Rizadelossantos’s Blog

An inspirational story By Francie Baltazar-Schwartz

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”

Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

“Yes, it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut way all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?”

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked.

Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’

“I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breathe and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them. ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

A sci-fiction story written By: Jamie Brindle

He started by telling them how they would die. Sometimes, he thought that selling deaths was all his job really was.
It was always good to start with the death. That’s what the customer was invariably looking for. That’s what really sold them.
Having described how his client would die, Quince would then go on in a rather matter-of-fact way to explain other notable features of the life he was hawking: childhood joys and traumas (as well as any exceptional neurosis that would result from them), love affairs, major accidents, famous things they would achieve, and so on. He would then finish off by displaying a rather nice rendering depicting a trans-temporal image of the body to be inhabited, tilting in holographic increments through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and so on until, after ninety degrees, to old age and death.
He would then look at them levelly and ask them: so?
Quince had never lost a client yet.

He had never lost a client. They always said yes. Not a single time in the whole of his existence – although he existed in a place where there was, technically, no time – not one single time had he even had to offer up a second life for perusal. The Poor Souls always snapped up what he had to give them.

Quince used to wonder if these Poor Souls were the only type. Certainly they were the only ones he ever came across. They were so empty and pitiful, these Poor Souls, these clients of his, so light. Of course, there was no sight here, just like there was no smell, taste, sound, warmth, cold, or anything else at all, at all, not even any time. And yet, were he asked to describe the Poor Souls, Quince would not have been at a loss for so much as a moment. They were symmetrical without having a shape. They were luminescent without having form or light. They were humble without having a self to humble. But, above all, they floated. Above all, they were light.
It came to him one day, as a revelation, that they were Poor Souls not because they were to be pitied, but rather because they were not rich. The Rich Souls – if they actually existed – never came to him. His job was to provide the Poor Souls with a means of gaining weight – he assigned them a life in which they might be forged into something with shape and purpose. Existence here was not a life-affirming experience. Only life was one of those.

< 2 >

This was a typical example of Quince’s work:
‘Hello,’ he would say, his awareness lightly skimming the life he was about to offer to his newest client.
‘Hello,’ would come the reply, a faint tepid breath.
‘Well, how can I help you today?’
‘Existence, please’
‘Oh, existence is it? Jolly good, jolly good! Well, we have this rather splendid life just in, let me see, I put it down here a moment ago … Ah yes! Now, what have we here …’
He would then go through the motions, acting as if he were perusing the life for the first time.
‘Yes, this one’s a real winner,’ he might exclaim, ‘Real first class death. That’s what you should look for in a life, you know, a real top-of-the-range death.’
‘Really?’ the Poor Soul would whisper.
‘Oh, absolutely, no question!’ Quince would reply with feeling, ‘Very character forming event in your average life, death. Very important.’
Here he would lean forward – even though there was no space here, he would lean forward – and try and intimate himself with the (usually slightly bewildered) Poor Soul.
‘You know, between you and me,’ he would say conspiratorially, ‘Between you and me, there are some Souls that choose quite ridiculously mundane lives, purely on account of the fantastical deaths which they know wait for them at the end.’
‘How fascinating,’ the Poor Soul would reply, obviously impressed.
‘Oh yes! Take this life, for instance. Well, it ends when, in the midst of bitter recriminations, your divorced partner decides they can control their grief no longer and plunges you both into the blades of an automated farming contraption! Just imagine that, will you?’
‘I can’t,’ The Poor Soul would sadly reply.
‘Well, of course you can’t!’ Quince would be enjoying himself by now, ‘Not now you can’t – but if you take this life, then you’ll be able to …’
The Poor Soul would be all too eager to jump for the life at this point, but Quince liked to play things out a bit.
‘And if that isn’t enough, then how about this?’ he would leaf quickly through the life and find something that seemed half-interesting, ‘You don’t lose your virginity until you’re forty – forty! – but when you do … well, look at this!’
He would lean closer and show the life to his client.

< 3 >

‘What is this?’ the curious Soul would ask, perhaps slightly alarmed.
‘They are quite common in the time when you will live, I am given to understand.’
‘And this?’
‘Horns, I believe.’
‘And also this?’
‘It appears to be a very small species of fish. Although quite what it’s doing there is anybody’s guess.’
‘Ah.’
‘Although, of course, you don’t have to guess. You could find out!’
The Poor Soul would be nuzzling towards him eagerly by now. A no-sale would be out of the question.
‘And then there’s the way you find out about your real parents, I mean wow …’
And on Quince would go, until he grew tired of his sport, and allowed his client to pass through the life he held out, unto what lay beyond.

Quince liked his job, and was never lonely, despite the complete absence of any real company. In fact, this was one of the reasons he enjoyed it so much. Here, he was the exception. Next to the Poor Souls he was a real standout, something special, something different. Here he was a Big Deal.
Occasionally he would wonder if it might not be nice to have a change; sometimes he even found himself pondering a life with an almost personal interest, wondering what it would be like to experience first-hand some of the things that seemed to go on in them. He had always held the opinion that life was almost certainly overrated, and probably something of a fad. But as non-time wore on, he began to wonder more and more whether he could perhaps be wrong. After all, he had never had any complaints …

One day – or night or, at any rate, instant – a most curious thing happened. Quince was perusing a life he had picked at random from the apparently infinite mass of them that jostled forever just below him. He had observed the death first, as usual, and had been mildly amused to see it involved a religious element of frightfully complex, vaguely hopeful, and magnificently erroneous conceit. After this he had leafed through the layers, seeing nothing more of particular note, until he was stopped short by a component that inspired in him a most unusual feeling.
The component was nothing special in itself – a simple pair of shoes carrying a battered look and bearing a distinctive gold stripe down one side.

