by: Claude Limoges

Back turned, George’s boss stood, stared out his office window, jingled the change in his pockets, and tsked.

“Can’t imagine what your old man would’ve said about this. Got to be the strangest reason why I ever let a body go. The ladies’ room, just between you and me, George, would have at least had some sense to it. But this business—” He shook his head. “No sense in stirring up anything outside this door, so I’m not saying a word if you don’t. But you’re out, Fincannon. You got 15 minutes to square things at your desk.”

He opened the door and ushered George out.

At his former desk, George mechanically sorted through items, pitching and packing. After having gushed lies to Ed’s questions—not a camera, an air freshener, well, maybe a camera but for company security, etc.—and then escaped Ed, George had wiped his hard drive clean, uninstalled personal software, and stomped on the camera, hoping to break it, but it proved as tough as its makers boasted. So he threw it in the river and spent the night watching the current whisk things toward the sea and gauging the distance between the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and the water. Anchored to a bench, he wished for his brother’s courage—Chad’s flare for making statements.

George had no statement to make, and in the morning, he simply let his feet take him back to the office. By the time he received the summons from his former boss, dread had gnawed his guts to the size of a raisin. He felt gratitude that no camera had been made public, and now that it was simply a matter of removing himself, oddly, he felt relief—the first since a scream alerted the office to Cheri’s hemorrhaging in the restroom.

The Blown Away poster in his old room waved a loose corner just under the air duct. On another poster, a young Tom Cruise grinned from behind a clinging blonde. Listening to Rush’s “Cinderella Man,” George unpacked his clothes. On every job application to be filled out henceforth would be one question feared above all others: Reason for leaving:

“Got caught with a spy camera in the men’s room?”
Not a chance. George blew dust off his model Corvettes and tried to think up something better.
“Stepped into a wormhole.”
“Had to sit on an egg at the South Pole.”
“Holland needed my finger.”
“The Venusians wanted me for an experiment.”
“Bug spray changed the sex of my hair follicles.”
“A mole on my back took the shape of the Virgin Mary.”
“Oh, gee, was that a job? My mistake.”
“Somebody said it would take only 80 days.”
“They slipped with the tooth scraper and gave me a free lobotomy.”
“Honestly, I saw four horses in the sky and thought this was it.”
“I didn’t leave; the Earth just spun out from under me.”

Melissa had kicked him out of the apartment. Hence, reason for leaving: “Moved.” In truth, having come to a dead end in his life, ironically, he seemed least of all capable of making a move.

Listening for his mother in the living room, he tiptoed to her bedroom, opened her top dresser drawer, pulled out scarves, perfume, and undergarments, felt about, then pulled out his brother’s urn. Chad would have made fun of the little Wedgewood jar—blue with white cherubs in flight. His mother’s choice. Chad would have given it the silent laugh that was his way of crying.

George stuffed everything back into his mother’s drawer, stepped down the hallway into the living room, and stood watching Marilyn Fincannon. Behind George the window was lined with shelves holding his father’s cobalt blue insulators, surreally interpreting the sun.

Over the living room’s chocolate-leather sofa hung Eisenstaedt’s The Kiss. The sofa held a throw, neck massager, back massager, foot massager, heating pad, and a Nicholas Sparks novel. On the end table were the remote and a stack of postmarked card envelopes addressed to the Fincannons, never opened.

Across the room sat a plant stand with African violets underneath Agrobright tubes. A nearby table held what could have been a triage unit for mice: scalpel, hemostat, cuticle pusher, infant nasal bulb syringe, baby spoon, long-nozzled hair color bottle, children’s paint brush, cotton swabs, eyedroppers, Lysol spray and a roll of Charmin Ultra Soft. In centipede fashion, a dozen baby food jars surrounded an egg carton with yarn wicks leading from jar to cup, each ending in soil from which stood—with the help of a steak stick spelling “m-e-d-i-u-m r-a-r-e”—one hairy leaf.

The table’s corner held a glass with a finger of gin and wedge of lime, the green fruit Marilyn’s code for gin. While the phone rang, she sneaked a sip and counted drops of liquid onto a violet.

Her voice effervesced from the answering machine: “Well, hey! You sure do have Rinnie and Jack—Chad and George! Well, who knows where we are, but we’ll give you a call as soon as we come back in. Bye-bye now.”
The machine beeped, and an answer came: Assurance Mutual works with many individuals like you to build a secure future. Dial 1 and save up to 10 percent on life insurance today.

