DonMackaroni
Lord of the Delete Key
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2007
- Messages
- 16
Hi,
This is a new story I'm starting. It's about a man who makes a doll that warns him with little doll symbols of invisible monsters that only it can see threatening to invade the doll maker's world.
This is the first chapter.
Fruber stared forlornly through a diamond-shaped opening in the chain-link fence as a wrecking ball smashed through the final walls of what had once been his and twenty-three hundred other people’s homes. His fingers tightened on the metal links with each dusty, muffled, thump of the giant ball into the thirty year old brick and mortar. His arms burned from hanging on the fence, but he could only gape at the still unusual sight of empty blue sky over the chunky mounds of debris in the lot before him.
With a shudder, he freed a bloated breath of fatigue and resignation from his chest. One more day was erased from the calendar, one day less available to pay homage to his old home. It seemed like it got harder each time instead of easier. He turned from the fence to finish his walk home and felt his stomach bottom out the same way it had the past two months when he saw the billboard.
“Golem Development, LLC, Bringing the Bronx into the 21st Century! Construction Starts This Fall!” the sign heralded. Fruber gave the advertisement a resentful glare, flipped it the bird, and stomped past its colorful images of single-family homes with picket fence borders, wishing that someone had asked the Bronx whether or not it wanted to go along for the ride into the future.
He walked the seven blocks to the apartment building he and his mom had moved into three months ago with his head down. His feet absently kicked empty juice bottles across the cracked and mottled sidewalk as he fought through the black storm crackling through his mind. He waved sullenly to a few of his school-friends who lived in other buildings in the complex before pushing through the outer doors of the drab, cinderblock tower.
He pulled the chain holding the key to the entry door from beneath his coat and shirt, shoved the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed through into the lobby of the building. It smelled of old urine and fried foods. He hurried to the elevators and repeatedly jammed his finger against the “up” button. The doors slid open after half a minute and he rushed inside and pushed the button marked “17” on the panel set into the carriage wall.
A short ride later and he stepped from the elevator into the hallway of the seventeenth floor. He ambled over to his door, scratched and dented like an unmarked black practice target, and slid his key into the lock above the doorknob. He turned it, and walked into his home, closing and locking the door.
“That you Phoenix?” his mother’s voice came from farther inside the apartment. “You didn’t go by that construction site again did you?”
“Nah, mom,” Fruber lied. “What’s for dinner?” He dropped his book bag on the floor and hung up his coat before heading into the kitchen.
Something was cooking and the aroma reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.
The kitchen was empty, though the dial on the oven was turned to “warm”. He opened the oven door, which squeaked loudly in protest. A foil covered casserole dish wavered in the oven’s heat.
“Don’t touch that, Phoenix,” his mother said. Her voice preceding her into the kitchen, “it won’t be done ‘till six-thirty. Don’t let it burn. When you take it out, let it cool for about ten minutes before you eat it, and put the rest in the fridge for me.”
Phoenix stared at his mother standing in the doorway putting in an earring. Hair the color of hot chocolate was elaborately styled and pinned up on her head. It looked like she was trying to not look really nice, but she did anyway. Her face was smooth, and clear of the pocks and age spots Fruber was accustomed to seeing everyday and he realized that she had makeup on. She had on nice clothes Fruber hadn’t seen since she and his dad had lived together, too. She was even wearing heels.
“Where you going, mom?” Fruber asked. His voice sounded muffled and distant like someone else asked the question.
“I’m going out baby,” she said, finished with the earring and smoothing her blouse and skirt. “I’m going out with a friend from work. I’ll be back at around ten, okay?”
It took a few minutes for Fruber’s brain to register what he’d just heard, but when it did he blurted, “You can’t date you’re still married.”
