The sisters of Gamma Beta Pi long held that the goddess was a myth.
That their initiation ritual, the bloodletting under the cover of darkness in the woods behind their house one night in late October every year, was nothing more than simple tradition. That the magic they claimed to call forth, bringing beauty and power to those few worthy women, were nothing but empty affirmations.
But Marsha Hart knew the truth.
Looking back now on all those times Dad died, I’d have to say the first one remains my favourite.
When he was twenty-nine, Dad was working as an in-house solicitor for a now defunct telecommunications firm. He lived alone in Peckham, and clocked in long, unsociable hours. One hot July evening, a little past nine o’clock, he got home and found a dead man lying at the foot of his stairs.
I killed my mother-in-law last month. Obviously, David doesn’t know I was responsible for his mother’s death. He thinks it was just an accident. Which is infuriating, because I was finally going to prove to him what a cow she was. But now I have to listen to him crying over “Poor Mummy,” and reminiscing about how perfect she was.
Department of Memory: Statement on Recent Memory NoteTM Upgrades
Memory NoteTM, the alert system transforming our conception of life, has been upgraded, announced the Department of Memory (DoM) today.
Upon completion of the Pilot Phase, DoM has done what it promised to do from the outset: learn. Upgrades to Memory NoteTM align with the system’s purpose: to bring memory to the present by alerting us in real time of which experiences we’ll remember far into the future.
Said Terry Bernham, Secretary of Memory. “The knowledge of what we will remember refines our behavior, changes our future, and adds meaning to our lives. This knowledge is NOTEworthy.”
From the road, the modern building looked out of place – as though it had been dropped into the Kansas wasteland by accident, meant for another location, but destined to end up here. We stood in silence, neither of us with any constructive thing to say and already exhausted in the creeping summer sun.
My eyes fell to the cheap sign that didn’t match the rest of the aesthetics: The Museum of Museums. The sign would have fit better in one of those old time tourist traps and looked at least twenty years older than the stark white behemoth it guarded.
Sasha’s attention fell on the harsh staccato of Stick’s nails, clicking across the hard floor. It’d been too long since she’d cut them, Sasha thought, distracted for a moment from the steady rhythm of her own breath. Stick clicked past again and Sasha heard him scratching against the front door. He had to go out. But it could wait. For one more breath at least, it could all wait — Stick and his nails and the world outside the door he was scratching at. Sasha re-focused her attention on the next inhalation, following it from the air fluttering past the edges of her nostrils, to the rising tide beneath her chest, as her diaphragm dropped and her lungs filled with—
The boys had gathered for Tristan’s return. Mulligan, a teacher, had driven from Galway through rain that seemed to resent his presence on the road. Rob had taken the train from Dublin. Shaney got a lift from a neighbour in Drumshanbo. And as for Tristan, he trumped them all: there was no beating a twenty-four-hour flight from Australia. (He’d failed to mention the stopover in Kuala Lumpur that broke the journey in two.)
There was no music in the bar. The owner’s son, who normally sang a disorientating selection of country tunes and pop hits, had taken a huff with his father. So the only bit of melody came from excited voices and clinking glasses.
Every day we can’t wait for The Show to come on. We rush through our days, come home, eat a hasty meal, sometimes with our little tin tables in front of the wall screen, salivating for The Show to come on. No matter how bad our days have been our smiles pop, our hearts fill when we see Bobby’s smile and Angela’s poofy hair, and little Max tripping on the dog in the doorway, and our laughter escapes us with no effort of our own. When we see that little Chip the cocker spaniel is okay, we together breathe a sigh of relief, and everything is okay in our world for that moment, that instant. We have our Show, and we know everything will be okay.
At my age, there’s half a chance… maybe half a hope… I’ll have an android to ease the weight of later years, help me stay in my own home.
Perhaps it’ll arrive fully assembled. Neither male nor female, its skin will be smooth as mine decades ago. I’ll train it to recognize my face and voice, understand the meaning of an arched eyebrow and intonations. We’ll take turns squeezing each other’s hands so it learns to modulate it’s strength. I’ll teach it to do the dishes. If it puts the cups where the plates belong, I’ll correct it politely.
Idle Ink 