Of All Trades

Sunshine floated wistfully through the window of the fifth story apartment and was unceremoniously sliced into equal pieces by the eggshell coloured plastic blinds that were just present enough to cut up the light rays, but useless enough to still let the beam glare directly over Jack’s eyes as he tried to sleep. His first thought was a question as to why the sun was waking him up instead of his alarm clock. As he slid his lids open and swatted at the light rays like a playful kitten, in hopes he might be able to knock the beam away, he focused on his alarm clock. For just a moment, and only a moment, Jack thought the digital display indicated the phrase “fuck you” on its face, but in reality only announced it was 1:42 PM. Jack had been unemployed for the past three months.

His alarm clock had been working about as hard as he had in that time.

Jack shifted to the right and managed to find a spot he thought would reprieve him of the beam of light trying to get him up at this ungodly hour. He lay his head back down and was about to close his eyes as another slash of sunlight fell over his eyes like a very very confused blindfold.

“Son of a bitch,” Jack murmured.

Pun intended. Entirely.

He decided that fate, or at least the sun, wanted him to be up for some reason. It was never a good sign when fate got involved, or the sun for that matter, because that meant Jack was going to have to do something. If he could’ve just slept through the day he would’ve been safe, but now he had to move.

Jack stared at himself in the bathroom mirror and debated heatedly with his tussled brown hair about whether he should shower or not. Of course he didn’t literally converse with his hair. But he couldn’t have conversations with his mouth, they’d never get along.

Mouth would always think Jack was looking down his nose at mouth every time Jack spoke. It wouldn’t work.

At least with hair Jack could talk peacefully and hair could follow his strand of conversation, show some emotion and curl in disgust at Jack’s various lazy tendencies, and sometimes would even lock him in conversation so long that he would forget to do some important things, like mop the floor. A hairy situation, indeed sometimes, and this was one of those times. Jack was kept staring in the mirror so long that he didn’t have time to get into the shower. The decision was made for him.

There was a loud booming knock at his front door. Impatient fists slamming into the wood construction alternating left and right. Jack knew this for a fact, because he knew exactly who knocked on his door like that all the time.

“Coming, Barry,” Jack muttered, barely audible to himself, and therefore inconceivable that Barry all the way at the front door and outside, sound being entirely muffled and destroyed by distance and the wooden blocker, could have heard Jack’s voice.

“Okay,” Barry replied, and stopped knocking.

Jack sluggishly found a red shirt and jeans, putting them on as quickly as the sin of sloth would allow...which isn’t very fast at all...if you were wondering.

Just as he finished dressing, Jack heard a thunderous crackling of wood and then the dull thud of something hitting the ground flatly, air rushing out from under the object forcefully and rudely, the sound of air particles cursing at the inconvenience like a New York cab driver who just missed a fare because he hit a bike messenger, killing him instantly via a windshield to an incredibly ineffectual blue, with thin white stripes along the side—to make it look “faster”—helmet, allowing a cranial fracture of such grand proportions that the messenger couldn’t possibly be alive enough to contemplate the issues involved with a mangled 3000 dollar bike which he bought with money he got for Christmas from his mother—Joanne, lovely lady—and his subsequent loss of a job for an unfortunate lack of a replacement bike.

Meaning, the air was inconvenienced.

The door hit the ground really loudly and Jack heard it in his room.

With mild surprise Jack left his room and went to investigate the noise. At the front door he found a short, red haired, man with just enough freckles to be deemed cute, as opposed to was-standing-too-close-to-a-screen-door-whilst-someone-was-throwing-shit-at-it-from-the-other-side-esque, by his peers. If he had peers. Unless you count Jack as a peer. In which case, he had peers.

This was Barry. He was lying atop the fallen door with ruptured hinges and shattered wood. He was pulling himself to his feet as Jack entered. Jack looked with dead green eyes, still a bit squinted from sleep, down at the smitten door which separated his world from that of the world out in the hallway, which was subsequently separated by other doors with other worlds on the opposite side, but more on that later. Jack looked up from said separator of worlds and then looked upon Barry, destroyer of separators, and said in no uncertain terms, “Hey Barry.”

“Jack. I have news!” Barry exclaimed joyously, oblivious to the door, but used it as a standing space quite comfortably.

“Is it about a door?” asked Jack.

Barry paused, taken aback by the non-sequitur, “No.”

“Too bad,” Jack said, looking down at the defeated door and then back at Barry. “I’m in the market for one.”

Barry looked down at the door and then back at Jack, after a while said, “I can look into that for you if you like, but what I have to say is way more interesting than that!”

“Go on,” Jack said.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” asked Barry. As if insulted by Jack’s breach of some kind of protocol known only to Barry.

Jack looked around the room and gazed upon Barry pointedly. “I think you’re pretty much in, Barry, already.”

Barry sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know I’m in the apartment. I mean like in, you know? To sit down, maybe offer a drink?” Barry held up his index finger on his left hand. “Also, I have a sliver, could I have a bandage for that?”

Jack looked again at the decimated entryway blocker and then back again at Barry. “Where’d you get the sliver?”

“Oh, I’m working on a likeness of Jeff Bridges, you know, from The Last Unicorn?”

Jack wasn’t sure where to start with that one. From the very bottom he could’ve asked why he chose to reference Jeff Bridges with one of his incredibly lesser known roles when he could’ve easily said The Big Lebowski, Tron, or Iron Man, or for that matter why he was doing a likeness of Jeff Bridges but said “from The Last Unicorn,” which was an animated film and couldn’t possibly showcase the face of the man Barry was trying to describe should Jack have been unaware of whom it was Barry was referring to.

