Pure Speculation
Stories and Poems
by Jay MacLeod
Copyright 2011 Jay MacLeod
Smashwords Edition
Pure Speculation
Pure Speculation is a collection of stories and poems by Jay MacLeod.
It was written and published in 2011.
Jay MacLeod is the sole author of this work. It is copyright Jay MacLeod. All rights are reserved.
This particular edition was published at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
Jay MacLeod can be reached by email:
He would enjoy hearing feedback from you about this collection.
Jay also has a blog which he updates fairly often regarding his writing and publishing activities. It is called Rejects Harbour
Jay would like to thank you for reading Pure Speculation. He would also like to thank those who helped, directly or indirectly, while he was writing it. This includes family, friends and co-workers.
Jay's novel Dear Editor is also available through Smashwords.
Publication Note
Stories and poems in this collection have appeared in the following places:
Niteblade Fantasy and Horror
Death Head Grin
Flash Fiction Offensive
Sleep, Snort & Fuck
The Gloaming
Pellucid Lunacy: An Anthology of Psychological Horror
Hungur
Polluto
This Mutant Life
Liquid Imagination
Scissors and Spackle
Artifice
Star*Line
Table of Contents
My Husband’s Nervous Breakdown in Five Minutes or Less
Poems
William Carlos Williams with Cannibals
Josh and What He Came Back With
To His Sweetie, Some Years On, With Gratitude
Even Better Than the Real Thing
Sometimes I check up on my hometown.
There are webcams trained on City Hall, the river, and the fake light house.
Wait a second.
They’ve placed a camera on the Old Train Station.
The OTS has been sitting abandoned and dilapidated for 30 years. I understand it is being turned into a liquor store. Soon you will be able to see people from my town buying booze twenty-four and seven.
A camera is now in the middle of Officer’s Square.
It is after three a.m. You can’t see the English Army Barracks. Nobody seems to have vandalized the statue of The Old Guy lately.
A truck just crossed the bridge from the South Side. No pedestrians are out. There are many call centres on the North Side, or there were when I lived there. I guess they must be closed for the night.
The slush is ankle-thick in front of City Hall.
It’s the middle of the week so nobody’s stumbling home from The Tannery except this one guy who did just now.
The new convention center is called “Chancery Place”.
It has been many years since I was back.
We have high hopes you will come and visit.
--
2. Notes from Home
The next time I am back it will be raining insects and mud.
The weather has been brutal here: red dust everywhere!
We will have to go camping. Do you know if they still have the UFO theme park?
The photographs of the coastal road are lovely. The sky is the perfect shade of blue. The driftwood looks perfectly natural sitting in the middle of the highway. Somebody should clear that away!
Yes, I received your email.
I am sorry to say I do not have an extra five grand. This is a real shame. If I did somehow have that amount, we could do lots of cool things. It would cover at least a couple of road trips to the States. We’d attend rock festivals, stay at motels, and eat at steak houses.
We could have one hell of a summer.
Again, it’s the hospital bills. I’m sure you understand. We need to hold onto our cash just in case the embassy requires us to leave in a hurry.
Don’t worry, we’re staying safe.
Please be sure to send pictures of the construction this year.
Hi to everyone and especially the guys in the kitchen.
--
3. Be In This Place
In his hometown the trees are miles high and the rivers routinely flood the banks.
College kids smoke cheroots on the train bridge. They play in jam bands and bathe in patchouli. Each year one or two graduates will choose to stay and start families. They are thanked for contributing to the tax base.
The workers live in duplexes they have built themselves. The bureaucrats wake up and kiss their mahogany floors every morning and thank their Protestant God for their jobs and their work ethic.
There is construction every summer and the highways become clogged with five-year old domestically-made cars. There is a rush to Frog Lake each weekend. Many picnics are held there. Children catch frogs and race them from one end of the beach to the other.
The winters are always dreadful. Snowdrifts reach the rooftops. The electricity is routinely shut off. Citizens are advised to boil their water. Heating oil is in short supply. There is an excise tax on firewood.
He imagines he will always stay here. He will live off the grid and make obscure artwork. He imagines a park bench named after him. He can see the plaque in his mind.
I am in the coffee shop with Trips at three o’clock in the morning. Hayes retired for the evening several hours ago, but I am too wired to consider sleep. Trips keeps lashing at my synapses with his thousand aluminum tongues and keeps drawing sweat from my pores despite the night chill. We have a long one ahead of us. Trips and I are going places. I order a coffee and manage to keep down the laughter in my throat, which threatens to puncture the quiet. When the waitress gives me change, I do not look her in the eye; there is no reason to inflict us on her.
