Last Box byGareth Gorst, o rganic earl grey tea

Last Box

 

'They’re for Wednesday, that box. We want to end Deepavali with a bang not a whimper, nah?'

 

   He pats my cheek. 'Yes, Papi,' I manage to draw out in my disappointment, as he leans up and moves back to put the crackers on a higher shelf.

 

I want it now.

I want it now and forever.

I want light in my night,

Explosions in my fight,

I want just… to be together

Watching, not waiting, watching life complete

Hand in hand, understand the party that’s been planned, the

people I’ve come to meet, the wisdom of the streets, the shimmering of the heat, the tower blocks oh so neat, the other children that I greet, the

Here in this city of light.

 

   The last day of Diwali, papi’s brothers and sisters arrive and we eat our dinner by a bonfire, sing songs, tell stories; but at some point I can't fight off the urge and fall asleep in his arms. At five, the adults are still up talking as we snore in our tent. My eldest brother wakes us, speaking too loud. '…It’s tonight. Remember, what they saved. Come, come…'

 

   Papi lifts me gently into some blue dawn yet to be unfolded and holds me calm up to the firmament for my bleary-eyed wonder to begin.

 

   Then the box explodes, in its preordained sequence, festival of light, of hope, of knowing; the soreness of our eyes; breeze starts blowing, harbinger of the inevitable lunchtime thunder and afternoon rain.

 

Let it begin, let it end,

Let it drive me round then bend

This aching for us to mend,

aching of life for what she sends, for

No one else but us, under Saraswati’s stars

Let this family live forever.

 

   The last smoke drifts into the silence and we hear the singing of the constellations once more, yet to be enfolded in some blue dawn still ours for the taking.

 

Happy Deepavali.

 

    I look up at him and see tears are streaming down his face, follow his eyes to where nine pinpricks in the blanket of the night let her love seep through. It seems we stay that way for eternity, wondering at what life has planned for us before I turn to see if I'm doing it right and he finally looks down and smiles.

 

'We own nothing here,' Papi says, 'nothing but each other. We belong, just so, though we’ve been told… none of this is ours.'

 

    We turn, leave the last box smouldering in its grave, and Papi carries me back to bed.

 

about the author

 

Biography: A lifelong writer dedicating thirty years to teaching creative arts  in Leeds, London, Milan, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. I see life as a map, the world as our children's oyster and my duty to redraw the parts of the map being stolen by the dream-catchers. I currently live and renovate in the Ribble Valley.

 

Suggested drink: a pot of earl grey

 

Biography (short): After thirty years teaching language in Leeds, London, Milan, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, I now live, write and renovate in the Ribble Valley. I see life as a map, the world as our children's oyster and my duty to redraw parts of the map being stolen by the dream-catchers.

Paste story here  

 

Paste author bio here 

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hose’re Roses by : Alan J Pawsey, coffee

 Harry was still miffed a week after Burt claimed victory and when the weather channel predicted pleasant temperatures and good air quality for the next morning, called Burt. “Hey, Burt, it’s been a while and it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow morning. Why don’t we meet out back for coffee and, “My treat, I’ll bring the pastries. You can pick up your coffee since I know how particular you are.”  He held back on his snicker until he hung up and then left a message on Philippe’s number in the kitchen. Philippe was the Home’s pastry chef. He was there twice a week, and Harry had made a special arrangement with him to make cinnamon crullers.

Harry fell asleep with a smile on his face. The game was afoot! In his sleep he dreamed of his childhood in Hoboken when he ran around with his friends like wild animals. When he got up in the middle of the night to pee, still half asleep, he was chuckling, “Mom didn’t like any of my friends in the Hellraisers, but we had fun!”

The following morning, he was up early and collected the crullers and his coffee in the Home’s cafeteria. Harry took the tray out to the patio, not wanting to chance someone else grabbing their table. It was still a bit chilly, and he zipped up his fleece jacket, trying to remember why he’d asked Philippe to make the crullers special for him. I thought something different would distract Burt, throw him off his game. Or maybe because he’s aways going on about croissants and French pastries. Five minutes later, he unfolded a tent card – RESERVED – and returned to the cafeteria for a refill. Burt was in the middle of the coffee line. The large clock on the far wall showed that they were still 10 minutes before their usual time.

Harry skirted the line, cleared his throat, and whispered, “Morning Burt, early bird and all that.”

