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First Place
Tamara Boyd
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
"Beautiful Bright Thing"
(Following is a short exerpt from this story)
...The only member of the family who could honestly be said to live in the living room was the dog, and Bogart gave the impression of not giving a bone for anything in it but the fireplace. That said fireplace hadn’t worked since his puppy days had never quite sunk in for him. Curled up on the hearth, his massive shaggy head resting on huge paws, the St. Bernard thumped his tail twice and yawned as Jen set the mailman’s Almond Roca on an end table. It was doubtful he’d shifted more than an inch since collapsing after his morning walk with her husband.
“Hello and good morning to you, too,” she said.
Her cat, of course, was the obvious suspect, in a compromising position as he circled the fallen angel on dainty sock feet, sniffing at her tissue‑paper skirts while his tail switched back and forth. Puck batted her and jumped when the tissue crackled. He noticed Jen watching, whereupon he made a show of sitting and commenced a vigorous cleansing of his toes.
Jen shook her finger at him and rescued her angel. Like dioramas built into ice cream cartons or doll furniture constructed out of TP rolls and cereal boxes, the angel was a channeled product of the erstwhile girl who had once entertained notions of being an architect. Perhaps the creature had leapt to her death, distraught over her advanced state of deterioration, for she looked diseased. Gold paint peeled from the glass bulb of her face in patches. Blue felt eyes and red “O” of a mouth were no more than faded tufts, and her cotton‑ball hair was beginning to shred. Her skirts were tattered, and her wings and the tinsel feathers of the garland on her head had filmed over. Had she looked this dreadful when Jen had pulled her from the closet after Thanksgiving? To allow a holy icon to descend to this state of decrepitude had to be some sort of sacrilege.
“I’m so sorry,” Jen said. In reply, the angel’s head fell off her paper‑cone body and rolled underneath the coffee table. Puck paused in his grooming long enough to watch its progress. He gave Jen a look that said, You see? It does it all by itself.
“You’re not off the hook yet,” she chided him, and fetched the rogue noggin. Her shopping and wrapping was done, and she had this afternoon and all day tomorrow to do her baking, or at least most of the day tomorrow. Maybe one of these days she’d wise up, buy her “homemade” Christmas goods from a bakery, dispose of the telltale packaging. Or order boxes of sweets and appetizers online. Instant Martha Stewart: just add UPS! Bogie would never tell. A cookie was a cookie was a cookie to him.
She put the angel’s head and body on the kitchen table and headed down the hallway to what had once been her eldest daughter’s bedroom for some angelic makeover supplies. When she entered, she saw that the single window gaped open, letting in the rain. The desk beneath was puddled with water. She muttered to herself, closed the window and locked it. She had only herself to blame. When she came in the Saturday after Thanksgiving for the tree and all the holiday decorations, the weather had been more accommodating, providing an opportunity to vent stale air, and since the window faced a fenced side yard down which she rarely traveled between the end of summer and the start of the following spring, it had remained open, a forgotten offender. As she swabbed the desktop with a towel from the adjoining bathroom, in the bedroom on the other side of the pass‑through door, somebody sneezed.
Jen’s heart thudded so hard against her chest she was sure that if the sneezer were musically inclined, he could use it for a metronome. The sensible and oh‑so‑very‑grown‑up thing to do would be to back out now, dash next door to the Carsons’ and dial 911, tell the police there was an unidentified sneezing object in her house. They’d come out, cuff the miscreant, tell her to keep all windows latched from now on, and that would be that. But here stood the household exterminator of all creepy‑crawlies discovered in places they were not wanted, a woman who had chased away things that went bump in the night for a large portion of her adult life. The somebody sneezed again several times. Sneaking into her house two days before Christmas! She would bash the sniveling bum, drag him out by his collar and down to the station herself. She hefted a meteorite she used as a paperweight and tiptoed backwards into the hallway. Bogie’s tags jingled beside her. She jumped, then pointed toward the guest room door. He glanced at it, but when he looked at her again, she was convinced she saw an eyebrow arched‑‑and who knew dogs had them? Jen crouched until the two of them were at eye level. She didn’t have to crouch far. She lifted Bogie’s floppy ear.
“There is a stranger in that room,” she whispered. He wriggled but didn’t back away. “An intruder. A very bad guy. I want you to come in with me and act mean and scary when I open the door. Growl at him. Be big and bad. I am going to subdue him‑‑that means knock him senseless‑‑and then we are going to call the police. Okay?”