George texted Melissa on his cell phone: “I love you.”
To his surprise, after only a few seconds a reply came: “Go to hell.”
“Be a dear,” Marilyn said. “Another lime.”

* * *
Chad leapt off the telephone pole, scrambled clear of the Maco tracks, and dove for the bushes beside George. Hands on hips, Jack squinted up at the pliers Chad had left atop the pole.
Chad shouted, “I’m going back up!”
Muttering, “That’s my boy,” Jack lunged down beside them.

Thumpetathumpetathumpetathum ...
The train rocketed by, then all was quiet, except for fast breaths and chuckles from the man and two boys.
As they re-emerged, Jack muttered, “George, go up and get those pliers and that insulator.”

The blood left George’s face.

Claude Limoges has a book out and new poems published. Learn more at http://claudelimoges.blogspot.com

by: Ashley Cunningham
winner of encore’s annual Creative Writing Contest

Doc finger sorts through files with several other cases than mine; several other stories that have bled too heavily through cotton-white pages. I watch his breath fold unto itself while he picks out the right one for me to read myself asleep to. After all these hours disguised as minutes, he pulls my files out and sits them on his desk with a sigh that says many things at once. I can’t tell whether he regrets this whole operation, or he is as happy as I am to get the truth off of his chest.

Looking outside the window, the morning clouds billow into themselves too until I can’t tell the sky from the fog from the flock of birds disappearing in its temporary depth. I feel like I have been awake for years while I have been sleeping. The blur between dreams and reality has taken a firm toe-hold on everything I believe to be true about my world. Every truth that may or may not be dispelled by me reading this black and white definition of myself.

I reach forward with less excitement than raw terror; less enthusiasm and more sheer anxiety. I suppose the pills would help a lot at this point, but, then again, I’m sure they would candy-coat my vision like rose-tinted glasses—too pretty a view to possibly be real. He slides a small fortune of information toward me, and I know from this point on the treasure is mine to spend. The pressure of these vaulted secrets begins to weigh on me until I hear a familiar voice tell me that without pressure there would be no epiphanies; without heavy possibilities, there would be no relief lifted from my shoulders.

And so I cave in. I flip the pages over, holding my tongue back with my teeth so I can taste the moment in all its bitter sweetness. The top line rolls out like a red carpet, displaying “Laura Jordan” like a celebrity headline in one of those overly bawdy tabloids everyone fingers through like animals. My brain is a blank slate, a dirt road with no clear destination. I try to manage the wheels turning over and over inside.

Laura Jordan: Dual Personality Disorder
Attempted Suicide

I look up from myself to find Doc looking me up and down like this paperwork. He waits for a reaction as I try to piece together how I am supposed to act, let alone react. Everything plays like a domino game now, and we both sit stagnant, pausing for the next block to fall and knock down all the others.

I don’t understand what is happening, and yet it is happening all around me without my consent. The whole world spins above me, and I am paralyzed by its immediacy. I feel like I am coming out of a sleep that has driven me to complete stillness, and I see my own face struggling in the salty bell jar of the ocean’s power. Fragmented memories find their way back to me, and I try to place them together in logical order.

I guess the more you understand yourself, the tougher it is to disagree with whatever it is you are doing to yourself. In my case, I don’t understand one single thing, so the argument is quite skewed.

I watch silent picture slideshows of my life play out against the walls of Doc’s office. Everything crowds together and behind the screen showing several different lives in one face.

I am 11, setting the woods behind my house on fire and laughing up at the dirty clouds.

I am 15, posing for a camera I set on self-timer, and puking between the shutter changes. Each new frame is a chance for improvement, I always say.

I am 22 and driving alone in a piece-of-shit car, listening to the sound of waves talk me in and out of their collapsing embrace. There I am, looking over the side of the bridge for Catalina. Hands on the steering wheel, slipping more and more to the right, sliding more and more toward shifty aspirations that will bury me in a watery grave. I remember straining to see how far I would have to fly above the tide to get there. I remember playing tug-of-war with my human instinct for survival. This was a fight I desperately wanted to lose.

I can see the gear shift in third, which is slow enough to cascade through an empty sky and fast enough to make a statement through the cement barriers on either side of the bridge. I can hear myself calling for my father in the same voice that halfway peeks out while I am urgently trying to pull my body out of an immovable state. The whisper-yell of my panic strikes me as I hit cold water. My vocal chords lose their pull the further I sink into immeasurable darkness.

