Chamomile + House-sitting

The very spookiest thing of all has happened: tech issues. I’ll have the audio version up on the site tomorrow. Please eat so much candy that you can find it in your sugar-filled heart to forgive me.

Hello again, and a happy Halloween upon you, your house, and the thing in your vents.

Today also happens to be the third annual Bookstore Horror Day in the Twin Cities, an event sprouted from Next Chapter Booksellers and now taking root in a total of thirteen local bookstores this year.

This seemed like an opportunity to do something cool in my community, so I made plans with Next Chapter to make and give away Bloomside bookmarks, each of three designs holding a handwritten burst of flash fiction in its entirety.

(Handwritten digitally and then printed, of course. My handwriting isn't reliably readable enough to do it all with a pen.)

One of the stories was Pendulum, which you'll likely remember from not too long ago, and the other two are new.

Since we therefore have two stories today, and it's a holiday, I'm going to keep the thoughts portion quick this time: October was great, community is great, and please, please vote, if you're a citizen of the United States. Tuesday, November third, is the last day.

Now, let's set aside the stressful things for just a few moments and close out Halloween with some brief glimpses of fiction, so we can wake up recharged and ready to enact those voting plans some of us just thought up in our heads, because we're the kind of people who value our sense of agency, and because in our brief, beautiful human stories, we are both writer and reader, and we're committed to being fully immersed in those stories and not skimming the pages of our own existence or needlessly tearing out the pages of others.

Anyway.

Chamomile

I took a small sip from my tea as the so-called mushroom cloud finally crept past my front gate from the east.

Not a nuclear bomb, of course, but nothing much more reassuring, given that we had yet to hear word from any country or territory so far that had been consumed by the spores.

We were supposed to have another few days, but a storm brought the wind, the wind brought the dark.

Maybe we'll be fine, you know?

I call my mother, still a few states further inland, but quite aware of the world outside her neighborhood.

"How's your tea?" she says, choking slightly on the end of it.

"It's great, mom. Thanks for sending it."

I really do love chamomile.

House-sitting

The day I fell asleep in Reed Jensen's bed, he had been dead for seven days.

My friends had dared me to break in and spend the night, and I was a coward in some ways more than others, so I told my mom I was staying with a friend and broke into a weird old magic man's weird old magic house.

Mr. Jensen was always wearing three things: his pale grey hair, curled and close to his head, a pullover sweater with a duck on it, and a deep purple scarf with gold stars, which he wore even in the summer. I think that's where the wizard thing came from, but honestly, no one should be questioning those colors in Minnesota.

They say he hides something under there. Katie saw an eye, once. Katie says a lot of things.

I met Mr. Jensen's iguana, Noodle, when I woke up screaming as soon as I realized it couldn't possibly be my cat batting at my nose.

His name isn't actually Noodle, though. It's something else, written in mostly circles and dots. Laura read it to me, she's the snake-fingered lady from the attic, but the sounds don't make any sense, and she told me if I said "Noodle," she would call for him in his true tongue.

I get all shaky when I hear it.

I made her some gloves this year, wool with red stripes and the tips cut off. I remembered that snakes are cold-blooded, and she really likes them.

I'm supposed to watch over everyone for ten years, she said. Just until Mr. Jensen is old enough again to remember and come home.

The hardest part is finding enough books to pass through the hole in the floor of the kitchen. Mostly because everyone at the bookstore thinks I'm obsessed with romance now.

I don't know how to tell them it's just the eye in the floor.

That's all for October. Time to fit in as much candy and as many great pumpkins and garden walls or whatever as possible before the sun again rises.

Keep blooming,

Martin