She dropped his ear back into place and straightened up. Bogie promptly sat on his haunches and scratched the ear, then shook his head. Check it out, she gestured. She could have sworn he rolled his eyes at her as he lurched forward and thrust his fat black nose into the crack beneath the door. Then he turned and slumped in stages in the hallway, yawned and settled his head on his paws and closed his eyes. Of course, animals were sensitive to things in ways humans could only dream of being. She’d have to trust canine judgment on this one‑‑and hope God was of a mind to look out for her today, just in case. She threw open the door. The meteorite slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor, fortunately missing her toes. Despite the sneezing and the implication that somebody was bound to be behind it, her default assumption was that she was only hearing things. She really hadn’t expected to find anyone there.
The stranger sitting on the bed shot to his feet when the door flew open. On first appraisal, he did not appear to be anything more alarming than a boy suffering from a case of Advanced Goth: fifteen at the outside, with lined eyes and preternaturally pale skin rendered paler by a spiky crop of damp black hair and the obligatory black apparel. He returned her stare in stunned silence. A good five or six troy ounces of silver adorned his face and his ears. Jen’s youngest daughter, four years Theo’s senior, had acclimated her to the undead look, but this wasn’t the kind of situation that was supposed to happen to you. You read about a thing like this happening to somebody else and wondered how in the world they’d handled it.
The kid opened his mouth, but whatever he planned to say was lost as he began to sneeze again. He turned his face toward his arm. When the fit had passed, he wiped at his nose with the back of his jacket sleeve and licked his cracked lips. Then somehow he went a shade paler. His knees buckled, and he hit the floor hard, knocking a grunt out of him. He slouched against the end of the bed and clutched his side with both hands, breathing raggedly. His jeans were torn, his jacket soaked, and his boots were cracked and muddy. Shadowy footprints traced a path across the dark blue carpet from the bathroom to the bed, and Jen knew if she stepped through to her craft room, she’d see his footprints there, too, now that the surprise of the open window had been supplanted by the shock of an uninvited visitor.
Heart still thumping, Jen knelt beside the boy. His expression aimed for punk bravado, but perspiration glistened on his upper lip, and his eyes‑‑bright green and glassy with fever‑‑were wary and pleading at the same time. He radiated a sour heat, the smell of sickness and want of a shower. He didn’t resist when she lifted his hands away from his side and saw what she hadn’t seen before: a darker black circle on his jacket and on the T‑shirt underneath. She pushed the edge of the jacket out of the way and rolled up the bottom of his shirt as gently as she could. Three gashes cleaved his abdomen, each four or five inches long. Jen sucked in her breath. At least his intestines weren’t spilling out. That was something, wasn’t it?
“What happened?” she asked.
He hesitated. “A steak knife.”
Which wasn’t really an answer at all, but she let it pass. “I hope it was clean.”
His eyes narrowed. Was that resentment? “I guess.”
“If it was dirty,” she explained, “the chance of infection is a lot greater. How long ago did this happen?”
He shrugged, then sneezed several times in quick succession, wincing at the pain that must have ripped across his stomach. He sniffled and pulled his shirtsleeve out from the jacket cuff and dabbed at his nose. Lovely to know what the neighborhood was coming to, kids getting stabbed with steak knives and running around bleeding in the rain at Christmastime and all. What happened to the days when the worst thing a parent had to worry about was a broken arm from a skateboarding mishap or a few ugly scrapes after a launch over the handlebars? Had she just imagined them? She unrolled the boy’s shirt to cover his wounds again and let the jacket fall back into place.
“I think you might need stitches.”
“I’m not going to the hospital,” he croaked.
She sighed. Had she expected anything else? “Well, at least we need to get these cleaned up and bandaged. And get you out of those wet clothes. You already sound like you’re halfway to pneumonia.”
The kid looked at her with suspicion. She flashed him a Girl Scout salute. “No police, I promise. But if I can’t get the bleeding to stop, then it’s the hospital. Deal?”
She saw the fear behind his glare. She slid her hands under his arms and helped him back onto the bed. Bogie whined softly from the doorway. “He’ll be fine,” she said over her shoulder. To the boy, she added, “Don’t mind that furry monster there. That’s just Bogart.” At the mention of his name, the St. Bernard’s tail thwacked the door. Some guard dog.
“I’m Jen,” she said when her first aid was done. “You have a name, or should I just call you You?”
The boy tugged his T‑shirt down to cover the dressing, then sank deeper into the pillow, avoiding her eyes. The gashes weren’t as deep as they had looked. He would have some ugly scars, and he’d have to keep the wounds clean to make sure they healed from the inside out, but he seemed to have already done most of the bleeding he was going to do. He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered.