< 4 >

The feeling it brought about was the worrying thing.
It was a profoundly strong and inescapable feeling. A feeling of utmost weight and undeniable truth.
It was a feeling of simple, absolute recognition.

Quince was shaken to his core. This had never, ever happened before. Although, when viewing a life so that he could describe it to his client, he was somehow instinctively aware of all that went on in them, nothing had ever before seemed to him to contain any personal relevance. Usually, it was as if he had a vast and automatic encyclopaedia splayed open in the centre of his being, something that transmitted to him every nuance of meaning in the lives he held. This was different. This was an item he recognised without its essence having to be translated for him.
‘Those are shoes,’ he thought, ‘You wear them when you go outside. They feel good at the front where the tips have been broken in, and sometimes the back scuffs your ankle and the skin chafes away and you bleed. You buy them at a discount price from a market because you think your friend would like the gold striped design, but then keep them for yourself because you find you like them, too.’
It was an unsettling feeling, for the most part.
For the most part, but not entirely.

He put the life to one side, and often retrieved it when the desire struck him. He leafed through it with a strange, almost guilty pleasure that had barbs and hurt him almost as much as it pleased him. He lingered over it, searching in vain (and also with trepidation) for something else he might find similarly familiar. But he found nothing. Or rather, the only other odd thing he found about the life was a strange lack of something. There were things in it that he could not understand, and this was most unusual and worrying. It was as if the internal encyclopaedia he kept was failing when it came to this life. Worse, it seemed that this fallacy was growing – for he would swear that, when he had first looked at the life, he had understood the death with which it would end. He remembered thinking it absurd and pointless, but also understanding something of why it was done.

< 5 >

Now he could not fathom it.
He pondered the death most of all.

A Poor Soul came to him, as they always did.
Quince had been studying the life again, the troubling life with the familiar shoes, and had not been aware of the Poor Soul’s approach.
He started, and then hurriedly pushed the life he had been perusing away into the distance.
‘Hello, yes?’ he asked, rather irked at having been disturbed.
‘Hello,’ said the Poor Soul.
‘Well, what can I do for you?’
‘I’d like a life, please.’
‘Ah, very well,’ Quince reached out and grabbed a life at random. He held it out for the Poor Soul.
The Poor Soul looked a little uncertain.
‘Um,’ it said.
‘Yes?’ asked Quince, acidly.
‘Um, is it a good one?’ the Poor Soul enquired meekly.
Quince was dumbstruck for a moment. This was not something that he was used to, a Poor Soul questioning the life that he offered it. But then, he thought, maybe he had neglected to give the life the spin he usually enjoyed presenting so much. Quickly, he glanced into the life, meaning to find a few succulent morsels there with which to tempt his client. But to his surprise, he found that much of the life had become quite opaque to him. He could see what happened in it, but he could understand very little.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Quince, stalling, ‘Yes, quite a remarkable life, this one …’
‘Well, what happens in it?’ asked the Poor Soul, politely, but with what Quince considered something of an inappropriate firmness.
‘Oh you know …’ said Quince vaguely.
‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ replied the Poor Soul.
‘Well, you … die on a ship,’ said Quince at random.
‘On a ship?’ said the Soul.
‘Yes, a ship. At sea. In a storm.’
‘Oh.’ The Soul seemed thoughtful for a moment. ‘Is that much fun?’
‘What? Oh yes, tons of fun!’ said Quince, somewhat annoyed by the Soul’s cheek. He offered the life up to the Soul with what he hoped was an obvious finality.
But the Soul did not take it.
After a moment, Quince shifted.
‘Does there seem to be some kind of problem?’ he asked coldly.
‘Well the thing is …’ said the Soul nervously.
‘Yes?’ prompted Quince.
‘The thing is, I … don’t think I’d like it.’

< 6 >

‘What!’ exclaimed Quince, positively flabbergasted by now, ‘Well, I mean, what’s not to like? I mean, it’s the Sea! It’s got it all! Power! Romance! The raw savagery of nature!’
‘It doesn’t really do it for me.’
‘Doesn’t really do it for you?‘
‘What about that one, there?’ said the Soul suddenly, indicating the life Quince had been looking at earlier when the Soul had arrived.
‘What, this one?’ asked Quince, guiltily.
‘No, not that one. The other one. No, not that one either. The one you keep sort of pushing away.’
‘Ah, you mean this one,’ said Quince, reluctantly bringing out the life that contained the familiar shoes.
‘Yes, that’s the ticker. What happens in that one?’
‘Oh, very boring life, this one,’ said Quince, a little too quickly, ‘Not much happens in this one at all. Bit of a wasted life, one might say. Bit of a non-event. No, you’re much better going for one of these nice lives, over here.’
‘Hmm …’ The Soul sounded worryingly unconvinced.
‘Well, hurry up, hurry up, I haven’t got all of eternity, you know!’ said Quince, quite untruthfully.
‘Actually, if it’s all the same to you, I think I will go for that life.’
‘Well, as it turns out that life is …’ Quince thought desperately, ‘That life is, uh, reserved.’
‘Reserved?’
‘Yes, reserved. Here, take this one.’
And he moved smartly forward and thrust a different life at random into the soul. Both Soul and life promptly vanished in a puff of nothingness.
The really strange thing was, Quince could not say for the life of him why he had done it.

