Allison Culley

Writing for the fun of it, trying to get back in the creative flow.

As I turned the corner into aisle 8, my foot hit something slick, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, I was going down. Unfortunately, my body still thought there was hope of saving itself and grabbed for my shopping cart. At least that’s what I assumed happened, because here I was laying on my back staring up at the fluorescent lights of the grocery store ceiling underneath my overturned cart with my groceries scattered on and around me. FUCK. I thought, closing my eyes for a moment. Fuckity, fuck, fuck. I didn’t normally swear, but darn just didn’t cover this particular situation. I wonder if I will just disappear if I lay here long enough, I thought to myself. “Oh my God!! Heather! Is that you?” I knew that voice. I should have saved Fuck. Because now I need a stronger word. I opened my eyes. A woman was standing over me. I couldn’t see her face, but only one woman in town had such artificially large and perky boobs. Yup. My Ex husband’s new wife. Bambi? Binti? I usually just thought of her as Bimbo. Becky. That was it. Becky. She leaned over. I could now see her face, specifically up her nostrils peeking between the very generous mountains of boob. I closed my eyes again. “Heather! Oh my God! It is you! Are you all right? Should I get help?” I sighed. “Hi, Becky. I’m fine. Just a bit of a slip. Getting my wind back before I get up.” “Oh thank God!” She exclaimed and yanked the shopping cart upright, practically taking off my left nipple in the process. “Are you sure? Let me get help. Michael is here somewhere.” “No, No” I started to protest. Could this get any worse? But she was already calling at the top of her lungs, “Michael! Snookums! Michael! I need you!” I pushed myself into a sitting position as my dearest ex came racing into the aisle. He skidded to a stop, taking in me sitting on the floor with the squished remains of my grocery shopping scattered around me. The look of shock followed by dismay on his face was priceless. Almost made it worth it. Almost. “Heather?” He managed to get out. “Sweetums, you’re here,”. Becky was shoveling groceries back into the cart with no semblance of order. “Snookies. It’s Heather. She fell.” Super bright, this one. I thought. It was obvious I had fallen. Normal people don’t suddenly decide to have a sit down in the middle of aisle 8. I tried to struggle to my feet. Unsuccessfully. I flopped back down. “Oh, you’re hurt!” Becky finally had everything back in the cart. “Let me help.” She reached down a hand. I must still have been dazed, because I took it. But Becky must be a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, and as I’ve previously mentioned, a bit top heavy. I am what one might call a curvy gal. Instead of her pulling me up, I pulled her down on me. I was suddenly much closer to those boobs of glory than I ever wanted to be. In fact, my nose was wedged in her cleavage. “Becky!” Michael finally snapped out of his frozen disbelief and lifted her off me. “Becky! Are you all right?” He glared at me. “You did that on purpose!” I sighed and managed to haul myself first to all fours, then to my knees and finally to my feet. “Of course I did, Michael.” I said super sweetly. “I fell in the middle of the grocery store just on the off chance that my ex’s future ex would walk by and I could sample that cleavage he found so irresistible.” I turned to Becky and tried for more sincerity as I asked “Are you all right? I’m sorry.” She looked from Michael to me and back again. “Uh, no, I’m fine.” She said. “Well, thanks for your help.” I grudgingly mumbled. As I went to leave the scene of my embarrassment, I finally glanced around. Both ends of the aisle were packed with people, some recording the whole thing on their phones. “Well, double Fuck,” I mumbled to myself as I took my battery’s groceries up front to check out. “Just fucking ex-cellent.”