Despite her pleas, he had refused to remove anything but his boots.
About the point at which she despaired of ever receiving a reply, he sneezed and rubbed his nose and mumbled, “Ethan.”
She ran through a list of neighborhood kids in her head, couldn’t place him. Maybe it wasn’t even his real name. Puck chose that moment to leap onto the mattress with an inquisitive meow. The cat sniffed the boy’s jeans, then sidled up alongside Ethan’s hip and settled himself into a ball. Within seconds, Jen heard a low steady rumble. Puck, purring! The puss who never acquainted himself with any stranger, the one who didn’t often deign to acknowledge Jen beyond a swat across her forehead every morning before the sun was up to let her know he was starving and wanted her to do something about it that instant, had found himself a soul mate.
“Haven’t we become the personable one all of a sudden,” she said. Her cat, as usual, ignored her. It was his most formidable skill. She looked at Ethan. His eyes were so green and luminous they startled her. “I’ve had grouchy there for nine years, and that’s a first.”
The boy sneezed and started to sit up, but she pushed him back against the bed. “Try not to move around too much. Let me go see if I can find something warm and dry for you to put on.”
When she returned with a hooded sweatshirt and pants she’d found among the castoffs in her Goodwill bin, the boy was gone. Puck sat stiffly upright on the bed, eyes narrowed, perturbed to see that the person to come back for him was the one he had to remind to feed him every morning. Jen shook her head. Theo was only twenty. Had she already forgotten how stubborn teenagers could be? Bogie trailing her, she went looking for Ethan and found him in the front hall, boots by his feet, about to relieve her wallet of its burden of cash.
“I thought I told you to stay put,” she said from the dining room doorway. Ethan jerked around. To his credit, he didn’t try to pretend he’d been doing anything other than what she’d caught him doing, though the sight of Bogie standing next to her seemed to give him pause, as he made no move to run. If provoked, the St. Bernard could knock him out cold with one swipe of a paw. Not that the kid had much to worry about in that regard. If anything, she would have bet Bogie was only here beside her now to make sure she didn’t try to crack Ethan over the skull with a snow globe next. “You’re going to start bleeding again.”
“I need this more than you do,” the boy said, the hint of a whine in his voice.
“There are more polite ways to go about getting what you need than that.”
“You want me to say please?”
“At least you could have asked. Even without the please.”
He scowled. “Yeah. And you’d just go, ‘Sure, take all my money’.”
“Maybe not all my money, but I think you would have stood a good chance at most of it. I’m done shopping. Anyway, I can see which one of us needs it more.”
He looked at the bills half in and half out of the wallet’s center pocket, then heaved a sigh and dropped the wallet on the entry table next to her purse. He folded his arms. “You gonna call the cops on me now or right after you kick me out?”...
(Complete story in 2009 Winter/Spring edition
of OnAngels Magazine)
Second Place
Vickie Benefield
Forsyth , Georgia, USA
"Angel's Watch"
(Following is a short exerpt from this story.)
...It was Tuesday, September 10, 1861, and he burned that date into his memory, along with the other observances he had made that day. As he came upon the Lexington County Court House, he could see men of all ages gathered around. He knew almost every one of them, several of whom were his relatives. They had all come to enlist in the South Carolina Volunteers.
One of his brothers, John Luther was meeting him there today, along with five or so cousins aiming to enlist as well. There was some small talk for a while among the group until they were told to “Form a line, gentlemen”. The Corley cousins and brothers were very adamant about wanting to be assigned to the same unit and hung closely together as much as was possible. They were all told that they would be leaving that afternoon to a destination near Columbia; called Lightwood Knot Springs, here they would train and learn the skills necessary to help bring them through the war. After the enlistment rosters had been completed, they boarded the train and left for their camp, a mostly solemn group.
During the course of training, Dan’l had several sleepless nights, in which he would take out his beautiful pocket watch and the picture of Lizzie. He would stare at her picture for long periods of time with her beautiful face bathed in the moonlight. He would touch the fob made of her lovely braided hair and then look at the angel on the lid. Strangely, he had felt a presence he had never felt before, comfort he could not explain.
