Ash Magazine Issue 1 Page 2

  I’m sitting on the couch watching a rerun of Mash when a spaceship crashes into the house. It opens up a pretty big hole in the drywall. I’d say, probably about three feet by ten, but I mean, that’s just looking at it. I don’t measure it or anything. Well, the wife comes running out of the bedroom in her damn nightgown like a loony patient screaming, “Oh my God, what’s that loud boom,” as if God’s gonna reach down, pull off the roof, and be like, “Well, you see Iris, I just crashed a spaceship into your house,” and all.

  So anyways, she runs out yelling that, and I say, “I don’t know.”

  Then she says, “You don’t know anything, do you.”

  But, she just says that because she has to say something bitchy. I ignore her and start looking at the spaceship. It’s a shiny metal craft with no wings, but not like a saucer, like they say, but more like a rocket ship. I’m half expecting Marvin Martian to jump out, like in old Bugs Bunny cartoons, but he never does.

  It’s a pretty boring looking ship to tell you the truth. There’s no markings to speak of, just a shiny silver rocket.

  So, Iris is yelling her damned head off in the kitchen, and I’m thinking, maybe this wouldn’t have happened if we would have moved to Albuquerque like I wanted to last Christmas, but I don’t say that.

  Then that moocow of a wife starts pounding on the spaceship with a frying pan, and it’s making the most awfulest noise, like somebody breaking bottles in a grain elevator or something. I tell her to lay off it, but she’s just screaming something crazy and banging away with the pan.

  I can’t take it anymore so I drive down to McTenamin’s to grab a beer.

  “There’s a spaceship crashed into your house,” says Chuck, the bartender.

  “That’s right,” I say, kind of straightening up in my seat to show him I’m not drunk yet.

  “Well, that is a damn funny thing,” says Chuck, as if a spaceship at your house is like Bob Hope or something.

  “I’m hoping it takes the wife back to the moon,” I say, trying to lighten up the mood at the bar a little. All the guys are sitting there drinking and looking at their bottles as if the President just died or something. It doesn’t help that Bruce Springsteen is singing something lonely on the jukebox.

  “So this spaceship, it’s from the moon,” Toby, the town fag, asks flipping his gay hand out when he says it.

  “Well, I don’t know. I was just guessing is all,” I say, not looking at him.

  Toby spills a half full Pabst’s all over the bar, suds going everywhere, and Chuck breaks down.

  “Fuck me, Toby. Fuck me. I just cleaned this fucking bar off,” he says, holding back tears. “That’s it. Everybody out. Bar’s closed. Everybody just get the fuck out,” and he buries his face in his dirty dishrag.

  Everybody grumbles and gets up. No one’s feeling drunk enough and it’s only five-thirty. Toby looks around, probably looking for somebody to go home with or something, but he doesn’t see anybody, and so he says, “Bye Charlie,” as if I’m going to say bye to him.

  I ask Leonard if he wants to come over and have some beers at the house, but he says, “I ain’t going over there with your spaceship. That thing’s probably radioactive, man. Next thing you know you’ll have a baby growing out of you.”

  I say, “Fuck you then,” but I don’t really mean it.

  The sun’s all over me and the seat belt keeps burning my forearm as I’m driving home. The road is shifting around something crazy, and the trees are bearing down like monsters. It’s a hot day in Texas even by July standards, and I might be a little drunk.

  I pull up to the driveway and the spaceship’s got smoke pouring out of it, looking like a chimney. It’s burning black because whatever the hell those things run on is leaking out. In the kitchen the woman is scrubbing at the damn thing. The little lines in the steel are shining.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “This thing’s hot to touch,” she says, scrubbing away with her lips clenched.

  “Then why are you scrubbing at it,” I say.

  “It’s filthy,” she says, as if I’m stupid.

  “Is dinner ready?” I say, opening the fridge.

  She gives me the look and goes back to scrubbing.

  “I only have so many hours in the day,” she says to the spaceship.