After that, Quince was much more careful in the way in which he dealt with the Poor Souls. He made sure the familiar life he had found was always well hidden when his clients came to him. And he redoubled his salesmanship. The only problem was, he found he could hardly make any sense of the lives at all any more. They were growing ever more clouded to him, and he was reduced to spectacular bouts of lying when questioned on any aspect of them. Then again, he got rather good at this, and soon began to find it easier, he thought, to invent something from scratch than it was to undergo the restrictions placed on him by mere embellishment.

< 7 >

He pondered the irritating Poor Soul which had had the rare nerve to test his patience; but no more like it appeared, and gradually he began to forget about this strange occurrence.
Also, he was increasingly obsessed with the familiar life. He found that he could not go long without the desire to look at it growing quite sharp. But now when he looked into this life, there was virtually nothing in it at all that he could understand, although he became more and more convinced that he was recognising elements contained within. Almost everything in the life now seemed at once achingly familiar and nauseatingly arcane.
This life became both his torture and his salve; and his existence, which was technically infinite, collapsed inwards and wrapped itself in knots around the two of them, this familiar life and him.
And it was while he was in this strange state of mind that a most singular thing happened.
One of his clients came back.
It was unsatisfied.

He had been aware of the Poor Soul approaching and had, as was his wont, hidden the familiar life carefully before it arrived.
‘Hello there,’ he began, as usual.
‘Hello again,’ said the Poor Soul, with a strange infliction which Quince finally recognised as something between fear and determination.
‘Er, have we met before?’ he stammered, unnerved at the thought of a Poor Soul that was rich enough to carry emotion.
‘Yes,’ replied the Soul, ‘I was here a while back. You gave me a life, I don’t know if you remember?’
‘Um, well, I give out rather a lot of those, you see,’ explained Quince apologetically, although, of course, he thought he knew exactly which life the Soul was talking about. Quince had never come across the same Poor Soul twice before. He had been given to understand that life was something of a one-way process, and wherever it exited, it was not meant to be here.
‘Yes,’ the Soul continued, clearly uncomfortable but resolved to get through the encounter nonetheless, ‘I thought perhaps you might. Um. It was a rather nice little European number? About so long? Ended with a death at sea.’
‘Ah, yes, I remember now,’ admitted Quince, deciding that this one was not going to be fobbed off, and might as well be tackled head-on, ‘How did you like it?’

< 8 >

‘Well, the sea was nice,’ said the Soul quickly, obviously eager not to hurt Quince’s feelings, ‘But, well, it wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind…’
‘Really? You must have liked the death, at least?’
‘Actually, I didn’t get to that bit,’ the Soul confessed, somewhat sheepishly.
‘Didn’t get to it!’ exclaimed Quince, thunderstruck, ‘Well then, however did you get here?’
‘Oh, you know …’ said the Soul vaguely.
‘I’m afraid I don’t’
‘Well, it was simple, really,’ stammered the Soul, ‘I just, well, decided that it wasn’t really my cup of tea. You know, it was very comfortable and all that but it just didn’t feel, well, me.’
‘You just decided to come back?’ said Quince, disbelievingly. He had never thought that this might be even remotely possible.
‘Yes,’ said the Soul, and then plunged on quickly before its courage could fail, ‘The thing is, you see, I kept finding myself thinking about that other life.’
‘Other life,’ interrupted Quince sharply.
‘Yes, you know, that one you were looking at when I first came to see you.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ growled Quince through metaphysical teeth which were, metaphysically, gritted.
‘Oh, surely you remember? You were looking at it quite closely when I arrived. Well, there was just something about that life which sort of glowed at me. I’m afraid I don’t know how else to put it …’ The Soul trailed off apologetically.
There was an extended silence.
Quince was just wondering how he might go about getting rid of the Soul when the little thing piped up suddenly.
‘Oh, here it is,’ it exclaimed happily, ‘Yes, this is the one I’m talking about.’
To Quince’s horror, he suddenly found that the Soul had somehow managed to locate the life – the familiar life,his life! – and had drawn it close.
‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ he shouted wildly, and pulled the life back away from the Soul. ‘Sorry,’ he went on, sounding not a bit of it, ‘These things aren’t to be touched by anyone but the Management. Company policy,’ he added belatedly.
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said the Soul quickly, ‘I quite understand. Only, I thought that well, if the Soul who reserved it hasn’t turned up, well then, I might as well have it … ?’
Quince took the life quickly, and hid it behind him. He decided abruptly that this had gone on long enough. Why should he, the special man, the Gatekeeper, the Big Deal, why should he be made to feel wretched by a mere Poor Soul? It was ridiculous! No, he must end this now.

< 9 >

‘I quite understand your concern, Sir,’ he began with polite firmness, ‘But it’s out of my hands, see? We operate a strict no-returns policy, I’m afraid. Myself, well, I’d love to let you have this life, but it’s not up to me, is it? No, so if you’d like to go back to the life you left down there, then I’m sure you can bring up the matter with the appropriate authorities when you get to the Other Side …’
Quince trailed off.
He realised suddenly that the Soul had taken on a strange, almost glazed over appearance. It was not hearing what he was saying anymore. In fact, he was not even sure it was looking at him at all. It was almost as if it was looking through him …
Quince shifted a moment too late.
As has been said, there was no space here.
Nevertheless, there were different places that one could decide not to occupy space in, and the Soul had abruptly decided that it wanted not to occupy the same non-space as Quince.
The impact hurt quite a lot for something that had absolutely no mass.
As they fell together, Quince turned. He was aware of the life he had been hiding behind him. It was very near, and Quince had time to think that it seemed much larger and more real than it had ever seemed to him before.
Then they hit it.
For a moment they formed a frozen tableau. Quince, the familiar life, and the Poor Soul all merged together in the diaphanous, hallucinatory way of things caught in the interstitial spaces either side of reality.
Then they all vanished into an infinitely thin sliver of void which bubbled away silently into the ether.

