Portfolio of Short Stories

                                                Memoir.

            I remember waking up to complete black. My house was freezing cold, and my sheets were at the foot of my bed, as usual; I sleep like I’m attacking someone. Considering the power was out, the only light in my room was the nauseatingly white light of my east-facing window. I couldn’t figure out why the window was so bright, until I decided to get out of bed, despite my room being a virtual ice-chest. Apparently in the last 7 hours, it had snowed one and a half feet and kept coming. Since I live in suburban New York, snowplows do not come until the snow lets up, in order to save money and time. I had always loved snow, and snow days, but what completely changed on this particular morning, was that it was October.  Not only was it October, but also it was Halloween.  Now there were two things wrong with this image, and they will always be wrong to me: Halloween is cancelled, and how the hell did it snow this early in the year. I was born in Michigan, where it was expected to snow on Thanksgiving, but never Halloween. New York tends to wait whenever it comes to snowfall.

Life becomes infinitely more difficult when you actually have places to go, and no way of getting there. I had just gotten my license a few weeks earlier, but with this much snow I knew I had to be cautious. I called my friend and, current crush, Aleksandra to see if she was free to go to the movies, since it was the only thing close to me that had power and wouldn’t kill me to drive to. This month of this year in movies will always perplex me; there was not one Halloween or scary movie in theatres. I wanted to dress up as a vampire, not because I liked the idea of being one, but more because I wanted to one up Aleksandra, who was also being a vampire. It doesn’t matter what movie we saw, because it wasn’t worth mentioning. It was rife with puns, that, while it was a bad movie, it was an okay experience. The snow managed to clear up, and school started again, and for the first time in the long time, I was glad there was no snow.

Zaq Schlanger

                                                            Colin

            Colin stood about six feet tall, but slouched to the point where he was a full five or so inches shorter than that. He was a bit heavier than most of his friends, but other than some fat on his stomach, he wasn’t at all fat. His eyes were sunken into his head and he had bags under his eyes like someone who hadn’t slept. His elbows drawn toward his ribs, making his shoulders considerably pointier than they would be if he would only hold his arms correctly. He held his hands like a predatory dinosaur, with his fingers like talons.  His feet pointed out like a penguin’s, and his knees pointed out in a similar fashion.  His hair was a mess of dirty blonde, which was always tamed by a black and yellow beanie. His eyes fit in with this illusion that he was always tired, in that they were often just barely open. However he occasionally opened them wide as if he was trying to stay awake but was just his way of exercising them. He had a pretty severe under bite, but it wasn’t severe enough to be a distinguishing feature, just enough to notice. He had a nervous habit of biting his knuckles, and occasionally and banging them against his teeth slowly. He did the even when he wasn’t nervous, but more so whenever his hands weren’t busy.

            He always wore loose, grey sweatshirts, and baggy jeans. He always made and unintentional entrance, due to the heaviness of his steel toed boots. Under his hoodies he often wore plain t-shirts, so he was never anyone who kept your visual interest for more than a few seconds. 

            Overall, he never made much of an impression when in public, considering that he kept his head down, and never made much noise. However, when he spoke, mostly only to his close friends, or when someone managed to get him angry, he spoke with incredible conviction. His words were like shards of glass, cutting the air and breaking the calm. His eyes light up and there is a sudden burst of energy from his formally tired eyes. Every word that comes out of his mouth is intelligent and well thought out, and for a boy with such a tired face and slouched posture, he gives a completely different impression. When he is angry, his teeth are bared and his eyes become shadowed, no one approaches him when he is angry.

           

                                    What Happens Outside the Table, Stays…

            Quiet. All of this started with quiet. Nothing seemed wrong earlier today, nor had it ever seemed wrong.

I sat under the dining room table; I liked the shade and the privacy. When I’m under the table, I feel special, alone, I feel like I’m in my own world, and that the outside world cannot affect me. The silence, my silence, was broken by a knock on the front door. Footsteps followed suit. The door creaks; no one fixes anything in this house. But I don’t hear a creak; I hear a slam, and a crash. I hear my mother scream “Declan, CALL THE POLICE!”

 I see my mother’s slippered feet fly by me, and three pairs of black clothed legs wearing heavy boots chase after. I can’t see where they go, but I can hear my mother yelling and screaming for my father, with no response back. I hear the set of four foot steps rush towards me again, my mother was fast, but she was breathing heavily and one of her slippers had fallen off when she ran past me the first time. The three sets of boots run towards my hiding spot, and I realized my mother had stopped running and was standing to my left near the family room entrance. “What are you doing here, why us?” Silence.

Then what seemed like an hour, but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds later, one of the sets of legs calmly strides towards the same side as my mother; the rubber and steel sole placing pressure on the floorboards caused a very strange “thump-squeak, thump-squeak” as the legs walk by.  I cannot tell what is going on, but there is silence again. I hear a sort of shallow thud, and a restrained choke, followed by a strangely quiet gurgle. It sounded like someone poured a gallon of orange juice on the floor, as I see my mother’s blood soaked body topple down to my level as her cranium hits the ground. Her neck has an enormous gash from side to side and her eyes are empty. One of the set of legs begins to squat down and I see the beginning of a face. I have never seen this man before. His face is spattered with freshly drawn blood and with a crooked smile and wide eyes he says “oops”.