  In the fridge I grab a cold beer and take it to the couch. In the kitchen I can hear her polishing that thing and muttering to herself. I turn the television on.

  I wake up and the TV is fuzzing. I spilled a beer can at some point and my crotch is wet. I rub at the wet spot with my hand. The clock says it’s four in the morning. I can hear the wife moaning from the bedroom. She’s been having sex dreams about Father Hoffler lately.

  She yells, “Oh yes, Father, give it to me harder. You know I’m a bad, bad girl.”

  The damned spaceship is glowing, but I can’t see where the light is coming from. The wife has some of her wet dresses and under things hanging from the nose of it, so I knock them to the floor, but I still don’t see any source of light. I would pick the clothes up, but my back has been killing me lately.

  I chug a beer, real quick, wiping the foam from my chin and lie down on the couch. The damned spaceship is making it hard to sleep, glowing like that, so I throw my big blue work coat over it. The glow is dampened a little, but I still can’t sleep.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I yell at the bedroom, but I don’t know why I say it. She’s quiet now. “Shut the fuck up,” I yell again, but not quite so loud this time. If there’s a spaceman in that ship I don’t want to wake him up. At some point I fall asleep again.

  “That spaceship got smoke all in the kitchen yesterday and the fire alarm was going off. I had to pull it off the wall to make it shut up,” Iris says in the morning. I open my eyes and squint at the light.

  “You were already passed out on the couch,” she says, her hand resting on her ass.

  “What,” I say, even though I heard her. She doesn’t repeat herself. She’s already dressed, looking like she’s going to go to work or something.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “To church. Remember that place?” she says and flips her hip at me like a prostitute.

  “Your lipstick’s smudged,” I say, even though it isn’t.

  “Will you get this spaceship out of here sometime today? I bumped my head on it this morning trying to unload the dishwasher. Maybe you could patch up the hole it made, too,” she says in a sweet tone, like I want to spend my Sunday doing busy work.

  “It ain’t my spaceship,” I say.

  “Well, shit Charlie; just lay on the couch all day then. I don’t care.”

  “Tell Father Hoffler ‘hi’ for me” I try to say to her, but I miss. She slams the door on her way out as if she’s making some kind of point. I pick up the beer cans and go in the kitchen. The trashcan’s overflowing, of course. My work coat is lying on the floor looking like a piled up piece of shit, and the wife’s laundry is hanging from the ship again.

  “Fuck you,” I say to the spaceship and I start throwing beer cans at it. One after the other the cans bounce off with a clang. Then I start throwing the silverware. Forks and knives fall to the floor. “You fucking spaceship piece of shit,” I yell, but I don’t know why.

  Then I see how heavy the microwave is. It’s pretty heavy, and when I throw it, it just falls flatly to the floor without even hitting the ship. I make some sort of guttural noise and throw the toaster. I can’t help myself from throwing the coffee maker. The coffee steams on the ship, evaporating.

  “Why’d you come here, why’d you come here, why’d you come here?” I ask it, but nothing comes out to answer me. I open another beer, but it tastes flat. I chuck it at the ship as if everything’s the ship’s fault. My belly rumbles, but there’s no food here. I could go to Mae’s for breakfast, but the thought of driving anywhere makes me sick. Sunlight’s pouring into the kitchen from around the spaceship. I lie down in its shadow just for a li
ttle bit, but I guess I doze off. I wake up to the sound of the door opening, and the ship’s gone. All that’s left is a huge hole and the sunlight burning my eyes off. My hair’s wet from the beer and coffee that’s all over the floor. Iris comes in from the living room and she’s got a look on her face. I reach my hand out for her, but she just stares at it.

  “Thanks for getting the ship out of here,” she says, but she’s smirking at the mess. I fumble at the silverware, dropping more than I pick up. My ear is sopping wet, and I rub at it with my hand. She steps over the coffee maker and heads back to the bathroom. I can hear her pissing as I take a dishcloth hanging from the stove and throw it on top of the puddle of beer and coffee. She pisses for a long time, longer than normal, and I can kind of smell piss over the stale beer.