One night during March when there had been a late night storm brewing with occasional, but distant lightning, he had fallen asleep only to be awakened suddenly. There was a glowing at the far end of the expansive open room, quite a distance from him and at first he had been compelled to yell out, “Fire!”, but had restrained himself because quite frankly he could not be sure that it was a fire, as he had not smelled or seen smoke. He got up to investigate amidst the gentle and not so gentle snoring of his fellow soldiers. As he neared the end of the barracks, the light became slowly brighter, and it appeared to indeed be a fire, but a fire of a different sort. It was almost akin to the campfires that they had made outside when there was a chill in the air, but instead of real fire, the flames appeared to be flames of another kind. The glow appeared golden with intermingled silver; blazing, but not hot. Most astonishingly, standing directly in the midst of the fire was a man with shoulder length flaxen colored hair! His clothing was the brightest white that Dan’l had ever seen and he stood there gazing at Dan’l with a very calm and comforting presence. Just as the man began to speak, his shoulders moved upward as if he was going to take a deep breath, while at the same time, his arms were brought toward Daniel ever so slightly. At that moment, Dan’l heard and felt the sound of a rushing wind, as if the windows had been opened to the storm outside. Dan’l wondered who else had heard this loud and rushing wind and looked around, but not a single soul was awake, and when he turned again to look at the fiery man that was when Dan’l saw them! There were two large pearl-white feathery wings, just visible at the uppermost part of his shoulders, and Dan’l immediately knew. This was an angel! To his surprise the angel’s mouth did not move, but he “spoke” in a voice that sounded somewhat musical and reminded Dan’l of Lizzie’s harpsichord, yet at the same time Dan’l understood perfectly the strong and comforting words spoken, “Fear not. I come to comfort you with good news. You will suffer, but you will not suffer unto death. Petitioned prayers have been heard.” Dan’l was mesmerized and could not move one inch. Strangely, there was no fear, but only peacefulness and awe. Then suddenly the “fire” died out and the angel was gone. Dan’l stood there in the same spot for ten or more minutes without moving, almost in a state of shock. Suddenly his thoughts came back to the night that he and Lizzie had parted. He could hear her words. She said she would pray for him and that she would ask for an angel to protect him. After several minutes had passed, Dan’l recovered somewhat. He then slowly made his way back to his bed with a slight frown and look of confusion engraved upon his face. He lay awake for some time, not knowing if he trusted himself to believe the sight he had witnessed, but yet knowing that it had been real. He had looked at the pocket watch again and examined the engraved angel, looking closer. It was the same angel! After almost an hour of somewhat clouded thinking, he drifted
off to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, he remembered the incident immediately and knew that it had been real, but he dared not tell anyone for fear that they would think him a lunatick. He would write Lizzie and tell her. It would be the first of many letters between them. His salutation always began the same. “My beloved Elizabeth” and the closing was “When this you see, remember me.” Daniel J. Corley.
Then word came that the troops were moving to Richmond....
(Complete story in 2009 Winter/Spring edition
of OnAngels Magazine)
Third Place
Thom Ryng
Tacoma, Washongton, USA
Thom is a writer, poet, playwright, and an award winning writer for travel documentaries. He is the co-founder of Subminimalism, a literary and artistic movement that consists of maybe three people.
"The Passion of Klara Hauptman"
- or -
"The Clockwork Angel:
A Children’s Folk Tale from Old Prague"
(Following is a short exerpt from this story.)
“Every clock is a time machine.” (Master Hanuš)
Prague is an ancient city famous for its mechanical miracles Rabbi Loew’s golem once walked its streets. The long forgotten garret of Tycho Brahe’s castle observatory to this day contains a clatter of mechanical chickens that once pecked for food and laid chocolate eggs. Here, Karel Čapek coined the word “robot”.
A hundred years ago and more in this city of mechanical delights, young Klara Hauptmann lost her husband to influenza.
For a long time she mourned him. A veil hid her tears from the curious and incurious alike, for that was the custom in those days, and she wore only black. But, as the great Astronomical Clock of Prague continues to remind us, time moves forward with inevitability and precision.
When at last the time had come that tradition and custom dictated Klara Hauptmann put away the outward signs of her grief, she did so, but her heart remained empty. She had no children, and her parents lived far away in the countryside. What little savings she had were soon spent. So, being still quite young, Klara resolved to learn a trade that she might support herself.
Now in those days it was rare for a woman of any repute to seek out a profession other than those of wife or nun. Regardless of custom, young Klara Hauptmann was soon apprenticed to the great clockmaker, Master Jan Orloj, who had in youth known her father.
Master Orloj was a round, jovial man. Somewhat dubious at the prospect of apprenticing a girl--the times being what they were--he found himself with little choice. Master Orloj once had three apprentices, and on the basis of his workshop’s size and his great skill, the City Fathers of Prague had commissioned him to repair the great Astronomical Clock.
