Posted: May 19, 08 6:38pm
Hello all,
I think this is the place for which I have been looking.
I have a 1500-word 'suburban' fantasy that I'm about to start sending out to get rejected. I would be interested in what y'all think of it, especially looking for what seems awkward or confusing, since you won't hear me reading it in your head like I do.
I'm a sci-fi/epic fantasy reader, but recently I have enjoyed stories by Kelly Link and Ellen Klages ("In the House Of the Seven Librarians"). Magic Realism.
The protagonists have largely been teenage girls and the stories are coming of age, bildungsromans. So I made my stab at it as more of a mid-life crisis, which makes this an even more appropriate venue.
It's okay if it stinks. I'm sending it out anyway. Let me know if you have a suggestion to cut down on rejection e-mails. Thanks for your indulgence.
Detention
by M.E. Ray
The crashing sounds from the kitchen startled the students and the detention hall teacher. Stainless steel cafeteria pans and shelves continued to make an unsettling racket. The three students all turned to the teacher with expectant looks. Mr. Grey shrugged slightly and gave them the uncertain raised eyebrows look.
“Y’all move to the other end and have a seat,” he said. He’d meant to sound reassuring, but the higher notes in his deep voice probably let slip his concern. He moved towards the kitchen.
The sounds of pans being thrashed about the industrial tile and rubber floor mats subsided as he passed the cash register and approached the connecting door to the kitchen. He hesitated and looked at the students standing near the glass exit doors. He smirked & shook his head a little and gave them the universal phone symbol, a hang loose sign to the side of the face, and a questioning look. The students exchanged glances and all shrugged sorry. They’d been put in detention for minor infractions, one of them for having a cell phone, so Mr. Grey wasn’t certain if they were lying or temporarily following the rules. He gave them a skeptical look and motioned for them to sit down.
He pushed the connecting door inward against the hydraulic closer and entered the kitchen a step. He glanced over his shoulder at his students and smiled. Two more steps and he was beside a long stainless prep table. The hydraulics jerked the door closed. He’d been back into the kitchen for ice and sweet tea and had some idea generally of how it should look. He could easily see that along the far wall pans were everywhere and the shelves were out of kilter.
A large dog moved into view between the prep tables, emerging from the pile of pans. He took two steps to the door and opened it a bit and called to the kids, “It’s just a dog. Y’all have a seat.” He crossed the kitchen towards the back door, passing by huge stockpots and a massive mixer. He kept the dog in his peripheral vision and held out an open palm in the big dog’s general direction as he moved in long slow strides towards the back to open a door and let the dog leave. He could just barely hear the students’ laughter and their voices echoing across the vast lunchroom.
The wolf-like dog turned with the teacher as he crossed the room and sniffed the air. All Mr. Grey could smell was Clorox, hand sanitizer, and the faintest whiff of tacos.
“You’d be Grey, then?” the dog that looked very much like a wolf asked.
Mr. Grey’s hand was on the government-approved door handle and pushing down as the words hit him. His hand slipped off and he stumbled. He caught himself and ended up in a crouch, staring at the dog that looked substantially like a wolf, now that he thought about it.
“Graceful,” the wolf said. Canine sarcasm was more than he had signed up for, and at 3:47 p.m. on a Thursday it was more than Mr. Grey could bear.
“Alright, guys. This is a good one. I give up,” he said to the smart aleck students who, he was sure, were behind this one and lurking in the cafeteria office. This would be on the internet by nightfall.
“No harm, no foul guys. Let’s go,” Mr. Grey said in his friendly conspiratorial voice.
“Nope. Just me,” the wolf said.
“Well, this is unexpected.” He was going with dream as a starting point. Had he really fallen asleep while watching detention? But his feet hurt from six hours of the same lecture on Gettysburg and that seemed like a non-dream detail. He began drifting towards the kitchen door he’d come through, to interpose himself between the kids and his new friend.
“Umm. What exactly’s going on here?” he asked.
“Better handle the kids,” the wolf said.
