We were heading up to Wisconsin for vacation, and when we turned onto the highway, I happened to notice the clouds - massive cotton balls licking their way across the big summer sky. Whenever I see clouds like that, it reminds me of being a kid; of staring out the window on road trips to the city, of lying on trampolines or warm July grass, of skidding to a halt on my Huffy atop the big hill in our neighborhood.

     There's a necessary loss that occurs when you grow up and take on the burdens of responsibility, and the consequence is that our wonder, awe, and imagination begin to dissolve around the hard edges of life. It's lamentable, but as the Mandalorian once said, This is the way.

     A part of me would want nothing more than to go back - not to change anything, but simply to relive and enjoy. But eternal adolescence is a fantasy, a warning on display as much as in the story of Peter Pan as in boomer basements bursting with adult children*. But back to the question at hand. Why does a certain type of cloud whisk me back to my childhood? I think the answer is quite simple.

     Because children spend a good deal more time looking up into the sky.

 

     

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By Wulf Moon

 

 

     Grandpa’s dead.

     Mom is coming.

     And all I can think is that she promised. I was ten, and Mom promised she would return from Luna in one year.

     One.

     Not three.

     A boy remembers those kinda things when it’s the last words your mom says before she spreads her wings like a June bug and flies off to the Moon on a shuttle.

     Chance of a lifetime. Job that’ll change our future. Because she can go to Norden Moonbase to grow her low-G microcrystals.

     Now I’m thirteen and here she is, draped in black, sitting in Grandma’s creaking rocker in the old family farmhouse in Osseo, Wisconsin. My home now. The only thing that could bring Mom down?

     Grandpa’s funeral.

     Not her kid.

     She stops rocking. I know she’s my mom, but it’s a stranger looking at me. Her perfume fills the room with strange spice smells. I reach for my inhaler, stop. I doubt she even knows I have asthma, or why would she put it on so thick? She perches on the edge of the chair, tears spilling down her face. I cough a little. Squirm on the couch. Look down at my wrist band as time taps its hollow beat from the living room’s oak clock, black with age.

     I’m not used to women crying—Grandma never cries. Mom brought me the new Flashpoint zip band with the chameleon skin. Can hardly tell it’s on my wrist. I wonder if her new chips are inside as I clip through Rok-Bok vids. Dudes doing aerial jumps with Dynexa turboboosters are insane. Must have nothing to lose, because a bookoo of these sledge-heads have kissed the tombstones.

     “Mark, stop scrolling, I’ve got something important to ask.”

     I tap Freeze, but it’s my heart that’s ice.

     “That’s better. Look at me, Marcus. This is important.”

     I look up, say nothing.

     “I can transfer to another lab, not go back up to Luna. I’ve fulfilled my residency clause—no penalty now.”

     Here we go. Gotta say my piece. Can’t get the words out, they’re stuck in my throat. My stomach churns. Man up, that’s what Grandpa would say. He’s gone, but I still hear his distant rumble of thunder. Boys run, Mark. Men stand their ground.

     I choke out words. “You said ... you said it was a one-year term. One. Year.”

     Her gaze darts to the floor. "I know, honey. I know I said that.” She looks back up, shudders. “It was a two-year term ... Oh, don’t look at me like that. Please don’t. I couldn’t tell you. I knew you’d be heartbroken.”

     I say nothing. I counted. Every. Single. Day.

     “I’ll make it up to you. I’m coming back. Not to Wisconsin—corporate doesn’t have facilities here. They need help on the patents for the microcrystals Mommy’s developing. I could transfer to Mikro’s campus in Bavaria. My German’s good now, and their best microcrystalline engineers are there. It’s almost the same as here—beer, polkas, real woods. God, I never knew how much I missed the smell of pines! I want us ... I want us to be together again. To be a family. Don’t you want that?”

     I’m sitting on cushions covered by a sickly barf-green Afghan Grandma crocheted with dichroic yarn, digging my fingers through the holes, making the colors shift. I know what Mom wants. What do I want?

