No. 38: ‘sss- SO WE MEET AGAIN, SHELVA,’ SAYS CECILY THE SNAKE

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh (the further adventuring of my great grandmother, Shelva Fiction)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.

Last Week:  Shelva enjoys a warm soak in a just discovered hot springs inside her hired hand’s, Efraim Ephraim’s, man-cave.  Efraim partakes.  Their mule, Sir Winston leaps in.  Big ‘ol Turt figures it’s something too akin to what humans use to make turtle soup.  He relaxes along the water’s edge.  The soothing bath is just like the ones Shelva often visited in her native Russia.  Except, little does she, or any of them know until after they’re in, this one comes with its very own cobra.

…I freeze in the hot water as the snake slithers up my body and looks me in the eyes…

Believe me, these seconds seem hours.

Not mere coincidence is it that we are, face to face, again, thousands of miles and an ocean apart, after nearly twenty years.  Let me explain.  I was a little girl in Moscow then.  The Crimean War and serfdom was ending.  Czar Alexander ruled.  It was the 1870’s.

Safely inside mama and papa’s house, (or so we assumed) away from the turmoil of Mother Russia, so many screams of fear did mine brutter Ivan and I make – in a seemingly perpetual scared anticipation.  It was all because Papa and his visitor had kooky idea to have our visitor’s pet cobra, Cecily, roam free to catch mice.

“Everybody in Lindia does it,” said the visitor.

Mama went along.  She hated mice, more than any thing.  (aside from the Czar, Cossacks, serfdom, and wars)

Visitor, tell Ivan and I, “Don’t be afraid of Cecily.  She likes children…”

“For lunch,” our cook, Vampira, whispers to us as the visitor educates us in Cecily’s diet.  “If it swallows big rabbits, like he says, it could open just a little wider for little children.”  (Ivan and I nicknamed her Vampira because of the spooky stories with which she tormented us.)

“Well,” you’re probably asking yourself as you read this.  “Why not get a cat?  Your Mama’s not allergic, is she?”  No.  It’s just that cats were hard to find in Moscow at that time.  The reason for that becomes evident as this story progresses.

The visitor and his Cecily spent a few months in Moscow.  I hadn’t seen Cecily, since then.  But the visitor, him I see a great deal.  He is James Thaddeus ‘Blackjack’ Fiction, my kindly father-in-law.  I am glad the father is the snake charmer, and the son the Shelva charmer.  I’d never asked Blackjack what became of Cecily.  Now I know.  He brought her to America, to roam the Fiction House environs.  Hmm.  I wish he would have gotten around to informing me.

“sssShelva,” it sounds like Cecily is saying to me.  Her eyes glow like bright silver bars as the steam of the hot sprigs sifts past her.  Her trunk continuously slaps the water, echoing like drumbeats in Efraim’s man-cave.  Efraim, Sir Winston, Turt, I, none of us move.  I tense even more than I think I am able as Cecily circles my shoulder, necklacing me.  How, ever til the day I die – if ever I should live that long, as my koo-koo Uncle Vanya would say – could I forget the sensations of this experience?  Breathing becomes hard, but the brushing of Cecily’s hood to my temple creates a slight, briefly refreshing breeze.  Her fork tongue kisses my cheek.  It feels like two tears rolling down.  The round of her fangs traces – like a pair of shushing skis – over my nose.  Her steady breath is volcanic hot, and the medicinal balm of an apothecary.  Any second now, Shelva, will be your last.

A voice from the past, and the present, suddenly thunders out in the man-cave.  “Here now, Cecily.  There’s a point where you risk being too friendly.”

I am hearing the voice of Efraim Ephraim.  But I recognize the words of Blackjack, years ago in Moscow.  At this most traumatic of time, it seems both the present, and memories of the past, intermingle as one.

When Cecily was loose, back home in Moscow, I believe she had a mind of her own.  She seemed to take a pleasure in tormenting Vampira often as she could.  Vampira was a moody, solitaire woman.  She acted and seemed ancient and gray as the Carpathians from whence she came.  Looking back though, I believe she was probably not more than 25 or 30.