His mother’s hands froze in the midst of smoothing her skirt. Her face was the color of caramel and toffee, but hard and expressionless as the cinderblocks of the ruined apartment buildings where they used to live. “Phoenix La’Viver Fruber, you listen to me right now. I’m only going to tell you this once. Your father is gone, and he’s not coming back. He left us. Both of us. Left us to start some new life with his girlfriend.” Her hands found their way to her hips. “And if you think I’m gonna sit around here watching things crumble, you’re wrong. I’m starting over too. I can, and will, date. And I’m starting tonight, with Jimmy, so get used to it.” Her eyes softened then, and she put her hands on Fruber’s cheeks. “Baby, you’ve got a chance to start over, too. Lord only knows why you still do, but I know you miss your father. But you’ve got to look at this as a chance to meet new people, make new friends. Sometimes good things happen when—“
Fruber shook her hands from his face and turned away. “I don’t have to do anything,” he said. The words felt painful when he said them, tasted as metallic and raw coming from his throat as the kitchen looked through his red rimmed eyes.
His mother straightened and pursed her lips. “Well, while you’re busy not doing anything,” she said, ticking points off on her fingers, “don’t break anything, don’t make a mess, and don’t stay up past eleven tonight, you hear me?”
Fruber shrugged.
“Phoenix—“
“Yeah, alright,” Fruber mumbled.
His mother’s heels clicked along the hallway, paused while the door opened, and continued, muffled, after the door closed.
Fruber glared around the kitchen a moment before smacking a half-full plastic cup off the kitchen table. It bounced against the cabinet doors beneath the sink and water splashed against the doors and ran down onto the floor in a small pool. He watched the water drip and pool through blurred eyes for a heartbeat before storming from kitchen, down the narrow hallway, and into his room. He slammed the door shut and kicked a pile of dirty clothes scattering them across the room.
Posters covered his walls, gifts from his mother through the years. His angry eyes scanned the room turning every object into a target of his ire. He kicked a basketball shoe over his bed and onto his desk uncovering the Knicks headband his mother bought him for his last birthday. It was his favorite one. He snatched it up from the ground and glared at it.
Then he decided to burn it.
He stomped out of his bedroom and into the living room, over to the cabinet where he knew his father used to keep the fluid for his cigarette lighter. He threw open the doors and rummaged through the things there until he found the yellow plastic bottle. He stalked through the apartment to the bathroom and shut the door. Then he stood there with the headband in one hand, the lighter fluid in the other, listening to the silence of the apartment.
He looked from the sink to the bathtub and decided upon the bathtub, tossing the headband onto the dry white surface and opening the spout on the fluid bottle. He held the shower curtain aside with one hand and hesitated briefly, before squirting a stream of lighter fluid onto the headband, saturating it until fluid ran down the tub and down the drain. It smelled sweet and dangerous, and his head floated and swam with a thousand thoughts.
He looked around to the toilet, where a book of matches sat on the tank top. He grabbed them, pulled one from the book, and hovered over the soaked orange and blue headband, not completely sure he wanted to consummate the act of insurgence with the striking of the match.
He let out a little strangled noise, not quite moan, not quite shout, and struck the match. It flared brightly to life in a sulfurous puff. He dropped it into the tub.
The headband ignited in a small whoosh of flames that flashed into the air over the tub. Fruber recoiled from the heat, crying out in fear.
The headband’s colors were lost in the consuming platinum-yellow of the flames. Fruber dropped to his knees before the tub and pulled remorsefully at the fair curls of his brown hair. A straight, golden strand of hair floated from between his fingers, and dropped into the fire. It flashed brilliantly, like a fuse, and vanished in a puff of smoke like a magician’s prop.
The shower curtain fell back over the tub, hiding the fire. And then it began to melt.
Fruber scrambled forward and smacked the curtain out of the way of the fire, jerking it over to the wall. He looked down at the black, smoldering remains of the headband and turned on the water spigot. He was sure his nose was fooling him, but he thought he smelled the years of sweat and fun and laughter that had soaked into the headband drifting up out from the tub and out the vent in the ceiling like a sad, stinky, ghost. He tossed water from his cupped hands onto the charred mess in the middle of the tub, splashing it around wildly. He wasn’t sure if the wetness on his face was tears or cold tub water.