     I want her to quit calling herself Mommy. I want to rip this tie off that’s choking my neck like an anaconda. I want Grandma to come back through the squeaky screen door and save me. I want Grandpa back, who hated tech and loved the old-world stuff on the farm and kept it running like new. I want to run outside and jerk the red handle up and down on the old water pump until rusty water gushes out, turns cold and clear, then stick my head under it until my brain freezes.

     I want Mom to stop asking this question.

     Hazy cornfield sunlight ripples through the living room window. It sets my mother’s face alight with a strange halo. Not like the Madonna. The way she tilts her head? Like a glowing mantis, hunting. She pins me to the couch with her buggy, eight-ball stare.

     “Mark, you could tell a judge you’d like custody switched back. Grandma and Grandpa just did that to spite me for leaving you down here, but I couldn’t take you, you know that. The Moon’s no place for a boy.”

     No place for a boy? It’s the only place I ever wanted to be.

     And she left without me and made her home up there.

     “But you’re a young man now, you can make your own decisions, the judge will listen to you. It would be just like old times ... Hey, look at me, kid. What’s it going to be? If Mommy transfers down, will you come live with me in Germany?”

     My throat tightens. My stomach knots up like a twisted ball of baler twine, strangling back the thousands of cries I had never let out.

     Men don’t cry. Grandpa taught me that.

     But I had counted. Late at night. In my bedroom upstairs with my models like the Apollo Lunar Module, the Orion Mars capsule, even Mikro’s private shuttle that I had glued little figurines in, one of them a mom holding the hand of her boy. One thousand eighty-eight nights of choking back the pain, crushing the cries that jumped into my throat every time I thought of her. Hurt twice as bad on nights when the Moon shone bright through the window. I’d lie in bed and stare at the bits in the ceiling that glowed like stars, fighting tears and shoving cries back down the prison of my stomach, like the grasshoppers I’d catch in the cornfield in the summertime.

     I’d cup those grasshoppers in my hands and stuff them into a real glass mayonnaise jar from Grandma’s cellar, spinning the rusty blue lid on tight so they’d never leap out. They’d climb. They’d jump. They’d ting against that lid and fall back to the bottom, doomed.

     My stomach churns. Here they come.

     The cries are climbing, leaping again and again, their spindly bodies pinging against my tightly screwed throat, always jumping, never able to escape.

     No air.

     Mom’s leaning forward now, mantis eyes burning into mine.

     How I had wanted to be with her! How I had looked out the window each night when the Moon was full, pretending I could see her! How I had studied that model shuttle, believing one day the real thing would take me up to her and our home would be on the Moon, at Norden. And now, here she is, right in front of me. Mantis Mom, down from the Moon, asking me to abandon grieving Grandma, to leave the family farm, to be together again with this stranger in a stranger land.

     I stare straight into her pleading eyes and shove those grasshoppers back down.

     Boys cry.

