Milo's Arch Enemy

Milo had no enemies. Well, actually he did, but it wasn’t an enemy - it was an ARCH enemy. Milo was a superhero, and all superheroes had to have their nemesis. His was his neighbor down the hall from his apartment. Said neighbor (named Chuck, Charles or something like that) had put out a welcome mat with puppies on it that said “WELCOME”. It was attractive and playful. And Milo hated it, because he had bought the very same welcome mat only 2 weeks before, but had neglected to put it out. Now, he had a welcome mat that he couldn’t use. And the welcome mat was important, as that was the only thing that people could put outside their door to differentiate their apartment from any other faceless apartment door.

Milo had only met Chuck a time or two before. He was scruffy bearded, thin and tall. He wore those skinny jeans that looked like something he had stolen from his girl friend. They had met downstairs while checking their mail boxes, and Milo noticed that Chuck had received a LOT of mail. The box was stuffed full. He wondered what that was about - bills? Junk mail? Fan Mail? One of the letters had hit the ground, Milo picked it up, and it was a handwritten envelope from Japan. Japan?

Milo handed the envelope to Chuck, Chuck said thanks, turned and walked to the elevator. Milo followed. He was curious as to what was going on here, but didn’t want to appear too nosy. He smiled at Chuck while they got on the elevator, but Chuck had already opened one of the envelopes and was reading a one page letter. He smiled faintly. Milo was dying to see what was in that letter. He coughed a fake cough, and then said “Letter from a girlfriend?”. Chuck looked up, smirked, and said “Nope”.

At that point the elevator doors opened, and they split up. Milo was vexed. He imagined it was a job offer. Maybe a piece of fan mail? He went through all the options. Milo’s brain whirled like a tire stuck in mud. After a bit, he decided he didn’t like Chuck very much at all. “He could have at least given me a hint” he thought.

So Milo threw away his welcome mat, and bought a new one. This was a “Hello Kitty” one. “Let’s take it in a different direction” he thought.  He put it out. Good. His was cooler than Chuck’s anyway, with the hipster-ironic thing going on.

Two weeks later, Milo was taking his trash out, and walked by Chuck’s apartment on the way to the elevator. HE HAD A NEW WELCOME MAT. It was the same “Hello Kitty” one. Milo picked it up, and got in the elevator, and pushed the button for the first floor. On the way down, there was a small lurch, and the elevator stopped. Milo was perplexed, but he decided to wait patiently for a minute to see if it would start up again on it’s own. It didn’t. Milo ended up pushing the alarm button which rang a bell. About two hours later, Milo finally escaped, with his trash and the welcome mat, which he had rolled up to try to obscure it. But of course, as he got out of the elevator, there was skinny jeaned Chuck talking to a elevator technician. Milo had a moment of panic……and decided to rush on by.

Chuck glanced at him, and saw the welcome mat. “You throwing away your welcome mat? Can I have it?”. Milo was stuck. He handed it over, ran out, dumped his trash, and ran back in to the elevator. Chuck was gone.

Milo went upstairs, and Chuck’s welcome mat was back in place. He went to his own apartment, and HIS WELCOME MAT WAS GONE. So Milo now had an arch-enemy. The battle was on.

Bernice the Cookie Waster

Bernice had enough of the cookies. There they had been, sitting in the break room, for the last three days. Someone had baked them, and everyone had one, but not two. One would guess the noble reason was that no one wanted to be greedy, but the actual reason was that they were dry and had an off taste. No one knew who had made them, and since they were on a disposable chinet plate, there was no opportunity to locate the owner of the plate. The rumor was they were vegan, which meant no buttery goodness.

Bernice had actually eaten three, one for each time she had been into the break room. Yes, they weren’t very good, but she couldn’t resist, even a mediocre vegan chocolate chip cookie that probably had some weird ingredient that was supposedly good for you, but was not very popular, particularly in a cookie that everyone should like. She felt like it was a bait and switch.