Cecily loved traversing the open rafters, and resting on the one in the kitchen above Vampira’s ever steaming cooking kettles.  Cecily moved so quietly, you never knew where she was.  She would dangle down, right over the jungle-like humid kettle, just in front of Vampira’s face.  Vampira’s scream was a dozen times more blood curdling than mine and Ivan’s ever could be.  She’d stand petrified, as if hypnotized, not by Cecily, but by the superstitions and fears, her own horror story creating had instilled in her.  Everyone came running to the kitchen.

Blackjack, always a well-dressed man in a black suit, with a red rose in his lapel, says, “Here now Cecily.  There’s a point where you risk being too friendly.”  Blackjack takes a long stirring spoon from a rack, and slowly lifts the snake.  “Don’t move an inch,” he tells Vampira.  You’ve already frightened Cecily enough with your caterwauling.”

Ivan and I smile at each other.  We sense what the other is thinking.  ‘It’s Vampira’s resemblance to a smushed poisoned toad that quakes the snake.’

“Now back away slowly, Vampira,” Blackjack says.  Ever the diplomat, he adds.  “Those lovely spices you cook with must have attracted her.”  With snake on spoon, he tastes what Vampira is cooking; and so does Cecily.  “Ah delicious.”  Cecily reaction is different.  She spits it out and hisses at Vampira.  A team of mice races across the rafters and Cecily abandons us to rampage after them.

Past is suddenly present when Efraim slowly reaches for his shovel that looks like, to me, for a moment, that spoon Blackjack curbed Cecily with so long ago.  Efraim says.  “Cecily’s not hissing, Mz. Shelva.  She must just be welcoming us to her version of a snake-cave.”  Efraim uses the shovel handle to let Cecily climb on, and off, of me.

Cecily slithers to atop Turt’s shell and coils into a relaxed position.  Sir Winston leaves the water, gets a carrot from the vegetable basket, and gives it to her.

Seems everyone, but you, dear Shelva knew she was around. 

After a few minutes, when I regain my composure, I confront Efraim.  “Why did you not have the courtesy to let me know she was here?”

Efraim stammers.  “I…I…”

His eyes suddenly twinkle.  I know he’s just now invented an excuse, or at least taken a semblance of the truth and str-e-e-e-e-tch-ed it into some concoction of the truth.

“Well, Mz. Shelva.  It’s like this.  Blackjack always wants his dear Cecily to be a free-ranging snake.  That comes from his long ago abolitionist activities.  You can understand that.  You saw the same hurt, back there in your land with the serfdom.  So Cecily comes and goes.  I guess Blackjack either forgot to tell you about her, or was afraid you might pack up and leave if you knew she was here, and he didn’t want that.  It’s all conjecturin’ on my part, Mz. Shelva, but that’s my guess.”

Exasperated, trembling now, I look at him contemptuously.

“I swear to you Mz. Shelva.  I had no idea she was makin’ a home in this water.  I swear it.  Well, what the heck.  Cobras do like the warm.  The spring’s big enough for all of us, right?’

I won’t say Efraim is right.  I won’t say anything.  Of course, I won’t just pack up and leave.  I love mine sweet druzhyna, mine husbant, too much.  Though, I’ll sure give Blackjack a stern talking to about Fiction House rules concerning letting a person know what is what.

“Hmm,” I say to myself.  “So it is Cecily, dear Cecily is the reason I see no rodents around the Fiction House.  Thank you so much Cecily.”

“Why do I thank Cecily so profusely?” you may ask.

Because.  I hate mice as much as mama did.

NEXT WEEK:  Where the cats of Moscow disappeared to following the Crimean War.  (and, no, they weren’t eaten.)

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

No. 37: WE MEET AGAIN, MINE COSSACK ENEMY.

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh  (My dear, sweet immigrant Great grandmother, Shelva; as a new bride in the 1890’s writes…)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse. 

