New Short Story: The Neighbor

I've got a new release! The Neighbor is a very short story about a very evil neighbor. It's free on my website (in .pdf format) and also at Smashwords (all e-book formats, including .mobi for Kindle).

The Neighbor

Blurb:
Ray's neighbors, Suze and Danny-Boy, experience a calamitous series of events.

I hope you enjoy the story.

~JT~

The Power of Words - Part 3

Please enjoy the third installment of The Power of Words, one of the literary short stories included in my Guppy Soup collection.

The Power of Words - Part III

Mom woke up when I entered her room. The oxygen mask lay around her neck, a garish oversized plastic necklace that was almost the size of her whole tiny face. The night nurse walked in and slipped the hissing mask back on, as she presumably had done a number of times before. She was no sooner out of the room when Mom slipped it off again. I stood off to one side, watching this scene play out. I still hadn't taken off my coat.
Mom's big brown eyes turned to me. She smiled dry cracked lips in recognition.
"Hi Mom," I whispered. I sat on the edge of the bed, leaned over and kissed her waxy forehead. I slid the mask back on her wrinkled face, not prepared to kill her just yet.

"So, what's going on?" I took her cold hand in mine, knowing there wouldn't be too many more opportunities to feel a beating pulse.

She pulled the mask off again. Dark circles rimmed her clear eyes. Doe's eyes. A peaceful look on her face erased some of the smoker's creases around her eyes and mouth. For the first time in a long, long while she looked like my mom again.

"I'm tired, Honey," she whispered before drawing a raspy breath. Long-time smoker. Just like Dad.

I reclaimed her hand and sighed deeply. Could I do this, even for her? I didn't know. Wasn't suicide a sin? Wasn't letting someone suffer also a sin?

"Are you sure about this, Mom?"

"I'm tired. In pain. I'm tired of it all," she repeated weakly.

Another nurse came in, clipped an oxygen sensor to Mom's nicotine-stained finger. Took a reading.

"Mrs. St. Jean has less than fifty percent of the oxygen she needs in her blood. The mask has to go back on and stay on."

"Thank you. I'll look after it. Um… Do you have any morphine… for her pain?"

She nodded and looked away. We understood each other. Do nurses take the Hippocratic oath? My godmother was a retired nurse. I'd have to remember to ask her.

The nurse left us alone. I didn't put the mask back on when Mom removed it again. Who was I to stand between Mom and Paradise? Had she not suffered enough in her lifetime? Had she not given me life? This was the least I could do to return the favor. We had both prayed during the week. Obviously, she had either used the right supplications, or her words were directed to a stronger deity.

So, this was goodbye, then.

"Will we see each other again?" I asked as I gently stroked her hand. My throat squeezed so tight I could barely breathe. I could have used some of that oxygen escaping all around us in the room.

She nodded. Smiled.

A nurse came in to give her a shot of morphine. It must not have been very strong because later, she awoke and asked for another. The pain was apparently unbearable. I guess. When you're asphyxiating yourself so slowly, I could see how your whole body might be craving oxygen. I went in search of the floor nurse and her handy ampoule of morphine.

I explained my mother's request. They knew. At least, with the morphine, I told myself, Mom wouldn't suffer at the end, or she wouldn't know she was suffering.

After she received another shot, she stayed awake for a few minutes and squeezed my hand.

I pushed aside the ceramic angel figurine, a gift from her nephew, moved two flower vases off the marble window ledge, and opened the drapes. She looked out the window at the cold snowscape beyond the parking lot seven stories below. The sun shone brightly beneath a band of grey snow clouds in the east. A beautiful day to die. Barely a week before Christmas.

"What time is it?" Mom asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time in two hours.

"Almost seven," I reported.

She lost consciousness and fought for each breath for an hour after that. I gasped right along with her. I held her cold, bony hand. At some point it stopped squeezing back.

Even though my eyes never strayed from her face, I couldn't tell you when she actually drew her last breath. I suddenly realized that she had died, yet I kept seeing her chest rise, as if she were still breathing. When the day nurse came in I told her I thought it was over, that Mrs. St. Jean had died a short while earlier.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and quickly left to get Baby Doc. The vascular surgeon happened to be making her morning rounds. In her case, I guess they were mourning rounds that day.

