These are just some pieces that have been knocking around for a while. I'd like to turn them into stories, but I haven't, yet. They have no titles.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I got into the foyer; I could hear someone moving in the house, upstairs. The smart thing would have been to leave immediately, but I didn't, because I was curious. I shut the door -- quietly -- and walked -- quietly -- towards the sound. The thick carpeting made the quiet part easy. There was the jingling sound of a drawer being emptied and I heard muttering: "Shit, shit, shit." Those sibilant S's really carry in an empty house. Couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman.
The light was on in one of the bedrooms, the master bedroom of course, and I crept up to it. Drawers dumped from the bedside table, three brands of condoms lying on the floor with keys, change, magazines, reading glasses -- just a mess. I hate a mess.
The burglar was a woman, a girl, really -- maybe nineteen, maybe twenty -- who looked like she'd come from the Cute Burglar section of Central Casting: short blonde hair peeking out from a watch cap, black turtleneck and black jeans, black jean jacket, black sneakers, and rubber gloves, the disposable kind they sell a hundred to a box. She hadn't yet found the safe behind the vanity mirror, but she probably would.
I cleared my throat. She whirled around, shrieked, and dropped the drawer she was holding. Since she had already emptied it, it didn't add much to the current state of entropy.
"Who are you?" she said.
I held my hand in my overcoat pocket as if I needed the comforting touch of my pistol. I didn't actually have a gun, but there was no need for her to know that.
So, like, I was working late, you know? I'd just finished my third liter of coffee and I was in the bathroom making room for more, there at the urinal, and it's coming out with some force and I'd already peed in the holes to make the thunder sound and aimed at each of the broken pieces of the urinal cake and my bladder was still achingly full. (Did I mention I was working late and kind of giddy?)
And I'm standing there, shifting my feet and suddenly I wonder how far I can get from te urinal and still hit the bowl. So I start backing up. I shuffle one cautious step back, and then another, and I'm going for the higher trajectory now, and I'm about five feet from the urinal, cock in hand, making the sign of the golden arch s is there's the one bathroom down the hall on our floor, and there's a restaurant in the basement and no bathroom on the main floor. So with that clarity that comes with emergencies I figure the restaurant bathrooms are full and in the futuret and I need to get to the toilet."
"Um." And I did the little penguin dance until I was bellied up to the urinal again. She darted behind me, let the door to the stall slam and then I heard her sigh as I heard falling water in stereo.
Time was, he thought snowfall was beautiful. It lent a lambency to the city night sky snowfull, snowfalling. That had been in November, when the winter was young and it hid the leaves and the dead grass of autumn. Now it was the pit of February and familiarity with snow had bred contempt as readily and abundantly as rabbits breed rabbits.
He had prowled his house and work for days now and finally he escaped. He debated the clothes to wear, threw his shoes in a bag while he pulled on the size eleven Kodiaks, and finally shrouded himself in the regulation snorkel parka. With practiced ritual, he kicked the accumulation of snow and crud from his wheelwells and fenders, and went to a bar.