Burt turned, nodding at Harry’s cup. “Refill already?”

Maggie was two back from Burt. She glared, pushed out her painted red-warrior lips, and announced in a not unsubtle way. “Just remember house rules: No cut-ins on the coffee or food lines.” Then she smiled. “Of course, Burt can join you at the back of the line.”

On the way outside, Burt mumbled, “Weather forecast says it’s supposed to be a good day; we’ll see.”

Harry, struggling with a too-full cup, muttered in return, “We’ll see.”

After they were seated, Harry extended the plate with the crullers to Burt. “I thought we’d have something different. I know you like cinnamon and asked Philippe to make some crullers special for us. Hope you like them.”

Burt didn’t wait and took a bite. “Mmm, nice. Choux pastry. There was a German bakery in our neighborhood in Brooklyn where I grew up, right outside of Bed-Sty. Yeh, just remembered what they called me: Brooklyn Burt. A name big enough to cover a lot of sins. Must be getting old, not remembering that last week. Up there with Hoboken Harry.”

Harry didn’t need another opening. “Hey, never told you how I ran with the Hoboken Hellraisers when I was a kid? They were pretty much my boys by the time I was eleven, not that I’m bragging. Considered me the brains of the outfit. Got me my start in life too. Smells.”

Harry tapped his nose. “Don’t have to tell you how poor neighborhoods stink. But there’s always a way to make it worse. No one would try selling stink bombs in Jersey, not with those refineries and what some claimed were Brooklyn garbage scows dumping in Jersey waters, but I thought maybe if I could make a real, real stinker, I’d have a seller. Lots of free ingredients behind restaurants and grocers in the hood for the picking. Heck, I knew about hard boiled eggs. Tried aging them and cabbage in discarded jars, I already forgot what else I threw in before tying party balloons over the top. Could light some of them and get a pop too.”

He paused and smiled inside, insisting that Burt finish the last cruller. Harry had to time this right, swallowing the last of his coffee.

“Yeh, I was saying, even went to the library, got the old spinster to show me a couple of basic chemistry books. Got me thinking. Even decided that’s what I wanted to be – a chemist. Easy stuff, but the other Hellraisers thought it was magic. I got a plastic bottle, dumped in some match heads and ammonia I liberated from the super in our building. Closed it up and waited a couple of days. Easiest was with an egg. Sulfur in them does the trick but in those days, eggs were expensive, so I had to wait until I found broken ones behind the grocery store. Best one was the easiest stink bomb. Just hair wrapped up in paper. I threw in a couple of chicken feathers and bones for a voodoo effect. Burning them releases the disulfide bonds in the hair keratin. Us Hellraisers boasted it was us that got Jersey the name ‘Garbage State’ with the extra smells we made that first summer.”

Harry finished his coffee and centered it on the now empty cruller plate. “Got me started. Ten years after I graduated with a degree in chemistry, I launched my first company. SLR, Inc. SLR – Smells Like Roses. Sweet sound too.”

Harry stood up and pushed back from the table. “The rest is history. I guess it’s your turn to clear off.”

About the author

 

 Alan is a retired cop and civil servant. Both occupations reinforced an inherent cynical attitude which he endeavours to control by drinking coffee and realising things ain't so bad. Or are they? 

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OF ELEPHANTS AND MEN by Guy Pratt, a pink gin

OF ELEPHANTS AND MEN

The commuter train ran up to London from the South Coast early each weekday morning. Most of the passengers were the typical gentlemen in pin stripe trousers and bowler hats with uniform umbrellas and rolled copies of the Times or Telegraph which they opened and hid silently behind until they hastily folded them preparing to leave the train when it reached the city. The same ones seemed to occupy the same compartment each weekday morning.

There were two exceptions in the compartment every morning. One was a small man in overalls with a cloth cap and he always carried three copies of the Daily Mirror. The other was a large man dressed in a tweed suit and a pork pie hat. He had no newspaper and throughout the journey gazed silently out of the window or read the back pages of the open papers of his fellow commuters opposite him. In that typically English way, other than cursory nods on boarding, there never seemed to be any conversation between them all.

Whilst the others were all engaged in reading papers the little man in the cloth cap would stand up and pull his copies of the Daily Mirror apart and roll the pages up into balls which he would at regular intervals throw out of the window.  He would keep looking at his watch as though he was working to a set time and pattern in doing this. The rest of the compartment’s occupants were either too engrossed in reading their own papers, too reserved to ask what he was up to, or just chose to ignore him, apart from the one under the pork pie hat who was becoming increasing puzzled and agitated.