After Dr. Genet officially pronounced Mom dead and offered me her sincere condolences, she repeated that she couldn't quite understand my mother's odd case. If she thought those words would console me in my grief, she was mistaken. She left me to deconstruct what I was doing in that hospital room in Sherbrooke. What I had been doing there all week. What I was going to do now, after I left the room.

Ten years later, this is my latest attempt to understand the situation and I still don't know what to make of it. I feel as if all I've accomplished has been to put another layer of words between myself and those tragic events.

Maybe someone will read this account and understand.

THE END

* * *

Thank you for reading the third and final part of "The Power of Words". I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you. 

Guppy Soup can be purchased from itunes (iBooks), Smashwords, B&N, Amazon and all ebook retailers. 

~JT~

The Power of Words - Part 1

Please enjoy the sequential release of another one of the literary short stories from my Guppy Soup collection. Throughout last summer I posted "Summertime" in four installments. I think "The Power of Words" will be complete in three posts over the next little while.

The Power of Words

We go through life and become educated. Unlike our parents, most of us not only went to, but actually graduated from high school. Many of us have gone on to university. A few maybe even have a Masters degree. Leaving those two insane world wars behind, we've been taught to change the world with words instead of using our fists and bullets. That's also how we alter reality, make some sense of chaos that surrounds us. Create order.

And the logos was made flesh…

But were not God. Mere mortal words are no match against the ultimate chaos.

Death looks us squarely in the eyes and laughs at our impotent incantations. Maybe it laughs. We have no idea what we're dealing with, but once in a while Death lets us peek into its world, where it has decorated its living room walls with decaying flesh and finality.

Fighting this relentless march toward the end of existence, does the correct spelling of a word really make any difference? When it comes right down to it? "Color" instead of "colour"? Oh, Structuralists and Semioticians of the world, what kind of weapon is the alphabet against that unblinking, unforgiving, annihilation?

Magical words. Prayers. Promises. Wishes.

Will to Power.

The willpower behind the words we use. Whose words win out, when two people wish for opposite results? Who decides which person has the best sentence structure to deliver their intentions?

And does it really matter? I mean, really?

* * *

"It's a fairly simple procedure. You've had these arterial grafts done before, Mrs. St. Jean." The vascular surgeon spoke to the elderly woman in a tone normally reserved for five year olds. And not very bright five-year olds at that.

These words were spoken a few winters ago, back at the CHUS in Sherbrooke, Quebec, so the conversation was in French, most of the English who once populated the area having been made to feel unwelcomed enough to seek greener linguistic-friendly pastures out west, to Toronto and beyond. It doesn't matter. Politics don't matter. The words might've been different, but the meaning would have been the same.

Mrs. St. Jean, "Mom" to me, didn't say anything. Her brown eyes shifted to her hands, knotted in her lap, then down to the scuffed floor. She pursed her lips.

I knew she had her doubts, but she'd never questioned any of her doctors—Mom had a bunch of them during her lifetime of chronic aches and pains—and at seventy-three, she wasn't about to start asking if this one had graduated at the top of her class in Med school. As far as Mom was concerned, even though Dr. Genet was young, maybe twenty-eight, thirty tops, she must've known what she was doing. After all, her framed diplomas hung right there on the wall behind her desk, displaying very impressive proofs of her abilities.

Mom nodded through her mounting discomfort, her arthritic fingers twisting themselves further. I'd seen those fingers contort into pretzels over the past three years, whenever the subject of Dad's lung cancer had come up.

She shrugged a bony shoulder, resigned to whatever fate the young surgeon bestowed on her. The medical explanation was all too technical for someone with only a grade six education. She didn't have to know the proper medical term for the deep pain she felt in her legs or to know how they were going to fix her clogged arteries. She just wanted the procedure over and done with.

We'd buried Dad two months before, just in time for Halloween. Trick or treat? We weren't asked, but I guess we'd been tricked that year. Now, Mom was just killing time until she could join him in Paradise, or in the ground, or wherever it is we go after we've suffered enough here on earth. She knew her fate. I knew it, too. She had been putting off this needed surgery for over a year, too busy looking after Dad to look after herself.