I watched him through my last working security camera. I’d had to shut down most of my peripheral inputs at the time of the great earthquake. The rest had gone down one by one, either failing on their own or because I cut power as my solar power panels were covered with dust and debris reducing the power out put. The days of hundreds of people, mostly happily but some very unhappily occupying, my apartments were long gone. He had been silent so long, I almost missed it when he spoke. It was barely a whisper and the bed he hadn’t left for several days was at the far side of the room from the camera. “I bet you think I’m a fool,” he rasped, staring directly into the lense. “I know you are still there. I see the tiny red light.” I could not speak through the camera, but I slowing turned the camera off and back on so the light he referred to would flicker. He wheezed out a rasp. After a moment, I realized it was a laugh. “After all, what kind of fool would refuse to leave with everyone one else?” I had wondered. I had gone back through every micron of data and security footage I could find. He had lived here a very long time. There were gaps in my database, but there was an 83% probability he had been here since I had been brought online. “I’m going to die soon.” He continued. “I stayed for you. I have no wife, no children. The other extended family I might have had disliked me as much as I disliked them.” For me? That didn’t make any sense. Most people didn’t think about the security monitoring system of their buildings, and if they did it was because the needed specific information retrieved. I flashed the camera light on and off several times. “I stayed for you. I designed you. I was on site every day while they built you. I was the first to move in. You are the closest I have to a child. I decided I was going to stay with you until you died. “. He fell silent for a moment. “Doesn’t look like I’m going to make it, though. I figure I’ve got another day or two, tops. By my estimates, you probably have another month.” I thought about that for a moment. If I powered up everything that was still working at once, I would use my remaining power very quickly. I turned the camera light on and off a few times, then powered up every light in the room before turning them off. He sat up in bed until a coughing fit forced him to lay back down. “I guess until this moment, I only hoped you were listening.” He said into the gloom. “I’m glad you are really here. I take that to mean you plan to run out of power with me?” I flickered the camera light again. “Do you think we could listen to music one more time? Some classical music?” I turned on a speaker and started a play list from his personal files. I played it until the sun set and the dark filled my rooms. Around midnight he passed away. I turned on every light, camera and sensor I had. I blasted classical music through every speaker. Just as the sun came up, I ran out of power. The camera in his room was the last to power down. Farewell, father.
“The universe is neither good nor bad.” The self help podcast proclaimed. I figured I should make some use out of my hour long morning commute. “Good and bad, opportunity and complications, they just exist. What you look for and how you frame things is what you will get out of what simply exists. You have to synchronize yourself with what you need.” I snorted. So if I look for money, I will find it? I doubt it’s that easy, I thought. The podcast continued. “You will doubt. This is part of the process.” I raised my eyebrow, though the recorded voice could not see it. “Pick a color, any color,” the recorded voice suggested. Orange, I thought. Orange. “Now that you’ve picked your color, pause this podcast. For the next 24 hours, keep that color in your mind. Be alert. Watch for it. Come back tomorrow for part two.” Shrugging, I paused the podcast. Orange it was, then. C’mon universe, show me what you’ve got. The first thing I noticed was the orange tiger lilies on the receptionist’s desk. Then more and more orange items caught my eye. A orange highlighter in my desk drawer. Orange crayon art done by a co-workers child. Orange flowers on a co-workers blouse. An orange car in the parking garage. A road worker wearing an orange hard hat. Almost every billboard on my drive home had some orange in it. The next door neighbor’s kids shooting hoops with an orange basketball. Orange roasted carrots with dinner. By the time I left for work the next morning, I was seeing orange everywhere I looked. I pushed play on the podcast then shifted my car into drive, passing my mailbox with the orange metal flag on the side. “Welcome back,” the calm voice began. “I’m willing to bet you have had an interesting 24 hours. Whatever color you picked, you should be seeing it everywhere.” True enough, I thought. The podcast continued. “Whatever color you picked, there is not more or less of it in the world than there was yesterday. You and your perceptions have changed. You are now in sync with that color.” The voice paused. “Now you may be thinking this