ZIMMY'S

One of my favorite stories from my chapbook, "Beheading The Muse."

This is another of those stories that was an assignment, but it was MY opening paragraph that inspired others at the Midwest Writers Forum in Lowell, IN.  In fact, we all came up with such good stories that we invaded another writing group that met at Barnes and Noble in Merrillville,  IN (Writers Expressions) and five of us read our versions, ‘amazing’ all those in attendance at the ‘similar themes’ in our works.  Unfortunately, we had to reveal that it had actually been a conspiracy on our part and that we knew one another.  Either way, they enjoyed it.

You can find another story using this opening paragraph if you happen to own the limited-edition anthology published by the Highland Writers Group at Borders in Highland, IN.  The anthology is called “Between The Pages,” and contained a number of great stories by folks that are still great friends (and published authors now!).

ZIMMY'S

   The old man shuffled into the diner, shivering from the cold fog that permeated the harbor where I work.  There were only three of us customers in here at this hour and we all pretended we didn't care but stared at his reflection, all of us except Zimmy, of course.  Zimmy was the cook.  He just glanced at the guy and chewed at his stogie and walked over while he wiped his hands on a dirty white towel.

  “Coffee, please,” he said, sitting down at the dining bar.

   Zimmy poured the coffee, his lower jaw jutting out as he did.  It was an odd habit that actually softened his gruff features.

   “Foggy night out, isn’t it?” commented the old man to no one in particular, putting his gnarled fingers around the cup to warm them.  He had thinning white hair that was in need of a trim, a one-time neatly trimmed beard and gold-metal spectacles that slipped down his nose when he talked, making him look like one of those armchair Trotskyite socialists.  He was also dressed kind of funny, not like anyone around here.  I figgered him for a European or somethin’, though he spoke American good enough.

   Zimmy grunted a nod at the old man’s statement, walked down to me and freshened mine.  The old man turned and gazed out the big windows of the storefront.  I looked as well.  The fog was an ugly, thick, misty gray curtain drawn across the outside.  The streetlamps didn’t illuminate much as the moisture diffused the light sources until they were simply blurs.  Tonight was especially bad.  You couldn’t see a thing across the street to Yancey’s bar.  It was usually fun to sit in here and watch the fights from the safety of a blue-plate special.  Hell, you couldn’t even tell there was an ‘across the street,’ other than the fuzzy yellow glow of their lights and the faint sound of the music comin’ through the glass.

   The old man sipped at the cup of steamy joe, closing his eyes and let it warm him.  You could almost see the hot liquid work, draining the cold grayness from his face and putting color back into his cheeks.  Mickey and Thom got up to leave, pulling their coats around themselves before throwing coins onto the table where the remains of a chicken dinner sat.  They nodded and walked out into the fog.  The old man watched them go while Zimmy bussed the table.

   “Ever heard of Arthur C. Clarke?” he asked me, staring at my reflection in the glass.

   “Artie Clark?  Can’t say that I have.” I told him.  “Sounds like a prissy-boy with that middle initial.  What neighborhood’s he from?”

   The old man chuckled.  “Arthur C. Clark,” he replied, with an emphasis on the “C.”  He’s… not from around here.”

   “What about him, then.”

   “He wrote an interesting set of stories--,”

   “Ah!” I said, waving my hand in dismissal, “I told you he was a prissy-boy!”

   “He wrote an interesting set of stories,” continued the old man, overriding my remark, “About a place called The White Hart.”

   “And?” I said, noticing that Zimmy was wiping down the counter between the old man and I, chomping on his cigar in a manner that suggested he was taking it all in.

   “One story in that series commented about a fog, just like this.”

   “Pfah!” I spat, “We gets this kinda fog all the time.”

   “Hmmm, yes.  Well,” he continued, “In one story, a man enters the bar called the White Hart and comments to the patrons therein about said fog.  He ponders the question, ‘How do we know we stay in the same universe, the same dimension, when we walk out into a fog so thick that we can’t even see across the street.’  I found the whole concept quite fascinating.”

   “Yeah,” chimed in Zimmy before I could come back with a smart-aleck answer.  “Yeah!” he says again, “Dat would be an innerestin’ concept.”

   Now my jaw hit the counter.  I didn’t think Zimmy knew that many words!  I mean, Zimmy don’t speak much, let alone think.  He just tends to the counter and the cookin’; throwing out the bums that cause trouble and catching the cheats that don’t pay.

