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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Our Concern for the Turkeys

We take such comfort from our guests.

Knowing they feel safe means so much to us.

Long ago…okay, not really all that long ago…a neighbor told us we’re known as the “safe house” in the neighborhood.

“All the parents tell their kids, if anything happens and you’re not sure what to do or just scared, go to Susan and Joseph’s house. They’ll help you.”

Note we were never asked if this was okay with us. It kind of just happened.

Left me scratching my head. “Huh?”

I think it started when we first moved into this neighborhood. One young lad, Ollie, always came over after school to talk with me. I thought he sought academic guidance as we often talked about school happenings. Each visit, he politely asked where Susan was.

I noticed his visits were shorter on the days Susan wasn’t around.

Then one day he confided, “You’re wife’s awful purdy.”

Thank you, Ollie. You do understand she’s with me, right, kiddo?

Ah, the stirrings of adolescent infatuation.

And meanwhile, the turkeys take comfort with us.

 

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.

Grandpa’s Pasta Sauce

I need a break from Tag and will offer two flash pieces as respite.

The first is Grandpa’s Pasta Sauce, written spur-of-the-moment for a class I took on creative non-fiction writing. We were given five minutes to come up with something based on a real event and humanize it. I read this piece when called upon and the teacher wanted to know if I really just made it up on the spot or had worked on it long and hard and offered it for comment.

Her specific question was, “Are you really that good or is that something you’ve been working on for a while?”

I offered it was just a good day for me.

This demurecation upset Susan greatly. “Why can’t you own you’re a good writer?”

That honest, simple question set off a storm of self-analysis, all to the good.

But you tell me what you think.

Grandpa’s Pasta Sauce

Grandpa cooked pasta sauce so hot your eyes watered when you walked into his kitchen. His fingers reddened as he crushed dried red peppers into the sizzling olive oil, the garlic, onions, and green pepper already skittling across the cast iron pan.

Next came tomato paste. A whole can that he practically cracked open like an egg because he’d been a dirt farmer all of his life and his forearms were veined like rivers running to the sea and his hands calloused like the earth itself after a dry summer’s harvest.

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