I leave the shop in a cloud of stink and walk along the deserted waterfront, trying to get my bearings. This blotter is unreal.
I go several blocks before realizing where I am. I stand in front of the apartment building and look up to her windows. They are dark. The stupid bitch is probably passed out.
Wake up, Ginny, your sugar daddy’s home.
I fumble through my pockets for my key, but somewhere in the course of the night I have misplaced it. I enter the lobby and try to get her on the intercom, to no avail. There is nowhere else she would be tonight. A surge of panic runs through me and I go back outside. My mouth is dry. Let me in, you drunk sow. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes. I take up a handful of gravel and fling it against her bedroom window. After a minute, I take another and let it go a little bit harder. There is the tinkle of breaking glass. A light turns on and Ginny is in a housecoat looking like a frightened cat. I want to give her a ride and tickle her purse. Trips and I have blown our entire wad tonight and need to refuel.
“Ginny… it’s Marty. Let me in.”
She looks around the room stupidly and goes to the window.
“Somebody out there? Who the hell smashed up my window?”
“Ginny,” I say louder, “I’m sorry about the window. I had to see you. Let me in.”
“Whoever you are, piss off before I call the police,” she says before turning off the lights.
She’s apparently blind and deaf as well.
I stand there, shivering and stupefied.
What the fuck just happened?
Trips isn’t answering. A cop car drives past me slowly and that gets me moving. As well as being a prime candidate for the drunk / buggo tank, I have a gram in my pocket and do not need the aggravation. The cold has wrapped itself around me tightly. It was foolish to go out without a sweater. The cold inside me is much worse, however. Trips is giving my body the spins.
Ginny… but I try not to think about it. But she must have seen me; I was standing in the street light, clear as day.
Suddenly I am on Cogswell. I do not feel well at all. It’s time I went home to try sleep. I am too wiggy to be out. All through the empty streets I hear footsteps echoing around me. I have the distinct feeling I am being observed, followed at a distance by some stranger. I look around and it’s just me. Feeling like a chemical, I slink through the fog which is making its way from the harbor, superimposing itself over the smoke in our brain, dimming the shadows which hover in our peripheral vision.
##
There is no rest back at the apartment. Hayes and a pack of ghouls are crowded around the coffee table playing cards and listening to Metallica as though it was the middle of the afternoon and not almost sunup. Hayes looks up from his hand as if surprised to see me.
“Marty,” he says, looking right out of it, “I stopped at the Marquee for a couple of drinks and realized I had another hit in my wallet.”
“Good, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t seem to hear what I am saying and continues to talk while looking past me.
“This is Eric, Joseline, Spider and Ruth. We were just about to smoke if you want in. Eric here has some B.C. hydro.” He gestures to one of the ghouls, who are all looking up now through their long, stringy hair and eye make-up. They look through me. I get the feeling that my skin has become clear and translucent. I want these mangy fuckers out of here now and for Hayes to get on the next bus back to New Brunswick.
Easy does it. These are houseguests and it is the night.
I shake my head to the invitation but they have all turned their attention back to the cards. I pass through the living room and into my bedroom to try and get some shuteye.
Sleep does not come easily. It never does with Trips. First there are the pains in the joints. Then there are the strange, creaking noises that come from inside of you. Then there are the pictures between your retinas and your eyelids activated by the squidges of light which keep the darkness before sleep from being total. I toss open my eyelids and all the photographs and posters in my room leer at me. The squidges of light clutch their faces after I close my eyes again and I see them contorting, changing in shape and colour.
My sheets are heavy and suffocating. I pull them off and get assailed by an arctic blast of air. My skin is grimy. Everything in my room is in an advanced stage of decay. With a strong breath I could make it all turn to dust. If I could feel my breathing. I bury my face in my pillow for what seems only a few minutes, the drug slowly releasing its grip on my body and psyche.
The sun is casting bright orange light against the white of my wall. So ends another night. I close my eyes a final time to a pair of blazing orange eyes scrutinizing my descent into unconsciousness. The smell of sweat fills my nostrils and my breathing is mine once again.
##
I don’t wake up again until evening. Hayes is nowhere to be found and the ghouls didn’t steal anything. The night is off to a fine start. I discover on the answering machine that I missed a job interview, which doesn’t really mean dick as it was only for a job at a fast food joint. Times are getting lean, however. In the mailbox is a cut-off warning from the power company to match the one I got a few days ago for the telephone. I have to do something.