Roller Coaster

Clyde awoke at dawn and went to the refrigerator. He felt compelled to check on a turkey sandwich that he had made the previous night. Due to the elongated surface area of the bread he had bought the week before, the sandwich was very large, too big to fit into one Ziploc bag. Clyde had been forced to seal the two halves separately.

Sitting side-by-side on the top shelf, Clyde saw that both halves were still sealed in their separate zipper storage baggies, but only one half of the sandwich had been preserved. The other half, the part laying on the right-hand side of the shelf, had visibly spoiled overnight. He began to think of what possible variables could have caused the strange inconsistency when he heard Gresham and Nell take their posts at the roller coaster next door.

"Hey, Nell!" Gresham called out to the tall, surly girl across the platform. "What'd you get into last night? I heard you let Shawn Decker get to home plate." Gresham wheezed out a harsh laugh as he crossed his thin, pale arms. He was wearing another punk-looking, sleeveless shirt. Clyde had never heard of anybody named Gresham before, but knew his name from overhearing many conversations between the two college dropouts during their daily shifts at the roller coaster.

Nell lowered her sunglasses and extended a middle finger in Gresham's direction. Still holding it up, she walked over to a large, lectern-sized control panel and pressed the offending finger onto a red button. Grinding clicks and mechanical groans sounded as the roller coaster roared to life. Nell flipped her hair from one side of her head to the other. Clyde had observed that, on weekends, she liked to dye it dark red and spike it up, Mohawk-style. However, it hung in a pinkish blonde, limp cascade on this Tuesday morning, the red not entirely washed out from the previous weekend.

Clyde stared at the vulgar young people through his kitchen window and thought back to the days when the lot next to his house was nothing more than a pile of wreckage. He missed the chirping of birds and the gentle spraying sounds of lawn sprinklers the most. All of his neighbors had moved away once they heard that a single-standing roller coaster would take the place of the demolished Blockbuster Video, but Clyde had opted to stick around and see just how bad it would be before deciding if he would leave or not.

Three short months later, he had to admit that it was pretty bad. The kinetic vibrations from the coaster's first large drop tended to rattle Clyde's wine glasses and often knocked picture frames off of the walls. Also, the loop-the-loop was right next to his bedroom, so the screams of elated passengers would keep him up until the roller coaster closed for the night, usually around midnight.

Taking a deep breath, Clyde lifted the window and called out to the lone-ride carnival employees.

"Morning, gang!" he called to them in his most chipper voice. The ornery teens glared up at him. Clyde cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah. Hi. I'm not sure if you got my letter last week, but would it be possible for you to ask your guests to not litter or, you know, urinate upon my lawn?"

"I'm sorry?" Nell asked him, cupping her ear. She was standing further away from his house than Gresham, but Clyde suspected that she had heard him just fine.

"It's just...the noise is bad enough, but the litter and, you know, urine smell is just getting intolerable."

Nell locked eyes with Clyde and began to walk toward his kitchen window. One of the long roller coaster trains rushed along the rails, grinding to a halt in the platform's passenger loading station. Without stopping or even looking down, Nell skipped up onto one of the cars and glided across it, glided as if it had been there for her all along. She pushed by Gresham, passing by him without taking her eyes off of Clyde. She then stopped and rested her forearms on the platform's railing, which stood less than three feet away from Clyde's window.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you," she said to Clyde. Her voice was low and sexy. Clyde knew it wasn't genuine, but it gave him a chill all the same. She batted her eyes. "Is there some sort of problem, Clyde Brinkman?"

"Well, it's just..." Clyde looked to Gresham, who now was wearing a merciless smirk across his pimply face. The punk had thrown his arms around a metal rod that was resting on his shoulders and Clyde could see reddish underarm hair sprouting from the sleeveless section of his shirt. Nell reached over the railing and grabbed Clyde by the chin, forcing his lips into a sloppy pucker. He sputtered a bit and finally said, "No, it's just...I was just saying 'good morning'."

Nell leaned in close to Clyde, close enough so that he could smell her passion fruit lip gloss. "Well, good morning, neighbor." She quickly released his chin and smacked his forehead hard, pushing him back into his kitchen a bit. Gresham howled with laughter as Nell sauntered back to her post at the control panel.

From over a block away, Clyde could hear the first wave of thrill seekers arriving. Just like any other day, their yells and cries would attempt to dominate the the noise of the roller coaster, eventually settling for second place. A deafeningly close second place.

"Time for a test run," Nell announced. Gresham hopped into the first car of the train as Nell started the ride. As the roller coaster rose up into meet its first summit, Gresham pumped both of his middle fingers into the air and sneered at the world. Clyde could only stand and watch.

Flashing a smile at their reluctant voyeur, Nell called out, "Let us know if you ever want a ride, Clyde!" She then laughed at the rhyme as though it was the funniest thing she'd ever said or heard.

Clyde closed the window, along with the blinds. He backed up into the darkness of his kitchen, listening to the swooshing noise of the roller coaster outside. His fists clenched, he walked back to the refrigerator and peered into it again. Clyde saw that one half of the sandwich was still good and the other was still bad. However, the spoiled one, its elongated bread covered in a thin layer of blue-green mold, was now on the left-hand side.

"How about that," he said to himself, loud enough so that he could hear his voice over the noise of the roller coaster next door.

