CATHARTIC UNALIVING SERIES

Fictional scenes of murder and mayhem based on reader requests

In winter, 2022 I made the mistake of sharing with my TikTok audience that writers have fun killing off people we don’t like in stories. If I need someone to die in a piece of fiction, I have been known to use the names and/or characteristics of people who annoy me. I invited my TikTok audience to share the names of people they would like to see fictionally killed off and promised to write short scenes of death. And they delivered! Turns out that it’s cathartic to fantasize about killing off people we don’t like! Because TikTok censors videos with words like “murder” or “killing,” this became the Cathartic Unaliving Series. And I bring it to you here in all its phantastical glory.

For horrifying new shorts don’t click here

Howl: A Story in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

My favorite time is the edge of night, when the sky darkens and the liminality of the coming darkness is visible in the shift from pale to pink to dark. The air cools and the wind falls silent.

Tonight, I walk across the park alone in a city silenced by quarantine. A virus stalks the streets, unseeable sickness driving people indoors. We wear masks that all the evidence says are largely unnecessary in open spaces. I wear mine in a show of solidarity; I don’t think it will keep me safe.

I’ve been avoiding other people all my life. It’s week three of quarantine and I day dream about having the whole world to myself. I want to walk the rooms of the Louvre alone, lie on my back in the Sistine chapel and examine that marvelous ceiling for as long as I desire, break into the burial vault of the Taj Mahal, and walk through the forbidden passages of Al-Karaouine.

A firework, a large one, goes off with a bang and I’m pulled from my reverie. I do not see it; it’s too far away for that.

Then I hear a howl rising. Then another and another, ghostly on the air of night. I stop walking and just listen. The howls rise in the gathering dark.

Humans do a passable impression of their canine friends but the intonation is different. Humans howling together is just as magical though, all those voices joined in a community of sound.

We began to howl to commemorate and thank essential personnel working the front lines of a pandemic that no one really understands yet. The news is full of doctors and nurses but I think of the janitorial staff, toiling in danger for minimum wage. My thoughts go to the warehouse workers, and the people cleaning those warehouses. I wonder if it is any better harvesting food from fields; at least the air is fresh. But those people are probably marginalized the worst, livelihoods held ransom by an administration that reveals its deep xenophobia and racism more and more every day. Oppressed by hate-filled politicians and targeted by racists on the street. And yet our lives depend on their work.

Then people began to howl for lost loved ones. Beloved dead lost to the virus but that quickly expanded to include any lost loved ones.  Every night at 8PM cities across America fill up with the sound of the human experience: a long, undulating cry of pain and fear and togetherness and hope. We are conscious beings screaming into the Nietzschian void, terrified that the abyss will look back. Terrified that it won’t. We are scared of what it all means. We are scared that it means nothing.  

We howl because the world is burning up and we know it and none of us can stop it. We howl because we are in this together and yet we cannot seem to come together to impact change.

I throw my head back and howl.

In the Event of My Death: A Meditation in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

In the event of my death wash my body like they used to, back when bodies were laid out in the parlor for “viewing” so that everyone could come and certify that the person had, in fact, died. Our culture tells us not to view the dead, to “remember how they were.” But seeing death brings closure. It allows us to embrace the end. So sponge away the effluvia of dying, weigh my eyelids down with coins, prop my mouth closed.

Then bury me in the forest. I do not need a coffin or shroud, just place me into the earth and cover me with soft soil. Return me to the ground.

We are all made of stardust, all of us, everything alive and everything not alive. All that is.

Death is not the opposite of life; it’s the opposite of birth, a completion of the cycle. That’s all death is: not-life. From the stars we are made and to them we will return. Like water returning to the oceans.

I need no memorial. I need no headstone or marker. I need no flowers or stone. I need no memory to prove that I existed. I did, and that is enough, and it matters not. Silence is my epitaph.

As a child I wanted to be famous. That’s one lesson the American Dream teaches us: that we all deserve to rock stars and movie gods. Fame will make us happy. Important. Immortal.

As an adult I learned to recognize all that as ego. It’s meaningless and pointless. We will all be forgotten. The goal of my life is to leave no impression, to be a ripple upon water. Leave only footprints we are advised. I don’t want to leave even that.

But don’t you want to be a positive influence upon others? you might ask. That’s impossible, I reply. No one can influence anyone else, we are simply present when others grow. Each individual is responsible for their own transformation. I am merely an observer. I am wind upon the grass. If I had not lived, someone else would have. Interchangeable humans.

It is a great relief to recognize that the world would not be any different had I never existed. Nor will it change in any significant way once I am gone. Only my words will be left. And those will fade, too.