The great Astronomical Clock of Prague is truly a wonder of the world, captivating all who see it to this day. It was designed and built in a baroque tower on the Old Town Square by the wisest clockworker of all time, Master Hanuš. The clock’s faces show all twenty-four hours, as a proper clock should, not just the twelve most often seen today. Its voluptuous golden hands and orbiting concentric circles show the zodiac’s daily
procession, when the sun rises and sets on each particular day of the year, and its location at every moment, even when it cannot be seen in the sky.
Furthermore, the clock describes the sun’s majestic orbit around the earth. In the intervening years Copernicus had given lie to the theory, but even now celestial mechanics are not such a practical matter nor nearly so well understood as some believe.
By the time of Klara Hauptmann, the great clock was hundreds of years old and hadn’t quite run properly since the long ago blinding and murder of Master Hanuš.
To repair the great Astronomical Clock was difficult and demanding work, but old Master Orloj was well qualified for the job and eager to prove his worth, and not coincidentally to make
his fortune.
Unfortunately, the eldest of Master Orloj’s three apprentices had recently married and left the shop to seek his own fortune in Vienna. The middle apprentice succumbed to the same influenza
epidemic that had claimed the husband of Klara Hauptmann. Shortly thereafter, the youngest apprentice vanished. Where he got to, no one knew for certain, though Master Orloj rather suspected he had run off with a certain recalcitrant shoemaker’s daughter of his acquaintance. So with all three apprentices gone and the great Astronomical Clock still to repair, Master Orloj couldn’t refuse Klara Hauptmann’s plea for work.
At first, Klara just kept the workshop clean and brought Master Orloj sandwiches when he asked for them. Gradually, however, Master Orloj began to ask her to hand him a particular hammer or screwdriver when he wasn’t in a position to reach it himself, or to hold pieces of the mechanism together while he rooted around for the correct pin or screw or bolt. All the while he explained to her what he did and why.
Every week or so he would assign her a small project, a small assembly of gears or cogs to clean and repair. After many months of this sort of teaching, old Master Orloj thought her at last
ready for a larger project, so he tasked her to repair one of the clock’s mechanical men.
When the great Astronomical Clock of Prague chimes the hour, a mechanical, skeletal Death pulls the rope that rings the bell. Then two small doors over the clock face fling open for two rows of apostles to solemnly parade forth. Finally, the resurrected clockwork Christ himself appears between them and raises his arms in benediction. There are more automatons as well: a Jew, an
Angel, a crowing cock, and other, more hidden figures that only reveal themselves during certain seasons or on certain holidays. In the days of Klara Hauptmann, several of these figures no longer worked correctly. So while he himself worked on crafting new gears and cams for the time-keeping mechanisms of the Great Clock, Master Orloj tasked Klara Hauptmann with repairing one of
the automatons.
It was the nearly life-sized clockwork Christ himself, pierced arms frozen at his sides and jaw locked shut. When first she saw him, lying like Lazarus dead and unmoving on the workbench,
an achingly sad longing rose in the breast of Klara Hauptmann, as if she alone could bring him back to movement and life. Such fanciful thoughts were quite foreign to the practical young girl, and just as soon as she noticed them she shook them from her
mind.
To repair and clean the mechanism, she would first have to pull it apart. Klara removed the figure’s filigreed halo and set it aside to be sent to the jeweller next door. Then she disassembled the figure gear by gear, strut by strut, spring by spring. As she removed each part, she rubbed the rust and grime from it and polished it until it shone. She repaired those parts she could and replaced those she couldn’t.
This was tedious and exacting work, and many weeks passed before she was done with it. As she rubbed clean and repaired each piece of the mechanism, she carefully labeled and placed it on a shelf in the workshop. When she had finished, and only the figure’s pierced hollow torso lay on her workbench, when every gear and strut and spring was cleaned and repaired and carefully labeled, she began to reassemble her clockwork Jesus.
As she began, that achingly sad longing returned. She wanted so much to bring movement back to his still form, to put life back into that empty torso. These feelings disturbed Klara; they were impractical imaginings, and she set them aside like her veil. Instead, Klara took up the first small spring and gently slid it into place.
As she reassembled her clockwork Jesus, Klara discovered to her great surprise that her task had become a labour of love. Now, some artists and craftsmen say that whenever you create something, you put a little something of yourself into your creation. Perhaps that’s true, but as Klara Hauptmann rebuilt her clockwork Jesus, she discovered she wasn’t quite as empty as when she had started. The longer she rebuilt her clockwork man, the less empty she became. She felt more whole with each gear she caressed into place and with every escapement she mended.
All through the winter she worked, sometimes forgetting her other chores and duties in Master Orloj’s workshop.