     Men make their stand. 

~~~

About the author:

     Wulf Moon wrote his first science fiction story when he was fifteen. It won the national Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and became his first professional sale in Science World (1,000,000 print copies per issue). He has won over sixty awards in fiction and nonfiction, including six Writer of the Year awards and six Best Writing Workshop awards.

     Moon's stories have appeared in numerous publications and best of the year anthologies including Writers of the Future Vol. 35, Best of Deep Magic 2, Best of Third Flatiron, Galaxy’s Edge, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2—a borg love story, what could be sweeter?

     Moon writes a series on writing craft for the professional magazines DreamForge and Story Unlikely. He teaches the award-winning Super Secrets of Writing Workshops and is the author of The Illustrated Super Secrets of Writing Vol. 1 and the runaway bestseller How To Write a Howling Good Story. Join his free Wulf Pack Club at www.TheSuperSecrets.com or check out the benefits of his online Wulf Pack Writers group at www.patreon.com/wulfmoon.

By Andy Millman

 

 

     The first thing Hutchins noticed was the missing leg. He didn’t remember anything on her resume or in her cover letter about it. He shifted his focus from the window to his desk, where the resumes sat next to a pile of takeout menus and old editions of the school newspaper. He knew the leg, or more accurately, the absence of one, wasn’t something that required disclosure, but he’d read so many resumes that contained much less useful information, such as “I like to bake,” that he figured having only one leg might merit at least a bullet point. He skimmed over the resume and saw no reference to any type of … absence.

     Hutchins glanced back out the window, hoping the sun’s reflection off the glass would conceal his stare. She used a crutch on her right side, the one with the missing leg, and swung herself, step by step, toward the building. She was wearing shorts, which reminded him of balding men who shaved their heads and called attention to, rather than trying to hide, what they did not have. The temperature had crawled above 90, though, and the ad had stated the position was in an after-school youth program with a casual environment, so maybe shorts were simply more practical. Both he and his intern, Ira, were wearing shorts. But she wouldn’t have known that.

     Now, he was open to hiring somebody with a disability. In fact, he rather fancied the idea. There weren’t many minorities in town and a disability was the next best thing. Perhaps there was some grant money available that he could drum up and in turn convert to a nice little pay raise. Plus, having somebody around with a missing leg might teach the kids to accept those different from themselves. Maybe they’d even lighten up on him. 

     Hutchins walked to the door and opened it for her. She appeared surprised at the act, her eyes opening wide and head tilting back, but she recovered quickly and thanked him. He invited her inside, continuing to hold the door open and stepping aside farther than was necessary.

     “Welcome to our little abode,” he said, wondering where that sentence had come from and doubting he’d ever used it before.

     He extended his right arm, as if he were offering a view to be savored and admired, or maybe a presentation of a lavish dinner laid out before her. The gesture was awkward and out-of-place, and one that she must have interpreted as an invitation to shake hands because she squeezed the crutch with her armpit and brought her hand forward. He shook it cautiously and released it quickly. When he then said to make herself comfortable, he immediately regretted his choice of words. Maybe she always felt a bit—off balance—and he’d just demonstrated either his insensitivity or his ignorance.

     He introduced her to Ira, the college junior who was interning at the youth center while considering a career in teaching, and who was eating the raspberry coffee cake that Hutchins had bought specifically for the three applicants they’d be interviewing that day. Ira gave a little wave and nodded his head, which bobbled around while his mouth continued to chew.

     She was taller than he’d anticipated, especially considering the one leg. Then again, would losing a leg affect one’s height, unless that person began to lean dramatically to one side? He wasn’t sure why he’d expected someone smaller. Perhaps it was her name: Tilly Connor. It sounded like it belonged to someone wee, perhaps even a child. There was something light about the name, as if a breeze could carry it away.

     She made her way the dozen or so feet to the tattered leather couch the local hospice had recently donated and sat with a heavy sigh. Hutchins took a chair opposite her.

     He told her a bit about the youth center, which occupied the former shop room at the school. The shop teacher had retired four years earlier and was not replaced. After sitting empty for a year, the youth center opened. Hutchins said you could still find sawdust if you looked hard enough. He chuckled when he said it, but she did not. She looked around at the mismatched furniture and turned back to him with an expression caught somewhere between disapproval and disinterest.   

