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I once wept onto bound blank pages and called the result The Book of Tears. I strangled and drowned that soggy volume and titled it Mercy, but this actual knife, here in her daughter’s bed where it was planted by god-knows-who, tells a more urgent story than any on paper. Only a book with a pulse, a temperature, a heft for leverage, and a handle for wielding as a weapon could compete with a butcher’s blade lurking in the bed of a child I don’t dislike. She and her mother had just begun to feel safe after weeks of squatting on a wornout mattress in a corner of Auntie Panty’s studio between a noisy radiator and a litter box. Before that, they’d spent two nights fidgeting in a rented bed at an unaffordable local hotel. Before that, they’d come home from mercy errands to a home that had been their refuge. The bastards hadn’t stolen much, but they’d splintered the front door and run their bleeding hands over everything that was hers, then crapped in the hallway and turned her home against her. She politely informed the police, enlisted me in the reclamation, fled with her daughter to anyplace safe, and languished in exile while I cleaned up. We’re staring now at what stabbed her beneath the covers as she was putting her daughter into bed, as sinister as a turd on the floor but more pointed. I touch her lightly. What chance does language have to blunt such objects or sheathe them, and how can we live without intimacy when items out of place can make the world and not the objects seem so reckless? She extends her arms; I anticipate an embrace, but she’s showing me her wounds. She’s starting a sentence with Since you moved out
Original Copyright © March 08, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 12, 2026
I had been seeing her, always at the same place, always muttering to the same or similar ducks, for weeks before I ventured to speak to her. If I had not had crackers in my pocket I would never have begun our little commerce with an offer of food, but as I stretched my hand across the impossible gulf between us there they were, each a simple orange square, pierced by fork points, twinned with another by a swipe of peanut glue, six such pairs arranged in three ranks of two files each, edge to edge, back to indistinguishable lightly salted back, girdled in cellophane. They had been meant for the dogs, who watched in alarm. Think I can’t get crackers? she asked me. Thinks I can’t get crackers! Not bothering to unwrap them then, I dispensed the packet to the dogs, who tumbled over one another and crushed the crackers to crumbs. Her crew and she have burglarized my home repeatedly since, and so haphazardly I no longer lock it for fear they’ll shatter the rest of the windows as thanks. She leads them in, as she first led them to my door, and if asked why, I suspect her explanation would involve the offer of food. We curl together now, at night, the dogs and I, sometimes in bed, more often beneath it, and huddle head to tail or paw to head or hand and listen for the door. I’ve moved their bowls upstairs. They’re hungry and unwell but rarely vicious, she and those she brings. Whatever made me think I could give a little, without offering all, I regret having thought, but I’m happy when everyone gets a little something, and that the dogs and I have a bed and a home where visitors feel welcome.
Copyright ©1997
Very Short Novels 
Thank you so much, anhinga, but I wouldn't want to try it without the other 199. —David
Why, thank you, brother. It's wonderful to see you here. :) —David
All you need is 100 words to make an emotional impact. Touching.
Brilliant, brother. Just simply brilliant.
This Very Short Novel has a strong resemblance to Simple Lessons of War from almost 20 years ago, but is…