So bury me in the woods where no one ever goes. Leave me to birdsong and raindrops. Let woodland plants grow from my compost, let soil creatures break my body apart into nutrients. Let me become earth, broken apart, rearranged, reconfigured. There is no me to destroy. None of us are anything; all things are nothing. And out of nothing everything is made. Ex nihilio. Nihil est.

It’s a koan, the underlying paradox of existence. The truth is paradox, Kierkegaard tells us. Paradox is truth. In the event of my death, bury me in the forest. In the event of my death leave me be.

Rose: A Mystery in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

For Pauli

The edge of the shovel dug into her foot but she pushed harder, bearing down, and the blade sank satisfyingly into the loamy soil. The rose bush shuddered.

“Don’t worry,” she told it. “You’ll like the new spot better.” She always spoke to her plants. She didn’t name them though.

Liking roses so much embarrassed her. It seemed so cliché to adore the flower of romance when she liked to think of herself as a practical person. Roses had been so modified, bred, and cultured that they had mutated into unnatural symbols of capitalist culture.

And yet. The velvety petals unfurling like a body opening to desire, the way the morning dew clung in crystalline droplets, the rich colors like candy in the morning sun. She loved them.

She didn’t love anything rose scented or flavored. Rose smelled too cloying, the taste like soap on her tongue. But straight from the source; there was a reason “stop and smell the roses” had become a euphemism for enjoying life.

She worked the shovel carefully around the plant, going slowly, until she could lift it free. The dark green leaves shivered. She discarded the tool and got down on her knees in the dirt to work her gloved hands carefully through the roots, pulling them gently loose. The whole things lifted suddenly and she rocked back on her heels, feeling one thorn pierce her long sleeved shirt.

She also loved that roses have thorns. Beauty and pain: no better euphemism for life.

She set the rose on the piece of burlap she’d prepared and picked up the shovel to fill in the hole. But she spotted something sticking up out of the dirt and she paused in a crouch to see it better. It looked like a piece of flagstone, dark from the ground. Curious, she grasped the edge and tugged experimentally. It shifted but not as much as expected; it’s bigger than it looks and still mostly buried. She tugged harder.

It gave suddenly enough to rock her back on her heels and she pulled it free and out of the hole. It appeared to be a piece of flagging bigger than a foot square. At first she thought that it’s dirty but then the lines resolved too orderly and she brushed the earth off to reveal a face.

It’s startling enough that she drew away from the stone. It’s androgynous, a square-jawed face with wide-set eyes. Fluffy hair fell in bangs across the high forehead and around the thick neck. Steady, contemplative eyes, slightly upturned. It’s a woman she decided, a visage etched like an old grave marker. She thought of bones in the ground, lying silent, and shivered. Had the previous owners buried someone here?

Grasping the edge of the stone she flipped it to see the other side. Nothing. She turned it back over and brushed the last crumbles of earth off but there’s no name, no date. Just that face, staring thoughtfully up at the empty sky.

Abandoned: A Scene in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!



I’ve driven this street but never walked it before. Walking is such a different perspective, allowing focus on things we drive by without a glance. I love to walk. I could walk all day.

So I must have seen the house but I have no memory of it. It looks derelict. It’s out of place between neat lawns and manicured gardens. I wonder if the neighbors resent it.

It’s a large house, a full two stories with garden level windows peeking through untrimmed juniper shrubbery. A side door opens into the garden and that’s what initially catches my eye: it’s a gorgeous door. But it’s half hidden behind a juniper with a large lilac rioting out of control.

I stop to get a better look. The door is double and made of some sort of dark wood that’s fast losing its polish to the elements. The wood is carved with vines and flowers in ornate twists and swirls. It looks like it must open to Narnia.

Then I see the rest of the house. There’s a wonderful wide deck wrapping around the side and front of the home but the railing dangles, broken, over space. Looking closer, I see that the deck is missing an entire section of flooring and nails jut like rabid teeth. The paint, once grey, has peeled away in long stripes.

I love abandoned places because they must all have stories. My imagination runs away. Maybe a sudden death, a job loss, an inability to be in whatever circumstances for one more minute. Abandoned places speak to the transience of the human experience, how quickly lives can change. My minds eye sees a woman running from the house, lugging an over packed suitcase trailing bra straps and socks.

Nature reclaims so quickly. The grass has grown up and matted, covering the yard in a thick web of dry stalks. Once roses had gown along the property line but now only dead branches, heavy with fierce thorns, silhouette against the sky. It feels a lonely and broken place.