     “Do you mind if I put my leg up?” she asked.

     He had told her to make herself comfortable, as he’d done with every other applicant, but this was the first who asked to place her leg—her only leg—up on the table. Hutchins quickly told her to go right ahead, but when the foot landed next to the coffee cake, he grew uneasy.

     “Would you like a piece of cake?” Hutchins asked, hoping she might relocate the foot once she realized its proximity to the food.

     She placed her hand atop a solid stomach. “No thanks. I stuffed myself at lunch. You know how it is at a buffet.”

     Hutchins would be too nervous to eat before a job interview, and a buffet carried a certain amount of risk no matter the occasion, but going to one before an interview was as foreign an idea to him as showing up to the interview without clothes.

     “I ate at ‘Mounds of Meals,’” she said. “They charge you by the pound. I’ve learned to load up on the stuff that doesn’t weigh a lot, like onion rings.”

     That old saying about eating or drinking great quantities because of a hollow leg came to mind (even though she wasn’t actually wearing one). Hutchins began to envision food traveling from mouth to stomach. Would it go directly to the leg from there, or were there stations in between? How much chewed-up food could a hollow leg hold? People could go days without emptying it. He grew queasy from the thought and tried to banish it from his mind.

     “I appreciate you coming here,” he said. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

     “Why would it be any trouble?"

     He felt his words turn back on him. “Sometimes people have trouble finding us."

     “Really?” she said. “I wouldn’t hire any of those people.”

     In truth, nobody had trouble finding them. There was only one middle school in the town and it was located on one of the two main streets.

     “Shall we start the interview?” Hutchins asked, hoping to put things back on track.

     “I assumed we already had.”

     This was not going well. Tilly made him uncomfortable, as if she were interviewing him. But he desperately wanted to like this one-legged woman and by golly find a reason to bring her on board. There were probably good youth workers in wheelchairs, and he would gladly hire them. Benevolently, he would overlook their disadvantages, like how their wheels would track in snow during the winter, or the fact that he couldn’t expect to toss them into the middle of a raging game of dodgeball. It wouldn’t be fair for players to take aim at someone in a wheelchair, and neither would it be right to fire projectiles at a one-legged youth worker. He knew a couple of boys who would see it as a kind of perverse carnival game, where instead of trying to knock over a milk bottle, they’d aim at her crutch.  

     Hitchins tried to focus. He asked some basic questions about her previous jobs. Her answers were short, rarely longer than a single sentence and sometimes as brief as a single word. She mentioned her last job (pet store) and why she’d left (bitten on the arm).

     “I have a lawsuit pending,” she said.

     “Against the pet store?”

     “I can’t very well sue the hamster.” The thing was, she wasn’t smiling, even though Hutchins forced the petty laugh he thought the comment required. He grinned stupidly at Ira, inviting him in on the chuckle, or at least to be a team player and smile along with him. But Ira just stared at Tilly as if he’d encountered a new species.

     Hutchins wasn’t certain he could spend entire days with both Tilly and Ira. Because Ira was essentially working for free, Hutchins placed few demands on him, even when he’d fall asleep watching TV with the kids. He’d hoped Ira had learned his lesson, though, when he dozed off during one of the Star Trek movies and someone placed a cold hot dog and two walnuts on his crotch. Hutchins had been at the administration office printing flyers and noticed it upon his return, but he chose not to wake Ira to inform him, nor discipline the kids stifling their laughter when he returned.

     The topic of the lawsuit niggled at Hutchins. Would she entertain another suit if they didn’t hire her? Maybe she’d sue even if they did hire her, claiming that somewhere along the line she’d been treated unfairly. These kids were crafty, and mean. What if she fell asleep like Ira, exhausted from dragging her leg around all day, only to awaken to a food-vagina constructed on her crotch, or even worse, a food-penis?

     Hutchins became aware of the long pause in the conversation. “Do you like children?” he asked, trying to restart things.

     She shrugged. “I don’t dislike them.”

     Interesting answer, considering the context. “I see you’ve worked with youth before.” He glanced at her resume. “At the … Mallory School for the Blind.”

     “Yeah, I was a teacher’s assistant in a fourth-grade classroom.”

     “That sounds rewarding.” He looked at Ira who bobbled his head up and down. 

     “Not rewarding enough to stay,” she said.

     “Money was bad?” Hutchins offered.