Jack decided just to keep it general. “Why?”

“Why Jeff Bridges?” asked Barry.

That worked. But Jack wanted to keep it even more general in this case. “No, why are you making a likeness out of wood?”

“Well, the last time I tried to use clay and that just ended up being one big bust, so I learned from past mistakes and decided to try wood!”

“I see,” Jack said, inaccurately as any statement could be spoken in the history of statements. Ever. “Well, come in, water?”

“Please.”

Jack poured water from the tap into a plastic cup that was left on the counter and handed it to Barry as he sat at the kitchen table. Barry took a drink and gave the water a sour expression. “Was there vodka in this cup at one point?”

Jack tried to remember what he had used the cup for last night but couldn’t. That was probably as good a sign as any that it had probably been indeed filled with vodka.

“Probably.”

Barry put down the cup and suddenly locked Jack with an intense stare. “Jack. I have news.”

“You mentioned.”

“Yes, and here it is: I have found a job for us!” Barry appeared incredibly excited, and Jack, to his credit, appeared more bewildered than his usual impassionate stare.

“Us?”

“Yes,” Barry replied, short of hopping up and down and clapping excitedly.

“A job?”

“Have found.”

Jack started. “What?”

“Oh, sorry,” Barry said, “I thought we were playing a game, you kept saying pieces of the phrase I said before so I thought you were starting some kind of impromptu word scramble game.”

“What kind of job, Barry?” asked Jack.

“Well, I figured since you’re, you know, kind of good at everything, right?”

This wasn’t an exaggeration. Jack was in fact good at everything. This was an unusual skill passed down on his father’s side of the traditional French family, as all male members of the d’Alltrads family were incredibly adept in many things. Jack d’Alltrads inherited this ability especially, along with his father’s sociopathic tendencies and self-destructive nature, as well as, pleasantly enough, his mother’s thin and severe lips, which enjoyed, as mentioned, being looked down at via the nose as much as his mother herself had, proud woman that she was.

“So I thought we would make great assassins!”

Jack was silent for a moment, and then raised his hand. “I have a question.”

“About being assassins?” asked Barry.

“Unrelated.”

Barry shrugged. “Okay.”

“Why did you break down my door?” asked Jack.

“Oh,” Barry said, suddenly understanding, “that. You see, I thought I heard you say ‘come in, Barry’ after I knocked, so when you didn’t let me in and the door was locked I thought you might be disoriented or in danger, so I broke in! After realizing immediately the misunderstanding, I thought it best to avoid the ensuing awkwardness by playing it up like it didn’t happen.”

“Thoughtful, it almost worked. Can I give you a pointer for next time?”

“Of course,” Barry replied, listening intently for feedback.

“Don’t bring up your likeness of Jeff Bridges being made out of wood; it brings a person’s mind too close to the wooden door lying destroyed on the floor.”

Barry winced. “I knew I was treading dangerously with that one!”

“It’s fine. Next time.”

TRANSIT LUX, UMBRA PERMANET

(Alright, so for anyone still reading this here blog, I've thrown together a short story/intellectual drinking game...yeah...I know. Anyway, here's how you play, everytime you catch some sort of veiled reference to Christianity, drink. And because it's an "intellectual" drinking game, the more analysis you use (read: bullshit you make up) the more you drink!)

***

Emerald eyes stared inquisitively around the room, inquisitive with just a hint of serious watchfulness. Impeccable white fur lay softly layered across the cat’s entire body, as if prepared by a professional stylist. The look of magnificence was complimented by the bright pink collar around a gracefully puffed up neck, which on a bigger feline would be more recognizable as a mane. The collar had an equally fashionable golden circle connected to it which had on it engraved a name. The golden plate announced that her name was Augustine. And this morning Augustine was dressed to kill, as she always was.
Augustine perched on her wooden table and kept a watchful eye over the kitchen, as had been her routine every day for four years. It was at that moment that the watchful gemlike eyes caught sight of something that they hadn’t ever seen before. Her perfectly groomed fur bristled and her pretty eyes narrowed. Behind a green and yellow porcelain cup, which embodied a stylized coiled snake that was smiling very amiably, stood a small furry white creature. Twitching nose and beady black eyes stared around the serpentine cup, and stared right at Augustine.
With feral instincts taking over so quickly, fear of the unknown and surprise were forgotten. Augustine dug her back claws into the wood of the table savagely for momentum, and then sprang forth with deadly intent, contradicting her demure appearance. She ignored the silverware that plummeted to the floor from the counter as she charged forward with unreal balance and grace. She barrelled directly into the snake shaped cup and knocked it aside, seeing the mouse run along the counter to her right. Turning to give chase, she lost her way and knocked over a glass container which shattered and sent its contents across the counter with a dark flourish. The black instant coffee powder immediately stuck to Augustine’s coat, and consumed the sheen her white fur usually exuded. She stopped momentarily to try to lick the substance off, but the bitter taste made her falter. With the equivalent of a feline cringe of distaste, she turned her attention away from the dark substance. Augustine’s powerful olfactory senses offered her no reprieve from the odour.
The tainted prey which had so intruded her territory leapt from the counter, thinking it was safe, and stood static on the kitchen floor below. Peering from the countertop above, Augustine’s once shining green eyes appeared murky, and the black substance that covered her fur only exemplified her shadowy manifestation.
With a soft guttural growl she pounced, and fell with fiery intent toward the mouse.
First, her deadly claws drove into the creature, and then her pointed teeth followed suit. She bit the mouse and tore at it until the venomous creature’s lifeblood ran from it completely and it breathed its last. Somewhere in her feline brain, she had always been curious about the taste of blood.
Curiosity killed the cat.