Refracted Neurons

Picture by Eryn Nikkole , edited with Photogrid He sat under the bridge, waiting.  On days when it rained, the water would pool up around his feet, seeping through his toes, wrapping his legs in coolness.  When he was tired, he would lean against the abutment and stillness would slide into his mind. One day, the decking above him creaked, the piles shifting as someone thumped their way across the bridge.  Just as soon as they reached the other side, they turned around and did it again.  So alarmed was he, that he climbed over the parapet to see what was causing the racket.  It was a grey satyr, pipe in hand, her hooves clicking as she skipped. “Stop skipping across my bridge or it will fall into the water,” he felt one of the boards on the decking, found it loose. “But Troll, have you heard the sound the boards make as I trip across them?” the satyr demonstrated. “Stop that!”  Now that he was on the bridge he could feel it shimmy and roll, “We’...

It's that time of year again; time to clear out all the drafts that sit hang around my blog.  I'm going to do this stream of conscious style, so grab your bongo drums and snap your fingers: ????????????????????? You ever have that dream? You know, the one where the motorcycle tries to run over you?   Well, maybe it’s just me, then.   When I was young, I used to have this dream a lot.  There were two immediate problems in this dream: 1. I was laying in the street and 2. I couldn’t move.  If you’ve ever experienced in-dream paralysis, you know what I’m talking about. Maybe because of this, I’ve always been afraid that when there’s a crisis, I will do nothing.  Up until now, I’ve always reassured myself with the thought that my adrenaline will kick in and spur me into action.  But apparently, that’s not always the case. I have a bad habit of placing holds on library books and then completely forgetting that I was ever intereste...

As she left the conference room, all Gina allowed herself to think was that the office smelled of peppermint and pine.  She slunk back to her cube, glad it was tucked into the corner.  “Too many errors,” she thought, logging back onto her computer, “Not good enough.”  Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she visualized a tree with a candy-striped trunk. “The Holiday Party is starting,” Mayra called out.  From Gina’s perspective, she looked like a disembodied head framed in grey curls, floating above the cubical wall. Gina slid down in her chair as Mayra’s shoes clicked across the floor, a flurry of managers shuffling behind with their notepads and tablets.  Gina watched them, her eyes drawn as always to Dalton, who moved with a peculiar march-step. “He’s a cyborg, you know.” The voice made Gina jump. “Like in a legal sense, like fifty-plus-one percent robot,” Jaime dropped a stack of envelopes on Gina’s desk, “Can you mail these to my client l...

“You are lovely,” he said, “Like a just opened flower kissed with dew.” Regina stood on the threshold, the light from her lamp forming a pool around her feet.  She held it behind her skirts as if the light itself could become tainted by the scene in front of her. “The most lovely?” Eirwen leaned on her broom “The fairest one of all,” Horace leaned towards Eirwen, the firelight casting his face in sharp shadows.  He was aging, just as Regina was, the plump of his cheek indented by a hollow, the line of his smile marked with creases. Regina backed away from the room.  Horace’s words hurt, but Eirwen’s cut her heart straight from her chest.  Eirwen, who she had taken into her home.  Eirwen, who she had treated as a daughter. Pulling on her cloak, Regina unlatched the outer door.  Snow blew in drifts, so white that it seemed to glow even in the darkness.  “Fair,” she thought, “like Eirwen’s skin.”  Regina shivered as she stepped out in...

One of the things I love about living in the city is that there are always plenty of weirdos around. Or to quote Jane Jacobs, who says it much more eloquently: Yesterday I hadn’t even made it out of the bus tunnel before I was pondering the meaning of life. What is this world? This frantic energy? This thing that is neither harmonica nor keyboard? Thanks to the internet, I can at least answer one of those questions: If you cross a Casio keyboard with a harmonica, you get a Melodica. It’s not melodic, so I’m not sure why they didn’t go for “harmoboard,” which is at least accurate. Anyway, I almost turned around and went back in the bus tunnel to tip this person, but I couldn’t stop giggling. . . . . I’ve had a bit of a lull in writing lately, but I think I’m finally on the right track for a novella I’ve been trying to work on.

Admittedly, I have not had the best of luck lately. So I was more than a little surprised when I opened the cover of a book I had picked up at Goodwill and found signatures. At first, I thought it was the usual, “To So-and-so, thanks for all the good times on the lake,” or just a string of nonsense letters and numbers. That’s what’s usually in second-hand books. It’s pretty rare for people to write their own name in the flyleaf, which I always do if I plan to loan it out. Anyway, it took me a minute to realize that the book was signed, not by the author, but by the relatives of the woman in the book. Luck glanced at me from the corner of his eye and grinned. I’ve read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks before, a friend loaned it to me. Since then, I always knew I’d pick up a copy if I ran into one. I’m crazy about non-fiction, especially medical non-fiction. One of the things I always wondered about was how Henrietta’s family felt about the book after it was published. The ...

“Ooooooh Veeeera, why are you still here?” Tracy walked by Vera’s cube, a white coffee mug in one hand. “I’m working on the report that you need on Monday,” Vera spun in her chair to face him, “You know, the one you didn’t ask for until it was 3:30 PM on the night before Thanksgiving.” Tracy lifted his mug as if he were about to toast her, “You can do it on Monday, as long as it’s on my desk by eight.” “I’m not coming in at six in the morning on a post-holiday Monday.  I’ll just get it done tonight,” Vera turned her back towards Tracy.  There was no point in arguing with him, he always won.  She continued working, setting up different fields and writing queries.  She was so immersed in her work, that a sudden movement off to her left startled her.  Caught off guard, Vera jerked, her hand connecting with a coffee mug. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, the flash of Tracy’s blonde curls, the tidal wave of coffee cresting the lip of the mug, and...