten, Tabby was dead. Brett’s brother had discovered him on the side of the road as he was biking home from a friend’s house. He picked up the lifeless body, strapped it to the rear fender rack, and brought it home.

Now, as Brett stroked the road kill by the red lights at the rear of his car, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. Could he guarantee his feelings for Heather wouldn’t change? Could he guarantee hers wouldn’t?

When Brett’s brother had gotten home with Tabby that day, he told Brett’s parents about it. Brett was upstairs, but he overheard all he needed to. He ran down and found Tabby strapped to the bike. From the doorway, his mom said, “I told you it was a bad idea to let him get that cat. Now look what’s happened.” She stormed off, leaving Dad to console his crying son.

Brett forgot most of the next year. In his mind, his parents’ divorce followed immediately after Tabby’s death. “She’s just not the woman I married anymore,” his dad explained later.

But what’s a boy to do with that? How can any child understand that love is an unavoidable roadside casualty that will forever change his life?

And what’s a man to do with a dead cat?

“Can I help you find anything else?” she called after you.

Poor girl. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t deserve to be the victim of your breakdown.

You saw an empty cart in the aisle and seized your opportunity to make things right by grabbing it and wheeling back to the glasses. “You know what?” you said, “I think I’ll get these now.”

“Oh. Okay.” She couldn’t hide it: she flashed you a look that said, “You’re weird.”

But you smiled at her and then you perused the cookware. They had that hard anondized stuff that Heidi was always talking about. You grabbed a ten-piece set, the Rachel Ray line.

Then you moved on. The OXO Angled Surface Measuring Cups looked good. You threw them in your cart. You added the Simple Human Utensil Holder with Removable Spoonrest. You needed some order in your kitchen.

But you also needed some sophistication, so you grabbed an Oneida 8-inch Mesh Strainer and a Rachel Ray fondue set. Was it tacky? The orange highlights were maybe too much. Perhaps the Chantal brand? In fact, maybe the Calphalon brand hard anondized aluminum cookware was a smarter buy than the Rachel Ray one.

You switched, opting for uniformity. After all, the stuff in your kitchen needed to match.

You were feeling better already. “Out with the old,” you muttered to yourself. And you headed toward the Accents Shop, where you picked up a couple of fancy pillar candleholders along with a Fresh Picked Peony- and an Anjou Pear-scented candle.

But then you saw the store employee who helped you earlier. She was talking to another employee, who was looking at you now. The implication was clear. You were a spectacle.

You didn’t need to be reminded. So you ducked around a corner into a clothing aisle and found yourself in the Misses section. Looming overhead were 12-foot pictures of women modeling Skirtinis and Shortinis and Strappy Tanks and Bootcut Jeans. They had relaxed smiles, skinny arms, pronounced collarbones. They were so beautiful.

You thumbed through the various racks housing Eyelet Trimmed Polos and Embellished V-Neck Tanks and Layered Tunics. You’d never heard these names before. There was an entire vocabulary you didn’t know.

Maybe it was your fault that Heidi left.

You wanted to drive back to the dentist’s office and apologize to the hygienist, tell her you had taken her advice and bought the toothbrush.

“I’m sorry,” you’d explain to her. “You look like this woman I was gonna marry. She left me three weeks ago.” She’d wonder if you were just trying to pick her up. And though you’d want to, you’d just walk away, proving to her that your intentions were honorable, that you were a good guy, that you just wanted to say sorry.

But then maybe she’d come after you. Maybe she’d say, “Wait!” and utter a sincere thanks and give you her phone number and say, “Maybe we could meet under better circumstances.” It would be just like a romantic comedy, the kind where apparent dating failure turns into a happily-ever-after with the most unlikely person – the one who disliked you the whole rest of the movie and who at the last moment realized that true love was waiting right there, right under her nose.

For a second, it seemed possible. You even began walking toward your cart, thinking you’d fish out the toothbrush. But then you looked up at the giant model in her Shortini, smiling ten feet above you, and it was utterly clear that you were surrounded by fantasy. None of it was true.

So what was there left to do but go home? What was left but to walk out of the Misses section, past the clerks waiting at their registers, towards the sliding glass doors marked with signs that warned, “Not an exit” and hope that they’d slide open for you?

You were a total embarrassment in the dentist’s office. Given, the hygienist looked exactly like Heidi, which was unfortunate, but that didn’t really excuse your gawking. You shouldn’t have ever started staring at her, but when she walked into the room, the way her scrubs swayed when she moved and something about the way she held her arms, with her hands bent up at the wrists, maybe – it was too much. You stared.