The world hands me a mirror, and I see through the other end of my eyes, watching every last-minute thought of mine race in slow motion. Before I ended up here, before I marched through these bullshit days, I was just a girl who didn’t know what to believe in anymore. I am still a girl who doesn’t know what to believe in anymore.

As the film runs on, I see my own expressions seep into the crevices of the sea. First there is a salty shock. Then there is a momentary exhale in time. I breathe out into the water, releasing bubbles that creep out of my mouth like silent screaming secrets.

I look in my eyes, and my eyes look back into me. For once, it finally makes sense. I am me. And I am Laura Jordan. It seems everywhere I am, my ghost follows, and the haunting memory of what I have turned out to be keeps me from waking up.

by: Ashley Cunningham
winner of encore’s annual Creative Writing Contest

It’s one thing when you begin to single-handedly smear the line between reality and unconsciousness; it’s quite another to be creating a line within reality alone. Here in this box with tiny maze pathways to medicine and one-way conversations, I believe that I find another part of me around every corner. It could be the way someone’s smile crackles toward me, or how their tongue sometimes trips over hello’s in the morning single files line drive. I feel I could have circumnavigated an ocean inside myself by now, and I’m waiting to decide on the right shore to happen upon.

I have to figure out how to stay afloat. I slip and slide through the late-hour corridors to piece together either side of the line in the dark. This room holds me in like a deep thought, sifting through my memories for explanations and remedies. No one can hear me scream. No one can see me struggling for sight until my pupils dilate to adjust to infinite nothing.

As the emptiness fills me up, I wander through overlapping circles in time and see Laura lying in the leaves of my childhood forest. The smoke of autumn fog rises from around her while she makes her move inside my head. I remember when I first introduced her to my parents, and they acted as if they didn’t even see her standing there, instead glaring at me with confusion or contempt; I’m still not sure.

I trace back to the time before Laura, when my mother and father and I seemed like one entity, a time when I knew without question that I was a part of something much bigger than myself. In those times, feeling so small was a feeling of great comfort. No matter if or how I fucked up, my accidental burdens could always dissipate within a bigger scope of reason.

Two pasts combine, and I can’t decipher which one led me to blaming myself and which one freed me from fault. I can hear Laura tell me I’m awfully stupid if I don’t see she is only trying to make me better. I can hear my parents tell me they want Laura out of the picture. I never pleased either one I suppose. As I think about this, it occurs to me for the first time that I never heard myself until I was drowning in the silence of a cold ocean. Watching Laura dissipate within the water, I felt lighter than ever before.

Still, I have to wonder why a killer such as myself would belong packaged in this box rather than caged in a cell. I try to remember the first time I woke up here, and all I can recapture is bits and pieces of mixed conversations among professionals who didn’t know what they were talking about.

“She was alone in the vehicle when they found her.”

“Probable suicide attempt. Possible accident.”

These words hit hard and stomp out a new impression on my mind. Could it be that everyone is keeping something from me, or am I the one keeping secrets from myself? I jerk my focus from the frame and decide tomorrow I will ask Doc why I am here for the first time. Either that or I will take it upon myself to research my own life in his disposable documents. I play hallway hopscotch with cracks in the cold tile, and land square inside my room with the foreign feeling of excitement.

I wake up and crawl out of shallow slumber with the impending feeling that I am going to stumble onto answers I didn’t ask for. There is no way around this one, though; for better or worse I have to find out the truth about myself. Step by step I march to and through the line born from a uniform serving mind melters. Time is slowing all around me while my mind races thinking about how I am going to divert Doc’s attention long enough. By and by the clock hands tick until I can make my way to his office.

Walking into this room with a purpose feels nice. It has been a long time since it seemed I was actually doing something. Mostly I’m just thinking or feeling, which both seem like a never-ending waste. Doc sits in his chair more serenely than I have ever seen him—almost like he knows exactly what I am up to. This could either be my paranoia, or he understands me more than I give him credit for.

“You look different today,” he remarks. I don’t take this as judgment. In fact, his insight kind of impresses me, and I consider simply asking him what landed me in his black-and-white world.

“Can I be straightforward with you?” I ask.

“Please. I’ve been wondering when you ever would.”

After all this mental preparation, I can’t gather up the words to dump out of my mouth and on to his agenda. The window finds my attention and keeps it for a minute before I finally break.

“I need you to tell me why I ended up in this place,” I tell him.

“The aim of your time here is supposed to be so I can help you discover that on your own,” he says.