   “Just think,” said the old man, warming up to the subject, “What would the world be like in a different dimension?  Think of all the ‘What If’s’ and how they would affect you.”

   “Like what?” I muttered sullenly, miffed that Zimmy had deprived me of some fun with this old coot.

   “Oh, all kinds of things,” pondered the old man, “Think of it!  There might be such things as talking boxes.  Instantly heated food!”  He chuckled as if contemplating private joke, “Presidents from Hollywood.  A way to send letters instantly to anywhere in the world.  Advertising on the moon!”

   “Oh, jesh!” I snorted, “You’ve gone too far now!  Who would want to advertise on da moon?  How would they get da words up there?”

   “Have I really ‘gone too far?’” he replied, turning toward me, “Have I really said anything that isn’t possible?  How do you know that I’m not from that dimension myself?”

   I snorted my derision.

   “How do you know,” the old man continued, pointing behind him toward the outside, “that, when I walk through that door and into that fog, I won’t simply vanish into the mists?”

   “Yeah, right.”  I snickered, getting ready to lambast him.  Zimmy gave me a hurt look, so I stopped.

   “Tell me,” countered the old guy, “do you have the letters J, C, Q, W or X in your alphabet?”

   “What are those?” I asked.  I noticed a smile creep across Zimmy’s face.  The old man didn’t answer, he just asked another question.

   “Is the electricity here AC or DC?”

   “Why, DC of course!” I laughed at the absurdity of his question, “AC is dangerous and deadly!  Mr. Edison proved it when that crazy Tesla and da Westinghouse guy tried to squeeze in on his racket”

   “And who won against Hitler in World War Two?”

   “World War what?” I said, “We ain’t had but one of them type wars!  Oh!  You mean that little skirmish that France had with Germany a few decades back?  They kicked his ass and put that demented little man away before he killed the Kaiser!”

   The old man smiled and pulled some coins out from his pocket, staring at them for a moment before laying them on the table and heading for the door.

   “I guess I still have some searching to do,” he said. 

    As the door opened, I saw Zimmy picking up a coin and looking at it in the light.  He fisted it and ran toward the door.  In a flash, I was right behind him as we ran outside after the guy.  We’d both seen the old man shuffle past the window only a second before, so he couldn’t be more than ten yards in any direction.

   “HEY!” we both called, running down the street.  I crossed, calling out “HEY” again, but didn’t see anyone.  There was nothing and no one there.  I walked back to where I heard Zimmy calling out.  The fog was so thick I almost bumped into him before I saw him.  We stood out in the middle of the street with that heavy soup swirling about us for a few moments and then turned to go back to the store.

   While we walked, I asked,  “Whatsamatta Zimmy, did the old coot cheat you with some fake coins?”

   “I dunno,” muttered Zimmy, showing me the gold coin in his hand, “Who da hell is Clinton Rex and what da hell is da Democratic Kingdom of America?”

   “Damned if I kn-,”

   We both stopped at the storefront.  I was sure it was the same spot!  We hadn’t gone more than thirty feet or so, but something had changed!  The lighting was different.  Instead of it coming from globes that were hanging from fixtures, it was darker, and the place was packed!

   Zimmy and I craned our eyeballs up to the sign above the entrance.  I turned to look at him and he to me before we blurted out together:

   “What the fuck is a Starbucks?”

POISON PEN

This is another story from "BEHEADING THE MUSE".  It was one of the stories that started out with an opening paragraph as an assignment.  We ended up with some really interesting stories at the Midwest Writers Forum with this one.  In fact, it inspired Larry Ginensky, a member of this group as well as moderator of the Highland Writers Group, to write 8 chapters of his “Dolores and Nietzsche” story, which can be found in the anthology that HWG published called “Between The Pages” (to which I contributed as well).

The old man at the bar held the drink up to the light as if to examine the clarity of its contents.  He stared at it for several seconds and then replaced it precisely where he'd picked it up on the napkin in front of him.  No expression could be read on his grizzled old mug.  I thought no more about it until he repeated the process a few moments later.

"Hey, Andy" I whispered sideways at the barkeep.  "What's with the old codger?"

"Him?" grunted Andy, wiping the proverbial glass with a clean, white towel, "Dunno.  He comes in here every night, buys the most expensive scotch I got and then does that all night.  When I close, he has me drink it and then looks at me like I just robbed him or somethin'."