Greenhorn am I, to so many of the ways of mine wonderful new country, Amerika.  Even greener when it comes to knowing poisonous from friendly snakes:  Human ones, I mean.  I learn.  When it comes to the cold-blooded variety, ach, now that is another matter.  I do not believe I shall ever desire to get close to any, and learn the difference between safe and harmful.

An indelible fear of them – as if they were cousin to the scarier-than-any-snake-Cossacks – was imprinted on me as little girl.

I have irrational fears of the one that caused it.  I believe it follows me all the way from Mother Russia, across the ocean.  Nonsense, impossible, unbelievable – Of course it is.

Yet…as I approach the man-cave mine husbant and I’s hirert hand, Efraim Ephraim is building, I scream.  So high pitch, birds in trees vamoose.  Efraim looks up from his and his workmate’s excavation.

“I’m sorry, Mz. Shelva.  I know you ‘afear snakes.  I wouldn’t have talked about one being here, if I knew you were near.  Come on in.  You’ll see it’s not real.”

Turt’s looking at me.  His beak-snout shows his compassion for my plight.  I hand him a tomato from my basket.  He takes it in his fin-claw, nods, and begins noshing.  Sir Winston trots about ‘hee-hawing’.  I give the jackass a cucumber.  Winston relaxes.  Efraim’s creature-worker-friends need a snack break, and I, quiet respite from my fear.

Efraim takes my hand, leads me inside.  I tremble.  I know I must face my fears.  It is so hard to.  But I am in a new land.  I must get used to new things.  This I know is one – facing fears.

“See Mz. Shelva.  It’s a small seam of iron and copper mix; but it looks like a snake?”

“Yes, Ephraim.”  I breathe deep.  Cough.  Put scarf to mouth.  So much almost-invisible dust in the air.  I stroke the mineral snake, ‘S’ ing the cave wall.  It is an exercise to excise my fears.  Not only does it look, it also feels reptile – COLD.  I pull back.

Efraim proudly shows me around his man-cave to be.  He says.  “We’ve been working so hard to make it as grand a palace as your Hermitage in Saintly Petersburg.  So we haven’t had time to ‘splore everywhere, just yet.”  Efraim’s a natural show off, but a good-nature one.  So the touting he’s doing now is for my sake:  To help take my mind away from my fright.  (That is a wonderful trait that I see growing in Efraim – caring about others.)

He looks about, and then suddenly shouts.  “We best skedaddle, Mz. Shelva.  See that sizzle.  I may have opened up a gas pocket.  I, Efraim and Sir Winston quickly exit.  Looking back in, we see Turt hasn’t budged.  He shakes his head and points his beak-snout at a flat boulder the height and width of a house door.  It’s a dozen times as thick.  Some sort of cloud rises from its seam and rests just above it.  Efraim slowly re-enters the cave, sniffs, and goes and waves his hand through it.

“Turt’s our canary in the mine.  By golly, he knows his common scents.  It’s plain old water steam.”  He beckons me to return.

I come, put my hand in the cloud; taste the moisture.  “Not ordinary water.  It is very high in the minerals mine Doc puts in the elixirs.  Why, Ephraim!  You’ve found a virtual treasure trove.”

These words spark Efraim.  So quickly:  He harnesses up Sir Winston and ties onto the rock.  “We’ll have it moved in no time.”

Sir Winston pulls.  Turt pushes at it with his shell and digs at it with his fin claws.  Working together they slowly move it, revealing a natural hot springs.  One like so many mama, papa took me to in Russia.

Of course, I knew what it was as soon as I tasted the steam.  ‘My impromptu plan will work,’ I tell myself.  Once he’s felt the sweet warmth on his skin, Efraim will bathe twice, maybe three times a day:  Not the every year or so that is his habit now.  Now maybe he’ll have a chance actually to find a woman, instead of tall telling  about them and the strange and unlikely twists of fate that tore them apart.

Efraim’s voice interrupts my matchmaker scheming.  “Pardon us, Mz. Shelva.  But we workers need a break after all that pullin’, heavin, and hoin’.”  I turn as Efraim disrobes to his long underwear and he, Turt and Sir Winston slosh into the water.  Mutual, “aahs”.