The three teen-aged voices were louder and not far from the door and Mr. Grey distinctly hear the word, “puppy”. He reached the door, opened it and stuck his hand out.
“Guys, y’all have a seat. He doesn’t seem to want to go and he’s not terribly cute.” The wolf growled low. “Just grab a seat. I’ll be out in a sec.” He let the door close, waited two long seconds and opened it quickly. The kids flinched and obscured their hands. “And put those phones away,” he said, and smiled.
He considered the extreme possibilities of the situation, military experiment or genetic crossbreeding came to mind. But the businesses of that sort were twenty miles away. And it knew his name. He held out hope for lucid dreaming and eased back into the kitchen.
“What’s going on here?” was the best he could do when he saw the wolf again.
“I’m your spirit guide.”
“Great, you’re a little late. I haven’t been starving in the desert or high on peyote in at least… fifteen years.”
“We’re behind,” the wolf said. Mr. Grey snorted.
“I could have used you when I was young and dumb and thought beer was food. How are you going to guide me now? And why am I having this conversation? Clearly too many school lunches and essays to grade have caught up with me. And I’m not even Navaho or Hopi or any desert tribe. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Your grandmother was a Cherokee.”
“Well, yeah. But she was also in the Daughters of the American Revolution and I don’t see Francis Marion’s ghost in here. In the school kitchen. Twenty years too late. Giving me the creeps.”
“You seem a little negative, for a teacher.”
“Well,” Mr. Grey’s mind moved from thought to thought. He was sure he would wake up soon, despite the worn out loafer question. “What did you expect? That I’d go all flower child and say, ‘Thanks dude,’ and happily follow your guidance to a better life?” He was rolling now. “This also suggests, from your angle, that I never moved into adulthood without a whole ‘right of passage’ ordeal.”
“Well,” the wolf said and appeared to shrug his shoulders. “Where does that leave us history teacher?”
From outside the door and with a bit of a whine, “Mr. Grey, it’s time.”
He pointed at his ostensible spirit guide with a warning finger, “You hold on.”
He opened the door a touch, “Go ahead y’all. He’ll get tired and be out in a minute and I guess I’ll need to clean up the pans.”
“Bye, Mr. Grey,” they said in near unison. “Be careful,” one of them added. They waved and then as they walked away their hands moved to purses and pockets to resume non-stop communication.
When he stepped back into the kitchen the wolf was indeed gone. He walked across the large silent room and began stacking pans and trays and glanced about, looking for the unwelcome wolf. He found that he wished it’d come back.
The next day and the next Monday, at lunch, Mr. Grey went into the kitchen for semi-illicit sweet tea and stole glances at the wall where his canine companion had caused such a ruckus. No sign.
Thursday was his day for detention, but he couldn’t wait. On Tuesday, tea in hand, he dropped his school ID among a stack of clean pans.
He dropped by detention after school and told the English teacher on duty, “I might have dropped it back there.” The students exchanged shrugs and the teacher smiled sympathetically, said “Sure,” and went back to her grading.
In the kitchen he saw no wolf, until he turned from retrieving his ID. There it was, between him and the door.
“You wanted something?” it asked.
“Why now?” he said, without thinking.
“Hmm?”
“Why did you come now? When so much has gone by. You can’t just be showing up twenty years late to everyone across the board. That’s a poor way to run a business. Even a spiritual one.”
“Well, we are a bit behind. But we come when we’re supposed to, more or less.”
“So what are you doing here now?”
“Well, now’s your time, more or less.”
“Seems like less.”
“If you’re so irritated by my being here why’d you stick your ID in the mashed potato pans?” The wolf looked up and sniffed the air, “Meatloaf,” it murmured, satisfied.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had this vivid a hallucination and I just wanted to be sure you were real, so to speak, ” he said.
“Oh, no. I’m here now. I’ll stay until we’re done,” the wolf said.
Mr. Grey stared at the wolf’s yellow eyes for a long time.
“Okay,” he finally agreed.
“See you Thursday then?” the wolf asked.
“Sure.”
