Archive for Thursday Short Stories

My Funeral

By jsomers | January 10, 2013 | 4 Comments

My Funeral

By Jeff Somers

I died young. Like a sucker. I bought the ticket and never got to finish the ride. I was twenty-eight and I stepped into the street looking at my watch and got hit by a Mister Softee Ice cream Truck. It took me a few minutes to realize I was dead, that I wasn’t just paralyzed or stunned or hallucinating, that I wasn’t going to stand up and make a joke and buy everyone ice cream. The driver sat on the bumper and cried over me, which touched me in an odd place I wasn’t familiar with, until I remembered that she was the bitch who’d smacked into me going forty-five in a twenty-five zone, doing her makeup or tuning the radio or searching the horizon for children in desperate need of a chocolate shake. Whatever. She killed me, I killed myself, please keep your head and arms inside the safety cage at all times or we’re not responsible for the mess you’re mangled body will make.

There I was, lying on the hot New York City pavement with the ticket stub still in one hand.

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Categories: Fiction, Free Short Stories, Thursday Short Stories

Where the Boom Bands Play

By jsomers | November 17, 2011 | 1 Comments

If anyone’s interested, here is the short story I read at The Tandem Reading Series last Sunday:

Where the Boom Bands Play

by Jeff Somers

I stared out at the snow as it rained down, big fluffy kernels of white swirling around, a miserable, cold sort of damp trapped inside just waiting for me to go out in my thick corduroy pants and slip and fall on my ass to trigger it, free it so it could settle into my bones and ruin me. I looked back down at the newspaper, reading the same line I’d read four or five times already: sources inside the police department confirm multiple Santas in costume were part of the. I read it again, liking the sound of it: sources inside the police department confirm multiple Santas in costume were part of the. I couldn’t remember what the rest of the story had been about, and glanced up at the top of the column, but the story’s beginning was on page 34 and I didn’t feel like hunting back through the pages in search of it.

I sipped my coffee and spluttered; it had gone cold. I got up to dump it in the sink and see if there was any more in the pot.

Louise said something, but I didn’t catch it. Louise had taken to mumbling, her words slurring past too slickly for me to catch hold. I grunted something noncommittal in response, trying to appear engaged and interested. When Louise felt ignored she became unmanageable, so I had long ago learned to never admit I wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t say anything else.

The kitchen faucet was old, original to the house, and dripped constantly. We usually kept a little plastic bowl in the sink, with a paper towel in it, to catch the drips and stop them from making too much noise. At night, if we forgot it, the noise was unbelievably annoying, and I lay there for hours until I finally gave up and got up to pad across the freezing floor and replace the little plastic dish. We would eventually have to replace the faucet, of course, but we dreaded the idea. We were broke. Even a small plumber’s bill might sink us.

I took my cup back to the table, blinking in the glaring light of the sun coming in through the windows, and sat down, picking up the newspaper again. I’d lost my place. Sipping lukewarm, over-sugared tea I scanned the pages, shivering. The heat wasn’t working. Between that and the dripping faucet I knew I was supposed to hate our apartment, but I loved it. I loved it more the worse things got,. It was ours, given to Louise by her Uncle decades ago when he’d died. The taxes were all we owed on it and while it was just four rooms and an ancient, rusty bathroom it was ours and I loved it. I was proud of the way we’d fixed it up cheaply, with thrift store furniture and sale paint from the hardware store—when people complained about a color match the store put the gallons of paint on sale for five bucks, as-is. I was proud of the way we’d maximized the small space and made it work for us.

I looked back down at the newspaper. Valentine’s Day had been a bust for florists this year. Why anyone needed to know that—beyond florists and, I supposed, economists, I didn’t know, but there it was on page three. I raised my cracked yellow mug and took a scalding sip of coffee, spewing the lava-like liquid everywhere as I leaped back from the table, cursing.