All the while Dad wheezed himself closer to death with his own untreated lung cancer. He had been resigned to his fate too, declining any chemotherapy. I wondered if my parents, both cradle Catholics, were supposed to act like such fatalists, why they were such Calvinists at heart. Had they exchanged faith in a Living God for faith in determinism? What did the priest call it in his homily? Providence.

What did I think of Providence? Nothing. I'd never been to Rhode Island.

Without any comments or follow-up questions from Mom the interview seemed over. Dr. Genet closed the thick manila folder and forced a smile at me and Mom. My cue.

"Hey, Mom. Can you wait for me in the waiting room while I ask the doctor a few insurance-related questions?"

Mom knew I was lying, everything was paid for in socialist Québec, but she was too worried and tired to care.

"Okay." She stood up on stiff legs.

The door gave a tiny pneumatic wheeze as it closed behind her.

I smiled. The doctor smiled back. Her eyes darted meaningfully to her watch. Yeah, yeah, I know. Important doctor. Busy, busy, busy. I was almost twice as old as she was. Unlike my parent's generation—people born in the nineteen-twenties—I'm a Baby Boomer and I hadn't been brought up to respect too many people. My teachable moments were la crise d'octobre, Vietnam, and Watergate, with hours of Ollie North thrown in for comic relief. And my respect was never based solely on people's job titles. So I was unwilling to be as generous as Mom was with the wunderkind sitting in front of me.

Me? I teach Sociolinguistics in a small university English department. Basically, my job is to listen to what people say in popular media discourses, things like movies or books or the news, and then to explain either what they really said or what they meant to say, by using a grab bag of language theories derived from current deconstruction, post-structural, and applied psychology fields.

Although I'm by no means that smart, I've been around geniuses my whole life. Guess what? I've learned that even so-called geniuses are human. I've also learned that not everyone finishes first in their class.

"So, what are we looking at, with Mom?"

I'm busy. Doc's busy. I wanted some answers before her beeper went off and she had an excuse to escape.

She cleared her throat and looked away.

Nervous… and engaging her imagination. Interesting.

She glanced at the door and then remembered who the surgeon was in this room. This was her world. I was the civilian interloper—someone to be dealt with as politely as possible and then quickly dispatched so she could resume her important doctor duties. She turned a pair of serious dark eyes on me.

"Well, as I explained already, we're dealing with something called Peripheral Vascular Disease. PVD can result from a condition known as atherosclerosis, where this waxy substance forms inside the arteries. To fix this condition, I'll be cutting into Mrs. St. Jean's groin—"

"I don't care how you're going to do the procedure," I interrupted. "I want to know why my mother is so afraid of going through with it. She's had it done four times already, so why is she suddenly worried about this particular arterial blockage?"

Every couple of years, like clockwork, Mom had to get arteries unblocked. She could barely walk anymore, the pain in her legs becoming so severe. Dr. Genet couldn't believe she didn't have gangrene from the poor blood circulation in both legs. The right leg especially. The doctor could hardly feel a pulse during the pre-surgery examinations. I'd read the report.

Dr. Genet, to her credit, didn't look at me when she lied. Still. A lie's a lie. She sniffed petulantly and stared at her manicured hands, patiently folded on the desk. She probably didn't get cut off in mid sentence too often. Finally, she shook her head.

"I don't know. You could ask your mother."

When I just stared at her in silence, she cleared her throat and tried a new tack. "We've decided to use a peripheral vascular bypass procedure instead of doing a transcatheter intervention… Again," she resumed, "Since her blood pressure is so difficult to control, the risk of an aneurysm occurring is…" Her voice trailed off.

I remained silent, waiting to hear about this so-called risk. These were all by-the-book treatment methods one could find online in ten minutes of Googling. Besides, I heard variations of it every night on the phone during Mom's daily health update. Meanwhile, Baby Doc still wasn't saying anything.

"I simply don't know," she conceded, shrugging beneath her white lab coat. Again, her eyes addressed her folded hands. I deconstructed her pose: was she unconsciously praying? To whom? A delicate gold cross swayed around her neck, moving to the pulse of her artery.

Who was the patron saint of vascular surgeons, I wondered.

We stared at each other in silence. Apparently, she was done talking.

Useless. She wasn't going to commit to anything. I would mentally replay this interview two weeks later.

