FireVaney

I woke up in my childhood bed. I didn’t question how or why. I threw off the covers, stood, and staggered to the bathroom. It was exactly where I’d left it, fifteen-odd years later. But then bathrooms don’t tend to move, do they? Particularly when they’re one of seven rooms in a single-story house. The bathroom’s sink and tub were overflowing. On the bright side, they were overflowing with water. So, it could’ve been worse. StepDude didn’t give a damn. He’d left the water to fill and overflow. In fact, all of the sinks in the house were overflowing—with water—which, at least to the eye, seemed clean. Thank God. There’s always a bright side. If your house must  flood, better if it’s flooded with clean water—as opposed to rusty colored water, or saltwater, or sewage. But I hadn’t realized something. Since I’d moved out, fifteen-odd years ago, StepDude inexplicably had sinks installed in every room and also in the hallway. That makes nine sinks—nine sinks and faucets * —if you coun...

Middle school. Gym Class. Outside. Field. Football. Picked last. As usual. Snubbed by quarterback. As usual. Playing for losing team. As usual. Gym teacher: Mr. Klip. He stops the game. Pulls a large EGG from his windbreaker’s pocket. Tells the class: “Go long.” We—the class—we’re confused. He Hail Marys the egg. I start running, hesitantly running ( hesitancy runs in the family), not fast enough, not to reach the egg before it hits, before it SPLATS, the ground. (Not that it’s clear that it’s not hard-boiled.) Doesn’t matter. Why? Egg DOES NOT hit the ground. No. Instead: A great brown bird, it BURSTS from egg. Flies past goal posts. Lands on tree branch, a low-hanging tree branch. Everybody: aghast . “Everybody,” but Klip. (“ Aghast ” not at low-hanging tree branch, no. “ Aghast ” at bird burst egg, or egg burst bird, or what have you.) I walk to tree, look up at bird—adult hawk, mayhap. But maybe, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Staring. Klip, he’d given me a leather gauntlet. When? Dun...

Wherever I was, it was hilly and rural and green. Maybe it was Scotland. I’ve never been to Scotland, but I’ve seen Highlander and Braveheart more than twice. And I do have Scottish blood, according to my mother. Wherever it was, I’d driven there in a car reminiscent of the “ General Lee ” from the “Dukes of Hazard.” Presumably, the muscle car, true to form, leapt from the continent (presumably the North American one) to the island (presumably the British one), since I don’t believe in airplanes, and since I’ve no recollection of how I found myself behind the wheel of said vehicle. The car belonged to my father. Or that’s what he’d led me to believe. Unless it’s what I’d led myself to believe. I stood (and presumably parked) outside of a massive, red bricked citadel atop a wide, curving ridge. The stronghold’s impossibly tall walls weaved over the length of the ridge like a colossal brick snake. My father rang my cell phone. If I took the call, I didn’t mention the car. Had I “borrowe...