Small works of fiction concerning life.
A writer with pen must write infinity.
Must dot that first i.
Must steady the hand.
Now to descend.
Confusions of essence produce absurd jots.
And ink must be elegant.
Steady that hand.
Carefully aim.
A tiny dot, uncertain, of a sudden.
One instant.
Forgotten.
The Great Sampson was a magician without peer. Five thousand shows in a hundred grimy towns and he never complained. The stiffs working the carnival regarded him with a mixture of wonder and derision.
“And now,” the Great Sampson waved, “my final act!”
A few people in the dingy tent regarded the theatrical old man. They were thinking about home. In a few minutes night would fall. Other sideshow tents were already being hastily dismantled, folded up. The Great Sampson, in his black top hat, had picked up a thin book covered with gold lettering and had shakily climbed into an open black box that resembled a coffin.
The old man ran his fingers through an ebony beard, which he had obviously curled and dyed. He opened the shining book as he faced the audience: several bored adults and one boy.
“Until this very moment,” he announced grandly, “no magician in the entire history of the world has actually performed magic. Illusion and deception have been substituted for magic, and millions of believers have been told by deceitful entertainers that they are witnessing the effects of true supernatural power. You, my good friends, will be the first to ever witness real magic. You will remember this day for the remainder of your lives. So pay very close attention. Don’t blink!”
The Great Sampson took a deep breath. He hesitated. He visibly trembled. “And now, after years of struggle, after years of false starts and dead ends, after years and years of searching: my life’s greatest and only worthwhile achievement!”
He held up the shining book with gold lettering and read: “Minui fines vitae justo in aeternum!”
The Great Sampson vanished.
The carnival sideshow audience stood with jaded expectation on the crushed dirt floor.
Nothing happened.
The people waited patiently for a minute, then two.
Nothing happened.
A man in back finally slipped out of the dark tent.
Nothing happened.
A couple near the black box shrugged, laughed and left.
Nothing happened.
Everyone left.
Everyone forsook the black box except the boy. In that shadow of doubt he didn’t dare move.
Something terrible–something extraordinary had happened. The boy could sense it. A shivering thrill fixed his feet in place.
Summoning courage, he inched forward, leaned slowly over, and peered into the box.
Skittering nervously at its bottom, a gray mouse was frantically trying to escape.
The boy’s heart pounded. His mind raced.
He jumped.
“Show’s over,” boomed a voice behind him. A carnival worker’s face was poking into the dark tent with a glare of impatience. “Time to go home kid.”
“But what about the Great Sampson?” the boy protested.
“What about who?”
The boy was indignant. “The Great Sampson is gone!”
“You need to be gone, too. Now get the hell out of here or someone might call the cops.” The worker shot him a exasperated look and left.
The boy hesitated. Nothing that had just happened–the magician’s strange speech–that split second when he had vanished–none of it seemed real.
The boy remained alone in the tent, looking down at the small helpless mouse. He had to decide. Quickly. He reached into the black box and took the mouse gently into his hand and slipped out of the tent into the twilight. The carnival was over. Indistinct lumps of canvas littered the ground.
The soft mouse in his hand had calmed down. The boy saw a man heaving plastic garbage bags onto a flatbed truck and hurried over.
“I think I know what happened to the Great Sampson!”
“What happened? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The Great Sampson disappeared about ten minutes ago! He was doing his very last magic show and I think he actually turned into a mouse. He said it was his final act! He said he would finally do real magic!”
“Get the fuck out of here. You’re crazy.” The man turned back to the garbage.
. . .
As the boy walked rapidly home, he stared frequently through his fingers at the mouse. It seemed to be an ordinary gray mouse.
He slowed at the grassy park several blocks from his home, and he sat down on the bench in the lamp’s soft light. He opened his hand just enough to closely examine the mouse. It seemed perfectly ordinary. “Can you hear me?” the boy asked.
The nervous mouse looked about, seemingly at nothing.
“If you can hear me, let me know. Do something. Nod your head.”
The mouse’s head quivered. It looked up at the boy.
“I don’t know what to do. Are you really the Great Sampson? Can you turn back? Are you going to turn back?”
No answer. None was possible.
“If that was really your final act–” The boy looked at the mouse feeling puzzled, hopeless. “Why did you do it?
“So you wanted to do real magic? Why? To become something different?”
He leaned sideways to pull an object from his back pocket. It was the strange shining book with gold lettering. It had also remained at the bottom of the box.
The book appeared to be a journal. It was the type of cheap mass-produced journal that anybody can buy for a couple dollars at a store. The boy read elegant gold letters on the cover. They formed the words: Follow Your Dreams.
. . .
Sitting on the bed in his room, still holding the mouse in one hand, the boy opened the thin journal. Its few pages were handwritten in black ink, clearly and elegantly. Page after page after page, with an occasional word or sentence neatly crossed out. Page after page. It seemed to be the life’s work of one person.
With one hand he clumsily turned the pages until he reached the last, where his eyes froze on the final words: Minui fines vitae justo in aeternum. Those had been the final words spoken by the Great Sampson. The fatal incantation. The final words.
Were they really magic?
He mouthed a few of the dangerous words inaudibly, a shiver crawling up his back, then stopped.
He jumped.
A very loud knock on his bedroom door.
“What are you doing” demanded his mother. “I called you for dinner five minutes ago!”
“Just a second.”
“I’m running out of patience–you come out of there now!” His mother opened his door. “What on Earth have you been doing?”