During Mom's funeral.

End of Part 1

* * *

Thank you for reading the first part of "The Power of Words". I look forward to sharing parts 2 and 3 in the near future.

Guppy Soup can be purchased from itunes (iBooks), Smashwords, B&N, Amazon and all ebook retailers. 

~JT~

Summertime Part IV

Wrapping up the summer fun, this is Part IV, the conclusion to my short story "Summertime", from my Guppy Soup literary short story collection. Enjoy.

Guppy Soup by JT Therrien

Summertime

Part IV

The cantor's lilting voice filled the church.

"Ave Maria..." the hymn began, the resounding organ notes raised goosebumps on Eugenia's back and arms. She wept, in part because this was her special song, but mostly because she could not express the overwhelming joy any other way.
The cantor continued:

"Gratia plena, Dominus tecum,

"benedicta tu in mulieribus,

"et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus,

"Sancta Maria, Mater Dei...,

Eugenia wore the elegant white-laced wedding dress her mother had sewn and worked on for so many months prior to the wedding. It felt snug and heavy and perfect on her shoulders. She was constrained and comforted. If love had a physical presence, she reflected, it was this dress.

Zachary stood beside her, straight-backed, debonair in his black suit and new black shoes. She had already seen the grey felt hat he had bought for the reception. Eugenia examined her fiancé's face; two deep oases of bright blue amid a tanned landscape of desert sand. A thin nose divided the two halves perfectly, the whole scene supported by his confident jaw.

Through the pale fabric of memory, Eugenia saw herself dabbing at a falling tear with the borrowed silk handkerchief clutched in her gloved hand.

Father Grady's compassionate voice asked her if she would like to become Mrs. Zachary Adams. "I do," she answered. Yes! A thousand times yes.

Eugenia almost fainted when Zachary said his own I do, so overcome with joy had she been.

And then they kissed for the first time as man and wife…

So long ago. They had been so young and so full of love. Eugenia turned over in her bed and suppressed a startled cry. She stared in wonderment at the man beside her and wondered if she was dreaming again. Zachary lay on top of the covers, his blue eyes serenely looking at her. Her heart raced, once again like that wonderful wedding day so many years ago. In her bedroom the world got a little bit dimmer, a little bit darker, except for Zachary's intense gaze, refusing to leave her face.

She was suddenly afraid and craved Zachary's reassurance.

"It's okay," he nodded. "It's almost time for you to come home, Genie."

"Oh, Zachary," mouthed Eugenia, another tear rolled down the side of her face and disappeared in the pillowcase. Like all those tears shed so long ago. She blinked away the rest of the tears. "It hurts, and I'm frightened, Zachary. Please take my hand and stay with me, even just for a little while?"

"Anything for you, Genie," he promised, gently squeezing her hand.

* * *

       Eugenia convulsed violently, in the process kicking the covers to the floor.

"Mother Adams? Can you hear me?" Fanny's cold, bony hands shook Eugenia's shoulders.

She gasped in agony, her eyes tightly closed in a futile attempt to ignore the present, the excruciating jostling of her body that threatened to keep her alive yet one more day.

"Hey! Mother Adams? Are you okay?" Fanny asked in a voice laden with syrupy concern.

Eugenia realized the growing darkness helped her to cope better with Fanny. She would need more patience if she was ever to actually love Fanny, but time now proved to be as elusive to hold on to as handfuls of water.

With the last of her strength Eugenia willed her eyes open, even though it meant having to look into her daughter-in-law's stone cold gaze one more time. She saw the look of disgust on Fanny's face but chose to ignore it. Time had become something too precious to be wasted on lost causes. Instead, Eugenia yearned to say goodbye.
"Martin? Where is Martin?"

Fanny's voice took on a sharp edge and her speech slowed, as if she were addressing a small child who was hard of hearing and somewhat slow. "I told you earlier, Mother Adams. Marty went out to get you some groceries. All right? Now, why don't you take another one of these little white pills and we'll see if you can't get back to sleep."

Fanny had already tapped a morphine pill out the plastic bottle when Eugenia's vision darkened, the world disappearing in a black fog. Fanny's squealing suddenly mutated into Ethel's voice.

"Eugenia? It's time for us to be going."

"Ethel...?" whispered Eugenia.