She was ready to chuck the whole thing in the trash, as it had been three days. The foil was half off them, so as dry they had been originally, now they were even more so, brittle tan-brownish discs of styrofoam. But there was an unexpressed rule that whoever put a snack in the break room, was the one who decided when it had to go. Mind you, some things didn’t last that long, like the scrumptious tunnel of fudge bundt cake from last week, which was definitely made with butter, or at least margarine. Bernice wondered - is margarine vegan? She wasn’t sure.

She took the last bite of the cookie. It was hard, but at least there was a chocolate chip in it. But who knows, maybe it wasn’t chocolate, but that carob nonsense which didn’t fool anyone.

She then decided to take matters into her own hands, and dispose of them. Right now, indeed. She got up, walked through the maze of cubicles. Alex was leaning back in his chair, staring off into space as usual. She gave him a look and he hunched over the computer, pretending to be busy.

In the break room was the plate of cookies, with three left on it. She picked it up, and threw it in the trash. Done! She had done everyone a favor. Maybe someone would take this as a hint, and bring in something tasty tomorrow.

Later that afternoon came the email from Leonard. The subject line was “WHO THREW AWAY THE COOKIES?”. Bernice groaned. The email had been sent to the whole department, with a terse message about wasting food, particularly delicious cookies that had been brought in for everyone to enjoy. Leonard ended by saying he was disappointed.

Alex peeked over the cubicle. “You threw them away, didn’t you?”. Bernice gave a grimace, and then nodded. “Good, because they sucked. I ate one and had to wash it down with old coffee.”.  Alex then went back to his cubicle, to stare off in space again.

The next day there was a bundt cake, a pumpkin spice one. But  Bernice was now suspicious. Maybe it had chia seed in it? Maybe zucchini? She couldn’t be sure. There was one slice ready to eat. She broke off a piece. Not bad at all, she thought. She picked up the rest of the piece.

Then she turned, and there was Leonard. “I know you threw away the cookies! I had plans for those cookies!.” Bernice shrugged, “Well, they were three days old, and people had stopped eating them”.  “They were perfectly fine, someone may have wanted one, but you had to be Miss Wasteful and throw them away.” “Hey! I’m sorry! I didn’t know you had made them.” Leonard turned pink, and pointed a finger at her “WASTER, WASTER! You are the problem!”. Bernice tried to leave, but Leonardpicked up the bundt cake and threw it at her. She ducked and it hit the wall. Leonard then left the room cursing loudly, kicking cubicles. She could hear him saying “BERNICE IS A WASTEY WASTER. SHE IS THE REASON THIS PLACE IS GOING TO HELL.”

Later that day she saw Leonard carrying a box, accompanied by the security guard who normally did nothing but watch netflix on his phone. As Leonard passed her cubicle, he hissed at her “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT”.

The next day, there was a plate of cookies in the break room. They were an odd color, brownish with flecks of green. Bernice bit into one. It was kale.

Josef Makes Decisions

Josef felt like a change. The blue socks had to go. It was black for him today. Black went with everything, so the decision to which pants to wear became much simpler. There were dependencies here.

These sort of dilemmas cropped up every day for Josef. His mind was often made up, but only after some deliberation. Nothing was instantaneous; he was the equivalent to slow drip to Starbuck’s instant coffee. He always made a decision in the end, even if the path was not straight.

Crossing the street that day against a red light was not unusual for Josef; he weighed the risks versus the inconvenience of waiting and the decision was clear. It was easier to walk out into the street and let the cars deal with it. It was most logical. He was small, they were big, so it is their responsibility to stop.

So this day, a very temperate 65 degrees, partly cloudy, with Josef just having finished a nice lunch of a roast beef sandwich, potato chips and a coke, was the day that his assumptions were put to the test. Josef wasn’t actually hit by the car. The car was hit by another car when it had to slam on brakes to avoid him.