There was warmth here and comfort, and Quince had a vague notion that he was not alone, that the Poor Soul was with him, and he held onto the awareness of this and an awareness of who he was for a little while before it leeched away from him like a dream on waking, and he became firmly and finally embroiled in the now, which was of course constantly changing, shrinking around him then emptying outwards, becoming cold and hostile, and lungs he had now, little lungs filling with cold fresh air, filling, screaming, pumping, he writhed on huge hands that held him gently, soothing him, and was moved to breast and Mother-Protection, a sanctuary which was his for an age until he grew bold and moved away on little legs growing ever stronger, taking him on his own wild adventures through early childhood, when, with shocking violence, he was taken away from those who loved him by an accident and placed in an orphanage, there to grow with blemishes and scars into adolescence, clever and suffused with talents but also wreathed in pain, and leaving here as soon as he could he leapt into life with abandon and passed through many strange and wonderful and terrible things until the fire cooled a little and love took him for the first time and carried him reeling against the harsher currents but with purpose until he begat and begat and begat a third and final time whence love was ripped from him once more, and he found solace in his middle years in his children until they too left, and he was once more alone but for a few friends who touched his surface as he touched theirs, in a vague, removed way, but which nevertheless helped and made some times joyous and others simply bearable, (and coming towards him suddenly were the shoes, the trainers, laced with gold, looking so strangely familiar that he suddenly wondered if there was perhaps a God or at any rate a god, something more than he had ever thought possible, so strong and strange was the feeling of recognition at the moment when he found them, but then they too receded into the past along with the rest of his spent life and were gone and the feeling of connection passed), but these friends gradually moved away, or passed away, or found others to whom their souls passed in favour of him, and he reached a point when his hair was silver when he realised his whole life was characterised by loneliness and loss, and so devoted his remaining years to poring over old books which described strange rituals and heathen rites, in the hope that he might find some crack in reality into which he could fit a lever and thus prise for himself a piece of creation that he could form around his existence to make himself more attractive to others, and in so doing secure their love for always and ever, so that he might never be alone again; and finding such spells in obscure abundance, he indulged in them fanatically, and sometimes felt as if they were almost working, and sometimes felt as if there was something else within him, a half-remembered presence of other, and this gave him the hope he needed to pursue his endeavours with renewed vigour, until, finally he died whilst in the midst of one such ritual, old and desiccated, the unintended victim of an arcane rite of frightfully complex, vaguely hopeful, and magnificently erroneous conceit.

< 10 >

He tumbled out of the other end of the life, into a bright white place. Picking himself up, he yawned, stretched, and looked around, wondering vaguely what he was supposed to do next. He could not remember quite why he was meant to be here. Then again, he could not quite remember who he was, or where here was in the first place, so he decided not to worry about it too much for the moment.
After a while, he realised he was not alone. A little way off, there was a line of other people. They seemed similarly bemused in a benign, un-worried sort of a way, so he decided to go and join them.
‘Hello,’ he said genially to the person ahead of him, joining the back of the queue.
‘Hello,’ said the person ahead of him, smiling a little.
‘Excuse me, but do you know what we’re queuing for?’ he asked, at length.
The person ahead of him thought for a while. The line shuffled forward.
‘Haven’t the foggiest, I’m afraid,’ the person said at length.
The person ahead of him seemed faintly worried about this for a moment, but then he shrugged. ‘But I suppose it’ll all become clear in a moment,’ he went on, brightening up.
Quince shrugged too. This seemed reasonable.
Eventually, he got near to the head of the queue.
There was a large benign-looking being there, handing out tickets.
The person ahead of him was given a ticket, looked rather happy, and promptly vanished through a big white door into nothing.
Then it was his turn. He held his hand out for a ticket. The being leant forward as if to give him one, then checked himself.
The being looked him up and down carefully.
”ang on a minute,’ the being said slowly, ‘What’s goin’ on ‘ere then?’
‘Sorry?’ he replied, quite unsure what the problem was.
‘Well, there’s two of you in there, in’t there!’ exclaimed the being.
‘What?’ he replied, confused, ‘Is there?’
‘Yes!’
‘Oh, well, I’m terribly sorry. I don’t want to be any trouble, you know.’ He really felt quite contrite.
‘Most irregular, that, most irregular,’ said the being severely, looking rather troubled, ‘Gonna throw the whole system out of whack, that is, if I let you through.’
‘Oh, well I wouldn’t want to be the cause of any problem,’ he said, ‘Would it be better if I just go back?’

< 11 >

‘Ooo, you can’t do that!’ said the being, sounding scandalised. ‘Nah, it’s a one-way thing, innit? No going back, mate, sorry.’
‘What should I do then?’ he asked.
‘You’ll just ‘ave to wait here, I suppose.’
‘Ah,’ he said, and moved aside to let the others in the queue past.
After a rather large amount of non-time he had an idea.
‘Look, as long as I’m here, is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked brightly.
The being considered this thought for a minute.
‘Well, the thing is, see, I can’t let you any further on, on account of there’s somehow more ‘n one of you in there.’ The being was speaking slowly, considering each word carefully.
Quince nodded sagely, as if he understood.
‘And just out of interest, what is further on?’ he asked politely.
‘Why, Level Two, of course!’ said the being. ‘What you’ve been training for, back there in Level One. Oh, it’s a whole new ball game in there, mate, believe me!’
He frowned for a moment. He hadn’t considered there had been anything previous to this big white land, but now that he thought about it, he did seem to remember there being something before … . ‘Shoes,’ he thought to himself, ‘Shoes with a nice gold stripe. I wonder what shoes are?’ For some reason, this thought bothered him a little. But he decided to let it go. After all, he had enough to worry about at the moment.
‘But I can’t go on to Level Two, though?’ he asked, just to clear things up.
‘No, mate, ‘course you can’t!’ the being said, ‘It’d be an unfair advantage, wouldn’t it? With two of you in there, and all!’
‘Ah, I see. And I can’t go back to Level One, either. So, is there anywhere else I could go where I could be of service?’ he asked.
The being considered this.
‘We-ell,’ it said, slowly, ‘I do hear they’re rather understaffed back at The Beginning.’
‘The Beginning?’
‘Yeah, you know, where it all starts? I hear it’s a real shocker of a mess down there. It’s a bit outside the rules, but if you fancy it, maybe you could go back there and help out. Tidy things up a bit, sort of thing?’
He thought about it for a moment. It seemed reasonable.