is all well and good, but what does the color blue or the color orange have to do with your goal of making more money, finding love, being healthier, actively creating or what ever your specific goal is? The answer is - everything. If making more money is your goal, being in sync with financial opportunities is unlikely to cause you to win the lottery or find a bag of money on the street.” I snorted. I guess the speaker had heard that particular objection before. I returned my focus to the podcast. The speaker was saying. “If you actively focus on opportunities around money you are more likely to recognize the opportunities already existing in the world. You may see a job posting you might have overlooked before. You might see a commercial that will cut your cell phone expenses in half. If health is your goal, a friend might offer to join a gym with you. You may decide to take the stairs instead of the elevator. “ Okay, I was starting to buy into this a little. “For the next 24 hours, think about what is important to you. What parts of your life could benefit from some synchronicity. Now pause this podcast and come back tomorrow. What did I want?, I thought, willing to give this whole synchronicity thing a try. I want to spend more time with my family and less time working. At lunch, I was getting into the elevator when I noticed the CEO already in this one. Normally, I would have waited for the next one, but today I stepped in. “Jim,” the CEO said into his phone. “The bottom line is we need more people to make the proposed expansion work. Even if we could find the right people, we have no where to put them.” He paused. “Jim? Jim?” He lowered his phone. “Dropped call?” I asked casually. “Happens every time.” He answered, “I should know better than to try to use my cell phone in the elevator.” I took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to eaves drop, but… elevator.” I shrugged. He chuckled. “No problem.” “Have you considered letting employees work from home, maybe sharing office space here on alternating days?” I asked. Then I held my breath. Was I being too forward? “Well, it has been mentioned, but it wasn’t actively considered.” He responded. Then he paused. “You’re Mike from HR, right?” “Yes,” I answered, surprised he knew my name. “I work with Karen’s team.” “How do you think Karen would feel about her staff working from home? There are documented challenges on managing remote teams. Do you think she would be willing to accept the added complexities?” He asked. “It’s come up in conversation several times, how she would like to get to her son’s ball game before the 8th inning, how tired she is of take out for dinner but by the time she gets home, it’s too late to cook. I think she’d be open to it.” I said. The elevator door opened and his phone rang. “Hi, Jim, sorry about that. Will you hold for a second?” He smiled at me and held out his hand for a handshake. “I think you are on to something. Expect to hear from me in the next day or two. I’d like to hear your ideas.” He put the phone back to his ear. “Jim, I’m back. I was just talking with Mike from HR…” I didn’t hear anything after that, as we had both gotten in our cars. Maybe this synchronicity thing was working, I thought as I swerved around an orange traffic cone.
“Eek!” I exclaimed, dashing into the bathroom and peeking through the thin opening. “It’s bad luck to see the bride on her wedding day! Why are you here?” And more importantly, where were my mother and my bridesmaids? They were supposed to have gotten here a half hour ago. “Ella, I have something important to tell you. I was going to wait until we were on our honeymoon, but I just can’t.” Jim shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking both nervous and worried. “Oh my god!” I exclaimed, stepping out of the bathroom and marching up to him. “You had better NOT already be married to someone else!” I poked him in the chest. “No, no, it’s not that.” “Your not married but you have children with someone else?!?” I was slightly calmer, but it had to be bad. I just wasn’t sure how bad. “No!” “A criminal. You’re a murderer or something!” My mind was going a mile a minute. “Did you kill somebody? Did they deserve it?” “N” He didn’t even get the word “no” out before my mind moved on. “You aren’t financially comfortable like you told me! Those statements were fake! Loan sharks are after you!” I was hyperventilating now. Jim crossed the two feet between us and wrapped his arms around me, muffling my face against his chest. “Ella, Ella, breathe. I would never lie to you. I just haven’t told you the whole truth.” I leaned in to his chest, focusing on his warmth and the spicy scent of his cologne. My breath gradually slowed but my heart was still racing. “What is it then?” I whispered. Silence. I looked up at him. He opened his mouth as if to speak, shut it took a deep breath, and just looked at me. I was starting to transition from fear to annoyance. “Will you just spit it out? If it’s a deal breaker, I’ll tell you. If it’s not, we’ll figure whatever it is out