All through the spring she worked, while the cherry blossoms blazed and fell, and Master Orloj took two new apprentices.
Klara Hauptmann was now the senior apprentice in Master Orloj’s workshop. She had more time now to devote to her obsession, while the younger apprentices fetched for her sandwiches and screwdrivers.
Occasionally one or another of the City Fathers of Prague came by the workshop to view the progress. By and large they were pleasant old grandfathers with white hair and fur coats, and if
Klara paid to them any mind at all, it was very little indeed.
One day in the spring, however, an altogether different sort of man came to watch Klara Hauptmann work. He was a skinny, angular old man, all twitches and jerky movements, with a
tangled mass of white hair shattering out from his head in all directions, and enormous black-rimmed spectacles. He wore a heavy old chain around his neck, from which hung a massive iron key a foot long. Accompanied by Master Orloj, he walked right up to Klara Hauptmann’s workbench.
“So, this is the famous Klara Hauptmann.”
Master Orloj nodded, jowls shaking. “Indeed it is. Klara, will you say hello to Clockmaster Švejk?”
Klara mumbled “hello” but did not glance up from her work. Carefully, her nimble fingers caressed a tiny gear into its proper place.
Švejk drew himself up and clucked, “I am the hereditary Clockmaster of Prague, the custodian and guardian of the Great Astronomical Clock.”
Klara looked up and brushed her long hair from her eyes, leaving a black smudge across her forehead. “I’m very pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Is there something I can help you with?”
“No, no. I’ve just come to watch you work for a bit. The Great Clock”--Klara could almost hear the capital letters--”is getting old. I’m anxious to make sure that the repair work is finished correctly and on schedule.”
“Oh you needn’t worry about Klara,” Master Orloj interjected, “her attention to detail is above reproach.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure she’s fine, Orloj. But she is an
apprentice after all, and just a wisp of a girl at that.” A convulsive shudder passed through Švejk’s body, making him look for all the world like a marionette. “You just make sure she keeps her mind on the task at hand.”
“You’re welcome to watch her work for awhile, if you wish.”
“I believe I shall do exactly that. Now girl,” he said, using a tone a schoolmaster might use to address a truant schoolgirl, “why is this automaton taking you so long?”
Klara shrugged. “The work takes as long as the work takes. If there isn’t time to do it right, how will there be time to do it over if it’s wrong?”
“Careful is one thing,” Švejk squeaked, “but it only took Master Hanuš six years to build the clock. At the rate you’re going, it will take you longer than that to repair it. Time,” he smiled, “is not infinite for our purposes. I shall be back to check on your progress tomorrow.”
The Clockmaster left the shop, but Klara had already dismissed him from her mind. The next day, the spindling Švejk came back to watch Klara at her work, pestering her until at last Master Orloj
had to politely send him away.
When summer came at last, Klara languidly repainted her clockwork man’s stigmata and replaced his re-gilded halo. She found to her discomfort that she had one piece left over.
It was a small brass gear, scarcely the size of a thimble, and its label--if, indeed, it ever had one--was gone. When she wound Jesus’ mainspring, however, he worked perfectly. His eyes blinked, he swung his arms upward in benediction a time or two, and smiled. In that moment of movement, he came alive for her, and her heart was full and content.
Klara secreted the extra gear into a locket worn close to her heart, and she sent for Karl, the youngest apprentice, to take her Jesus back to the Astronomical Clock.
(Complete story in 2009 Winter/Spring edition
of OnAngels Magazine)
Honorable Mention #1
Linda M. Gilbertson
Concho, Arizona, USA
"One Less Mouth to Feed"
(Following is a short exerpt from this story.)
“I’ve got to jump! I have no job, no money, no food, and no hope. Without me, there would be one less mouth to feed. Without me, my family could survive,” cried Tom Haskell as anguish and despair devoured him. He stood at the edge of the railroad trestle. A gorge which looked like the Grand Canyon opened wide beneath him. Called The Canyon Crossing, its’ mouth stretched for miles. It begged him to satisfy its thirst like a hungry beast. It was 1929 in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.
Tom grabbed a support beam like a trapeze artist tethered to a lifeline. He analyzed his situation. If, I’m to end it I can’t chicken out now, he thought. What would it be like to hit bottom like a rock? Would it hurt? All I have to do is let go of this beam and step off the track. How difficult could that be? Will I scream on the way down? No one’s going to hear me or find my body. No one will know my pain. Oh, I’m going to be sick to my stomach. His obsessive thoughts consumed him.
