I submitted two pieces for the Nine Lives issue of Moss Piglet magazine.
Miss Fortune
Hi Mom. I know it’s bridge night so you won’t get this for a while but I’m leaving this voicemail just to let you know I’m ok.
You know how annoyed I get when you start to worry about farcical misfortunes and I have to talk you down? Well, I’ve just experienced something even you couldn’t dream up.
I was walking past the florist on that busy corner - you know the one, Daisy Rose’s Roses and Daisies - and I spotted some arrangements with the first locally grown roses of the season. It was silly, given how allergic I am to bee stings, but I just had to stop and smell them. It’s been so long since we’ve had fresh roses! And of course it’s been ages since anyone’s given me some! So, I had to!
Anyway, they were so fragrant, so heady! I guess I got lost in the sensation of that warm smell and didn’t notice anything was amiss at first, but then there was something pinching the bridge of my nose. I opened my eyes and I had to go all cross-eyed - and there, staring at me, was this bee! I’m not making it up when I say it was staring at me with its huge bee-eyes just daring me to swat it away! Meanwhile, I could see its little butt quivering, ready to sting me! So of course I screamed! Which, I know, not good to panic, but you try not screaming when an unwelcome bee is pinching your nose!
While I was screaming, I threw the flowers into the air, which, ok, not good. But some guy, in a desperate attempt to save the flowers or maybe just relive his high school football years, ended up charging through me to catch them. So, well done mister good flower samaritan - you kept them from hitting the ground but you sent me sprawling into a moving bus.
My head shattered the mirror (thankfully not the other way round). I managed to stay on my feet - years of involuntary ballet to the rescue, I guess - and then the rest of me slammed into the bus and I half-twisted, half-bounced off.
I pirouetted out of traffic, which was good, and into a couple of guys, ordinarily not a bad thing, especially if they are the kind of guys who’ll buy a girl bee-free roses *ha!*, but they were hauling on a rope, trying to lift a piano to an upper-level deck and then through to an apartment - you know these old buildings with their narrow twisty staircases - and that was the bad part because me knocking into them caused them to let go of the rope.
The guys jumped out of the way so they weren’t hurt. Ooohh… speaking of hurt, hang on, where’s the call button… Hi - the pain’s getting bad. Can I get more painkillers please? And can we do better ones this time? I know the doctor’ll probably say no so let’s just keep it between us, ok? Thanks!
Hi again. Where was I? Oh yeah - the dolts trying to move a piano. So they were fine. I got caught in the rope as it flew up so I was lifted and swung out of the way. That swing, by the way, saved me from getting crushed by the falling piano but it still managed to bash into my shoulder. Did I mention that I was now tumbling ass over tea kettle and flashed everyone? But not to worry, I was wearing clean underwear! *ha!*
That collision, by the way, kept me from being lobbed onto the pointy bit on top of the street-level light fixture and being skewered - whoever designed that thing clearly wasn’t worried about people falling onto it - and instead launched me at the stairs where my fall was broken by a mattress that had just been dropped by another couple of guys who had been getting ready to move it into that same apartment.
You can imagine how confusing it was as I gathered my wits with me lying dazed on a mattress, head pounding, hurting everywhere, surrounded by strangers, everyone screaming, traffic stopping and honking and… Mom, all I wanted was to go home but someone called an ambulance and made sure I got into it and in the meantime I had a crowd of people staring at me, videoing, pointing, talking, laughing…all that and more.
It took forever before I heard the siren but it did finally arrive. Despite the fact that I could’ve climbed into it, they laid me on a stretcher and lifted me in. I let it happen, mostly to get away from the crowd, and off to the hospital we went. But I guess the whole thing wasn’t unbelievable enough yet because some idiot driver ignored the blaring siren and flashing lights and T-boned us. I was flung into the EMT who was working on me - the good part is she cushioned my body, the bad part is she’s in bad shape in the bed next to mine - so they had to call out more ambulances, or is that ambulanci - and now I’m here.
Oh - and since I somehow lived through all that, I figure my luck kept me from actually… you know. So… can you pick me up a lottery ticket? Maybe give it to me when they finally decide to release me. Thanks!
Gotta go - my nurse is back and… is that the fire alarm going off?
Buried ✦ Alive
Dark. Close. Stifling. Throat burns with acrid pine. Moist earth fills my nostrils. A hard unforgiving surface; my heavy head and bony back increasingly ache with every passing moment. I try to touch my face but my hands and arms bump into solid walls sticky with sap. Every wheezing breath vibrates my tired body that just hurts and I can’t move and I want to vomit. I can smell my fear and taste the gorge. I wet myself. I’d wipe my eyes of stinging tears if only these walls weren’t in the way.
I’m going to die here. Alone. Afraid. I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I don’t even know my name. I just want to curl up and make myself so small I just disappear into nothingness. The dark and silence are my only allies; I’ve been abandoned by everything else.
✦
The first taste of a new body is always the sweetest feeling. There’s the success of cheating death, of moving my soul into my new shell. But the initial melding, the capitulation of what was someone else’s domain as it succumbs to my will, is heady. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve done it; enough to be familiar, not so many as to be boring routine. I think of myself as ancient and, so long as I don’t become complacent, immortal. Each transference is the same, a recreation of my initial terrifying experience.
To be buried nearly dead is to be buried still very much alive. That first time, waking to the realization of having been interred before my time was fully up must have awakened a sense, an ability, I’d had no inkling was mine. In a moment’s desperate clarity, somehow spiritually feeling a vital being overtop my so-called final resting place, I moved my spirit from the grave-bound body doomed to rot six feet under into that of a young man. He was a gravedigger putting the final touches on the burial mound.
Like a careless tenant, his life force had departed but left abandoned all of its belongings, such as its memories, for me to recover. I was able to integrate into his place in life but found it unimaginably dull. I therefore set off to create a new version of existence modelled on what I’d always desired in my prior life.
And now, during each of these subsequent lifetimes, I need to prepare for the next. Plans must be executed to keep my existence undetected by potential troublemakers and to ensure my continued comfortable existence. This, of course, includes nearly dying and arranging for a suitably aged and healthy replacement to be at hand at the crucial moment.
Were anyone aware of this process, a reasonable question could be posed regarding the disposition of the prior occupant. To which I might answer that perhaps they now inhabit a soon-to-be-deceased body in the same position I found myself how many lifetimes ago or maybe they’re tuning their harp to sing hosannas for eternity. I don’t know and frankly couldn’t care less. It’s their lookout for being irresponsible owners of a body which they hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve.
Enough prattle and patting myself on the back. First let’s enjoy a deep breath of fresh air then get to the business at hand. I’ve a life to live. Again.
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