"No, Mother Adams. There's no Ethel here. All right? Now listen to me. This is Fanny. Do you hear me, Mother Adams? It's me, Fanny!"

Eugenia felt Fanny's claws dig into her shoulders again. Her head rolled limply from side to side when Fanny shook her.

In a panicked voice, Fanny shouted, "Mother Adams? Do you need a doctor? Do you want me to phone Dr. Frennette?"

"Ethel?" Eugenia said. She knew that wasn't right, but she was so confused. "Tell Martin that I love him very much, will you?" Eugenia mouthed the words silently, her breath feathering Fanny's cheek.

"What are you saying, Mother Adams? Mother Adams? What is it that you want me to tell Martin?"

Fanny's voice drifted away again, drowned by canned laughter pouring out of the black and white Philco television. Fred, still warning Ethel that if she knew what was best for her she would return that fur coat. Lucy, with her hair-brained scheme, would mix everything up and Eugenia and Zachary, who were now sitting side by side in matching pine rockers, would get a big laugh out of the ensuing chaos.

"Zachary." She stretched out a hand to touch her husband's shoulder.

He turned to his wife. "Yes, sweetheart?"

"It's good to see you again, Zachary. I've missed you for so long." Eugenia couldn't help dabbing at her eyes with the blue handkerchief.

"And I've missed you, too, Eugenia," he replied.

"Can we stay together, now?"

"We will be together forever, sweetheart. I promise."

Eugenia closed her eyes and sighed, combining the past and the future in a single last breath.

THE END

* * *

I hope you enjoyed the conclusion of "Summertime". 

If, after having read the four parts of "Summertime", you absolutely must read the rest of the Guppy Soup collection of short stories, it's available for Kindle on Amazon and for all other e-book formats at Smashwords and all online e-tailors.

~JT~

Summertime Part III

Still continuing the summer fun, please enjoy Part III of my short story "Summertime", from my Guppy Soup literary short story collection.

Guppy Soup by JT Therrien

Summertime

Part III

"Marty? Yeah, it's me. She's awake and she's calling for you. I don't know why. No, not yet, she's fine... healthy as a horse... I told you, she's fine! Look, Marty, I'm just giving you the damn message, okay?"

Eugenia unconsciously clenched her teeth. Fanny's voice intruded upon the memory of the accident, shattering it as if it existed on flimsy celluloid.

When Fanny's whine faded, Eugenia's jaw relaxed.

"I'm telling you, Ethel, you're taking that fur coat right back to the store!" Fred yelled at his wife.

"I'll do no such thing! Why, Lucy told me that it looked—"

"Lucy! Lucy's crazy! You listen to me, Ethel. You take back the coat or you'll be going to that wedding accompanied by your screwball friend instead of me!"

"Fred! How dare you talk that way about Lucy. She's my best friend!"

Laughter, so much laughter.

Eugenia smiled, knowing that Lucy would soon be involved. Then all heck would break loose for sure.

"Look. I don't care what you do or when you get back. How long till the end of the game? All right, I'll tell her... something... I don't know what! Look... don't worry about it. You sit and finish your beer, I'll be fine!" Fanny slammed the telephone receiver so hard into its plastic cradle that the ringer dinged.

A moment later she heard Fanny's heels clicking neatly on the hallway linoleum tiles outside her bedroom. Eugenia closed her eyes, feigning sleep.

Fanny entered the room and strode directly to Eugenia's bedside, her body casting a shadow on Eugenia's face. She nudged the bed with a fleshy thigh. "Mother Adams? Mother Adams?" Eugenia tried not to gag on the cloying scent of Chanel No. 5 when Fanny towered over her.

When she coughed she opened her eyes and stared into Fanny's sun-wrinkled face, so close it seemed to draw the very breath from her lungs. Fanny's bulbous nose was in direct competition with her black-rimmed eyes for attention. Lifeless, loveless spheres, they absorbed life and discharged indifference in return. If it was true that the eyes were mirrors of the soul... Eugenia shivered at the thought of Martin staring into those eyes for the rest of his life.

Fanny smiled at her, flashing bright white dentures that were too long in the front, creating a buck-toothed grin that contrasted with her fashionable hairstyle, the bleached-blond strands tucked behind oversized ears, making her long equine face appear longer and even less attractive than it already was.