Tom eased his massive frame onto the cold steel rail on the track, his long legs dangled over the side of the trestle. His clothes were threadbare. He smelled of stale beer and old tobacco. Below him, the gaping mouth of the monster licked at his second hand boots and hypnotized him. His stomach knotted, the bile rose in his throat. He wretched the contents of his stomach into the canyon below. He wiped his mouth on the dirty sleeve of his jacket. “Oh, God, give me the strength to stop this pain. I can’t live like this anymore,” he shouted and wiped the tears from his eyes. His voice echoed off the canyon walls.
A cool breeze stirred the air; a fragrance of honeysuckle enveloped him. He breathed in the sweetness, amazed that flowers grew nearby. He turned his head for his nostrils to better claim the scent. He sucked in his breath. A young girl perhaps ten years old, holding a bouquet of wilted flowers, stood on the trestle close by. Her gaze fixated on him.
“What are you doing Mister? Are you sick or something?”
Tom believed his sour stomach created her. He just starred at the aberration.
“Are you alright Mister?” The girl insisted once more, and jolted him awake as though from a sleep.
“No, I’m not alright, just leave me alone,” he said as he shook his hand at the aberration. “I’ve hallucinated her being here. I must be crazy,” he mumbled to himself. His stomach started to wretch again, but he swallowed the bile that crept into his throat rather than having puked into the canyon once more. Hallucination or not, the embarrassment encouraged him to control his stomach contents.
“My name is Hope,” she volunteered.
Tom clutched the support beam even tighter, and prayed the hallucination would disappear and leave him with his misery. The smell of honeysuckle became more intense. The little girl moved closer and sat down on the track next to him. He ignored her presence. His mind played tricks on him. However, he noticed her small frame, tattered dress, and unruly long brown hair. Smudges darkened her cheeks and her sad dark eyes stared deep into the canyon below. Tom just lived in the next town over, but had never seen her before.
“You said your name is Hope?” Tom laughed to himself, humored by the irony of the name. “I could use a little hope right now,” he said.
“What are you doing?” she said, and turned her eyes to meet his.
“Well, I’m going to kill myself,” he told her with an embarrassed chuckle, and half expected her to break out laughing. She didn’t. She just stared at him.
“That’s sad. You have so much to live for. You must have a family somewhere. I’m sure they care about you, don’t they?” she said.
“How would you know anything about my life? You have no idea of my problems.” Tom’s anger overrode his common sense. He took a deep breath and felt foolish. “I have no job, no money, and no food to feed my family. I have no future,” he added as a way of explanation of his outburst. He stared into the canyon below. After a moment of quiet and a few deep breaths, Tom turned his attention back to Hope.
“What are you doing here, Hope?” he asked.
“I picked flowers for my Mama,” she said and raised the wilted bouquet. “Daddy said we need to pick a lot of flowers to keep Mama happy. She’s sad a lot.” Hope’s dark eyes, fixed on Tom’s.
“Why is your Mama sad?” he asked.
Hope faced toward the Canyon. “Daddy said it’s my fault Mama cried so much. He said I came at the wrong time. He said he wished I had not been born; not enough food for all of us.”
“Your Daddy’s very sad.” Tom whispered as he remembered his own situation. A catch in his throat made him clear it before he continued. “He is frightened like me. There’s a lot of responsibility to care for a family.”
“Daddy said that if we had one less mouth to feed, we would have a better life,”
Hope said. “Perhaps Mama would stop crying if she had a better life. I picked these flowers for Mama so she wouldn’t be sad anymore.” Hope looked at Tom, eyes pierced his soul. She whispered as she leaned closer, “Do you think your family would do better without you, Mister? Do you think they would have a better life?”
Tom didn’t know what to say. After all, this conversation wasn’t real. It was all in his mind, wasn’t it?....
(Complete story in 2009 Winter/Spring edition
of OnAngels Magazine)
Honorable Mention #2
Lawrence Kessenich
Watertown, Massachusetts USA
"Rafael's Flight"
(Following is a short exerpt from this story.)
Until that morning in the church, none of us realized that Rafael had been hiding wings. We had grown up with him and gone to school with him. Some of us had even been his friends—to the extent he was capable of friendship. But not one of us had ever seen a hint of those wings. In retrospect, some kids claimed to have had suspicions, or even to have gotten a glimpse of them, but that was baloney. Nobody had clue.
That Sunday, it all fell into place. Why Rafael had always been so secretive. Why he’d never slept over at anybody’s house. Why he’d never gone swimming with us. Why he never wanted anyone to touch him. Why his parents always got him excused from gym class. When I thought of the hundreds of ways he could have been exposed, it astounded me that he never had been. And that made his decision to expose himself all the more amazing.