It was a false causality to link his actions to being hit in the head with a half full can of soda. He did nothing to warrant the driver’s outrage. In fact, he had tried hard to go on his merry way, leaving the scene of the accident.

The can of soda was lukewarm, and it gushed on him with enthusiasm. It left a small dent in his forehead. He says, and there is really no way to disprove it otherwise, that for a second he blacked out, and does not remember the next few minutes.

Accounts say that Josef chased the driver down and kicked him hard, yelling that it was a free country and he was a loyal american. Then he slipped and fell on his butt, got up, cursed a bit and left down the street, hair plastered with sugary liquid. By this point, the police showed up and Josef was dragged back to the scene of the accident.

In the end, nothing changed for Josef. He still crosses the street whenever he wants to. Often, you can see him not even bothering to look. What happened once can never happen again. That is what Josef decided.

Elias Likes to Date

It came to an end for Elias. A complete, grinding - metal on concrete halt. He was at once shocked but also delighted.

His expectations had been different. It seemed to him, waiting this long for a relationship to die was in itself an admission of mortality. We only have so much time, don't we? Elias rubbed his eyes. It was part of the deal, it was expected after all.

Cloe was smoking again. It was a nasty habit that she picked up when things went badly, or sometimes too well. In any case, it was only one cigarette, not a whole pack. It had been a long time, and while it is like riding a bicycle, it takes time for the body to adjust to the cool breeze of nicotine.

Their relationship (such a word) consisted of trips to concerts, movies, things that two people do while surrounded by many more people. It was to her as if he lacked the ability to go beneath the shell. It was all superficial with him, not in a sexist way, instead emotionally plastic. She felt sometimes like he was on TV talking to her, a link that worked mainly one way.

Fortunately it had been brief. It was something to remember to forget. She watched the brown veins of tar on the cigarette as she smoked it, and imagined it was doing the same thing to her lungs. Elias was just ash.

Elias was working out while listening to Giorgio Moroder soundtrack music. The pulsing synths and thudding disco beat matched his breath as he did his sit-ups, his push-ups and pseudo-yoga posturing. The music guaranteed that the kind of peace that Elias felt was warm, soft and bland. It crowded out the details of the world and gave him elemental simplicity.

He fixed himself a drink, and settled into the chair in front of the computer. He tapped out the address, and found himself on one of the dozen different dating sites he belonged to.  He looked at the choices, and felt like he was in a candy store. Sweet and not a bit nutritious. Just his style.

Fritz Goes There

Fritz went there. It seemed like the right thing to do, in the flashpoint of the moment, where there was no rewind, undo, command z. The camera would spin around, for then it could be seen the reactions of both Fritz and Ann in an instant.

Fritz had made the mistake of saying the obvious - "I told you". It never really serves any purpose, after all. It isn't even that satisfying on reflection, when the fallout settles in. Ann was so thinned skin anyway. Comments never bounced off of her; they would bruise her ever so slighting, and sometimes she would nurse them back to health, but she was really a bad nurse - often her concern would make it bigger than it was, which meant that it was always big. This was, for Fritz, the biggest deficit in their relationship, inside his mental spreadsheet.

They had a cat. Had a cat. Sentra (the cat's name) was a rogue. He was cagey. He pissed in Fritz's closet, so Fritz put a litter box there. Peace was then achieved, but like North and South Korea, peace was really just a term for un-war.

Things would get knocked over. They found a dead mouse lying on their bed. Fritz flashed back to "The Godfather" for a moment. When either of them left, Sentra would be there, ready to jet out.

It was a slice of freedom, and he did indeed escape. Fritz had warned Ann about this many times, because it was he that would have to chase him down. Sentra was smart, or maybe just so dumb that he really couldn't quite be understood by humans. Cats are like that.

Ann had come home from Trader Joe's, with her two bags of frozen stuff, and the brownie mix Fritz liked. She had fumbled for the keys. The obvious thing would have been to put the bags down, but no, as Fritz would point out, she didn't do that. Unlocking the door, she pushed it open with body, and in doing so, saw the gray blur of Sentra out the door.