"Are you cold, Mother Adams?" Without waiting for an answer, Fanny dropped another layer of sheets over Eugenia's body.

"Where's Martin?" Eugenia asked weakly, pawing ineffectively at the heavy layer to get it off her sweltering body.

Even though there wasn't anything humorous in what Eugenia had asked, Fanny laughed as she answered, "Oh, you know Marty. He's out and about. Gallivantin' like he does. I think he went to get you a few groceries. You know," she said casually, looking down at her glossy blood-red fingernails, "that's probably the reason why you had that spell. You don't eat too good, living by yourself and all, in this big old house full of cold drafts."

Eugenia inhaled deeply again, trying to draw oxygen in her lungs. She turned over, away from Fanny and her dreadful cloud of perfume.

Fanny harrumphed and walked over to the other side of the bed, blocking Eugenia's view of the old willow tree. She struck a match and lit a cigarette, blowing a puff of smoke over the bed and across the room.

Eugenia coughed lightly.

"You don't mind if I smoke, do you, Mother Adams?"
Fanny inhaled deeply, a moment later releasing the smoke above Eugenia's bed. "You know," her daughter-in-law continued, "you should really think about moving into Glenwood Manor, that new residence in town. Did Marty tell you that we went over there last week, just to have a look-see?" Fanny's pencil-thin eyebrows raised inquiringly as she waited for Eugenia's response.

Eugenia remained silent, trying not to panic as she struggled to draw a much-needed breath.

"Well, anyway, we went there. It was Marty's idea, you know. And it was just so wonderful! They have dancing on Saturday nights, and there's a big TV, and a large common room full of picture puzzles and games. And… if you moved there you wouldn't have to worry about cleaning this big old house or walking up and down those nasty stairs."

And you could finally lay claim to my house and move in, Eugenia considered.

Her breath sounded as raspy going in as it did coming out. She closed her eyes to mere slits, the whole world reduced to a slice of grey.

Fanny stretched her hand out. Eugenia thought she was examining her latest manicure, paid for with Marty's hard-earned money. Twelve hours a day, six days a week, the poor boy sweated in that smelting factory. Fanny turned her face toward the sunshine and closed her eyes. "God, I hate the sunshine. Look what it's doing to my skin."

As Fanny left Eugenia's bedroom, sinewy strands of cigarette smoke trailed behind her like a long veil, torn into ribbons.

TO BE CONTINUED...

* * *

I hope you enjoyed Part III of "Summertime". Look for Part IV in the next few weeks.

If you absolutely need to finish reading "Summertime" before I post the other parts, you can find Guppy Soup for Kindle on Amazon. The literary short story collection is also available on Smashwords for all other e-formats, including Kobo, ibooks, B&N, etc.

~JT~

Review: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I enjoyed this collection of odd short stories. I was, unfortunately, looking for Catholic-themed fiction, which was why O'Connor was on my to-be-read pile. Sadly, I fall into the camp of readers who do not see the Catholicism displayed (either textually or sub-textually) in any of the stories.

As an author whose fiction promotes the New Evangelization of the Church, along with central themes of St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body, I question O'Connor's methodology of choosing to show readers what some ignorant characters think the Catholic Church is about. I refer here to the last story in the collection: "The Displaced Person". Through my fiction, I prefer to explicitly show the doctrines of the Church. I believe that the message is more clearly presented that way.

O'Connor's "Catholicism" seems to be of the type Good vs Evil. Well, yes, that is a theme covered in the Catholic Faith, but it is also a theme that can be found in every good piece of literary fiction (and non-fiction, if we include the Bible and many other books).

When questioned about her fiction, O'Connor reportedly said that since she was a Catholic, she could write no other way. Just because one is a Catholic does not mean that everything one writes has Catholic overtones.

While I'm at it, I might as well say that the sentiments expressed (along with the southern dialect) distracted my reading. And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves William Styron's prose! We are only sixty years removed from most of these stories, and I think their voice is already dated.

These stories are definitely worth a read, however. They are interesting, and I guarantee you will never meet such a collection of bizarre characters in any other anthology.

My quest for entertaining Catholic fiction continues...

~JT~

View all my reviews