In this episode, we talk about feeling like a fraud as a writer, the word ‘aspiring’, and comparing our work to others. Then, we’ll read our stories based on the prompt: death in a small town.
Rebecca’s Story:
Death is measured in casseroles.
Tuna.
Pasta.
Rice.
To be fair, Mrs. Stacey did bring lasagna, though it wasn’t her recipe. She stole it from her sister-in-law—and not the one she liked. Not that she’d admit it, but she’d told me years ago in a drunken state at book club and I’ve never forgotten.
We tried to eat two before realizing death also staunched appetites. The rest went into the freezer, which seemed to expand to hold the food and our grief all in one. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but if any more come, I’ll have to upgrade.
Organize the flower arrangements.
Death would be a lot easier if it occurred only to people who deserved it. If my husband’s passing had uncovered a secret affair or second family, for example. The anger might fill the utterly empty feeling for a while, giving me something to feel. Instead, I’m hollow. And there’s nothing to fill that hollowness but casserole. That, and the homemade cheesecake Mrs. Jones prepared. Damn her and her deliciously fattening desserts.
Coordinate extended family’s sleeping arrangements.
I never thought I’d wish to be haunted, that I’d genuinely beg whatever spirit realm existed to send me the ghost of my beloved to stay with me for all eternity. Mostly because I have a feeling that ghosts aren’t happy. I think they want to move on, but haven’t been able to for whatever reason and I’d never wish that on anyone.
Except my husband.
I wish it on him. And I don’t even care that we wouldn’t be able to touch each other, that we’d never share another warm embrace. I just want to hear his voice. To see his smile. To get his advice on what size freezer would fit all these casseroles so that I don’t get tricked into purchasing something I know I don’t need.
Clean the house.
I saw the neighborhood wives standing outside my house the other day. Like they were holding a town meeting on my porch deciding whether or not to knock on the door and come in. It’s just like Mrs. Stevens. I think I heard her say something like, “You know, for the children,” and if that bitch thinks she’s coming in to my house to help me raise my children after my husband died, she’s got another thing coming.
They didn’t knock. Didn’t barge in. I think they don’t know what to do with me now. Besides bring casserole.
Clean the neighbor’s casserole dishes, label them, and return to each neighbor as they complete their obligatory second check-in.
I wonder if I’ll have to move away. If the way they treat me—as if they’re wearing kid gloves—will cause me to go insane. I’m sure they don’t have this problem in big cities. You could lose a loved one and never once have to tell your neighbors, to explain in excruciating detail, to describe what it felt like when the police knocked on your door. You’d never have to watch their eyes soaking up every word, wondering if they were just curious, wanting to share your grief, or something worse.
Plus, you’d never have to drive anywhere again, to fear the very thought of getting in a car, because the public transportation is sure to be better than it is here.
Call the kid’s school to excuse their absences.
They tell you grief is easier when you lean in to the positive moments, when you cement the good times in your mind.
That’s bullshit.
I want to scream at the universe. To tell it to go fuck itself. To take someone else instead. But, when you make those bargains you never know who will lose their life for your happiness.
Though I’m not sure I’d care at this point. That someone else’s family might be stronger, more able to deal with the loss. Less likely to completely lose their minds at the thought of continuing to exist without that person by their side.
Clean the house. Again.
I pretended I wasn’t home when Mrs. Williams came by the other day. She knew I was. I knew she knew I was. But neither of us seemed to care. I’m sure she’s going to talk to the other women about me. They’ll come up with a clean solution to the “McCafferty Problem,” as I’m sure they’ll call it.
Joke’s on them. I’m not a problem. I’m just just too busy to let them in, too embarrassed to let them watch me scoop their casseroles into the garbage disposal. I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings. I’m not cruel.
Curl up in bed and never get out.
Why do we have such a small period of time with which to grieve? Why, do other people get to determine how long that period of time lasts? Why don’t they tell us when it’s over? When they no longer want us to talk about those we’ve lost because it makes them uncomfortable, they should let us know it’s over—that our time to freely talk has ended.
Because it would save me time to know when it’s appropriate to talk about my pain and when I’m required to lock it away, to slowly go insane by myself.
Katelyn’s Story:
“Something just fell out of the sky.”
Yeah, I thought. No shit.
Gilmanton wasn’t known for much. If anything, it’s only significant quality was the totality of its insignificance. Tucked between a wide expanse of Wisconsin farmland, you only came across the unincorporated town if you had a reason to be there, or if you’d had the misfortune of being born somewhere between Tay’s cattle farm and Severson’s junkyard/pumpkin patch/ice cream shop.