Then I see the light. There’s a light on inside. I see it through slatted blinds but the windows are too dirty to make out much more than the glow of a bulb in a flower shaped sconce. I get no sense of the room.

My imagination revises at the speed of light. Not an abandoned house but an abandoned person, too old, too sick, too crazy, for upkeep. Maybe a hoarder, piles of trash choking the rooms, threatening annihilation under an avalanche of smothering stuff. Grocery bags of shit, a whole rooms filled with used diapers, the drains clogging, floors sagging under weight, package after package delivered daily, building mansions of needless belongings.

No, maybe an agoraphobic in rooms sparkling and beautiful, unable to prevent the outside from falling into neglect. Serene dustless surfaces kept perfect with perpetual cleaning. Maybe some damaged, isolated genius looking through the window back at me.

I shiver, walking on.

I Miss You: A Story in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

I stand in front of the house, the sun warm on my shoulders. It didn’t look like a special house. It looked like every other house on the block. Three concrete steps lead up to a small porch and the front door. Someone had painted that door red but long ago. The paint had cracked and faded.

I don’t remember the door being red. I also don’t remember the four square windows set high, near the top of the frame. Maybe a different door? The door I remember had been varnished wood with an oval window. But maybe that is the back door.

The house feels special to me. I’d come here unerringly, parking on the curb without a doubt in front of the third house on the north side of the street. It was the house of before.

I remember my younger self storming down those steps and down the walk, through where I now stand motionless. That self slammed the door on a yellow ’68 VW Beetle and tore out fast enough to squeal the tires on the little car. That self had not known that I would never cross that threshold again. That self had been innocent of the way the world can hurt. That self had only bled from childhood scrapes. Never at the hands of another person. That self had never held a gun.

Something rolls under my shoe and I look down to see a fragment of sidewalk chalk, bright blue. I bend over and pick it up, feeling the dry dust on my fingers. I remember drawing for hours with chalk, until I’d worn all the pieces down to nubs. That’s a before memory. The after self no longer drew. The after self  doesn’t do much of anything other than drift from menial job to meaningless job. That’s why I’m here: to see if I can find my before self. Maybe re-become them.

I step onto the brown grass crumbling in the yard next to the stoop. Kneeling, I write “I Miss You” in tall, blue letters on the side of the concrete steps facing the street. I miss them so much: that willful, creative, beautiful person. The me who is no longer me.

The world had tried to force be into a person, a body, a gender that didn’t fit. Humans so love boxes, categories, labels, binaries. I’d tried to conform, to be a girl, to be feminine.

My mother had called me a freak; she’d always been so much crueler than my father. That had been when I’d fled. But streets are so hard, even more so to a person who doesn’t fit, who doesn’t belong. The body kneeling in the dead grass bore scars both visible and invisible. The hand blue with chalk dust had struck, twisted, killed.

I stand abruptly. I’m not here. I don’t exist.

I turn and walk back toward my car. It isn’t a Bug anymore. It is a BMW M6 Gran Coupe in black sapphire.

After: A Scene in 500 Words

I originally wrote this a few years ago and recently brushed it off and gave it a polish.

She sat in the shade of the big live oak tree, trimming her fingernails. The clippers made a soft snick! snick! as each shard fell into the grass. The live oak grew in the middle of a large flat field and had undoubtedly been growing there for a century or more. It had seen a lot over the years and the past eight months had been particularly eventful.

A sturdy barbwire fence enclosed the field. That fence had been built to contain livestock of the bovine or equine variety. But no horses or cows were to be seen. On one side of the field the fence had large hole. One of the posts lay upended on the grass surrounded by a tangle of wire. A raw rut of freshly turned earth scarred the field but whatever had done the damage was no where to be seen. She doubted that the cows or horses that used to live in the field had escaped.

She sat facing the hole in the fence as she went about her work, cutting each nail brutally short. Once, months ago, her nails had been long and manicured, always polished and perfect, cuticles trimmed, skin moisturized. She still kept her hands clean but her skin had dried and a series of scrapes and abrasions covered her knuckles.

Every minute or so she glanced up at that break in the fence. Nothing stirred in the mid afternoon heat except the dust motes dancing in the dappled sunshine across her knees and the tall grass waving lazily in the breeze.

She thought longingly of taking a short nap in the warm sunshine, surrounded by the sweet smell of hay and the energetic sound of cicadas. But that hole made her nervous.

Finished with her task, she placed the nail clippers back into the top pouch of a medium sized backpack that leaned against the tree next to her. The pouch also contained a razor with extra blades, tampons, tweezers, medical tape, antibiotic ointment, and bandages. She zipped it carefully closed and double checked it. Supplies had become scarce.