Even when she was at the computer, pulling up your record, and she glanced at you and then did a double take because you were staring at her, you didn’t stop. You kept staring. You stared when she started her small talk, your mouth agape even though she hadn’t yet requested for you to open up. You stared at the strands of hair that fell into her face as she bent over you. When she positioned her dental light so that it shone into your eyes, you just squinted. You stared at the silhouette of her face.

You stared and noticed her fidget when she met your gaze, but each time, you kept staring, noting how the gradient of her blue eyes was exactly like Heidi’s. And even when she cut the small talk and threw all of the dental jargon she could at you (mesial, composite, onlay), you kept staring.

Poor girl. She told you your gums were too sensitive and that you needed to spend some time stimulating them. You just stared. She recommended an electric toothbrush and a gentle circular motion at the base of your teeth. You just stared at her –despite her flaring her nostrils and clenching her jaw (just like Heidi). And as soon as the real dentist finished his examination of your mouth, double-checking her work, you stared as she fled through the doorway of the office.

You realized, of course, just how creepy you’d been, but the guilt didn’t hit you until you were in your car in the parking lot. You said out loud, “I gotta get ahold of myself.” And then you decided to go buy an electric toothbrush. There was a department store in a strip mall just down the road, so you drove there and began searching.

You walked around for ten minutes before finding them next to the vacuum cleaners. But instead of buying one and walking out of the store, you browsed the vacuums, which looked like colorful jet packs and boasted cyclone technology, mini turbine heads, and motorized brush bars.

An employee asked if you were finding everything all right.

“Yes,” you told her. “Thank you.” But since you were in the home goods section of the store you were a little sentimental, and you actually considered confessing that in the larger scheme of things, no, you weren’t finding everything all right.

“Actually,” you said, “do you have flow blue glasses?”

“Yes.” The woman smiled. “Right this way.”

You followed her to the Kitchen Ware section, and she pointed to the glasses.

“These are nice,” you said.

“Let me guess.” She wagged a finger at you. “Wedding registry?”

You almost dropped the glass. “Yes,” you lied. “How did you know?”

“Well, first of all, not many men shop for flow blue glasses. But mainly, I could just see the look in your eye when you picked up the glass. It was like you were thinking of someone else.”

“That’s impressive,” you conceded. You set the glass back on its shelf and walked away. You couldn’t talk about it anymore.

I thought you were dead, I say.

Nata looks at me. She’s got a what-the-fuck expression on her face. You know this guy? she asks. Karl says to me, took you long enough. Seriously, Jimmy adds.

What’s going on? Nata says, I thought this guy was all weird to you when you popped his clutch.

Karl snickers.

Me and Karl thought it would be funny to set up a “chance” encounter, Jimmy says. He makes quote marks in the air when he says chance. It was just a joke, he clarifies.

Yeah, Karl says, I figured I could act really weird and eventually you’d recognize me and we’d all laugh about it.

But that didn’t work, Jimmy chimes in, so then we had Karl show up at the bar that night.

And that didn’t work, either, I say.

Right, Karl says. I figured I’d just keep messin with you until you recognized me.

Okay, Nata says, so who the hell is Karl Morris? She’s looking at me. So is Jimmy.

Yeah, Karl says – he puts his hand on my shoulder – who am I?

So I explain to Nata that me and Jimmy and Karl were good friends in elementary school, but then Karl moved away in 6th grade and that in high school, I heard that Karl had died in a skiing accident. I tell her how the three of us used to go wandering through the construction sites in the subdivision where we grew up and how we were always getting into trouble and how we stole two boxes of nail gun nails one time. And another time, I say, Karl put like 20 toads in a box and wrapped it and tied a ribbon around it and gave it to his sister for her birthday.

Holy shit, says Jimmy, I forgot all about that. Yeah, so did I, says Karl.

We crack open some beers and sit around telling stories about those days and then at 10:00 Oprah comes on and we stop talking and watch, all four of us – me and Jimmy and Nata and Karl. The show’s called “Perfect Strangers, Perfect Friends,” and it’s about a taxi driver and a businessman who discover that they are actually best friends. Or something like that. At the end, Dr. Robin comes on and starts talking about happy friendships and shit.

And then out of nowhere, Karl says, Dr. Robin’s a Creepy Mofo.

You’re telling me, Nata says.

Amen, Jimmy adds.

And I honestly can’t believe what I’m hearing.

Are you guys crazy? I ask. Do I even know you people? Dr. Robin rules.

They say nothing. They all look at each other for a second and then Karl says, just fuckin with ya and we all laugh our asses off. I’m telling ya, it was just like a sitcom — beautiful people, misunderstandings.

And as the credits began to roll, I kissed Nata and told Jimmy and Karl to go fuck themselves.

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