Not literally. There’s a hospital forty-five minutes east, but you get it.
We have basketball games, hunting season, and we put on the best Fourth of July fireworks show in the region.
Tonight, it seems like everything is falling out of the sky.
“Mom, I’m serious,” Nick Turner declares as he tugs at his mom’s sleeve. His words fill the brief gaps between thunderous booms. “Something just fell.”
“Shhh,” Melanie Turner hisses at her son, as if his soft voice could drown out the wild cacophony overhead. The fireworks reflect in her eyes, wide and ignorant to her child’s wandering attention.
“I just saw it, over there.” Little Nick points beyond the pond, out towards the cornfield where he was supposedly conceived after senior prom.
“Will you stop?” Melanie begs, straining her voice so that she can be heard over the fireworks without openly yelling. “There’s nothing falling. Just sparks.”
All around us, glitter descended in showers of light, fading just before meeting the water below. Every year, this is the place to be on the Fourth. These people can turn the sky above the pond into Times Square on New Year’s Eve and any cop passing by will just grab a beer and watch right along with the rest of us. Even I have to give them credit for it. With the stars competing with these manmade wonders of color and explosion, the scene is a marvel. Excessive, yes. Dangerous? Don’t ask. At least we’ve all still got our eyebrows.
But I’m not watching the fireworks. That why I miss whatever Nick Turner thinks he saw fall out of the sky, and why I nearly cry out when Alexa Weaver, my lifelong neighbor, grabs my shoulder from behind.
“Come with me,” she whispers, though it’s cut off by a shimmering crackle. “Hurry.”
“What is it?” I ask, more irritated then I mean to be.
Alexa’s face is washed in the purple from the blossoming peony erupting above us. Her summer tan absorbs it like warped sunlight, mingling into the unruly curls spiraling out of her head. She has too much makeup on, applied with an untrained hand and then reapplied for good measure. She wears a baggy, sequined romper and a pair of worn out flip flops coated with a permanent layer of dirt and sand.
You don’t get to look like that in a town this small and go unnoticed, and Alexa loves every side-eyed judgement thrown her way.
“Didn’t you see it?” she asked me. “Something fell into the cornfield.”
I roll my eyes. “How many wine coolers have you had?”
“Four,” she replies. “Now come on. Or do you want to sit here and stare and Derek until the world ends?”
Color rushes into my cheeks, entirely separate from the glow of the night’s celebration. When I look back to the edge of the pond, Derek Sanden has turned his back on me, focus shifted towards the water.
Disappointment is a fledgling in my stomach. We were supposed to come here together, but instead he was seven beers deep with his older brother’s hunting buddies.
“I didn’t think so,” Alexa says when I don’t respond. She takes my hand and I follow, my legs consenting before my brain. We pass my uncle and his drinking gang, Mrs. Stump and her family of seven, and the sewing circle and every other small clan that makes up our population. Nick Turner is still watching the cornfield when Alexa starts leading me towards it. The long grass wraps around my ankles, the air around us alight with lingering smoke as the finale begins. The crowd claps at our backs, cheering louder with each collage of noise.
When the fireworks end, the new silence curls in on itself just long enough to hear the footsteps creeping up at my heels.
“Hey, you running off without me?” Derek says, catching up to us easily.
“Go away,” Alexa commands, and my stomach lurches at the potential confrontation. Alexa is a firework all her own, with none of the patience for boys I have seem to have endless amounts of.
“Don’t be rude,” Derek retorts, his voice slurred. “You’re always so rude.”
If either one of them was going to say anything next, their snark falls away when we all spot the same thing at once. Smoke. Not from the sky or the fireworks. From the earth. After a few more yards, a clearing opens up in the cornfield.
“Holy shit,” I say. Something’s there. Something fallen.
It’s small, sleek enough to go unnoticed with such overwhelming distractions. The bulk of it is buried in the soil, dug in by its own weight and impact. Shaped like the head of a spear, it appears to be made of some type of metal, so smooth that it reflects the hazy stars like a mirror.
Alexa steps lightly towards the new crater in the earth, running her fingers over the material.
“What is that?” Derek asks. “Some sort of space junk?”
I want to tell Alexa to get away from it, to run back and tell someone more equipped to deal with smoking UFO’s in the middle of a cornfield.