< 12 >

‘Alright,’ he said, nodding, ‘If you think it would help.’
‘Oh, it’d help alright!’ the being said, ‘No question there! It’d help everyone! You’d be lending a hand where it’s wanted, and well, between you and me, The Beginning’s the best bit anyway! So probably good for you too, mate, actually.’
‘So we have a deal then?’ he asked happily, holding out his hand.
The being considered for a moment, then shook warmly.
‘Yes, mate!’ the being said, ‘We’ve got ourselves a big deal!’
The being snapped its large fingers. Abruptly, Quince felt the world begin to stream away backwards. Everything became faint.
But before it was lost entirely, the being called out to him.
‘Now, remember there’s no memory back at The Beginning!’ it was saying. ‘On account of there being no time! Don’t worry, in time it’ll all make sense! Oh and here, take this back with you.’ The being hurled something at him. He caught it. ‘That’s the life you rode in on, mate. Might as well find some use for it! I’m sure some Poor Soul will want it …’
And with that, the voice trailed away and was lost.

Quince stood, surveying his domain with satisfaction. For a moment, he felt a little odd, as if something was slightly out of phase with how things should be. He frowned to himself. He felt slightly … full. As if he had more substance than he should have. For a moment, he almost fancied he heard a strange – yet strangely familiar -voice echoing in his head. He puzzled at the feeling for a moment, but could not quite grasp it, and so let it go. It faded away like a dream.
He looked down. Ah yes. He was holding a life in his hands. How did this one end, he wondered? For some reason, he felt as if this life was important, somehow. It was as if it were tugging on him. He wondered why that might be. What could any one life contain that would make it more attractive to him than any other life?
He was just about to skim through it in an attempt to find out, when he noticed a client had arrived. He smiled brightly. He did love his job.
Putting the life to one side amid an infinite pile of other lives, he turned to face the Poor Soul.

< 13 >

‘So,’ he began cheerily, ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Oh, I’d like a life please,’ breathed the Poor Soul.
‘Would you, now?’ grinned Quince, grabbing a life from the pile, ‘Well, this is a most agreeable life, it ends quite spectacularly …’
‘The thing is,’ the Poor Soul interrupted him, ‘What was that life you were holding when I arrived … ?’

This short story was written by David Ensminger, you can also log on in this site to search for more short stories http://www.eastoftheweb.com

Teddy stood there in front of the door at the Flav-R-Rite canning factory watching the sun make her car look dirty and naked in the asphalt lot as the huge parking lights clicked off. The morning blue was hazy, as if it didn’t want to be blue at all. The glass in the door kept fogging up with her breath, but she didn’t move.
Arnold came up from behind her.
‘You wanna share these pretzels?’ he asked. ‘I just nabbed them from the vending machine.’
She didn’t turn at all, not even an inch. ‘Which one?’
‘I didn’t know there was more than one kind of pretzel,’ he said, looking at the bag with eyelids scrunched up.
She kept looking at her breathing coming and going on the glass. ‘Which vending machine?’
‘Ah, well, to tell you the truth. I snuck into the managers’ hallway and grabbed it from their machine. That one’s always full of stuff.’
‘That’s because they never eat from it, Arnie. They actually make money. They like to eat things that don’t have ten pounds of salt crammed into it.’
Arnold hovered a bit, turning the bag over, looking at the table of contents.
Teddy finally turned around. ‘Never mind, Arnold. Eat up, really. I’m just…waiting.’
‘I can’t finish em, so have some.’ He began pouring them into the rind-like contours of his palm.
‘What are you waiting for? Car don’t work?’
‘No.’ She turned around just as the blue began to gather some sense of itself. The parking lot began to look less shabby.
‘Car’s fine. I’m fine. Go ahead. Get out of here…’ She turned around. ‘You worked all night. Go on…’
‘Suit yourself. I see you eat plenty of French fries at the bowling alley.’ He dropped a few pretzels, looked at them ricochet off the pavement. He appeared satisfied with something as he pushed open the door, teetering a bit as he brought his hand up with the pretzels. He walked like there was an invisible bowling ball he was balancing between his rickety thighs.