Ann had not had much luck with finding him when Fritz showed up to help in the search. Their townhouse was a sea of many, with varying faces, but ultimately clad in a shade of vinyl. Fritz thought, if I had the brain about the size of a walnut, I would get lost too. Or maybe just not care. At least until dinner time. And even then, that could be a bug, or maybe a rodent.

Fritz thought these thought while wandering through the complex, occasionally looking underneath rows of parked cars. There was no point in calling Sentra's name - first, he would feel like an idiot for doing it - people would think he had lost his car, and was calling for it - and second, it was doubtful that Sentra would even acknowledge him.

Later than night, the discussion incrimination interrogation would begin, and the eventual "I told you" would surface.

Ann at that moment narrowed her eyes. She had moment where she thought of Sentra out there , wandering around, and then she was out the door too.

Sentra, on the other hand, had already moved on. Three streets over, in the late afternoon, Nicolette found Sentra grooming himself on the sidewalk in front of her town home. When she opened door, Sentra zipped in before her. Nicolette decided that this was a sign.

Sentra, on the other hand, didn't really care one way or another. Humans were these big, mobile meat-things - too big to eat - really just there to provide a warm place to sleep, food and cleaning up crap. Nicolette decided this was a fair arrangement.

Fritz, on the other hand, had to work really hard to get Ann back. It took two days of pleading, going by her parent's house, waiting out in the cold for her to come to the door, having messages relayed that she wanted nothing to do with him. This was an unfortunate side effect of both of their brains being bigger than walnuts….at least that was what Fritz decided in the end.

Alfredo the Tiger

Alfredo felt it was useless to go on. Vera had fallen asleep during the long, protracted argument/counterargument that he had so eloquently constructed inside his own dialog with himself….the equivalent of masterbation, but in the case, followed by a brisk splash of cold water, and no happy ending in sight.

Vera wasn't anti intellectual, it was simply that pragmatism was her grounding spot. There wasn't the nuance, for her is was just noise, stray data around the margins to prevented getting to the heart of things. It was in her taste in clothes (largely Goodwill) and her choice of music…for her is was the ONE album, "Double Nickels on the Dime", which would always come on at some random spot when she started her car. It was a weird sense of pragmatism even her; let someone else make the mix tape, so that it is all different and all the same.

Alfredo rolled over, and ended up sitting on the edge of the bed. The dim glow of electronics was enough of a nightlight to make out Vera's profile. She lay still. Alfredo, on the other hand, always hogged the bed. But somehow he managed.

It was at this moment in contemplation that he heard the sound of a car door opening. Downstairs. In front of his house.

He waited.

He heard the definite sound of a car door creaking. Definitely. Vera drove a 1975 Chevy Nova. The door definitely squeaked.

At this point, Alfredo had to make a decision. A very hard thing for him to do. He had just argued with himself for half an hour……about italian neo-realism. Now, he needed to find his cell phone….it was downstairs…..sitting on the coffee table in the living room.

He put is slippers on, thinking it would deaden his steps as he crept downstairs. He was tempted to peek outside, and paused for just a microsecond to look at the front door, but then he snapped back into focus, and found the phone, just where he left it. A small miracle indeed.

The next 5 minutes will be re-examined again and again….in the future, in the same way that those pesky italian neo-realists argued in Alfredo's head. Things became quite blurry, but there was evidence at the end that could point to some of the major points.

First, there was the phone call. It was, as records would later show, brief and incoherent. 15 seconds, to cover the most basic of information: a noise outside, and an address. After the briefest of time, Alfredo decided to look outside after all, as he could now hear the sound of a engine's starter kicking in and out.

He doesn't remember grabbing the umbrella. Creeping out of the back of the house, looping around to the front, hiding under the bushes. The car kicked in, and shut off again. Alfredo could see someone half in and half out of the car.