This went on for several months and pork pie hat was working himself into quite an anxiety state over it and finally could contain his curiosity no longer. He blurted out to cloth cap and overalls in a posh voice “Why ever are you doing that every day, rolling up balls of newspaper and throwing them out of the window at regular intervals?”

“Well guv,’” cloth cap responded, looking as though it was something very mundane and every day  ”if It’s done regularly, it keeps the elephants down.”

“But there are no elephants in the commuter belt” protested the questioner.

“Damned effective, isn’t it Guv’” cloth cap replied.

A few weeks of silence in the train ensued then pork pie hat and tweeds opened the conversation again. “I used to catch elephants in Greenland” he stated.

“They don’t have elephants in Greenland” said cloth cap and overalls.

“Not now” replied pork pie hat “I captured the lot.”

“How ever did you do that?”

“I’d go to a remote area of Greenland where they lived and set up a blackboard. Then I would chalk on it two plus two equals five. The elephants would come along and stand and puzzle over this. While they stood there, from a safe distance I would view them through the wrong end of my binoculars. They now appeared so tiny I could pick them up with tweezers and drop them into a jam jar.”

“Amazing! That’s amazing” exclaimed cloth cap.

One day at the London Zoo a new companion was introduced to one of the resident elephants. The new elephant asked the other one how she came to be in the Zoo. Nelly explained that her parents had been in a circus touring the South Coast and had escaped and hidden out in woodland close to the commuter line. Unfortunately, Nelly’s parents died and she was left an orphan and taken to the London Zoo.

Jumbo asked Nelly “What did your parents die of?”

Nelly explained that the authorities suspected foul play and an autopsy was performed on her parents. The autopsy found that they died of newsprint poisoning but no one was ever brought to justice.

“How very sad,” said Jumbo looking sorrowful.

“Where have you come from?” asked Nelly.

“I’ve come all the way from Greenland.” came the reply.

“Greenland!” echoed Nelly, ”I was never told me that we had relatives in Greenland. How on earth did you get here?”

Jumbo looked at her warily and replied “I don’t think you are going to believe this…”

About the author

Guy Pratt is a retired octogenarian second hand bookseller who enjoys gardening, long walks with his dog and travel. He gravitated into the book trade after earlier years in farming, the army Intelligence Corps and the civil service. 

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Them’s Goldfishby Kenneth M. Kapp coffee,

Them’s Goldfish

 

Burt and Harry were doing what they did best: sitting on the back terrace of the old-age home, swapping tales over the dregs of their morning coffee, and munching whatever was left on their plates after flicking the crumbs from the croissants onto the flagstones for the birds. The other residents gave them room, tired of being told whenever they came close that the two of them were just letting their choppers do the talking. “They get a good rest from the glass on the bathroom sink overnight, not having to get up a single time to pee!”

Maggie was one of the few residents to go up against the dynamic duo. Her quip that “It wasn’t funny even the first time!” got more laughs.

In any case, this morning turned out to be for walks down memory lane. A cardinal landed on the far end of the patio, having spotted the crumbs. Burt was first out of the chute. “I told you those birds have super sight.” Harry ignored the remark and tried to encourage the bird with his tweet, tweet, t w e e t, which didn’t play well through his choppers or 82-year-old lips.

Burt pounced, “Give it up Harry, your lips are past their prime.”

“Never. They’re the same ones I was born with.”

“Well, must be the teeth then.”

“No different than yours.”

There was a rumor circulating in the residence than once the two friends had gotten their dentures mixed up after laying them out on a dining room table for comparison.

Harry tried to deflect. “Too bad you weren’t around when I was a kid. You should have heard me whistle like a blue bird. Plenty of them back east then. They were more melodic than these red cardinals.”

And that started the trip down memory lane.

Harry’s family grew up in Hoboken. “They called me Hoboken Harry soon as I turned eight!”

Burt’s family was from the lower East Side. He would spend the next two weeks trying to come up with his own handle, but he was stuck as East Side Ed even though his name was Burt. Meanwhile as best defense is a strong offense, he had launched the following story:

“OK, Harry, let me tell you a story that my father told me about when he was eight growing up on the Lower East Side. Summers were hot then too. Maybe not as hot as they are now but then if you were poor the best you could do was open all the windows and pray for a breeze, trying to ignore all the smells coming in from the streets and alleys. ‘Whoo-ee, gardy-loo.’”