Andy bent his balding pate down towards me.  "I done hears he had a big loss or somethin'."  With a shake of his head, he continued, "Poor Mr. Sommers hasn't been the same since.  Hasn't written a lick in almost 20 years!"

"Sommers?" I interrupted.  "Charles J. Sommers, the author?  That's HIM???"

"Yeah," replied Andy, "You know him?"

"Know him?!" I exclaimed, "He's the best horror and fantasy writer there ever was!"  I glanced at the old man again who was looking at his glass, "He made Stephen King look like a pansy!  He could describe a scene in 100 words and scare the pants off you where King would take a whole page and just mildly frighten you!"

"So, he was good then, eh?"  Andy poured me another drink and then leaned against the bar, his meaty bare arms straining against the short sleeves of his white shirt.

"He was great!" I said, downing the shot poured for me.  "I've always wondered why he stopped writing though."

"You want to know why?" said the man in a raspy, nicotine-stained voice.  "I'll tell you why!"

His words jolted us out of our huddle.  We hadn't realized he'd been listening and we felt rude.  I leaned back in my chair and took off my suit jacket.  Andy self-consciously wiped a spot on the bar with his towel.

Sommers looked as if he were about to speak again.  Instead he paused, rubbed the graying stubble of his chin and then wiped his hands nervously on the legs of his pants.  I turned to look at him when he spoke again.

"I don't write anymore because it all comes true!"

"What do you mean?" I said, using an old body language trick, encouraging him to continue.

"Just that, it all comes true!"

"What came true for you?"

"My writing!" he said in a feeble cry, as if he were about to break.  "Everything I wrote came true..."

"Tell me what you mean." I said softly.

He lifted the glass again and stared at it for a long time.  I gave Andy a shrug as was about to turn back when the old man began again.

"I've always loved writing." He said.  "It was a comfort and a passion with me.  I would go into a trance when I wrote.  My first girlfriend, Katherine, noticed that back in college.  I'd just begin writing and wouldn't stop until I'd finished.  I wouldn't stop to eat, I wouldn't sleep, hell, I wouldn't even go to the bathroom because I was so determined to finish!  I would just drink about a pint of scotch and begin writing.  I'd finish the rest of the bottle as I wrote, coming out only to get another.  If I didn't have any left, I'd tear the place apart until someone got one for me!  I'd never read what I'd written, though.  Katherine did that for me.  She would gush.  She thought my ranting, my drunkenness and my trance writing made me mystical.  We both liked to drink, though.  We both loved horror stories.  That was the basis of our friendship.  Together, we devoured the cheap pulp horror novels and all the magazines.  She had the same warped sense of humor I possessed.  Perhaps that's why we've gotten along so well over the years"

Sommers took another long look at his glass.  He slowly put it down again in the exact same spot.

"It was Katherine that suggested I use teletype paper for my writing when I typed half a page without a sheet of paper in the typewriter.  That was how I wrote my first novel" Sommers looked up at me with painful, rheumy eyes.  "I locked myself in my dorm room for three days and churned out three novelettes.  Katherine went through them and picked out the second as the best."

"It was about unrequited love and revenge.  That's what Katherine had for me.  Unrequited love.  To me, she was just there for sex.  We had a love of literature in common and that was it."

"But Katherine was in love.  She typed and edited that first work for me and got it published.  When she handed me the book, I didn't even realize that I'd dedicated it to her!"  Somers laughed.  It came out a harsh bark.  "I'd thought she was the one that put it there but, sure enough, there at the beginning of the roll was my typing 'To Katherine, without whom so much wouldn't have been possible.'  Hah!" 

Sommers paused again, talking as he stared off into space.

"It was about a girl that loved a man, but went on to pursue her own destiny.  Katherine did that.  She eventually became an editor at Doubleday... MY editor!"

"Then I fell in love.  Mary was my passion, second to none except for my writing.  Mary didn't mind though!  I fell in love with a slim brunette with big eyes and a demure smile.  She fell in love with what she called 'an intriguing author.'  And to beat the band, Mary and Katherine got along famously!"

The old man looked down at his fingers.  "These hands spelled the end for Mary though.  She bore me two fine children; a son and a daughter."

I loosened my tie and got more comfortable at the bar.  Andy did as well, absentmindedly pouring us both another drink.  He hadn't yet taken the money I'd laid out.

"What do you mean by your 'hands spelled the end for Mary?'" I asked softly.