Screw that. I have been digging and digging, and all that has come out of it is a bigger hole for me to bury my confusion.

“Occasionally, though, I have found that some people need a push rather than just pulling at strings.” He reaches for my file, and my jaw locks in place with panic. Maybe I didn’t think this through; maybe knowing is going to do more damage than good.

He inhales, exhales, hands me a manila folder. This is it, I know. There won’t be any turning back from this point forward. There won’t be any more circling around the truth.

by: Ashley Cunningham,
winner of encore’s annual Creative Writing Contest

All I see is the cold sliver of Miss Delaney Jenkins as she moves past me on her way out. Her left eye twitches in my direction and keeps pace with her feet as she walks away from that lying bastard Doc Hall’s office. He doesn’t lose a step either, hands shuffling around desk dust as if nothing exists outside his bubble.

I was already confused; now I am confused and furious. Maybe I am wrong, but something seems terribly off today. Maybe I am in the bubble and everyone else is in on the secret.

When I twist the door knob behind my back, Doc finally takes a second to notice me. His countenance seems as shuffled as his paper work. Countless pages of nutbag cases keep him up to his elbows in unpleasantry. It seems to me now more than ever that I am just another picture stapled onto a diagnosis.

He looks at me in that way people usually do when they are hiding something: sort of a nervousness and fake confidence at the same time. I want to know why he lied about talking with my mother. I want to know why he would tell me he has never heard of Delaney Jenkins. Times like these I almost wonder if it was really me they were talking to when each one denied the other.

“Can I help you with something?” he asks.

“You haven’t so far,” I tell him. The thing that stings the most is that I actually thought I could trust him in the beginning. More and more I find out that I can’t really trust anybody. Any body houses veins that bleed with deception and ulterior motives.

“It is difficult to help you when either side of you is fighting so hard against it. Tell me, have you been open with anyone in your life? Can you remember?”

Before this exact moment, I was streaming with an impossible flow of anger. Now it seems someone has halted the tide, and I am standing on the shore, questioning everything once again. I am a wealth of emotional extremes. It is very possible for me to love and hate someone within the same five minutes. Once Doc is looking up at me for an answer, it occurs to me that maybe he is right. In this case I hate myself for being the only one who is against me. I am tripping over thoughts left and right, and Doc Hall watches me struggle to come up with something to tell him.

“In the accident were you the driver or the passenger?” he asks me. I am jerked out of my fog by the audacity of his question.

“I was driving the car. You’ve known that. I was driving the car, and I killed her, and that’s why I’m here in the first place. Why would you ask that?”

“Tell me, in the dream were you also driving the car that got you to the beach?” he asks.

“That’s the problem. I’m pretty sure Daddy was driving, but when I am standing in the water alone, I can’t remember how we ever got there,” I answer.

“Have you ever considered that maybe your memories are slanted by your different perceptions of how your life has gone?” Doc asks me. Damn. I’m stumped again.

“I mean, you always say you don’t remember things. Could it not be possible then that you are not who you think you are?” he asks. He’s on a roll today. I suppose the reason I have never thought about things this way before is that no one has really ever asked me. And who knows what I would have said if anyone did.

The truth is, the only person I ever opened up to was Laura, and she is not much help when it comes to anything but herself. That is the difference between us: She only helps herself, and I can’t help myself. You always hear that opposites attract. But what comes after the attraction? No one ever tells you that part.

“Maybe. But who would I be if I am not who I think I am?” I ask Doc.

“That is why you are here. We want to help you figure out who you are. You apparently either gave up trying or just split into in the process,” he tells me. Too much shit has happened too quick, and I decide I’ll end it before it hits the fan. I don’t say anything to Doc, just turn around and make my way back to my bubble to get a cigarette.

Outside the air is much clearer, and I can watch the smoke cut it softly. I try to think about what Doc said one piece at a time, but it’s all one unfiltered puzzle of almost-answers. I trace the circles of smoke until they outline the moon, a perfect sphere of light that takes over these night-time hours. It is so full it looks like it will most likely burst any moment, spilling iridescence from the cracks in its skin. Momma always says weird shit happens when there is a full moon. I should have probably known what I was up against, but I have been inside all day, unaware of the rest of the world outside myself.

I decide that the only way to answer Doc’s questions is if I knew what he already knows about me. This way I might be able to gauge my understanding of how the fuck to get out of here. Is it sad that I have to cheat on questions about myself?