< 2 >

Teddy held the door from slamming, then propped it open a bit.
‘Everything in that machine is months old, Arnie. The bosses don’t eat it, so no one bothers to change…’
Arnold kept talking and eating, walking and eating, dropping one here and there. As soon as he got his keys out, and the metal began to tinkle as the keys dangled down from his hand, he heard the brush rustle at the near end of the parking lot. He looked over to see what he thought was a dog. No, not a dog, it was too, well, it just wasn’t dog-like. It looked more unreal, if that makes any sense. It had a different kind of tension. Made its way through a spate of clearing, where a few half-starved trees poked out from the low lying weeds. Was it a coyote, here, next to the Flav-O-Rite processing plant, he thought. He never could get the full profile, just jabs of fur almost alight as the sun came over the bend.
Teddy stood there, watching him watch the animal, and wondered what kind of man he was when he wasn’t feeding himself fistful of pretzels or wheeling his cart around the factory floor, trying to sell cigarettes, Wringleys, even old Hustler trading cards. She wondered if he was the kind of guy who would stop by the Taboo Video on the way home, where her friend Kit worked, the pudgy one with eye glitter, and ask her about Star Wars toys or if she knew when the young kid might be in back in the video booths, the black kid who wore that damn nylon thing on his head and liked to please. One time Teddy was there the boss lady was even tweaking, and there was a different guy on the floor. Just laying there. The boss bought some of her Dad’s Playboys for 25 cents, had some stomach that just wouldn’t hide beneath her belt, and kept screwing her mouth up. But Teddy liked the way she called her ‘darling.’ She made enough money for the $3.00 breakfast down on Lancaster, in front of the bar with the pink sign that said, ‘Happy 30th B-Day Julie. It’s All Downhill from here!’ They can’t be for real, she thought, then eggs were inside her, warm and nuzzled by Coke. She always drank Coke for breakfast, something that her neighbor used to do before high school. He was a cool kid, played drums in a metal band called Armed Vision and played Dungeons and Dragons, but one that he had rigged up on his Atari computer. She tried to play his drums once, she ended up just following the damn singer, you know, boom boom boom. He said follow the beat. Teddy thought, this is the beat, isn’t it? He just shook his head after a few minutes, went to tell his mom there were fleas down there, so they better do something. Later, the bus with the band flipped over, and a mic stand went right through him, like he was butter with some random bones here and there.

< 3 >

The breaths started to seem like snowflakes mutating on the glass. Everyone else from the third shift had left already. She didn’t leave, she never wanted to leave. Well, right now. She felt like she could never be the kind of woman grandma called the Black Madonna, the kind that scrubs floors and knows the truth about men at jukeboxes. That knows why tattoos are a kind of vein that tell you that trouble is spelled with all kinds of colors, mostly faded. She liked men, men with baseball caps and even lip-rings. Yeah. That’s right, the kind Danny has shoved in his face. He could fix her car, well, change out the damn brakes, and even if they got stuck on the beach because he was too stupid and drove right up to the foam, he wasn’t stupid, because he just went up to some mom and dad, showed them a rope and said, ‘Let’s do this, can’t we folks?’ He was a good kid, her boss said, after he came and brought her Denny’s to-go for lunch. He’s a good kid, she said, knowing that she hated her other boyfriend in Hawaii, where he went to open a sunglass shack in a new mall. As if they needed another one, as if there weren’t sunglasses on every friggin block there. But, at least she got his truck, and when he wasn’t harassing her on Myspace for talking to friends, he could be sweet. Well, not sweet like Danny, but his own kind of sweet. ‘Kinda like getting hit by a truck load of gravel,’ her boss said, talking about Mr. Hawaii, ‘That’s not love, just a stupid excuse.’ She didn’t like her boss when her mouth webbed open like that, not at all. But that’s OK. I don’t have to like all people at all times, she thought.
Teddy moved forward, pressing her hands against the glass right under where her breath had clouded it. It felt like the side of a cue ball or tile floor. A bit of wind came in. ‘Thank god,’ a woman said, beside her suddenly, pushing it even further. She leaned over Teddy’s shoulder.
‘I needed to get some air, get a damn minute to breathe. You should hear them back there, rattling off how hard it is to be a woman and all that crap.’

< 4 >

She had short hair, but it didn’t make her look like a man, just made her cheeks look chiseled. Her eyes were big as gray green quarters, it seemed. For a minute, Teddy thought she’d seen the woman in the sub-basement store Wednesday morning, downstairs off the so-called Hollywood District, where the floors were uneven, and the place felt like a gray, surreal bunker under the pall of fluorescent bulbs and 50% off Baccarat crystal saxophones, heavy duty dented cookware, and smelly wicker baskets. Just being down there made her feel dizzy. And this woman seemed like the one…
‘You leavin’?’ she asked, twisting around her and jabbing the door wide open now, sticking one foot out with some lukewarm air of confidence.
‘Well, I’m done with my shift.’
‘So, what are you waiting for, an invitation?’ she replied.
‘No, just…’ Teddy’s words hit the end of her tongue and just walled up.
‘Waiting for your man, sweetie? He pickin’ you up today? Guys are always late. You can tell them, just come early, you know, wake your butt up early this time. Set the damn clock ahead ten minutes. Or don’t bother with the coffee, cause I don’t like it anyway, but they’re late anyway, huh?’
‘No one’s late. I’m just standing here, feeling kinda stupid.’
‘No man? Then you must have something waiting for you. Babies right? Don’t want go home to that right now. I get you…Know the feeling.’
‘It’s not that,’ Teddy shook her head and half-smiled, ‘I never got to that part yet.’
‘You ain’t got no babies? You gotta be thirty, girl, right?’
‘What’s that got to do with babies?’ Teddy wanted to laugh a little, but she was a bit sore instead.
‘I dunno. It seems like it’s just got everything to do with it. Nothing wrong with it, don’t get me wrong. Just want to get a bit of air, hang my head out here a second.’