     “Yep. And it was hard controlling the kids. You’d tell them to line up and they’d be all over the place, bumping into things, running into each other. I mean hey, they couldn’t see a damn thing. Sometimes I thought they might be faking, you know, to get out of a real school, so I would try to startle them with my hand in their face, but they never flinched. They were blind all right—or real pros.”

     Hutchins took a breath. “Well, I commend you for doing that kind of work. And now you’re seeking another position working with kids. Is this your first choice in jobs?”

     She smiled. “Would it be yours?”

     Hutchins didn’t answer. Of course it wouldn’t be his. It wouldn’t even crack the top ten. “We have some hypothetical questions we ask our applicants,” he said, moving on. “There are no right or wrong answers.”

     “Then how do you evaluate the responses?” she asked.

     Obviously some answers were better than others, and some were clearly wrong. But he didn’t say that.

     “Let’s just see what you think,” he offered.

     “You’re the boss.”

     “Okay. Let’s say you’re working by yourself one Friday night and a couple boys are arguing at the pool table. Their voices rise and you’re concerned things might get violent. What would you do?”

     She thought on that. “How big are they?”

     “I’m sorry?”

     “The boys. How big are they?”

     “Let’s just say they’re average size.”

     She scratched at her chin. “I suppose I’d say something like, ‘Hey, settle down over there.’”

     Hutchins nodded. “And what if they continued?”

     “I guess I’d go over there. Maybe ask what they were arguing about.”

     “Good,” he said. “We try to encourage discussion. Get them to express their feelings.”

     “And if that doesn’t work, there’s the old peacekeeper.” She lifted her crutch and slammed it on the table. Fortunately, it missed the cake. Ira recoiled as if he’d been struck.

     “Well,” Hutchins said, “that would certainly get their attention.” 

     “I wouldn’t hit them, of course,” she said.

     “Of course,” Hutchins echoed.

     “Unless one of them hit me first. Then—” The crutch came down again with a vicious thwack.

     Ira stood up. “I need to use the bathroom,” he said, and then scurried off.

     “He’s a bit jumpy,” Tilly observed.

     “He’s young,” said Hutchins.

     “Well there’s no substitute for experience,” she said.

     “No, there’s not.”

     “There were lots of conflicts at the pet store,” she said.

     Hutchins didn’t understand. “What kind of conflicts?”

     “Oh, all kinds. Customer vs. employee. Boss vs. employee. Animal vs. employee.”

     Hutchins noticed that all the confrontations occurred with an employee, and he wanted to know if she was the employee but knew he shouldn’t ask.

     “Have you ever held a Komodo Dragon?” she asked.

     “I don’t even know what a Komodo Dragon is,” he admitted.

     “You’re lucky. They’re bastards.”

     Ira returned looking like he’d washed his face. He sat down and said, “Did I miss anything?”

     “Yeah,” Tilly said. “Your boss made a pass at me.”

     “What?” Hutchins said. 

     “Just kidding,” she said. “The kids must have a lot of fun teasing you two.” She chuckled for a second and appeared, for the first time, like she was enjoying herself.

     Hutchins cleared his throat and tried to regain his composure. Unfortunately, he was now thinking about having sex with this woman, picturing his sweaty body on top of hers, her one leg wrapped around his back. He told himself to think of something else, anything else. He went to his go-to channel changer, an image of his grandfather lying dead in his casket. And that helped.

     “So how long have you been here?” she asked Hutchins.

     Hutchins wiped the perspiration that had dotted on his forehead. “About three years now.”

     “Did you study for this in school?”

     He hadn’t. He told her that he’d studied math to become an actuary, which was the truth. He didn’t tell her about the failed certification tests and the miserable six months he’d spent at a large insurance company, nor his secret desire to work in a baseball team’s front office and put his love of statistics to interesting use. He simply told her that he’d changed his career path.

     “That’s not uncommon,” she said. “Sometimes you change, and then the path has to change.”

     Hutchins studied her. He wasn’t certain they were talking about careers anymore. 

     He glanced at her resume. “Well, you certainly have some good qualifications. We’ll be interviewing people the rest of the week, but we should have a decision by the end of next week. Do you have any questions for us?”

     “I can’t think of any,” she said.

     “Ira, do you have any questions?”

     Ira looked at Hutchins and then looked back at Tilly. “Would you mind if I asked how you lost your leg?”

     Hutchins felt his face flush.

     Tilly didn’t flinch. “I lost it on the train,” she said.

     “I’m so sorry,” Ira said. “There was an accident?”

     “No, I just left without it.”

     Hutchins wasn’t sure if this was a joke, but he wasn’t about to laugh. Ira tilted his head, like dogs do when they don’t understand.