Rafael’s wings must have been smaller when he was a child—proportionately, that is—because he didn’t start wearing his long black coat until high school. (He had worn bulky sweaters all the time as a child, even when it was hot—which didn’t seem to bother him—but we’d assumed his parents made him do that). While he had the usual growth spurt most of us did as teenagers, his must have included a dramatic lengthening of his wings, making the coat not an eccentricity, as we assumed it was, but a necessity. His parents must have given the principal with some kind of health rationale for the coat, because, despite a standing rule against wearing coats to class, Rafael was allowed his. This just set him further apart from his schoolmates, who briefly reveled in the opportunity to taunt him. Briefly because Rafael seemed to pay no attention to taunts, and taunts ignored quickly become unsatisfying.
But when the taunting was still fresh and nasty, I took umbrage at it for him, and got angry at him for putting up with it.
“Tell them off, Rafael,” I said. “You don’t need to take that.”
Rafael smiled that indulgent smile of his and said, “How do you know, Alex?”
“How do I know what?”
“How do you know I don’t have to take it?”
He said that kind of enigmatic stuff all the time. It was one of the things about him that drove me crazy—and fascinated me.
“I know because you’re bigger than most of them and could kick their behinds.”
He continued smiling and shook his head, then got a serious look on his face.
“I have a health problem. I can’t kick anyone’s behind.”
“Speaking of that, what is your health problem? What kind of health problem requires you to wear a coat all day?”
“I have a rare tropical pneumonia. I can’t stand breezes.” The smile crept back onto his face. “Metaphorically speaking, you might say they ruffle my feathers.”
Now I know what was funny about that, of course, but at the time it just seemed weird.
“Whatever, dude,” I said. I’d long ago given up trying to understand some of the things he said—which often contributed to my getting tired of being with him. And it was worst when we got into spiritual discussions, though I have to admit I loved them anyway.
“Do you believe in angels?” I once asked him.
“Do I believe in myself?” he replied.
“I don’t know, but that’s not what I asked you.”
“What you ask may not always be what I hear.”
“No kidding. I wish that once in a while you’d just answer the question I’m asking.”
“I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”
“You just don’t happen to see them the way normal human beings see them.”
“Bingo.”
“Why do you try so hard to be different all the time?”
“It seems to come naturally.”
“Maybe, but you make it worse with your weird ways and your enigmatic answers.”
There was that smile again. “He who has eyes to see, let him see. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
“What, are you Jesus, now? You’re going off the deep end, bro.”
“I prefer the deep end—that’s what you like about me, isn’t it?”
He was right, of course. There was no one else I could talk with about spiritual stuff the way I could talk with him. I was a pretty serious kid, too, and Rafael took me seriously, despite the way he kidded me. Even in late elementary school, he and I would get into long discussions about stuff the priest had said in church. They were the kind of discussions that could have gone even deeper if we’d ever had a sleepover and a chance to talk long into the night. But, like I said, Rafael didn’t do sleepovers. Health reasons.
So, the pattern went like this: We would hang around together every day for weeks on end, playing chess and Dungeons and Dragons (which he insisted on calling Angels and Demons), writing apocalyptic stories, building forts in the woods or, during the winter, in the snow, reading aloud to each other from The Lord of the Rings and so on. Eventually, I would get so excited about having such a great friend (Rafael said if I was a superhero I’d be called Excitable Boy) that I’d start to insist that we have a sleepover, thinking he and his parents would change their minds. Rafael would say no, of course, and then he’d start to pull back, telling me he was busy and couldn’t see me for a week or so; and then the week would grow into several weeks; and finally I’d be so hurt by his rejection that I’d stop calling him. And then we wouldn’t be friends for a while—until we’d fall into a discussion after church some Sunday and end up going over to Fitzgerald’s for vanilla cokes while we talked. And then the pattern would start all over again.
With a few variations, that pattern continued throughout middle school and into high school, though sometimes I did some rejecting, too. Like I said, Rafael was a strange dude, and sometimes I made friends with kids who were uncomfortable with him. Then, like a good Judas, I would kiss him off for a while. But Rafael never held a grudge. The minute I wanted to spend time with him again, he was there for me, and he never said word one about the way I’d ignored him. The times I inevitably went back to Rafael were when I was hurting: when I’d broken up with a girlfriend or my parents were giving me an especially hard time or things weren’t going well in school. He was a great listener....
(Complete story in 2009 Winter/Spring edition
of OnAngels Magazine)