He regarded the sodden, orange, blue, and black mess in the tub, and began to sob.
This is a new story I'm starting. It's about a man who makes a doll that warns him with little doll symbols of invisible monsters that only it can see threatening to invade the doll maker's world.
This is the first chapter.
Fruber stared forlornly through a diamond-shaped opening in the chain-link fence as a wrecking ball smashed through the final walls of what had once been his and twenty-three hundred other people’s homes. His fingers tightened on the metal links with each dusty, muffled, thump of the giant ball into the thirty year old brick and mortar. His arms burned from hanging on the fence, but he could only gape at the still unusual sight of empty blue sky over the chunky mounds of debris in the lot before him.
With a shudder, he freed a bloated breath of fatigue and resignation from his chest. One more day was erased from the calendar, one day less available to pay homage to his old home. It seemed like it got harder each time instead of easier. He turned from the fence to finish his walk home and felt his stomach bottom out the same way it had the past two months when he saw the billboard.
“Golem Development, LLC, Bringing the Bronx into the 21st Century! Construction Starts This Fall!” the sign heralded. Fruber gave the advertisement a resentful glare, flipped it the bird, and stomped past its colorful images of single-family homes with picket fence borders, wishing that someone had asked the Bronx whether or not it wanted to go along for the ride into the future.
He walked the seven blocks to the apartment building he and his mom had moved into three months ago with his head down. His feet absently kicked empty juice bottles across the cracked and mottled sidewalk as he fought through the black storm crackling through his mind. He waved sullenly to a few of his school-friends who lived in other buildings in the complex before pushing through the outer doors of the drab, cinderblock tower.
He pulled the chain holding the key to the entry door from beneath his coat and shirt, shoved the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed through into the lobby of the building. It smelled of old urine and fried foods. He hurried to the elevators and repeatedly jammed his finger against the “up” button. The doors slid open after half a minute and he rushed inside and pushed the button marked “17” on the panel set into the carriage wall.
A short ride later and he stepped from the elevator into the hallway of the seventeenth floor. He ambled over to his door, scratched and dented like an unmarked black practice target, and slid his key into the lock above the doorknob. He turned it, and walked into his home, closing and locking the door.
“That you Phoenix?” his mother’s voice came from farther inside the apartment. “You didn’t go by that construction site again did you?”
“Nah, mom,” Fruber lied. “What’s for dinner?” He dropped his book bag on the floor and hung up his coat before heading into the kitchen.
Something was cooking and the aroma reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.
The kitchen was empty, though the dial on the oven was turned to “warm”. He opened the oven door, which squeaked loudly in protest. A foil covered casserole dish wavered in the oven’s heat.
“Don’t touch that, Phoenix,” his mother said. Her voice preceding her into the kitchen, “it won’t be done ‘till six-thirty. Don’t let it burn. When you take it out, let it cool for about ten minutes before you eat it, and put the rest in the fridge for me.”
Phoenix stared at his mother standing in the doorway putting in an earring. Hair the color of hot chocolate was elaborately styled and pinned up on her head. It looked like she was trying to not look really nice, but she did anyway. Her face was smooth, and clear of the pocks and age spots Fruber was accustomed to seeing everyday and he realized that she had makeup on. She had on nice clothes Fruber hadn’t seen since she and his dad had lived together, too. She was even wearing heels.
“Where you going, mom?” Fruber asked. His voice sounded muffled and distant like someone else asked the question.
“I’m going out baby,” she said, finished with the earring and smoothing her blouse and skirt. “I’m going out with a friend from work. I’ll be back at around ten, okay?”
It took a few minutes for Fruber’s brain to register what he’d just heard, but when it did he blurted, “You can’t date you’re still married.”
