Airport 101

Only at an airport:

- Will you pay $11 for a sandwich that you don't like but it's the closest thing to what you do like.
- Will people share the queerest things with strangers.
- Do you not feel weird staring intently at people.
- Does watching people run with their luggage become the funniest thing in the world.
- Do people prove that they actually do read from time to time.
- Can you clearly discern between the jerks and true gentlemen in the world.
- Does sarcasm become a federal offense.
- Do you ride on a horizontal escalator. 

My First Short Story

Red Bobber

I didn’t expect the line to snap when I wound the handle faster. One might suggest it was out of my own eagerness or impatience that caused the acceleration in my hand to strain the wire beyond its limit. I didn’t even expect to catch anything, but there I was, standing on the pond’s bank thrusting my entire body backward while vigorously reigning in my prize, when the line snapped.

My grandpa said it was not my fault, that sometimes lines just break. Besides, the fish isn’t going to live much longer now that the bobber keeps him near the surface.  I listened to my grandpa in his attempt to ease my sorrow as I watched the bright red bobber, that deadly tracking device, bounce across the surface of the pond. Was he surprised that the line snapped as well? Did his fears match my own when we were both suddenly dragged into a spirited game of tug and war? Is he too saddened that no one won the match, that in the end both sides lost? Does he also lament the pain of defeat represented in that red flag of truce that repeatedly undulates in the water?

The rattling of trinkets breaks the forest’s murmur as my grandpa fails to find another bobber. Perhaps another day, he says. And so, I regretfully follow my grandpa back to the truck, turning my back on the red buoy that continues circling the outskirts of the pond. 

The Funeral Home

Today was the day I moved into the funeral home— my new humble abode for the next three weeks. 

There has really been not much to tell since I have arrived. The house is loudly silent, which seems impossible but I tell you it is most certainly true. Above my own footsteps, no other sound in the house is heard. I open the front door as a truck is barreling down the road but no sooner do I shut it then that same truck is nonexistent, deathly muted, as if the house lives on a different level of frequency. The house is as quiet as the grave (no pun intended).

However, the stillness is enormously loud, so much so that it has enveloped even the floorboard creaks and the refrigerator groans. Its hush infiltrates every room, every hallway, every crevice of this place. The house is so quiet in fact that I dare not stop treading my bare feet across the kitchen floor lest the silence overtake me. I dare not cease voicing my thoughts aloud lest my tongue grow numb and stop moving altogether. I dare not stop lest I too become a victim of this curse.

I can tell you all the perks about this house such as a large kitchen, the large collection of DVD’s at my leisure, or the comfy chair I am currently lounging on. But I could also tell you the multiple drawbacks as well, like the fact that the downstairs once housed the dead or that the bathroom light flickers only at night. I could tell you about how the back room leads into a dark garage-like basement with a door that cannot be closed. I could tell you about the spider I found frozen in an ice cube tray or the multiple bugs I found crawling in my bed. I could even tell you about the corpse half buried in the backyard that I named Charlie. 


But I don’t want to freak you out, because despite these things, the place is great.