Fresh Cut Grass

Jonica snapped awake, thrown from a deep sleep by yet another nightmare. It was still about an hour before dawn and it took her almost a minute to realize that she was in her chilly Manhattan studio apartment. She'd only been living there for a couple of months and wasn't used to the strange, new surroundings yet, especially at four thirty in the morning.

Partially because of the cold air outside her cocoon of blankets and partially from the nightmare, Jonica felt wide awake. However, rather than rising from her futon bed to begin her day, she rolled over toward her apartment's lone window. Through it, she could barely see the night sky above the building across the street. Listening to the dull hum of her building-controlled radiator, Jonica found a star and made a wish that things would get better, that the nightmares would stop.

Louisville was far behind her now, but much of Jonica still considered it home. Her marriage to Wallace had fallen apart so quickly that she didn't really have time to say goodbye, but she felt that she needed a fast change to keep from falling into a deep depression. She wasn't sure that depression hadn't found her anyway, as she'd yet to find a job or meet any new people that didn't scare her. But she was determined to move forward, however slowly.

Still, there was so much that she missed about her former home, like her older brother and sister. They'd lost their parents a year apart over a decade ago, but they all stayed close in touch. At least they had before Jonica decided Kentucky wasn't for her anymore. She also had many friend still there, most of which she'd known her whole life. It was a good life for a long time, but Wallace had taken that away and changed the way Jonica saw the world.

New York is your world now, she thought. She made a second wish, one for fun, new friends.

There was a sound outside her apartment door, something in the hallway. It thumped and rustled like a plastic bag full of clothes being tossed up the stairs or, impossibly, falling from a considerable height. Jonica lived on the top floor of her building and the only other person on the floor was an older woman, a shut-in type, that lived across the hall. Jonica thought she wasn't likely to be taking out the trash at this time of the morning. She supposed that the noise could have been a weird echo from garbage collectors on an early run, but there weren't any of the domineering garbage truck noises down below. In fact, it was strangely quiet outside.

Another bag fell in the hallway. She noticed that the peephole in her door was dark and that the hallway lights, usually always switched on in the common areas, were out. Then the aroma struck her, the smell of fresh cut grass. It was unmistakable, the bitingly sweet fragrance of newly-mowed summer lawns. Jonica pulled her blankets up to her chin.

Since moving to the city, Jonica would go to Central Park whenever she felt more homesick than usual. Pushing through layer after layer of busy New Yorkers was much of the life outside her apartment, but the park offered an oasis of nature and city dwellers at their most relaxed. It was one place that seemed to have the smells that she remembered from home. However, she had arrived in New York during October and it was now winter, a harsh one at that. The smell of grass filling her apartment would be difficult to find in the city at any time of year, but especially during the likely beginnings of a snowstorm.

Jonica tore herself from the cocoon of blankets and eased her feet onto the cold hardwood floor. She stood up and wrapped the topmost comforter around her body as she crossed to the apartment door. More thumps of more bags hit out in the hallway. She unlocked the door and made a third wish, one that she hoped would negate the first one. She wished that the noise and the stink were all a part of a new nightmare, that she'd wake up in sunlight, even if it was under a Kentucky sun.

But then the door rattled as more bags fell against it from the hallway. The smell of grass was so strong, a rancid stench of rotting chlorophyll and foul dirt. Jonica took a deep breath and threw open the door.

Her tiny apartment was almost immediately filled with a wave of dark, thick-lined garbage bags. They were stacked beyond the height of her door and had filled the entire hallway, quickly spilling over and past Jonica as she involuntarily screamed out. And as the heavy duty bags hit the floor and walls of the apartment, the bags tore open, exploding with heaps of fresh cut grass. The odor was overwhelming, sick and putrid. The green leaf volatiles stung Jonica's exposed skin as she tripped and fell into the mounting pile.

Wallace always mowed the yard back at their home in Louisville. He wasn't a very athletic type, but he hated the idea of paying somebody to do a job he could do himself. Jonica used to joke that one day their kids would take over the lawn care duties, but that was more or less just to needle him, Mr. Careful who never wanted children. One time, Wallace had responded by throwing a clump of the fresh cut grass into Jonica's face. She didn't blame him for the playful act, but some chemical that he'd added to make the grass grow thicker caused her skin to break out into a nasty rash that never entirely left her.

Now, Jonica struggled to pull herself up through the dark mounds of clippings that surrounded and covered her. The smothering grass filled her mouth, causing her to spit and cough. Jonica's skin burned as she clawed her way to her feet, wiping the leafy blades from her eyes.

It was still dark in her apartment, but reflected light bounced across the sticky grass that reached halfway up the walls. When Jonica reached the top, she found Wallace's body resting against a dense pile of grass. He was lying next to his whore, the girl that he had impregnated. They were positioned the same way that Jonica had left them in Kentucky, the girl with her hand raised to her slit throat and Wallace clutching the stab wound at his chest. They had tried to calmly explain their situation to Jonica back in Kentucky, but she hadn't listened for very long.

Seeing them again now these two chaotic months later, Jonica had to laugh, even as it caused her to inhale more clumps of decaying grass. Whatever demon had sent Wallace and his lover to her had been with Jonica for a long time and she finally felt ready to meet the damned beast. The jolt from her nightmare had subsided and she suddenly felt very sleepy. She nestled into the grass between Wallace and the girl, drifting asleep with greater ease than she had since leaving Louisville.