For Very Short Stories

by Eric Beeny

  


  

TEACHING MASS EMPATHY

Desmond once taught a college course on Mass Empathy.

This was probably right around the time his drinking got out of control.

This was what the layout of an aerial view of the lecture hall looked like after he passed out any homework assignment he wanted them to complete for submission the next day:

Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto
Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto    Ditto

He had to give up teaching when his students began to feel they weren't being given individual attention, that Desmond didn't understand the pressure to succeed he was putting them under.

He of course didn't, and when confronted he told his students they didn't understand he didn't have time to worry about all their little problems.

He had a class to teach.

FIRST IMPRESSION

Desmond could still maybe remember kindergarten, how proud his mom was of him using his scraps of toddler syllables to stitch the alphabet together.

Before getting on the bus, his mom licked a napkin, cleaning his cheek like a spot on the window.

At home, every lesson was a broken object.

At school, well, he learned nothing.

The teacher taught him how to stand silently in the corner.

She taught the rest of the class how to ignore him.

Desmond peed on the blue mat where he was told to take a nap.

The progress reports said he wouldn't cooperate.

He still had trouble using a pair of scissors.

At the end of the year, he cut himself out of the class picture.

There's still a hole where Desmond's face used to be.

That was his impression of a broken window.

MONTEREY TOOTHPICK

Samantha was all by herself three nights ago and she had a dream about an acoustic guitar filled with water.

Samantha drank from it, holding it up by the neck, one hand behind its back, sipping from its hole.

Samantha felt like Jimi Hendrix on stage just before he set his electric body on fire in front of thousands of people.

HEADS UP

Just as Marple was leaving the hospital she saw a bunch of other infants standing around in the parking lot.

Two of them were playing Frisbee with a manhole cover.

Each of the two infants had only one arm.

"Duck," Marple yelled.

The two infants looked in opposite directions for the same thing.

On her lap one of Marple's hands was like a clenched anus, the other an open casket.

The open casket was like the fat belly everyone who's born into this shit life wanted to return to.

It's just how everyone got there, or, how they got there.

Two sides of the same groin pushing, pulled shiny and not so bright into cold, white, sterile jungles of limbs and eyes from the womb's warm pocket.

Having a baby is a coin toss, Marple thought.

There can only be two outcomes.

"Look Mom, no tails," Marple said.

"Sweetie, I'm driving."