< 5 >

Teddy felt guilty, not because she didn’t have any C-Section white scars running below in tiny skid marks, or because this woman was just plain getting in the way of this day, when the sun might clear her head and get the whole fuzz inside worked out, that tingle that seemed to come from the back of her neck and sit uncomfortably on the ride side all night, just a Styrofoam empty tingle. Coffee wouldn’t do it. This baby talk wouldn’t do it. It was like being back at Wal-Mart, working at the pharmacy counter, all the old people smelling like oatmeal and old feet, fumbling with their cards, asking her the weirdest questions. Well, the guys mostly. Did you work at the downtown location? Was she having a long day? Those were the ones easy to blow off, just smile half-robot like, but then they’d get weirder as the night dragged on. One guy came up to her, and it wasn’t like he looked different, or that he had a boll weevil freak kind of approach. He looked dead-on dad, just khaki and sweater kind of humdrum everyday guy, but then he leaned forward and said, ‘You know how to fight the devil, right?’
Teddy just looked at him, not baffled, just lazy and half-hearted.
‘No, but can I help you?’
‘Fight the devil?’
For about two seconds she thought about Motley Crue. Fight the devil, was that their second album? Wait, the album her brother Wade always swore was the metal masterpiece of the 1980s; the CD cover had some red and black devil sign looking thing on it.
‘No, you have a prescription to pick up?’ she asked.
‘I’m more concerned about the devil than my blood pressure.’ He put both elbows on the counter, put his hands up and in his hair, cracked his neck as he jostled it side to side. One finger slipped down and bumped his glasses.
‘Blood pressure medicine is very important. You should be regular about it. Just tell me your last name.’ She tried to remain in the zone of ‘nice’ but felt like just turning around and waiting on the car window, where someone had just pulled up and placed an order in the sliding slot.

< 6 >

‘I’ll tell you how to fight the devil. Just go up to him and say, ‘Get the hell out of here before I shove you up my anus where you belong.”
Did he say that, she questioned herself. Did he just say that, to me?
Then the woman at the factory half-closed the door.
‘Watch it,’ she said. ‘I know where you’re coming from. I’m from the 1970s you know, when kids were like, I dunno, considered crib monkeys or something. In high school, that’s what they’d say in the bathroom, ‘Better take the pill cause you don’t want no tit leeches,’ and we’d laugh, knowing the boys would probably have a heart attack if they heard us.’ She smiled, brushed hair away from her eyebrows. ‘Guys are all alligator skin, but when it comes to babies, they melt like soap. Well, some run, I guess, but some just get that dad kind of high, that cave man thing…’
‘I got to go now.’ Teddy slipped out the door, nudging the woman, feeling her jostle in the mid-section.
Teddy walked the parking lot thinking about Danny. He didn’t even drink coffee or Coke. He just seemed like a never ending boy. He actually drank milk. So weird, she thought, who drinks milk, in a glass, from top to bottom?
She was almost to her car and opening the door when she knew that she needed to remove something from the trunk. Hesitating, she flicked her fingernails against the window, making deadened little pitter patter sounds. The nearby trees and gray mashed potato clouds filled the reflection in the glass, though a brief sun glare almost washed it all away in a sharp blaze. She turned, looked at the back of the car, then looked across the parking lot, eyeing the yellow lines that darted here and there.
She didn’t want to go back in there, but she knew she should, knew she had to, to get her mind unblocked.
Turning far enough sideways that her hips felt a dull ache, she could see the woman at the door finally leave the foyer and disappear into the building that stuck out like Legos for nearly a quarter mile. Nothing but a few dwarf shrubs trying to make it look half-way hospitable.

< 7 >

She made herself go to the trunk, go to that keyhole that had been scratched until it looked like faint silver varicose veins. She stood right up on top of it, watching her shirt blow a bit, skimming the discolored metal.
She opened it, but didn’t let her mind cling to anything, because every time she thought about what she was thinking, she felt undone.
It opened with a quick squeal, metal on metal, and there it was, like nothing more than a sandwich or water bottle. But it was a gun.
Fear did not sit under her skin. This was Indian land, she thought. Guns settled it, though disease did most of the grunt work. In high school, the lesson came like a slap in the face: The tribes moved from place to place, ate the bulbous roots of a spry blue flower, made sounds that had no place in white language, even chewed on slugs and wasps’ nests when the hazelnuts weren’t underfoot. She was Indian…well, her grandpa married an Indian in the hills of Wisconsin, but all she knew about being an Indian was playing the slot machines. God, what have we done to this place, she thought. The hops farms, blueberry farms, and peach orchards were a kind of netting covering everything, except the giant cottonwood she loved, by the lake, with the robins the mosquitoes loved to bite. It stood just like the statue of Blackhawk down on the river bank, so unshakeable. Lincoln had been in the Blackhawk Wars, she knew, picturing Instructor Schulz fumbling with the chalk. He had seen the dead bodies, he knew the white people had the guns on their side. Now, she had the gun on her side.
She felt as though she was shouldering the weight of the world, but the weight was measured in ounces of broken bits of concrete, all scrambled in her head. She wanted to fold away the voice in her head, the one that said, ‘I never should have gone to the pawn shop,’ where the fat man stood like a giant cardboard box, just useless, really. It was like the bumper that pressed up against her knee was the nudge of a lover telling her, ‘You should have been kissing me.’