She leaned back against the tree. She liked this spot with its visibility in every direction. The untended grass grew tall and she felt hidden in the shade. The road, a narrow country blacktop, blazed in the strong light and she clearly saw that nothing stirred anywhere close. It was safer now to sleep during the day and stay up all night. But she didn’t sleep much at all anymore.

She tugged the backpack closer and made a pillow, staying mostly upright so that the road would be the first thing she saw upon opening her eyes. The bugs of summer hummed around her. She felt safe. She allowed her eyes to close.

Her breathing gradually deepened, her lips parting in sleep. The sun shone down. The grass ruffled in the warm breeze. The cicadas droned.

Far away down the road, where a bend went into the trees, a shadow moved.

Monster: A Story in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

I wait, writhing. I think tendrils. I speak silence. I am my mother’s daughter, blood of her flesh, fruit of her womb. 

It is muffled here in the dark. My first awareness is sound, sweet singing, though I do not know “song” or “sweet.”

Next I know sharp, stinging. I do not yet know “pain” or “tooth” or “tongue.” The first blood I taste is my own.

It becomes cramped. I can no longer stretch and my wings press close, uncomfortable constriction. I have grown larger and I curl inward upon myself, soothed by the beat of my heart and the surrounding warmth.

But it soon becomes more cramped. I stretch irritably, limbs pressing into the soft close. This is the only world I have known and I grow weary of it in search of space. My lungs take in only fluid but I long for the open air, though I do not know that which I crave.

Such softness. I dig my fingers in, sensing spasms. I know there is a  world beyond.

Flush of fluid, blinding noise, a great spilling forth. I ride a river of red, it coats my skin and clots my hair. I cannot make sense of sight, a sensory assault of new sensation. I do understand depth perception or movement. I do not know “red” or “body” or “death.” I do not know that I have been born.

I pull myself up on fragile fingers. The wings spread upward, gloriously free. I take a breath automatically and spew forth fluid, coughing, choking. The next breath is sweet and glorious. I take another.

Breathing clears my head and I look around, beginning to recognize this new sense that is sight. I see velvety red, Martian runners of rippling maroon. It coats my skin, drying and beginning to flake.  I brush it away and see shimmering white beneath, white wasteland of glowing flesh. This is me.

I look around and see a face. Though I have not learned “face” I know what I see though I cannot name it in language. Coated in the red rivulets, shining eyes staring up, unblinking. I reach with taloned fingers and touch, tingling, mingling of flesh against dead flesh. This is her.

I take her hand in my hand, her golden skin against my pallor. Her fingers taper to narrow nails, slender. My fingers end in curving bone tips, whiter even than the skin of my hands. Her fingers are lax in mine. We are different.

Her middle is ribbons of flesh. I sit in her wound. Her womb. She has no wings sprouting from her back like salvation.

There is air on my skin, the call of space. I stretch my wings. The air enters through an open space in the wall and beyond I see the an expanse of black, littered with tiny pinpoints of light.

The air calls to me and I stretch my wings, responding to an instinctual pull. I am fantastic flight, born upward.

Pandemic: A Poem

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

The extroverts are going crazy after only ten days of physical isolation.

“Social isolation” they say

But it’s really physical distance that matters.

This virus can’t cross social media or contaminate via text message.

I silently calculate the cars on the streets.

Are all these people essential workers?

Maybe.

I shouldn’t be so judgy.

My feed fills up with tips on how to maximize this time.

Learn an instrument. Start painting. Write that book.

Meditate.

I always work on myself. This doesn’t feel that different.

But maybe I should try something new.

Push myself.

Start the next thing in my life.

What have I been meaning to do?

The extroverts are going crazy.

A lot of introverts are loving it.

See?

We always knew we could work from home!

Uncertainty makes lots of people anxious.

Americans are taught to maintain control: control what we eat, how we respond, how we look.

But it’s all illusion.

Nature will have Her way.

I find uncertainty comforting,

Reality revealing itself.

Because nothing is certain.

The only thing I can control is my own mind.

A lot of introverts are loving it.

I am one of them.

I read. Binge TV. Write. Work. Sleep. Walk. Yoga.

Text. Have Netflix horror parties. Hold virtual happy hour with friends.

See? Introverts are social, too.

I suspect this whole introvert/extrovert thing is just another social construct.

Another way of categorizing in order to establish (the illusion of) control.

It’s probably bullshit.

We trade memes like new currency

And argue about what’s in poor taste.

The introverts are loving it.

The extroverts are going crazy.

