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New World Order
November 13, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Business, Child, Father, Office, Son, Work | by davidbdale | 4 comments
I took my son to work today and they gave him my job. He looked so executive-ready in his Rocky and Bullwinkle tie, so stakeholder-inspiring, so regional vice-presidential, in fact, that he apparently defined a paradigm shift in leaderliness. As for me, I’ve been remaindered for sixty days to transition him, at partial pay, beneath a crap-colored parachute. From the first day of his pregnancy (yes she called it his pregnancy, not hers) his mother coddled him. Survival of the Fittest does not apply in the New World Order, she told me, so now he’s fit for nothing at all, but I’m the odd man out. He’s nine! What does he know about differentiating brand attributes? Nothing, the bosses tell me, but brands are passe. Concentrate his training instead on making him less derivative, by which they mean: Less. Like. Me. He sees me as one of those cavemen in the diorama at the Museum of Natural History, where, by the way, he peed his pants riding my shoulders and I changed him and bought him an ice cream cone and a second when he dropped it and he looked at me with admiration. I would kill the District Vice President of Corporate Indiscretion to see that look again, but he’s had no use for me since Bring Your Child To Work Day, when he shook the hand of the Chairman of the Board, who cannot remember my name, and cast his indifferent gaze on office items of fleeting interest and asked the Chairman, in a voice as cool as water, How much do you make? while simultaneously, with the back of his free hand, fondling the curvy bottom of the woman who will be his right-hand man. I was lying. I never changed his pants, or anything else.
Copyright © 1999
Booklikemarks
November 12, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Abandon, Art, Book, Loss, Love, Separation | by davidbdale | 3 comments
Thin strips of card stock, a pharmacy receipt, a suicide king: bookmarks all. Metaphors for my placeholder finger, they separate the pages I have read from those I may never read. Half-solved puzzles mystify me even as I mark my place in stories that no longer interest me. A photograph of my lost love reminds me that I was once lovable; a summons from an officer of the court commands me to give testimony for what I’ve done or thought or been. They substitute for my hand between the pages where I’ve stuck them, separating my Crime from the Punishment I hope to delay forever by reading no further. The reviews aren’t good. Because of what I haven’t seen, my Emma Bovary’s toying with her Leon still; she hasn’t met, may never meet and betray me with her Rodolphe. Raskolnikov at the pawnbroker’s shop stands forever, axe above his head, declaring his moral superiority. And finally, until you compel me to bear witness in yours, mine is The Tale of One City. The day we were to marry, you responded to something loud—a starter’s pistol? a biological alarm clock?—and sprinted down that aisle, vaulted the flower girl, grabbed a ring and a meaningless kiss and flung the bouquet like a baton over your shoulder on your way toward making a life for yourself. Since then I’ve been sidelined here, abandoning project after project, Doctor Jekyll and whatever comes after, I quit them before they can hurt me. But now, you say, you need commitment and bold action from a man who stops at open doors. Listening to it ring, I stand here hand on phone, not trusting that you need me or for how many pages and terrified that it might be time to start another chapter.
Copyright © 1999
Very Short Novels 