                                                Personal Philosophy

            When I wake up every morning, I am driven by the thought that I will learn something new. The idea that I will be shoving a new piece of information into my head, especially one that will prove useful, brings meaning and motivation to my day.  My life sort of revolves around the idea that I will keep learning new skills, in order to make myself more useful, and satisfied with myself. Besides  the drive to learn new things, I also try to make my life fun and carefree when I can, such as never giving up on my childhood, and making seemingly impulsive decisions. In reality, I think over everything I do for hours to months at a time, and very few of my decisions are impulsive. The only time I can be impulsive is when I know that I will not risk anything I care about in the process, and that I will either A) have fun or B) learn something valuable. 

            At the end of the day, I lay back and think over all that I have learned, all that I heard or saw, and repeat it in my head, in order to keep it fresh and imprinted in my mind.  Intense thinking and learning make me feel completely satisfied, and when I am able to share what I have achieved, I feel an even larger sense of fulfillment. The famous Latin phrase “cogito ergo sum” is part of the way that I live.

            Thinking is the most powerful thing that we have, and it is what makes every person so special. I do not follow any religion, and this has helped me with my personal journey and the way that I live my life day by day.  I feel that when we can think, and create, we are most powerful, and it is when I am most powerful. My drive to learn makes me constantly think over situations in new ways, and helps me solve problems. 

            The most important aspect of my philosophy, when it comes to learning, is knowing how to learn in the first place. I have taught myself many things and this has made me who I am today. It has built my will power up to new levels, where anything that I try hard doing, I can achieve. Life is full of new things to learn, and new people to teach.

                                                            Porcelain Skin

            The stairs that lead to the basement creak, even if only a mouse climbs them. There is single light bulb mounted in the center of the ceiling. When you go to turn on the light, it flickers and seems as though it is about to die. The basement is dusty and warm; warmer than most basements. There is the unforgettable smell of charred wood in the air, but no fire flickers in the fireplace. A slight knocking carries through the air; it could be mice. There is a ragged brown carpet in the middle of the room, with a slightly darker brown border that is about 6-inches wide.

            Against the wall, under a very small barred window, there sits a very simple workbench with cups of water and paintbrushes. There is also a rack, much like a coat tree, of freshly porcelain doll heads. Directly above the table, there are tools mounted on a pegboard; Knives, rope, clay cutting tools, as well as a few small clay shaping tools. Above the fireplace, sit seven porcelain dolls; their eyes glistening from the singular light bulb. One is leaned over, with all of its hair over its face, as if it’s hiding. Two of them have their hair in pigtails. Something about the hair is eerie, it seems too real. All of them have delicately painted black lips and white faces, warmed only by the hint of pink blush. The fireplace enclosure is made of old brick, while the slightly protruding chimney appearing to be concrete, like the rest of the walls; a few slight cracks litterthe surface. The knocking comes again, less rhythmic than before, more of a pounding… louder.  Mounted right above the opening to the fireplace, there is a medium sized corkboard, with a spider web of red yarn connecting photos to newspaper articles, those connected to smaller papers. One of these pieces of paper appears to be a fortune from a cookie, and every line of yarn connects to this one piece of paper: “Perfection is in the eye of the beholder” There is one strand of blue yarn that connects a picture of a girl to a small bundle of hair.

             To the direct right of the fireplace, there is a large metal door. The knocking becomes a pounding, becomes impossible to ignore. A scream rings from behind the door, which shakes the padlock that keeps it locked tight.

                       

     

(Photo credit: Garden of Dolls)

                                                The Forest of Silence

            “Where the hell am I?” a young female voice said from behind a tree.

The sky and forest surrounding the source of this voice were pure white, and the ground was blanketed in thick black snow. The snow also fell lazily from the sky, silently covering the already dark ground.

            “You’re where I live, and where you will live too” spoke a voice with no origin point.

            “You didn’t answer my question though,” said the voice of the girl, who now stepped out from behind a tree. She had shoulder length brown hair and fair skin. Her green eyes stood out from both her hair, and the white forest.

            “You have arrived at your permanent home, the place where all souls must wander for eternity” spoke the same voice, except this time it emanated from a figure dressed in an all black suit, with a hood over his head.

            “That sure as hell sounds like I’m dead, and I’m pretty fucking sure I didn’t die!”

            “And what makes you sure you’re not dead, do you remember how you got here?”

            “…No, I don’t. But. I can’t be dead; how did I die?”

            “Do you want me to remind you? A death should never be forgotten” The hooded figure’s mouth was slightly visible. His chin was as white as the light all around and a slight smirk could be seen.

“But this isn’t what’s supposed to happen, where are the angels, where are all the smiling faces of my family…Where is my mom…” The teenage girl’s voice declined in tone and volume, almost completely fading away, her throat choking out the words.

            “You lived your life believing fairy tales, your Sundays spent in high roofed congregations, shoving money into the hands of storytellers. There is no happy ending, but there is no sad one either. There is only bleakness, quiet. You will gain peace, but you will not see another soul for the rest of eternity.” The hooded figure directly addressed the girl as he walked towards her slowly, the snow impossibly undisturbed behind him.

            “If I’m really dead, how did I die, you offered to tell me…”

            “You couldn’t find peace of mind, your head was filled with darkness, and you gave up. You let your blood wash away, down the drain, like your life. The dark snow falling is meant to be your mistakes, blanketing your purity.”