Slate - Short Story/Monologue
I typically don't post work online anymore as it fucks up my chances of getting it published, but this is too short to do me any good anyway.
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The other day when you called, I almost didn’t pick up. I wanted you to think I was off being someone else. But after the tenth ring, I figured you saw through me. Anyone less patient would have hung up. You’re something else.
Today, I’m a bird. It’s not very often I get a request like that, to become a bird. I can float listlessly through the air, but that’s not the kind of bird I am. The kind of bird I am today is the kind of bird that slams into a clean window to wake the family on the other side. To shake them.
Yesterday, I was a brick dropped from a roof that almost killed a man. I made him break a sweat. I broke on the ground.
I never know what it’s going to be when you call, and you call often enough to make it interesting, and I answer often enough to make it worth your while. Don’t I, baby? I like to keep you on the line. That’s why I don’t have voicemail.
Tomorrow, you tell me, I need to be a doctor. And I’ll be engaged to a blonde woman who’ll end up dead of an aneurysm by the end of the week. It’s so perfect. She’s so young. I can see her now, hair splashed out like the corona of the setting sun, a final blaze to a impotent life.
You tell me I’ll be the doctor for a little while. I ask if you want to play nurse, and you playfully hang up.
One of these days, I might get to meet you. Maybe you’re sitting next to a phone. I think you just got a call, someone telling you that you’re going to be a blonde woman. That’s what helps me cope. You were the man, the family, the window, the ground, you are always there.
The odd days, the days where you call just to talk, the days where I get to be myself and make you laugh. The odd days, the salad days, the days I would miss the most if I were dead. Even though you put upon me I never feel put upon. Maybe it’s because you’re the woman, and I’m the doctor, and you’re the ground and I’m the brick. You tell me I can call anytime, but we both know you change your number and I never change mine.
On the odd days, on the days when I get to be myself, I always wear a red hoodie when I leave the house. The hood off my head, on my back. It helps conceal the curve of the spine that I get from carrying you with me.
Tomorrow, I’m a doctor, and I can stand up straight.
Then we’ll see.