Louise was standing in the bathroom doorway, just looking at me. I turned to her with my arms spread to invite sympathy for my coffee-stained shirt and burned tongue, but she just stared at me with an odd, quiet expression on her face.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She blinked at me slowly. “Are you joking?”

I frowned. Louise was amazing sometimes. “Of course not!”

She just shook her head and turned away.

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Categories: Fiction, Free Short Stories, Thursday Short Stories, Writing

The Unappeasable Host

By jsomers | October 6, 2011 | 1 Comments

This was originally publish in Bare Bone #5.

The Unappeasable Host

by Jeff Somers

IT WAS hot, was all he knew. Hotter than he’d ever imagined it possible, dozing on a couch in his apartment, sullenly sweaty when the city temperature hit eighty. Eighty! He prayed for eighty degrees, now. He thought it must be at least 125 degrees. He thought he must be melting, slowly, some horrible former man, running away like candle wax. He supposed he was knee-deep in culture and ought to be absorbing something meaningful, but all he knew was that he was hotter than he’d ever been in his life. He didn’t think there were numbers to describe the amount of kinetic energy in the air.
He swabbed his forehead with a rag and stared around at the rest of the group. He was on an elephant. The whole tour group was riding the huge beasts. They smelled, he thought, like rotten beef jerky.

“Where are we going again?”

Pong, their guide, turned his small, tan head slightly, and said something in his language of marble-mouthed vowels. Then he turned away again. “We go to visit the Hill Tribes.” he said. “These people still live by ancient tradition.”

These people still live by begging from tourists, he thought icily.

In the tour literature, this part of the trip had seemed admirably fascinating. Over beers and burgers with his friends, that part had seemed the best part. On elephants! In the jungle! Visiting tribes that clung to thousand-year-old ways and rules!
He looked around sourly. He was melting onto an elephant and would have the pungent scent of sweated-on rotten beef jerky following him into the afterworld. He swatted at flies and took a drink from his water bottle, wishing he’d stayed in the hotel today, played sick, and just laid on his bed with the ceiling fan on high, misering his strength.

The other members of the tour seemed to be enjoying themselves, as far as he could tell. He didn’t see how it was possible, but they were chatting and laughing, awkwardly perched on their own elephant couriers. An elderly woman noticed him looking at them all and waved.

“Having fun, Harry?” she called out.

He managed a small smile and waved back. “Can’t wait to meet the Hill People!” he sang back, thinking She’s fucking eighty years old and she’s bouncing along on an elephant in 1000-degree heat. She’s senile. When he was eighty, he planned to spend most of his energy devising new ways to get things from the fridge without getting up from his bed. Still, he had to admit, privately, that she was amazing. She looked fifty, and had more energy than most of the others, who were all easily forty years younger. Her enthusiasm, though, annoyed him. He just wanted to go home, and it felt like she was single-handedly pushing them all forward, into the Hills, carrying ridiculous gifts for the beggar children who would swarm them.

“Christ,” he whispered to himself. “I’ll bet a game’s on channel five back home, right now.”

Pong turned to grin at him. “You want to go home, Mr. Harris?”

Mistah Harrie, he pronounced it. Harry still couldn’t tell if their guide was making fun of him or was just having trouble with consonants. He gave him a neutral look and shook his head. Pong was smart, so Harry suspected he was being made fun of. He knew he had a reputation as the dead weight of the group, the sourpuss. It embarrassed him, because the trip had cost so much, and so much effort had gone into its planning – to come and be so thoroughly unhappy made him feel like a whiner, especially since he was alone in his unhappiness. That had made him grit his teeth and stick with it -though he could have simply kept his hotel and plane reservations and left the tour. That would have meant more money after what he’d spent on the tour, though.

“I’m just as happy here.” he asserted to Pong, who nodded amiably and turned around.

Harry sagged in the saddle behind their guide. Elephants! He hadn’t expected elephants, though everyone said it was right there in the brochure. He supposed it had been. It didn’t mean he’d expected it.

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Categories: Free Short Stories, Thursday Short Stories