He then ran towards the car, and gave the car door a good kick. Some one cursed. The thief stood up, and unexplicably Alfred found a Sony Explod radio/CD  car dash unit hurtling towards him, but fortunately the thief was a poor aim, and it fell on the ground.

What happened next seemed like destiny, as a CD popped out. Alfred picked it up, and threw it like a frisbee.

It is important to understand that Music CD's are not frisbees. They do not fly particularly well. They have a tendency to turn sideways, which this one did. But it did hit the car thief squarely in the head, and despite it's small mass, knocked him over. Alfredo doesn't remember this part - the part about the umbrella, but when the unknown person started to get up, evidentially he was met with a solid whack from the pink umbrella.

Later they would find fragments of the Minuteman CD on the ground. Alfredo offered no explanation, but in retrospect, should have at least made something up. There was definitely a chance to elaborate. He was so unfamiliar with actually acting on something immediately. It actually made him uncomfortable. Vera, on the other hand, saved the fragments for many years. Alfredo, for her, was a tiger in a pair of bedroom slippers.

Archangel #38

It came as a shock, an emotional shock to be sure, but also a real electrical shock for Jimmy Bowden, as he casually flipped on the light switch. He had insisted on using the cool brushed metal plates for the switches in his new studio, but he actually had no business working with electricity at all. It didn't help that he was color blind, but even more - that he was definitely challenged when it came to simple mechanical tasks. Changing a tire.....maybe, if he took notes. Anything requiring a power tool had been deemed off limits by his then girlfriend Charisse. He had almost severed a thumb with a power drill, for christsakes, never mind the drill holes he had left in the small eat-in kitchen dining table that tended to become is adjunct workspace when his old studio was full of stuff he had pulled (rescued he says) out of dumpsters. And some of it did smell.

Jimmy did jump back at that moment, and kind of crashed into a table full of paints. Some of these little plastic containers cheerfully popped open, and left spatters of paint, similar to a giant paint gun, on the floor. And Jimmy did like paint guns. Archangel #37 was painted entirely with a paint ball gun, after all.

Jimmy's shock subsided when smoke began to pour out of the switch box, but that did not last long, fortunately, for the power breaker did finally kick in. At least he did not burn the house down. That would be a shame.

The space itself had been built by someone else, a gruff beer-bellied guy who always wore jumpsuits, typically gray or blue, made by Dickies. He didn't say much, and listened to his stream of conservative talk radio at full blast on his admittedly cool DeWalt black and yellow boom box. Jimmy kind of envied it, and swore he would have one some day. It was LOUD, and Jimmy was so sorely tempted to plug in his iPod to it to listen to Morbid Angel, if could even figure out how to do that. He doubted the handyman/builder would like death metal.

The paint on the floor sort of coalesced, and created this swirl of pattern on the floor. It was cheap acrylic paint that he had doctored up with various stuff so that it had a slightly runny texture.

Jimmy had decided that he really needed another light switch, so he had wired it himself. He was confused by the wires, and red, green, blue (what was blue for?) and black were one thing, but the fact that it was hard for jimmy to tell some colors apart made it even more of a challenge. He looked at the smoldering, melted switch, and proceed it to pull it out of the wall with a crowbar, for in addition to everything else that made Jimmy unique, he was impatient and unable to think more than 3 minutes ahead. At some point, the box came free, and Jimmy fell backwards hitting his head on the floor, making a light thud as it bounced off the floor covered with industrial vinyl, the kind seen in commercial establishments with the little bumps about the size of quarters. His head at this point was covered in paint. He appeared to be bleeding psychedelic blood as he stood up, wobbly on his feed. He then slipped again, falling forward into a pile of whitewashed masonite siding he had scavenged. The paint had been absorbed enough that his body acted as one giant paint roller at this point.

Later this year, he would hang Archangel #38 in his one-man show. He was careful as always to not say much as people milled about making comments. The general view was that it was his best work yet, a sense of spontaneity and spiritual explosion combined with the temperance of man's physical being. Or something like that.