  It’s just a phantom smell I tell myself. She comes out of the bathroom and walks to the bedroom without looking at me. She’s going through drawers, and I put the toaster back on the counter. It looks kind of busted, and all of the burnt scrapings have left ash marks all over it. I can’t lift the microwave up, with my back hurting so much, so I just leave it there. It looks broken anyway.

  I’ve almost got the floor clean, when she comes out. She’s changed into a black dress, and I remember it. I accidentally got some come on it once when we were messing around at her parent’s ranch. The ranch was getting sold and we went out to clean it. I had thought she’d be mad about the stain, but she had just rubbed at it and said it would go away. I guess it did.

  A black Toyota that I’ve never seen pulls up to the curb and she gets in. I see all of this through the hole in the wall. She turns to look at me from the passenger seat and gives a little wave as they pull away. I think it’s a guy driving, but it’s not Father Hoffler. I stare at the car as it drives away, but she’s not looking at me anymore. The car turns right at the corner.

  I have to close up this hole today.

  Date of Death

  By M.S. Smith

  Her face was as red as the evening sun that was quickly dropping behind her. Two rivers of tears eroded salty canyons down her cheeks. She had attempted to wipe them off, but only succeeded in smudging her make-up. I was glad that the restaurant wasn’t busy; that we had decided to meet well after dinner rush on a Monday night. The server, obviously sympathetic to the plight he did not understand, was the only person who could observe us. Our section of the restaurant was otherwise empty, and there was little chance that the older couples I had noticed smoking in the front would be coming near our table. It was best this way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. She’d been crying into her nearly empty bowl of spaghetti for several minutes, and during that time we’d been entirely silent. At some point our hands grasped over the table, but when, I don’t know. Her hair was golden and her skin pale, making her the closest approximation to an angel I had ever seen; yet she seemed fragile, innocent, as if she’d been ripped from the pages of a Victorian love scene. The fragility wasn’t like her, but was easy to understand.

  She had every reason to break down.

  “It’s okay,” she said, holding my hand tighter. “It really is okay. It happened so soon after I moved back here that I hardly had anyone to talk to, except my family. It’s good to talk, sometimes, you know? Good to…” She trailed off into a dry sob.

  This was the summer of 1999, and I had just freed myself from the trap of an Origami skeleton. It had caught me like this: Regional Headquarters of National Bank needs people familiar with data entry and scanning. Part-time position pays twelve dollars an hour. Work twenty hours a week, can work any hours between 8am and 10pm. Previous office experience preferred. Position is temporary, 2-3 months. I responded quickly to the advertisement, feeling myself lucky. It was exactly what I needed. I had been looking for extra work to pay for some credit card debt I’d racked up in college.

  Once I cleared their background check I was working, and I was excited – just a few months and I’d be in the clear. The management clearly considered me a means to an end and weren’t concerned with my qualifications, provided I was fine with moving papers and pressing buttons and doing very little else.

  An easy job. I thought I had lucked out. I was working a 7 to 4 office job, but it had taken me months to get hired, and I didn’t think finding another cool, air-conditioned workplace would be easy.

  “I really am sorry,” I said.

  Her name was Alice Jenssen and we’d been a big thing while we were attending community college. We had even talked of getting married. But then we did something stupid, and there was an argument, a pregnancy scare. A few months later she decided to hit the Big Leagues and moved to California to attend Berkley while I graduated with an Associate’s in Internet Technology and dove straight into the local workforce. I never thought I would see her again, but our hands, still holding tight, had been unexpectedly moved.

  “I know. I know you’re sorry,” she said, and she squeezed my hand, her grip now so tight that it hurt. “I’m sorry too, that I’m crying. This has been good for me. It’s been great to see you again. Don’t take my tears the wrong way.” She was beginning to clear up, but she still hadn’t touched the paper in front of her.