“Well, well,” he says to his compatriots.  “Won’t the ladies all love this.  And right in my very own man-cave.  I can see myself immersin’ here two or three times a day.”

I say to myself.  “They’ll like a clean smelling Efraim.  That’s what they’ll like, Efraim Ephraim.”

Turt’s taking up most of the space in the hot drink.  You wonder how he can take the heat that must be leaking into the inside of his shell.

Sir Winston crowds into a corner.  Being a mule, you just don’t know if Winston used to be a he or a she.  Poor dear.  I choose to think of our Winston as a handsome, debonair, Sir.  Wouldn’t be a pleasant looking woman.  That is certain.

I excuse myself to get some towels from the house for them.  When I return Turt’s crawled out of the water – obviously, it’s too near a turtle soup recipe he may have almost became main ingredient of at some time.

Remembering the good times with Mama, Papa back home…“I just have to…” I say.  “Please Avert your eyes, Efraim.  You too Turt, Sir Winston.”  I slip from my dress, down to my camisole, and get in.  “Aah!  Just as I remember.  But in Russia, women not so immodest.  All wear special spa clothes, bulkier than the thickest mink.  And the men, ach, they are in special suits so all-covering that the only skin showing are from their eyes up to where hairlines start.

As I relax, I feel my thigh being stroked.  Not Efraim.  His hand would need to be six feet long, to reach me:  Not hairy enough for Sir Winston, nor rough enough for Turt.  I freeze in the hot water.  I just know it is the snake from Moscow.  I divert my eyes downward.  I am right.  I’d know those markings anywhere.

Too scared, am I, even to run out of the water screaming.  As it moves up the middle of my body, and then looks me in the eyes, I imagine it says.  “We meet again, mine Shelva.  You have come to me; at last.”

NEXT WEEK:  More of Shelva and her Cossack snake.

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 36: BEWARE LADIES, THERE’S A SNAKE IN EVERY MAN-CAVE

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh (my immigrant great grandmother, Shelva Fiction’s fear and musing on life in the 19th century Czarist Russia)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse. 

    I am so afraid of snakes.

As little girl, in Moscow, I greet kindly visitor friend of Papa.  He arrives with his new pet, a cobra.  From far off Lindia they come.  Never have I seen anything so exotic as what rises up, in a swaying line, from the wicker basket.  Its eyes bite into mine and beckon,“Come hither, Shelva.  Dance with me.  I shall caress you.  We shall become one.”

I tremble.

Nightmares of that first haunting meeting, often, have I:  They are dark as my little girl imaginings of the murderous Czars, and their barbaric Cossack enforcers.  To most Russians, Czars and Cossacks are the real versions of other peoples’ bogies, banshees, and demons.

Papa’s visitor friend stayed the summer.  We two became great friends.  But it was not so with the cobra pet.  Too many times to count I feel it studying me through the wicker slats.  Is it readying to strike?  Or is it, as the visitor explained, “Intrigued with you, Shelva, and scared of you as you are of it.”  Hmm?  I do not think so.

Often our visitor played a small flute and tapped lightly with a cane.  Beady cobra eyes beckon, “Come dance, Shelva.”  Its mysterious silver hood seemed to curtain over its coiled trunk, so you couldn’t even imagine how long it was.  If it roped straight upward it would seem one tall tale, reaching from the basement to the roof of Mama and Papa’s two-story house.

It was wide as a Papa’s arm.

So scary, the sounds it made – laughing, like a sore-throated hyena one minute, growling-barking like a temperamental Great Dane the next.

Ach!  It smelled:  Sometimes like rotten horsemeat, other times, some poor dead museum creature preserved in formaldehyde.  Worse, was, when you didn’t smell it.  That’s when you were afraid ‘it’s maybe lurking in a hallway, might be creeping up to, and, at any second… coiling around you.’  Brr!  Probably slimy and cold like peeled cucumber just out of the icebox.