His mother’s hands froze in the midst of smoothing her skirt. Her face was the color of caramel and toffee, but hard and expressionless as the cinderblocks of the ruined apartment buildings where they used to live. “Phoenix La’Viver Fruber, you listen to me right now. I’m only going to tell you this once. Your father is gone, and he’s not coming back. He left us. Both of us. Left us to start some new life with his girlfriend.” Her hands found their way to her hips. “And if you think I’m gonna sit around here watching things crumble, you’re wrong. I’m starting over too. I can, and will, date. And I’m starting tonight, with Jimmy, so get used to it.” Her eyes softened then, and she put her hands on Fruber’s cheeks. “Baby, you’ve got a chance to start over, too. Lord only knows why you still do, but I know you miss your father. But you’ve got to look at this as a chance to meet new people, make new friends. Sometimes good things happen when—“
Fruber shook her hands from his face and turned away. “I don’t have to do anything,” he said. The words felt painful when he said them, tasted as metallic and raw coming from his throat as the kitchen looked through his red rimmed eyes.
His mother straightened and pursed her lips. “Well, while you’re busy not doing anything,” she said, ticking points off on her fingers, “don’t break anything, don’t make a mess, and don’t stay up past eleven tonight, you hear me?”
Fruber shrugged.
“Phoenix—“
“Yeah, alright,” Fruber mumbled.
His mother’s heels clicked along the hallway, paused while the door opened, and continued, muffled, after the door closed.
Fruber glared around the kitchen a moment before smacking a half-full plastic cup off the kitchen table. It bounced against the cabinet doors beneath the sink and water splashed against the doors and ran down onto the floor in a small pool. He watched the water drip and pool through blurred eyes for a heartbeat before storming from kitchen, down the narrow hallway, and into his room. He slammed the door shut and kicked a pile of dirty clothes scattering them across the room.
Posters covered his walls, gifts from his mother through the years. His angry eyes scanned the room turning every object into a target of his ire. He kicked a basketball shoe over his bed and onto his desk uncovering the Knicks headband his mother bought him for his last birthday. It was his favorite one. He snatched it up from the ground and glared at it.
Then he decided to burn it.
He stomped out of his bedroom and into the living room, over to the cabinet where he knew his father used to keep the fluid for his cigarette lighter. He threw open the doors and rummaged through the things there until he found the yellow plastic bottle. He stalked through the apartment to the bathroom and shut the door. Then he stood there with the headband in one hand, the lighter fluid in the other, listening to the silence of the apartment.
He looked from the sink to the bathtub and decided upon the bathtub, tossing the headband onto the dry white surface and opening the spout on the fluid bottle. He held the shower curtain aside with one hand and hesitated briefly, before squirting a stream of lighter fluid onto the headband, saturating it until fluid ran down the tub and down the drain. It smelled sweet and dangerous, and his head floated and swam with a thousand thoughts.
He looked around to the toilet, where a book of matches sat on the tank top. He grabbed them, pulled one from the book, and hovered over the soaked orange and blue headband, not completely sure he wanted to consummate the act of insurgence with the striking of the match.
He let out a little strangled noise, not quite moan, not quite shout, and struck the match. It flared brightly to life in a sulfurous puff. He dropped it into the tub.
The headband ignited in a small whoosh of flames that flashed into the air over the tub. Fruber recoiled from the heat, crying out in fear.
The headband’s colors were lost in the consuming platinum-yellow of the flames. Fruber dropped to his knees before the tub and pulled remorsefully at the fair curls of his brown hair. A straight, golden strand of hair floated from between his fingers, and dropped into the fire. It flashed brilliantly, like a fuse, and vanished in a puff of smoke like a magician’s prop.
The shower curtain fell back over the tub, hiding the fire. And then it began to melt.
Fruber scrambled forward and smacked the curtain out of the way of the fire, jerking it over to the wall. He looked down at the black, smoldering remains of the headband and turned on the water spigot. He was sure his nose was fooling him, but he thought he smelled the years of sweat and fun and laughter that had soaked into the headband drifting up out from the tub and out the vent in the ceiling like a sad, stinky, ghost. He tossed water from his cupped hands onto the charred mess in the middle of the tub, splashing it around wildly. He wasn’t sure if the wetness on his face was tears or cold tub water.
He regarded the sodden, orange, blue, and black mess in the tub, and began to sob.