  It was now covered slightly by her near-empty spaghetti bowl, but most of it was readable. “Did you get in trouble for taking this?” she said.

  “No, they never knew. And even if they did, I doubt they would care.”

  The job turned out to be a graveyard. My tools were keyboards and scanners rather than picks and shovels, but I felt that my purpose was largely the same. I buried people. And really, I’m the one that had it the worst. At least a gravedigger can see families as tangible evidence that the person in the casket existed, and at least the gravedigger isn’t tormented by every detail of the person who has died. I’m sure there are sad ones, the ones who are buried without anyone attending, the ones who are never present, their empty casket standing in for some disintegrating tragedy or a mystery that would never be solved. But I had it worse. I saw the entire lives of people put into dollars – worse, I saw thousands of them. Thousands of lives turned into numbers which, like caskets, contained what little remained of the deceased.

  The paper in front of Alice had the words ‘Date of Death Balance Request’ printed in bold on the top. Below them was a form, filled out with names and times and account numbers, and below that was a small attachment, a request that Alice had written several months ago with the help of an attorney.

  To Whom It May Concern:

  I regret to inform you that my sister Crystal Jenssen passed away on February 2nd, 1999. Enclosed is a copy of her death certificate. Please send me all information pertaining to the financial accounts she had on record with your bank.

  Thank you,

  Alice Jenssen

  “Mom couldn’t write it,” Alice said. She was touching the paper now, rubbing its edges, letting its rough surfaces be replaced by memories of her sister’s skin. “I could barely write it. In fact I didn’t write it. My Mom’s attorney told me I could write it, that it wasn’t something he needed to do. He said he’d just review it to make sure everything was good. But I told him I couldn’t write it, so I made him do it and signed my name.”

  “I didn’t know what to think when I saw it,” I said.

  “It looks so much shorter now. I thought it was at least a page long. I don’t know if I was even paying attention.”

  “I wouldn’t want to write it, either.”

  These Date of Death Balance Requests number in the thousands. I went through hundreds each day, each of them in almost the exact same format. The only things which changed were the names, the dollars, and the attorneys who represented the estates. Otherwise they were all the same; they were all that remained of people who had died. It didn’t affect me at first, and I didn’t understand why it should. But, as I passed file number two hundred I could feel my chest get heavier – as I passed file five hundred I could hardly breathe. The paper weighed me down. T
hat was the Origami skeleton, an off-white collection of names and papers which rose above me ten feet tall, its paper-cut sickle daring me to protest.

  What was death even doing there, with me and the papers? Did it have to be there? I thought no, it did not have to be, in fact it was not – it was only my mind that constructed the Origami skeleton, an irrational fear spawned from nothing.

  But my attempt to consult rationality, to drive off my feelings with the pitchfork of logic, failed. I was being watched. My friends could tell something was wrong by the way I drove – Once a speeder who enjoyed passing slower motorists in my unattractive but loud ’94 Mustang, I was quickly becoming a perfect example of defensive driving. My mind suddenly became fixated on survival. I stocked canned foods. I jumped at loud noises. People who knew me asked what was wrong, why I had suddenly become defensive and shy, but I couldn’t tell them. No one, I thought, would get it.

  “I couldn’t believe this when I found it,” I said. “I had to do a hundred double takes. And of course, I thought that you were gone, so I didn’t believe there was any way this could be you writing in. But it was a morbid job. I had to find out what was going on.”

  The waiter arrived out of nowhere and took our plates without asking, startling us both. Then he took out a small fake-leather pad and put it on the table. “Check’s inside,” he said. “You can pay up front whenever you’d like.” Then he left as quickly as he appeared, his eyes, which hadn’t made contact with either of us, aimed at the floor.

  “He seems a little nervous,” I commented when the waiter disappeared.