I ash out my cigarette in a puddle by the window, and immediately try to figure out how I am going to get to my picture-stapled diagnosis. I might need help for this operation, someone stealthy and willing to be a shadow in these halls. I need someone invisible to be able to see myself truthfully.

by: Ashley Cunningham,
winner of encore’s annual Creative Writing Contest

Before the accident, before Laura, before time decided to stop, I can remember riding around for hours, playing back seat to my parents’ destinations. We drove the day into the night, and the night was always my favorite. The sky crowded the moon until it folded layers in to the night of a million other places besides here.

Mom always tells me that weird shit happens on a full moon. She swears more people at her hospital have babies, and more people die on a full moon. And every time she tells me this—which is every time there is one—I end up convincing myself into trouble just because.

But before the trouble, before the deaths, before I grew up and out of the loop, I can remember my parents in the front seat of the car, having patchwork conversations while trees ran along the blue blanket sky like a hemline.

Tunnels through mountains and bridges above oceans, the back seat was such a lazy adventure. All that time alone, I could explore the world. Inside and out. I didn’t even know where we were going most times, through towns so far away but so familiar, I had lived pretend lives in several houses that jutted out of the borders and outlines of each city limit.

I don’t know which city I am in right now, only that it’s in a state of confusion and almost-panic that I am fueled by each day, an area where, each night, my limits are tested by silence. I walk to the pay phone to call my mother. On the way I think about what Doc said. I trip over the idea of her and my father both coming here to scrape up what’s left of their little North-Carolina scum. If I do get out of here soon, it will be because of them. And not because they take me but because if they show up together, I will gladly say goodbye to Laura before they even ask me to. I know they will ask me to; they hate her as much as I love her. The problem here being that I thought I had given her as much of a farewell as possible in the last seconds of the tide. I can’t be held responsible for the way she keeps coming back. I wish my parents could still ground me. I have been too high for too long.

I slide what change I have through the slot and let my fingers walk over numbers, crunching them as I wait for the voice on the other tin can to say “hello.” If it rings more than three times, I’ll know she isn’t there.

Ring. I breathe it in as it passes. Ring. I breathe out as it goes.

“Hello,” she says, and it sounds almost like a question.

“Hey, Momma, it’s me,” I answer. She proceeds to make over this call like it’s coming from beyond the grave, and I instantly remember the way she looks when she gets excited about something having to do with me. It’s been so long since I have seen it, my stomach starts to tickle itself inside-out, and I feel like a child again.

“How’re you doin’ today, baby?” she asks me once the rush dies down.

“Better now, I suppose,” I say. I mean it, too. She would know if I didn’t.

“That’s what I like to hear from my girl. You think you’ll be ready to come home soon?” she asks.

“Well, that’s what I mean to ask you about, Momma. Doc Hall says you called the other day and told him you and Daddy were coming here to get me,” I say. The whisper of a breath is the only thing I hear for too many seconds to remain sure of this phone call.

“I don’t know what to tell you, stinky, I never talked to your doctor the other day. I didn’t even really know parents were allowed to call in to the center, or you know I would have somebody there on the phone every single day.”

The tickle in my tummy becomes a lump in my esophagus. The child in my voice becomes a monster in my head. “What the fuck do you mean?” I ask. I can hear myself about to flip on her, and I don’t want to, so I just wait.

“Laura, baby, calm down. I don’t know why he would have told you that, but there has to be some sort of explanation. Maybe he got you mixed up with another patient,” she says. She is trying to over-rationalize because she knows how irrational I can be if left to my own devices.

“But he said you and Daddy were coming. He told me bold-faced and all.”

“Honey, I haven’t spoken to your father since the accident. We could barely even speak then, do you not remember us yelling back and forth in the emergency room?” she asks. I remember Daddy yelling.

“I kinda tried to block that shit out, Ma. So you’re telling me that neither one of you are coming?” I ask, still a small bit hopeful.

“Not until they tell me I can, sugar. And I don’t know whether your father will be coming at all.”

Click. I don’t mean to slam the line down, but I don’t know what else to do. I take backward steps away from the bad-news box and try to collect my wits before making another move.

What the fuck. What’s up, Doc?

If boredom murders the heart of our age, disappointment rapes the mind of our innocence. And I feel like the whore at the receiving end of a very bad joke. I play these thoughts through on repeat as I make my way to that old dirty bastard Doc Hall, and I march into his office bruised already by my battle for clarity. I get to his door, but I am caught off guard by what’s inside.