But I find myself taking a step closer, running my eyes over the moonlit mystery before us. My foot lands on something hard, and I see that the crops beneath it have been uprooted by more of this strange metal. I clear the dirt and broken stalks away, revealing what looks like a wing.
A plane. No, a ship. A…
“Spaceship,” Alexa whispers. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No,” I say, but the word dies at the feet of the obvious. My disbelief catches up to me for only a moment, and then the top of the ship flies open without warning.
Alexa is knocked backward, landing harmlessly in the dirt. Derek drops the beer he carried with him and lets out a long string of creative profanity.
Light reaches out from the new opening in the ship, almost fluorescent in its unnatural glow. For a moment, we all just stand and stare, and I don’t even register my own movements before I’m gazing down inside.
I don’t know what I expected to see, but a body seemed likely.
It’s a man. At least from up here it looks like a man. When the smoke clears enough to sharpen the image, I can make out the fine, nearly translucent blue skin that peaks out from a white uniform.
Human, but not. Different, but not.
Its eyes are open wide, locked on me as Alexa comes to my side. It gasps for air like a fish washed up on land.
Alexa slides down and slowly reaches her hand out towards it. For a moment, I see nothing but fear spread across that blue face, but it quickly twists into pain. I follow, peering over the intricate buttons and screens that make up the interior of the ship. It’s impossibly small, clearly not designed for a long journey.
“He’s dying,” Alexa whispers just as a stream of bright yellow blood bubbles from its lips. I can see it seeping through the uniform at his side, nearly concealed by the elaborate straps holding him in place.
I wrap my fingers around the ledge, knowing she’s right. His face is strained, his black hair matted with sweat and blood. The sounds that escape his mouth are that of anguish, the first true suffering I’ve ever heard. Unmistakeable and haunting.
It – he? – grasps my hand and squeezes. The bones in my fingers shift together and I have to bite back a gasp. His eyes dig into me, filled with words I know we can’t share. He’s asking me for something with those eyes. Begging.
And then he dies. Simply.
A flash breaks the stillness of the night, and we turned to see Derek holding up his phone, taking a selfie with the fallen ship.
“What the hell are you doing?” Alexa snaps. The man’s hand is still in mine, still warm and full of fading life. I can’t bear to look back at his face.
“What?” Derek asks, his voice slurred. “Nothing ever happens in this damn town. I’m not missing this.”
I can see by the way his fingers move frantically over his screen that he’s sending that damn selfie to everyone he knows. I move to stop him, to rip his phone from his drunken hands, but Alexa pulls me back.
“Look,” she says.
Behind the seat where the man now rests, a much smaller one is cocooned in a miniature version of the ship itself. Its own lid has also been removed, and another body, even more impossible than the vessel that carried it here, lies within.
Any composure that my adrenaline and subconscious has deployed withers, and I forget to keep breathing.
“It’s a kid,” Alexa says, eyes wide and glowing.
Not just a kid. A baby. Brand new and fast asleep.
I can hear shouting in the distance. Whoever Derek told is on their way, likely bringing the entire town along for company. Soon this ship and this corpse and this baby will be plastered all over the news. Gilmanton will be anything but insignificant now.
Alexa reaches in and undoes the straps securing the baby. It doesn’t wake when she lifts it into her arms.
“We have to take her,” she says, a sentence I almost let myself believe I didn’t hear. She says is so softly, a whisper to be lost on the wind.
Not it. Her. I’m not sure how she knows that.
“What?” I ask, bewildered. “Take her where?”
“Over here!” Derek hollers, tripping himself in drunken excitement. I don’t think he’s paid enough attention to us to know what we’ve found, and I have a sudden urgency to keep it that way.
“Anywhere but here,” Alexa says, much more resolute as the voices get closer. “Listen to them. They’ll take her and do experiments and shit. Or they’ll just kill her.”
Reality tumbles through my head, and I know she’s right, and I know what the dying man was asking of me. Protect what he left behind.
Plus, Derek was right; nothing ever happens here. And this was, well, something.
Alexa puts the baby in my arms, wrapping a blanket from the ship tightly around the small body. Warmth radiates into my skin.
“Go,” Alexa says, “take her to the old barn by Tay’s. I’ll meet you there.”
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. I’ll make sure no one follows you. This whole place is going to be a mad house in about twenty seconds.”
I open my mouth to protest once more, but she puts her hands on my shoulders. Behind her, flashlights create a halo around Alexa’s wild hair. Derek still hasn’t gotten off the ground.
“Run, Sam,” she says. “Just run.”
So I do.