Sommers went on as if ignoring me, but I could see the flicker in his eyes that told me he had heard.

"My son grew up to be a fine lad.  Tall like his mother and strong like I was once.  Vietnam was happening then.  I was against it, of course.  I wrote a story about the pain and suffering that a soldier endures.  I wrote about life in the foxhole and the agony of being wounded, or seeing your best friend blown to pieces.  I wrote about Johnny, though I didn't know it until after he died."

"What?  How did he die?"

He was silent again, looking at the glass.  Then, looking away, he said, in a hoarse whisper, "He was killed in Nam.  Got blown up by a mortar round."

Sommers sighed heavily.  "It was Katherine that pointed out the similarities about how Johnny died and how my character in "Death Warrior" died.  It was almost as if I'd seen Johnny's future a few years before."  The man covered his face with his hands.  Speaking between his palms he said,  "I was shocked because, of course, I'd never even read my own work!"

He rubbed his face again and put his hands down.  "Marie came next."

"I wanted to write something upbeat, but I struggled for six months.  The words never came.  Then a news story about a murder came on and I got an inspiration.  I was in my room for five days, typing furiously.  I know this because that was what Mary told me when I got out of the hospital.  She had delivered the manuscript to Katherine and the girl fairly drooled over it.  At least that's how Mary described it!"

"It was about two girls who go to college, live together in an apartment and are murdered."

"So?" I said, "What did that have to do with your daughter?"

"Two years later," he replied, "Her and her best friend went to college.  I was successful then.  I bought a townhouse for her to live in.  They threw a party and they invited everyone they knew."  Sommers stopped, choking back a sob at the memory. 

"Well, one of the young men had a thing for my daughter.  She didn't like him, though.  He came to the party.  While everyone else was having a good time downstairs, he took my daughter upstairs, savagely beat her, raped her and then slit her throat."

"My GOD, man!" I exclaimed, "I'm sorry to hear that!  But of course you realize it's all coincidence!"

"To you, it may have been," he said, turning only his eyes to me, "but, when the police read my book and found that it followed the plot fairly closely, THEY certainly didn't think so!" 

Sommers went back to his glass and stared at it again, not saying anything for a long while.

"You mentioned your wife," broke in Andy, his voice sounding like a Mack Truck pulling away from a stop.  "Surely she didn't think this was anything more than coincidence."

"Mary was always loyal." He said, more to himself than to us.  "And she paid for that."

"How so?" I prodded.

There was another long pause.

"Years before," he finally continued, "When I'd written those first stories.  One of them was about a man that plots to get rid of his wife."  Sommers stopped and stared for a long time.

"He arranges things so that his wife gets mad at him and decides to go out for a drive.  She is run off the road and down a cliff.  Really sophomoric, television melodrama, but you have to realize, it was written 35 years ago!"

"OK."

"Mary and I had a fight a few years back.  She got angry over my drinking and then the way I went into a trance for days as I wrote.  The deaths of our children had really affected her.  She didn't realize that a writer just can't stop writing, that it's an insidious disease.  She felt we had enough and that we should try and make a new life together.  I ignored her and went back to writing."

"So, what happened?"

"She was run off the road and killed."

"Oh."

"Yeah," he said with a wry smile.  "I'd lost everyone.  The police swore I did it, this time.  They brought out that book of mine and used it to take me to court!  Only Katherine stood by me!"

"That's so sad!" I told him, "But you need to realize that these were all nothing more than coincidence!"

"Bullshit!" was his only reply.

"But they were!  They ARE!"

"Bullshit!" he said louder, turning to look at me.

"Why do you say that?"  I said.  "These things happen to people every day."

"People don't write about other people dying!"

"Sure they do!  All the time!"

"Not about their friends and family!" he growled, gripping the bar as if he were going to pounce.  I saw Andy reaching for the blackjack.  Sommers glare burned into me as he finished, "Not about their own goddamn death!"

"Your own death?" I said meekly after a moment.

Sommers seemed to back down as I asked that.

"Yes," he said, resignedly, "My own."  He lifted the glass again and laughed.  "That first story?  The one Katherine liked?"

"Yes."

"In it, she is rejected by the one she loves."

"OK."

"As Katherine pointed out to me five years ago, he dies."

"OK, so he dies.  So what?"

Sommers looked at the glass of scotch in his hand before setting it down again.

"He dies because the woman he jilted poisons his drink."