I tell these memories, so you know that when I look in cave, near my new home, in Amerika, nearly 20 years later, I am sure, just so certain I see a cobra; very same one arrived Mama and Papa’s so long ago.  Again, it beckons.  This time its eyes speak finality.  “Enter, Shelva.  We shall have our last dance.”

Cossack, Czar, and snake face, they become one.  “Come, little girl…”

All, in a split of second, I scream, feel dizzy, drop basket of fruit and vegetables I bring to Efraim Ephraim and his cave workers.  I sway, as if hypnotized.  I begin to faint.

“Whimsy, lark, imagination, Shelva.  You must incorporate it into your guile to survive the beastly snake the Czars make our Mother Russia into.”  ‘How many times Mama, Papa tell you this, Shelva?’  I heed their wisdom.  I learn to incorporate it in all my trials, tribulations, and travails.

So, how can I not imagine that Efraim will rush out, and – like a grand gentleman in Chekov dramatization – catch me before I hit the ground; and say to me, “There, there, dear sister Shelva.  No evil will harm your smooth as mink skin, or mar your delicate soul.  You will be safe, and soon, your loving druzhyna husband; he will arrive and comfort you.”

What’s this?  The cave workers all keep on working.  No one comes to save poor Shelva.  Of course, I know, a man such as Efraim, he is so lost in his man-cave world.  Little desire has he to escape to enter some princesses’ storybook world to ‘save her’.  But, of so devoted a brother, a damsel can still dream?  Yes?

The echoing thumps of excavation have drowned out my scream – that is really, why he does not come.  Efraim is busy digging into the floor and ceiling, and then shoveling the earth onto a cart hooked to our mule, Sir Winston.  I straighten up, breathe deep, and force my fainting spell to depart.

I exit my storybook world, and return to the real.

I sigh.  Relief:  The cobra is only in my imagination.  The sight of Turt’s thick, swaying neck in the cave’s long shadows triggers it.  Hood looking is his beak-snout.  He uses it like a mechanical crane, to yank away rocks from between dirt he loosens with his fin-claws.

I feel silly, a dreamy schoolgirl again, as I think about what I have imagined.  Yet I perspire and tremble.

I retrieve the dropped fruit and vegetables.  To help shed the snaking fears of my thoughts, I study the cave.  I cannot believe all the changes made by Efraim, Turt, and Sir Winston since last I was here.  The entrance, so low I must duck to enter, is now a ten feet tall opening.  Roof so low inside, I must crawl, and give me, what mine loving druzhyna, Doc Fiction call, “claustro…”  I cannot pronounce.  Now, I cannot reach up and touch the ceiling.

Before, the cave was dark, eerie, giving you the deathly fear one senses, when seeing a picture of a Cossack encampment on a Russian countryside.  You see the murderous hate in their faces as they gird themselves mentally, to annihilate the poor nearby village the next day at whim of Czar.  That paralyzed, twisted look:  You’ll remember it always.  It painted their faces when they came, took most of your family.

You want to enter the picture, enter the village, and shout.  ‘Escape, them:  Before it is too late for you.  Somehow, save yourselves, fellow countrymen; as I was able.’

Efraim’s cave is bright now.  About half-dozen bats remain, of the so many that once lived here.  They are the hangers-on:  as are the villagers, blinded so by hope that all will be well.

For a moment, cave noises cease as Efraim begins levering into place a timber roof support.  His back is to me.  To Efraim, I am not there.  I hear him say to Turt.

“Well, ol’ fella.  Would you just look at the length of the snake I just found?  I’ll just bet Mz. Shelva never seen anything like it back in her home country?”

I freeze in fear.  Yes, I have.  Now, has it returned for me?

NEXT WEEK:  We meet again, mine Cossack enemy.

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

Posted in archeo-apologist, humor, Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 35: MEMORIES MIDST BOMBARDMENT

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh 

(My great grandmother Shelva’s accounts of strange happenings – triggered by her hired hand’s building of his ‘Man Cave’ circa 1890’s)  

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse. 

  Ever since I leave Moscow, I dream of this Eden land now I live.  Mine loving Adam husbant, provides his Eve heaven on earth at the Fiction House in Amer-ika.  I carry water from my wish come true well to my paradise garden.  But, oh how the fresh morning air suddenly turns not so, how might one put it, angelic.