“Nothing.” He turned and quickly placed the mouse in a drawer by his bed.
“Well, come on. You know how your father doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Reluctantly, the boy stepped out of his room and headed for the stairs. Turning back, he saw his mother enter his room.
. . .
The mouse was gone.
Whether his mother had found it, or the mouse had escaped, the boy couldn’t know. It didn’t matter.
He lay on his bed, almost in tears. He didn’t know why.
Of course, it all was plain silly. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as real magic. The Great Sampson was gone, that was the only thing that mattered. The Great Sampson had performed his final act. And nobody really cares about an act. Everything in life is an act.
The boy picked up the thin book with glittery lettering.
He didn’t dare open it.
He placed it on his bookshelf, among other wise books he would probably never read.
Perhaps he’d read it one day.
A leaf blower came by every Monday.
A tree in a concrete planter had been placed at the center of a concrete plaza. It fed on the dark water of janitors. It shed a few leaves.
Around and around the spindly trunk rode a grown man with a nicely groomed beard on a motorized skateboard. Mounted on his head was a tiny lens. Around and around he circled one afternoon. Around, around, around.
The tree dropped a leaf.
The Nicely Groomed Man rode briskly away, and later that night he watched his twinkling video on a screen in a small dark room. He then sent if off to a virtual place to show everybody, anybody. The blurred scene, he thought, was like art. He was a satellite. The lone tree was a strange sun. Its gravity was irresistible. He returned to work the next day.
During lunch the bearded man spooned a cup of drippy noodles and thoughtfully regarded the tree. Cigarette butts and litter had been tossed into the concrete planter. The tree grew in a false light reflected from a wall of sheer, faceless offices. A wonderful forlorn miracle. How did it grow? Why did it grow?
Where did it come from? Who placed it there? It didn’t occur to the man that they were alike. Both in that plaza. Waiting. Waiting.
Another day came. A janitor dumped a bucket of dark water.
A leaf blower arrived on Monday.
One person was on the beach.
Linda walked quickly over the sand in her awkward work shoes. She breathed in the chilly morning air. Her thoughts were consumed by the busy day ahead: the meeting with an important client at nine o’clock and the many projects she had to work on because it was already Thursday. Her eyes were down on the sand, unfocused.
She noticed an unbroken shell.
She picked the shell up and instinctively held it to one ear.
“Hello?” said a voice in the shell.
Linda halted, turned about. She searched with confusion up and down the empty beach. The sun was just rising above a dark line of rooftops across Ocean Drive. A gull passed above her and the surf rumbled. Not a soul was nearby.
She looked for a moment at the small perfect shell, then held it again close to her ear.
“Hello?” whispered a voice.
“What? Who’s that?” asked Linda, whirling around.
Was somebody talking to her?
Perhaps she was confused. Calming herself, she carefully turned the sea shell over to examine it. Polished pure white, the small beautiful conch resembled porcelain. The unaccountable voice, she concluded, was just the muffled sound of the crashing ocean, an echo, an indistinct murmur of the air.
She raised the shell once more to her ear.
“Help me,” said a small voice. “I’m lost.”
“Who’s that talking?” asked Linda, listening with disbelief to her own startled words.
“Please help me,” said a voice in the shell.
“What do you mean? Who are you? I can hear you, but I can’t see you anywhere. Did you say you’re lost? Are you saying you don’t know where you are?” asked Linda.
“Please save me,” replied a voice in the shell.
“Who is this? This is crazy!”
“I’ve become lost. I’m lost,” said a voice in the shell.
“It’s okay. Maybe I can help you,” Linda said, her mind racing. “I can hear you, so you must be somewhere close.” She looked up and down the sand again, much more carefully. “I’m standing on the beach near the intersection of Ocean Drive and 28th Street. The old lighthouse is about a mile to the south, out at the end of Lookout Point. A big ship is on the horizon.”
“I know,” whispered a voice. “I see that.”
“What?”
“I see the place where you are standing.”
“You can see me?”
“I see the wet sand under your feet. I see clouds moving past the lighthouse, casting living shadows on the golden cliffs below.”
“How do you see that? Where are you?”
“I see exactly where you stand,” said the strange voice. “I see silver sunlight on every ripple in the sand. I see the ebb and flow and surge of every wave. I see the dip and rise of every bird, the joy in unbounded air. I see the swell of Earth’s beating heart.”
Linda stood, astonished.
“I see everything,” said the voice in the shell. “But I am lost.”
“I see a lingering blush of sunrise in one vanishing cloud,” said the voice. “I see every pool and channel, the erosions of a thousand forgotten tides. I see the tug of a hidden moon, rainbows in skins of water, and unshed tears. I see beyond the horizon.”
The small voice spoke more quietly. “I see a needle of silent pelicans threading the crystal surf, the beauty of white spray rising. I see small splashes of green where blue ought to be. I see bones of driftwood, mother-of-pearl atoms, mute messages in polished stones.”
“I see everything,” whispered the voice. “I see broken flotsam, bits of time and bits of memory. I see the tiny brown crab skittering by your feet. I see the polished white shell in your fingers, a touch of wonder on your face.”
“Yes, you know exactly where I am,” Linda replied quietly.
“Will you take me with you?” asked a voice in the shell. “I don’t want to be lost.”
Linda gazed at the unbroken shell, her eyes opened wide. Until that moment she hadn’t understood its mystery.
She carefully put the small shell into her pocket. She continued slowly across the sand.
Short Stories by Richard 