  “He scared the shit out of me,” Alice said, and then she laughed. It was an honest laugh, dislodged by the gravity of recent events in her life.

  “You want to get out of here?” I asked.

  “I do, let’s pay and then we can walk the river for awhile. The sun is setting. It looks beautiful.”

  I paused, considering, and then said, “So do you.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Alice replied. She laughed again, and it was still honest.

  We walked outside. It was becoming cold quickly, the warmth of the air being sucked out by the lake that was only a few hundred feet away. We walked towards it, attracted by the sunlight that flicked and licked across its cold surface, causing a candlelight effect that encompassed everyone who came near. At the edge of the lake we paused for a moment and Alice stuck her toe in the water.

  “Cold,” she said. “Even colder than you’d think.” I nodded and headed alongside the water, looking for a place we could sit down and enjoy the sunset. Alice followed.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said.

  “Can’t believe what?” I asked, hesitantly. She did not respond quickly, but I pushed on. “That she actually…”

  “That, yeah, but this, too.”

  “I don’t think I follow,” I said.

  She put her hand up. She was asking for a moment to think. We found our way to a small wooden bench and sat down.

  At what point had I snapped? Probably at the moment which directed me here, the moment I realized that Crystal was dead and that Alice was alive.

  I might have gotten use to the carnage, like a soldier thrown into war that he doesn’t believe in. I might have gotten use to the idea not as an agreement but as the means of survival I so desperately desired. It was only a job, I could remind myself, it was only paper, even if all those files took on the grim shape of a paper skull in my dreams. It was only a summer, one that could slip away and then be shut up and forgotten, a bad chapter in an otherwise excellent book. But when Crystal’s name came to my eyes, I was done. The teeth of the trap that I had entered pricked the back of my neck, and I knew I had to leave before it sprung.

  “I remember crying,” I said. “I just now remember it, when I saw your sister’s name. I remember crying. I remember the manager coming inside and asking me what was wrong. He had no idea, and I didn’t know myself, so I couldn’t answer. I just stayed silent and sobbed. Then the manager said he was going to get help and I got up and ran out a fire exit. The sirens went off and everything.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said.

  “No, I did, I really did. I ran out of the fire exit. The manager must have flipped. But I never had to go back again. I was using direct deposit, so they sent me what I earned and I never spoke to anyone who worked there again.”

  “That’s incredible,” said Alice, smirking. “I would like to have seen that. Your boss probably had a heart attack, probably thought you’d gone completely daft.”

  The sun was nearly set now, but several waves of high, thin clouds were still reflecting the light, casting themselves against the dark sky like giant curtains.

  We were still holding hands, and my hand was beginning to hurt from her squeeze, but I made no move to end it. We didn’t say anything for awhile. Alice was still laughing softly at my story, and the breeze coming in from the water seemed to be soothing her tears. We kept watching until the sun had disappeared completely, its last ember fading behind the horizon.

  ”I still don’t follow you,” I said, breaking the silence. “I mean, finding it hard to believe we’re here.”

  Alice brushed back her hair, which the wind had been playing with, and looked at me. She thought about it for a few seconds, biting her lower lip, and then shrugged. “Well, you told me about all the death that was around you, how you felt like you knew the names of more people who were dead than alive, and then you found out about my sister, and me. I mean, you hated that job; you found it terrifying, you felt like you could do nothing but survive, but look at you now. Isn’t it surprising that we’re standing here? Doesn’t this make you feel lucky?”

  She was right. We could plunge into the water tonight and hold our breaths for a short minute, maybe two, and then we would be nothing more than two more entries in that Origami skeleton –perhaps we would fill out the brow, or shaped the lips, there would be no change at all. Her sister had died and so had the three thousand one hundred forty seven people between A and Jenssen. But to each other, both in life and death, we were not files or names or credit scores or bank accounts. We were the loving hands that would write out the dead name of another and know who that person was, what that person stood for, what that person believed in, and who that person loved.

  She was right. I was lucky.