     Tilly smiled. “I had a prosthesis. I would take it off when it bothered me and use my crutch. I really did leave it on the train.”

     Ira and Hutchins nodded.

     Tilly said, “I learned two lessons, though. If I’m going to drink until I can hardly walk, keep my leg on. And write my name and telephone number on my next leg.”

     “Well, it’s always good to learn a lesson,” Hutchins observed.

     “Or two lessons,” Ira added.

     “Yes, thank you, Ira.”

     Tilly didn’t tell them how she lost her actual leg, but she took the other one off the table. She slid the crutch under her opposite arm and lifted herself from the chair. Both Hutchins and Ira rose with her. Hutchins looked around to make sure there was nothing in her path. She thanked them and told them it was nice meeting them. They said the same. At the last second, Hutchins asked if he could walk her out. She looked at him and paused for a moment. Then she said that would be fine.

     She told Hutchins she’d parked in front of the school and he offered to walk her there. They were quiet for a bit, and he felt the awkwardness of something like a first date settle heavily around them. He caught sight of a newer-looking Subaru wagon parked in a handicap spot in front of the school. She explained, without his asking, that she drove with her left foot and was actually quite good at it.

     “Listen, I wanted to thank you again for coming here,” he said.

     “Yeah, you said that.”

     “I know. I guess, what I’m wondering is, do you really want this job? I mean it’s okay if you don’t.”

     She looked at him. “I don’t really like kids,” she said.

     “That’s okay. Neither do I.”

     “But you should. I don’t mean you should like kids. I mean you should like your job. We all should, shouldn’t we?” She leaned back against the car.

     She appeared more at ease than she had inside. Her face relaxed and Hutchins noticed, for the first time, that there was something attractive about her. The sun picked up the hues of her auburn hair. Her smile grew almost gentle now.

     “I suppose you’re right,” he said.

     “Look, you seem like a nice guy. I don’t want you to fret about all of this. I don’t want the job. You can officially remove me from consideration.”

     Hutchins didn’t say anything.

     “And I especially wouldn’t want it out of sympathy.”

     “No, no,” Hutchins said a little too forcefully. “It wouldn’t be because of that.”

     “Anything you say,” she said and opened the car door. She rotated to face him and then sat straight back down before twisting into the car and pulling her crutch inside.

     “Are you sure about this?” Hutchins said.

     She started the car and said, “Absolutely. I don’t want anything screwing up my unemployment benefits.” With that she closed the door, gave a little wave, and then sped off much too fast for someone in a school parking lot.

     Hutchins went back inside. Ira was eating more coffee cake.

     “What did you think?” Ira asked before swallowing.

     Hutchins shook his head. “She’s not right for the job, but I’m glad she came in.”

     Ira nodded and turned on the TV.

     Hutchins returned to his desk. The next applicant would be there in a half hour. A recent college graduate who’d listed every babysitting job she’d had since the seventh grade. He rubbed his head and took two Advil from the bottle in his drawer. He was almost out. He stared at the pile of resumes on his desk. He thumbed through them for the next ten minutes. Then he opened up a resume file on his computer and began reviewing his own. 

    

~~~

About the author:

     Andy Millman lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he leads writing groups for older adults. His work has appeared in a number of outlets including: Whistling Shade, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Big Jewel, Points in Case, Friday Flash Fiction, Zest Literary Journal, Midwest Review, and Story Unlikely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     If you're not familiar with Bruce Bethke, you probably should be. Aside from being the guy who wrote (and coined the word) Cyberpunk, he also runs a magazine and has a pretty storied history in and out of the writing world. And when he writes about those storied histories, we like to pay attention. So read the second installment of Bruce (reminiscing, recounting, lamenting?) The Saga of Cyberpunk by CLICKING HERE.

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Dear Story Unlikely,

I found out about Story Unlikely when I went down a rabbit hole, and at the end was a weekly newsletter [highlighting your magazine]. Basically, you had me at “whimsical” in the guidelines, and plus, it was free. I felt my writing style would be appreciated based on the humor and voice of your website and the stories I have been receiving. I hope this doesn’t give Danny a big head but I think he’s funny! Speaking of Dunder Mifflin, my parents are from Scranton. My dad was offered a job at Penn Paper about forty years ago. He didn’t take it, but it's still funny to think about, especially since his name is Jim.

 

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Evangeline P

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