Fiction – Page 38 – Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog

My Wife’s An Alien

Last week I offered Grandpa’s Pasta Sauce and this week a slightly longer flash piece, My Wife’s An Alien, a bit of a break from a steady diet of Tag.

My Wife’s An Alien comes from a family joke; my Mediterranean blood makes me a furnace compared to most people. Susan offers me to people she sees shivering. “Hold his hand, you’ll warm up fast.”

The contrast to this is, compared to me, she’s the arctic. She once walked up to a fellow worker and put her hands on the back of the coworker’s neck and the coworker (no kidding) jumped about a foot in the air. “Good god, woman. Have the courtesy of staying in the ground when you’re dead!”

The scene here about cold feet? Yeah, it happened. A lot. Took me a while.

My Wife’s An Alien

My wife’s an alien. I found out on our wedding night. You see, I’m old school. None of that heavy breathing stuff until the rings are on the fingers. She didn’t seem to mind. I offered to…umm…pleasure…her in other ways. You know? If she wanted.

“No. I can wait.”

I can make a joke out of it. One of those “My wife’s so frigid…” but that’s just the point. She is.

We’re lying in bed that first night together and she lets out this heavy sigh. I mean, long, deep; it sounded like an airline ruptured in the honeymoon suite, but what’s pneumatically driven in a honeymoon suite?

“You okay?”

She smiles, her eyes on the mirrored ceiling. “Yes. Just relaxing.”

“Do you want to…you know…?”

“If you’d like.”

But just then I’m noticing the bed is getting cold. “Are you getting chilly? Let me adjust the temperature before we start anything.”

“It won’t matter.”

“Huh?”

She’s still staring at our reflections in the ceiling mirror, smiling, and her foot slides over towards mine under the covers.

Except her foot’s a good five, six inches away and I’m feeling like I’m Luke Skywalker on the ice planet Hoth. She touches me with just her toes and I swear to God my skin turns blue up to eyeballs and my nose hairs twitch.

“Holy Mother of…are you alright? You need a doctor?”

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From the Casebook of Ima Flush, HDP Certified Space Plumber, Quadrant 6E now in Harvey Duckman Present V9

Yes, it’s true…the long awaited and no longer a special plumber’s issue of Harvey Duckman (Volume 9) is now available for your reading pleasure.

Many writers contributed (including Peter James @Brennan_and_Riz Martin, Kate @KateBaucherel Baucherel, Liz @LizTuckwell1 Tuckwell, Robin @robinmoonwrites Moon, Will @will_nett Nett, Mark @DarrackMark Hayes, A L @ALBuxton2 Buxton, and Craig @CKRoebuck Roebuck). My offering is From the Casebook of Ima Flush, HDP Certified Space Plumber, Quadrant 6E.

This story has a strange history.

But then again, what story of mine doesn’t?

The special plumbers issue – which this story was written for – never came about. Kind of. The issue had been talked about for several years. It was on again off again and the seesawing (frankly) became tiring. I hadn’t written anything for it yet so no worries.

Then I drove to a master telescope maker to have our telescope repaired (it’s a beautiful Schmidt–Cassegrain I originally purchased back in the 1990s to learn astral-photography. finally getting back into it). I’m driving along and listening to music (must listen to music) when the protagonist, Ima Flush, appeared in front of me.

Naturally, I swerved.

After people stopped honking their horns and getting back on the highway, I listened to what Ima told me.

Even had to turn down the music. A bit.

Turns out Ima likes classic rock, too!

She had an amazing story to tell.

Here…let me share just the title. I thought Ima was changing her mind. No, she was sharing her genesis with me.

And an amazing genesis it is…

“From the Casebook of Ima Flush, HDP Certified Space Plumber, Quadrant 6E”

[no, that was true when we started, not any more]

“Choices made Manifest Through Self-Awareness”?

[too wordy and obscure]

“The Opening of Ima Flush”?

[no, nobody’ll remember the reference]

“The Silver Ring”?

[no, ditto… ah, I have it. how about…?]

Breaking Through

(Yes! That’s it!)

Hope you enjoy.

Tag – Part III The Body – Chapter 13

Tag – Part III The Body – Chapter 13

Dire entered the cellar from a bulkhead concealed in a thicket of stranglebushes. She wore thick clothing even on the warmest days so the thorns wouldn’t slow her. Sometimes she needed to hide in a hurry.

She lit candles then a lantern, trimming wicks so there’d be heat and light but no smoke. A wall held animal parts, a workbench several tools. Beakers and bowls and corked jars covered shelves far back into the dark. A lectern held several books.

A pigskin glove, the fingers spread and held open with pins, rested palm up in the center of the workbench. Pig ligaments and sinews ran up through the fingers. The woman picked up a magnifier and studied the glove, sometimes pulling the sinews to see if the fingers fought the pins. They did.

She smiled.

“What have you there, Grandmother?”

She spun and lifted a fine edged knife from the bench as she did so.

Tag – Part III The Body – Chapter 12

Tag – Part III The Body – Chapter 12

Grasshoppers chirped and took flight. Bees buzzed from flower to flower. Wrens and blackbirds flitted from limb to limb. A bushtit danced on the dead girl’s barbette tugging at a loose thread, another made a hole in a stocking.

The woods grew silent as Baillot, Tardiff, Eric, Thomas, Verduan, and Patreo gathered in a semi-circle around the body.

Ide pushed through them. Thomas moved to hold her back but not quick enough. She looked at the young woman’s body and collapsed against her son.

Patreo reached into his cassock and pulled out a small phial. “Lay her down.” He pointed to a sprout of turf back aways from the body. “Over there.” One quick shake and he uncorked it under her nose. “Breathe slowly, Mother. Deep and slow.”

Her eyes fluttered then focused. She pushed him away and scrambled across the hard earth to the body.

Baillot frowned at the phial still in Patreo’s hand.

“Crushed Buckthorn with cayenne and some other herbs, Father.”

Ide gently adjusted the dead girl’s blouse and skirt. “I taught Julia needlework and weaving. She made these as I watched.”

Tardiff squatted beside her and gently took her hands in his. “Are you sure this is your daughter, Ide?”

Ide pulled her hands free and hugged the body to her. The blood on the face and neck turned her blouse a patchwork of bizarre leaf shapes, as if red maple leaves became hands, grabbed her blouse, left their ruddy mark then let go.

“Forgive me, Ide, but the face. It would be hard to tell by the face – ”