Burt moved on quickly, realizing his French wasn’t what it used to be, which never was much anyhow. “Yeh, on hot days he and his brothers and cousins – by the dozens – would go down to the East River and jump in to cool off. Dad would joke, ‘So our mother wouldn’t have to wash your underwear.’ We took turns, always making sure a couple of the family members stayed up to guard the pile of clothes and shoes.”

He paused for effect. “I bet that was at least one hundred years ago. They’d run down the pier, hold their nose, and jump in. On one such run some big kid from uptown stopped him and pointed out the shit floating in the water, guess there were even fewer sanitation regulations then, and asked, ‘Hey kid, what do you call that stuff floating there?’ My pop answered, ‘Them’s goldfish,’ held his nose, ran down the pier, and executed a perfect bombardier into the river.”

Burt figured his story won the prize that morning, so he pushed back from the table, looked around for anything he may have brought and left, and nodded to Harry. “Loser must bus the dishes. And don’t forget, ‘them’s goldfish’ and you heard it from me first, right here!”

About the suthor

 

Kenneth M. Kapp lives with his wife in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, writing late at night in his man-cave. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. Please visit www.kmkbooks.com. 

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Nightstand by David Uri, Manhattan

Suggested Drink: Manhattan (consume before bedtime to erase the day)

Recipe: Use Amaro instead of sweet vermouth. 2:1 ration of Rye to Amaro. Never bourbon. Nothing expensive. Swirl or stir. Pour over ice and let it sit for 30 seconds while you stare longingly and caress the glass. I don't think it calls for a garnish but there are those who put cherries on everything. You know them. They don't know you.

Shortly before 06:00 am today, Mason’s days of killing time came to an end.

These had been long days stretching through each infinite moment. Boring days. Forgettable weeks consumed by vacant hours. Joyless television. Meaningless walks. Vacuous conversations. Wasted time for the singular purpose of wasting it.

Mason held it firmly. Time. Squeezing it tightly. Choking it slowly until the moment that it left him.

The bedside clock, with its stiff red numbers, displayed 05:59 am, as Mason reached over to his nightstand and prevented the alarm from going off. He stared as the 06:00 displayed and became aware of the sound of his own breathing. The simple cadence of his inhales and exhales continued as Mason laid on his side intently watching these numbers drift into the afternoon. The other needs of his own body ceased to exist as his eyes solely focused on the LED’s pushing each minute to the next.

The room’s twilight yielded to darkness as Mason watched the clock display 06:00 pm. With each breath, he knew that his days of abusing time were now at an end. Time had left him. And he could no longer manipulate it, cajole it, or kill it. Time couldn’t stand him anymore.

In the day that preceded this day, Mason discovered that his friend, more of a work acquaintance, had dropped dead in the middle of his life. The guy had just left the cardiologist after a great checkup and stopped for his favorite blue Slurpee at the 7-Eleven on his way home. An hour later, the convenience store manager found his cold dead body on the floor of the bathroom. A heart attack, they said. Only fifty, they said. What a shame, they said.

Mason turned fifty yesterday.

When he came home that evening, his wife told him of a young woman who was hit by two bicyclists while walking in the park today. They were apparently blinded by the glare of the sun and crashed into her simultaneously. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that the woman had some undiagnosed bleeding disorder. After her head hit the pavement, she died of a brain bleed within a few minutes.

Mason liked walking in the park.

On the same day, which was yesterday, Mason’s mother told him that his father had died today. He had always expected his father to die, but not yesterday. And not from a cancer that Mason was never told about. A cancer that his two brothers knew about for over a year.

Mason was a father.

Mason decided that he must apologize to time. How could he have mistreated it so badly? Now each moment must be sliced open and dissected in search of meaning. Nanoseconds would measure his life. Microseconds would define his days.

05:59 am. It was evening. It was morning. Day one. Mason drifted back to sleep.

David Uri is a writer and surgeon who focuses on the connection between memories and death. While David has been published extensively in medical journals, his upcoming novel is a fictional retelling of his own near-death coma. Good times.

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the author the other half goes to expenses e.g. Maintaining the web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.