Get to Know Your Blogger

As Faceshots and Placeshots have been difficult to come by lately, I thought I’d share some City Fiction with you.  Your blogger is also an amateur short story writer, and I’ve pasted below two stories that are set in New York. Be forewarned, they are slightly demented, but those are the kinds of stories I grew up reading.  If they aren’t your taste, don’t be deterred. More real New York people and places are on their way to City Snapshots, so keep checking back.  Click below to read the stories.

“Mr. Jones”

Mr. Jones crouched with his back to the open window.  Hands in fists.  Shoulders shrugged tight.  Eyes clamped shut.  He listened.  No scream.  Not yet.  Thank God.  No scream.  He would relax in a half a second.   Pretty soon it would be one with the sidewalk.  He listened, holding his breath in anticipation.  “Splat,” he choked as he simultaneously exhaled and released the tension from his body.   He turned and allowed his eyes to transmit a shot of the sidewalk to his brain.  From the 72^nd floor, he couldn’t tell much, be he could see that there was no commotion.   Back to work.

Goddamned mice.

But thank God for windows that opened and brown paper bags.

He hated mice.

The Empire State Building was overrun with them.  But then so was the entire island.

In his office, he had a weekly ritual of catching the mice and throwing them from the window.  He hated mice.   He couldn’t even stand the idea of transporting one from his office to the nearest disposal.  At home, he flushed them down the toilet.   Dead or alive.  He caught them in traps.

The office was used to display his product.  Shoes.  The most popular fashion of the day.   The office was tiny, so he used every space available.  Some days, when a client was visiting, he or she would reach for a shoe on the windowsill and clumsily knock it hard enough to propel it downwards.   From the 72^nd story of the Empire State Building.  “Oopsies,” a woman would say with a stupid grin.  A right shoe.  Sometimes a left shoe.  Always just one shoe.  Lost out the window.

What speed would the shoe reach before its flight was stopped suddenly by the sidewalk?  How about a mouse?   In a brown paper bag.

Mr. Jones always wondered this right after he released the bag from between his two fingers.

Every day, Mr. Jones came into his office to work.  He turned on the lights and glanced briefly at each trap with the dread that there may be a mouse waiting.  Trapped in it.  Unable to move, either because it was dead or because it was stuck in the device.  About once a week, Mr. Jones was welcomed by this scene.  These were the days that he most despised, but that he also secretly lived for.  They broke the monotony.  They gave him power.  They gave him purpose.

Mr. Jones ate a tomato sandwich and a green apple every day for lunch.  He brought it in a brown paper bag.  When he got to the office, he put the bag on the corner of his desk so that he could see it.

Mr. Jones unlocked the door and entered his office.  He turned on the lights and noted the empty trap in the corner.  Standing in front of the desk, Mr. Jones set down his briefcase, opened it, and removed the brown paper lunch bag.  The bag was placed on the corner of the desk.  Mr. Jones then circled the desk, cautiously pulled back the chair, and examined from a safe distance the mousetrap underneath.  He saw it.  He couldn’t see its eyes, but he could feel its stare.  A little overnight guest who had overstayed his welcome and was still alive.

Mr. Jones straightened his spine, pushed back his shoulders, and stared at the yellowing white wall.  He deeply inhaled.  The sandwich and the apple were then removed from their sack and placed on the corner of the desk, exposed.  Hugging the wall, he slid to the window and pushed it about five inches open.  As high as it could go.  Not big enough for a human.  But big enough for a shoe.  Or a mouse in a brown paper bag.

Mr. Jones bent his knees until his face was even with the opening, and took a deep gulp of fresh Manhattan air.  Keeping this posture, he shuffled to the rodent and lowered the bag with his left hand.  He used his right hand to open the bottom desk drawer and remove a pair of tongs.  He never kept a trap.  He couldn’t bear to remove the creature from it.  In one swift motion, Mr. Jones placed the trap in the bag with the tongs in his right hand, crumpled the bag closed with his left hand, and leapt to the window from his bent, quivering stance.

This was the worst part.  This split second while he was holding the bag.  Before he could chuck it, he always tried to make sure there weren’t many targets below.  It was difficult to see anything from such a height, but Mr. Jones did his best.  It made him feel better about what he was about to do.  He drew in a breath.

“All clear,” he convinced himself.  And with that he tossed the bag out from between his index finger and thumb, where it had been sturdily grasped.  The mouse stuck in the trap shoved into the bag flew to the ground while Mr. Jones turned from the window.  A few seconds passed, and he wiped his brow.

He put a new trap down, sat at his desk, and waited for lunch time.

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“The Poison Man”

“Another Homeless Man Found Dead in Union Square Park”

I read the headline, and I smile.  I pull the baking sheet of chocolate chip cookies from the oven and set them on the counter to cool.  My Golden Retriever Jules runs over to check out the new aroma, then curls up at the foot of the refrigerator.  I toss the newspaper into the recycling bin, and sink into the sofa.  Not in the mood for TV.  Ready to deliver those cookies.

“The Dead Homeless Now Totals 7″

I wrap the cookies in cellophane and put them in a plastic K-Mart bag.  I grab Jules’ leash, and he springs off the floor, tail wagging.  We proceed for our walk–today through the East Village.  Making it to 2nd Avenue, I continue on East 9th Street towards Tompkins Square Park.  Jules and I have a seat on one of the benches and enjoy a few moments of a light summer breeze.  On our walk back to Soho, we pass a young guy doubled over with a cardboard sign in front of him.  “Homeless. Hungry. Too young for this.”  I toss the K-Mart bag to the ground below him.  He glances up with a questioning stare, and I reply with a sensitive smile, “Some cookies for you.”

“The Cause of the deaths is Ingestion of Bromadiolone”

Jules licks my face.  It’s got to be early.  I roll over and grab my cell phone.  Yep, only 6:30.  Well if he needs to walk, whatever.  I stick my feet into some loafers and grab his leash and a baggie.  I get back and can’t sleep.  I go to the cupboard and grab the ingredients for banana nut bread.

“‘His eyes were frozen open and bloody red. It was terrifying.  There was dried blood coming from his ears,’ said the jogger who found the body.”

After dropping off the bread in front of some hopeless dude with a ravenous appetite, I make my way to the Astor Place K-Mart.  Pick up the usual.  Coffee. Bread. Flour. Splenda. Rat Poison. Plastic wrap.  Head home to feed Jules.

“Another Victim of the Poison Man found on West 18th Street”

I’m not sure when I’ll stop.  I just love to bake, and this really never gets old.  Seeing my name in the papers.  I’m helping the homeless problem, you know.  It won’t have increased as astronomically by this time next year.  If I keep this up, that is.