21st Century Cupid: A Character Study in 500 Words (Or Fewer)

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

He steps into the light on the far side of the street and my breath stops. He tilts his head back, closing his eyes against the gentle mist. The light loves him. It clings to the smooth planes of his cheeks, highlighting the bow of his full lower lip. The mist coats him in glistening droplets that glow crystalline in the white street light, shining in his dark hair and on his pale skin.

Almost every visible inch of skin has been tattooed or pierced. Flames swarm up from under the collar of his long vinyl coat, licking around his ears and across the shaved sides of his head, disappearing into the black curls tumbling down and across his wide forehead. His arching brows are adorned with silver rings. So is his nose, pierced twice in each nostril, a heavy gauge hanging from his septum. Silver studs line both ears and I’d bet money on daith piercings. I can see whole poems on his fingers but he’s too far away for me to read the words running up his black-nailed fingers, around his wrists and disappearing under the cuffs of the jacket. Tear drops have been tattooed down one cheek. Cliché but effective; you gotta love the classics. He looks like cupid dragged through several levels of a hell dimension.

This late, there is no one else around but he has made himself to be watched. He’s designed for an audience, from the top of his rock star hair to the tips of his square toed boots. I wonder if he’s hiding his true self under all that mask, or if this is really him, all punk rock godling.

The light changes and he steps into the street, toward me. The light brightens on his face as he walks into the sphere of the lamp on my side of the street and for a heart stopping moment he seems to look straight at me. His eyes are green like sunlight on the Aegean. The thick, black lashes suggest to me that his dark hair is his own, not needing alteration to fit the aesthetic.

He’s beautiful, his features almost androgynous. The high cheekbones and firm jaw are masculine but the perfect doll mouth and slanted eyes are more typically feminine. He has wide shoulders but a narrow waist, his black jeans riding low on his hips, a flash of white skin between his tattered tank and studded leather belt. All the adornment heightens my initial impression: a Botticelli angel made flesh, fallen into a human body of lust and earthly delight.

He reaches my side of the street and steps into the shadow of the building. The rain coats him in glimmers. His eyes flash white and now he sees me. His chin dips, sending his eyes into shadow.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello,” he replies.

American Mother: A Character Study in 500 Words

During time spent on lock down in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, I produced a series of character studies, short shorts, poems, and vignettes in 500 or fewer words. Enjoy!

My mother wasn’t an especially good mother. But my head is filled with American nonsense about how mothers are always attentive, always giving, always putting their children before themselves. That wasn’t my mother.

When I remember it’s mostly a scent like rising bread. I only have one visual memory of her: dusty bare feet on the wood floor of our kitchen, tanned calves, an apron smudged with flour, a blond hair caught in another drift of flour coating her freckled nose and cheek. I remember a flake of purple polish on one long toe. I don’t remember polish on her fingers because I can’t see her fingers: they are buried in a fluffy mound of dough.

American mothers are supposed to cook. That part my mother perfected. I have a childhood filled with cream sauces, soufflés, homemade pizza, rosewater cakes, passion fruit yogurt, calzones, and falafel. All made from scratch, my mother’s quest to start with the most basic, the foundational, the most elemental. She packed my lunches full of raw veggies with three dipping sauces, toasted crackers and mozzarella made from whole milk, crème fraise with ripe berries, sushi rolls with cucumber and pickled ginger. Then she turned vegan and I arrived in the cafeteria with vegetable dips made from tofu and hummus, decadent banana muffins sweetened with dates and chocolate chips, rice balls with pickled plum. She forgot to buy me new clothes or school supplies, but my bento box overflowed with five star bounty.

Mothers are supposed to care for their children, help them with homework, draw baths and see them to bed. Mothers are supposed to teach their daughters to keep house, to cook, to clean. My mother shooed me from the kitchen every time I evidenced interest.

“Dirt and food, that’s all women are good for,” my mother said. (I know this because my father told me her words.) By the time I turned five, I learned to do my own laundry, pulling the sheets off my bed, separating whites from colors. Soon, I washed all the sheets in the house. So I suppose my mother did teach me to keep house: my negative role model for what not to do.

I look like her. I see it in photographs. I have her tilted green eyes and dark blonde hair. I have the dimple below the right corner of my mouth. But I have my father, too, his high cheekbones and dusky skin.

I wonder if my mother wanted to be a mother. She and my father had been together fifteen years before I arrived. Had I been an accident? She died before I could ask her. And my father only offers up sparing anecdotes that do not let me know her.

Am I supposed to know how to be a mother? I buy a cookbook but I burn the quinoa and the soufflé falls. My bread burns on the outside and stays goopy on the inside. I will never be an American mother.