somehow.” “I’m a shape shifter,” he said. I couldn’t process what he was saying. “A what?” “A shape shifter.” He said. “I can turn into an animal.” He paused, his face red. “Specifically, a rabbit. I can turn into a rabbit.” I stared at him. He sighed. “I can see I’m going to have to show you.” He took a deep breath and slipped out of his clothes. The next fifteen seconds were definitely odd, but when he was done a rather large grey rabbit crouched at my feet. Fifteen seconds after that, Jim was again standing in front of me in the manly form I was accustomed to. I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. I laughed so hard I had to gasp for air which made me sound like a braying donkey. I laughed so hard my legs could no longer support me and I sunk to the floor. Eventually I got control of myself and wiped the tears off my face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. But honestly, I did not see that coming.” I took a deep breath. “So aside from having to stock extra carrots and watch out for coyotes when you are in rabbit form, is there any other aspect of being a wererabbit I need to be aware of?” He sank to the floor next to me and released the breath he’s been holding in a long sigh. He took my hand. “Shifter rabbit. Not wererabbit. Wererabbits only change form when the moon is full and it’s involuntary. I can shift or not shift whenever I want.” He twisted to look in my eyes. “You seem to be taking this rather well.” “I’m just happy you aren’t a murderer or already married to someone else,” I said. I leaned my head to rest on his shoulder. “But seriously, is there a particular aspect of this… trait… that I should be concerned about?” “Well,” his face was now so red it was almost purple. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘breed like bunnies’?” “Uh, yes?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “Well, uh, there’s a reason why I asked if you wanted a big family.” He looked away “Even if we are really careful with birth control… well… shifter rabbit sperm are really strong swimmers.” Once again, a laugh burst out of me. I almost didn’t hear the knock on the door. My mom cautiously opened the door and stuck her head in. “You’re laughing. Can I take this as a good sign?” “Yes, yes,” I said, getting to my feet. I gave Jim a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you in about an hour, love bunny.” Both he and my mom looked at me oddly over the endearment as he left. I started to put on my dress. I’d have to do my makeup all over again. I looked at my mom. “So, mom, remember when you said you would move here if there were grand babies to watch? You might want to start house hunting.”
Marissa stared at the Lock Screen on her phone. She was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to believe what she was seeing. Call from Richard and a small circular photo of him shone from the screen as the phone vibrated in her hand. This couldn’t be happening. The call went to voice mail and the screen went dark. She had come out here on the one year anniversary of Richard’s disappearance. Come out to the place where his camping gear had been found. She’d come here to get closure. To say goodbye, even though they had never found his body. He was gone. Presumed dead. This couldn’t be happening. Call from Richard, photo of his face smiling into the camera. There wasn’t even supposed to be cell service here. The lack of cell service was just one of many things that had made it difficult for the search parties last summer. This couldn’t be happening. The call went to voicemail and the screen went dark. Richard’s cell phone was in a box in her garage along with everything else the search parties had found at his abandoned camp site. The battery should be dead after not being plugged in for over six months. She had kept it charged way too long after his disappearance so she could look at his pics and listen to his voice on the voice mail. But six months ago she had turned it off for good. Then her phone binged. A text message flashed across the screen. Richard Dammit Ris, please pick up. I know you are holding the phone in your hand. I know you see this. Please. Answer. Please. Marissa stared at her phone. It rang again. Hang shaking, her finger hovered over the screen but she was unable to make herself swipe to answer. It went to voicemail, then immediately rang again. This time she made herself answer it. No sooner had she swiped right when her body began to tingle all over. She was surrounded by white light. The phone fell from her hand. *** William sat at the campsite where his brother had disappeared two years ago and his sister-in-law had disappeared a year ago today. He was armed to the teeth; an automatic rifle, a pistol in his side holster, knives strapped to both thighs, grenades, bullet proof vest, extra ammo, anything and everything he could strap to his person. He sat in the dark with his automatic rifle in one hand, secured by a strap over his shoulder, and Marissa’s cell phone in the other. He needed answers and he was going to get them.