< 8 >

The gun had shown up like something unchangeable in her life, something steady.
Some kids were going to Utah on the highway, in a van, or so she thought as she glanced up, imagining a swimming pool, janitors hanging around the bathroom with cans of Lysol, boys urinating on coals. Television. 8 Ball. Stale bread smudged up on hooks to catch those carp. That bogus magic of ranch homes and pot lucks and fried Twinkies, each held up like a cup of light to prisoners like her.
I’m telling you, she felt cold then, inside that body, behind that face that was not hers. Not the one she was going to become, but did become, because she could not salvage that half of her brain that made her answer the right questions at the right time. She couldn’t get the wiring straight, until now, facing that gun. Knowing how her muscles were ready to inhale this moment, she was ready to head back in, see the boss.
‘Got a flat or something?’ It was Arnie, with half his window rolled down. He must have pulled up near her from the backside of the lot. She figure that by this time he’d by eating his Hi-Hoes, drinking a lukewarm cup of coffee, and smoking cigarettes in the parking lot of his apartment complex called Pine Lakes, though there was only a drainage ditch and no pines left.
She was surprised he made his way back to her. Not taken aback in a way that would make her slam the door, raise up on her toes, or feel the rash of sweat, but just worried that she had been so dumb not to make sure he was gone, really gone, and not slinking around like men do when they don’t seem to get what they want. ‘They’re so needy,’ she thought.
Arnold was not going away. He wasn’t going to do anything until she had one drink with him, until the waitress would look at them, until the cook with the tattoo tear and crucifix on his chest made something resembling breakfast.

< 9 >

Arnie’s whole life seemed like regurgitated honky-tonk song to her, just like the whole factory seemed like an invitation that said, ‘You will never know anything.’ It didn’t make her feel scarred, like it was some kind of leprosy, but it didn’t make things easy for her, for she would wake up without caring if she could dangle her foot down and touch the floor. The same days when the moon fell behind the last wall of trees and dawn only delivered up this naked dirt of living.
‘No, Arnie.’
‘Then get what you need to get, and come have a beer with me. C’mon, this morning needs a good laugh, and I don’t wanna start watching TV yet, and you know how I can’t sleep. I’ll jab your ear off tomorrow, telling you how missed…’
‘Arnie…’ She closed the trunk, turned towards him, though her hand was still pressed down on the metal.
She remembered that the grip of the gun made her feel as if she had finally arrived somewhere, but she couldn’t get to it. Like Jerusalem for some people, it was just too far away. Arnie’s words felt like wet napkins. The highway looked anemic. She folded away his voice, put it in a jar, and placed it on a shelf.
‘Get going. I’ll be there. Warm the grill.’ She put a smile to work on her face, kind of a half-glum one, one falsely stretched into a curve, as if there wasn’t much wattage to lift it. She didn’t want to remember the time she went home with him, out of some misplaced pity, and touched him. He seemed so….pulverized. She remembered slipping, in a minute of total boredom and half-cooked empathy, her hand between his legs and feeling his penis, which felt like the tofu that one of her boyfriends asked her to make. He wanted more, wanted kisses that made her question the very existence of penises, those appendages that stuck out like lumpy, shapeless fingers when they were soft. She had gone down for a minute, but when a smell like soap and wet clay lifted into her nostrils, she just gave it a tap, tenderly, and said, ‘I’m not your girlfriend.’

< 10 >

He rolled down his window further. ‘Huh? You mean warm the seat? Cause I can’t go back there and just…’
‘Yeah, warm it. I’ll be right behind. Well, you know, let me have a cigarette. Then I’ll be there.’
He smiled, then moved across the parking lot, barely whirring in his old Ford. It was like finally hearing the music end. That undisturbed minute clung to her.
She looked at the factory, at the doors, at the ridge just to the left with just a sliver of snow remaining in the light. How did people speak before they could figure out what they wanted to say, she thought. She walked down the line of cars, letting her hand clip each with a sound that reminded her of a computer keyboard, the ones she’d thought she would train on before every boy thought she should be barefoot and pregnant instead. Boys, god, all the things they do in the name of sex and love. All the mental whiplash they unleash just to get your pants down, she thought. She wondered what it was like before microwaves and trailer parks.
That’s when she reached the front door. No one was there. The lights were gray inside. The candy machine looked like a red statue with a robot head. She then turned around back towards her car, felt a breath fill her lungs.
‘It’s not the end of the world,’ she thought, looking through her purse to find the keys. Maybe she should just go the library annex, where the books were little more than a quarter, in the old wing that still felt like 1960. She liked to flip through the books there. When she was a kid, when her brother would go straight for the monster books and Hardy Boys, she would look at the travel books, ones splayed with full color photos. Now, she liked the fiction, but not just anything. She would read the first page, then the last, to see if anything rippled or pulled her in. This drove her mom crazy. ‘Why in the heck do you do that,’ she’d say, peeking around the corner with an armful of books that looked like soft-core porn more than a story. ‘What’s the point of reading the damn thing if the ending’s all given away?’

< 11 >

No, she thought, to hell with that. It may be the end, but the words between count for something. Actually, they mean the most.
But she didn’t want to go to the annex, she didn’t want to go get mom, and she really didn’t want to get near Arnie right now, and she didn’t know what to do with the gun, but knowing it was there made her feel both breathless and important.
She sat down in her car, smoked until the ashen curlicues hung a minute before slipping out the window.
The sky was cleft by zigzagging geese of some kind, maybe from Canada. She had been there once, through the locks of Sault St. Marie, up north of Michigan, then she went to the mall in London. Dad thought it was so uncanny that there were two Londons, and since there was no way in the hell he could buy a plane ticket to London, then driving the old Chevy Malibu to a mall in Ontario had to be the next best thing, right? She bought a Metallica tape for her boyfriend, ate some Chinese food. It tasted the same as down in town.
But this made her tired, thinking of Dad, thinking of men, and sleep came down on her. A good sleep, the kind she had been dreaming of for weeks. The last thing she remembered seeing was the image of the scrubbed, white metal factory glinting in the front window. Then the sleep came. The kind that comes from the aftermath of peace, of not knowing what would come next.