I wrinkle my nose.  Ach!  What is that awful musty cave stench?  I hear squeaky screams and whoosh, whooshes, like lined laundry in a brisk breeze.  The sounds crescendo as the sky blackens.  I look up – see such an aberration of nature:  Bats – in broad daylight.  To me, superstitious Shelva, they are devils of the night.  They come, by the thousands.  I run for the protective-covering arms of my garden’s scarecrow – a tan uniformed Cossack effigy.  The scare works for crows, and good-soul Russians, but not bats.

The flying rat-like mammals, prehistoric looking in their leather-like webbed wings, brush me coldly.  Oh, how I wish I wear my bonnet or scarf, and long sleeve blouse.  I press my hands to my thighs, so, as dastardly Cossacks are apt, they don’t try up to get up my dress.

Sensibly, I am not worried about what in Amerika you call rabies.  Mine husbant, Doc Fiction, has natural herb remedies I have seen cure it.  But, insensibly, rushing through my thoughts are Carpathian Mountain legends told me by our family’s old cook.  “They’ll tangle in your hair, drive ‘em you, batty.”  She’d lean over her steamy kettle, her stringy gray locks dripping wet, and say to little brutter and me “I know this, dear Ivan and Shelva, for I am Vampira, their queen.”  We’d scream, and run hide in closet.  (I suppose now, as adult, this just her batty way of getting us out of her hair.)

“Shoo, shoo,” I shout, as the bats land, to feast on my tomatoes and the bugs my luscious red fruit attracts.  Does about as much good as ‘nyet, nyet-ing’ to keep teen-age czarina from sneaking her hand into a jewelry jar.  (I see just that thing happen when, young girl, I, in Moscow’s exclusive Sowurtski’s Diamond Shop)

Oh, what to do?  Just as none could stop a greedy czarina, no one can stop hungry bats.  Mine fine tomatoes are even finer than diamonds to me.  Long ago have I left behind the glamour of Moscow for quiet loving life with mine druzhyna, Doc Fiction and the quiet healing ways nature offers:  Ach!  Whole season of crop…disappearing before mine eyes.

     “Shoo, shoo,” I hear in the distance.  It is not my echo, but dear tovarishch, Captain Polly.

“This way!  This way!”  Squawks she.  She circles the garden.  Captain Polly looks an airborne shepherd herding a flock.  The bats take flight.  They follow her.  Within a minute, I see the last of them disappearing into the horizon.  I examine my crop.  Other than a few dozen, the tomatoes, Captain Polly has saved.  “Hip Hurray for Captain Polly!  Thank you, mine tovarishch.”  Plant destroying bugs – hardly any remain.  Looks like a bumper crop instead of no crop.   “Hurray!”                     

     This strange event – it’s all something to do with Efraim, Turt, Captain Polly, and Sir Winston building Efraim’s ‘Man Cave’, no doubt.  I start for the cave to give the workers a basket of tomatoes and take from them the explanation for my terrifying experience.  I imagine Captain Polly’s bird to bat, then the bat to bird conversation.  The way I choose to see it, it is smooth and flowing, not parrot-like halting as we humans would expect.

I imagine Captain Polly recreating Sarah Bernhardt’s soliloquy from, Only a Bird in a Golden Cage, from when mine husbant and I saw her in the drama on the Paris stage.  All other men had eyes affixed continually to various anatomical parts of the divine Miss B.  Not mine sweet druzhyna.  Nyet.  I could feel his passionate eyes burning like wildfire into me, his divine Shelva, so anxious to return to hotel and its oh-so-beckoning bed – oh, so uncomfortable for sleep, but so nice for…

~ ~ editor note:  My great grandmother left out the events of what took place later that Paris evening.  I assume she felt she should leave that type of writing to a Balzac or Baudelaire.

Her re-imagining of the great Bernhardt via parrot and bat is disquietingly unique.  This is my version of Shelva Fiction’s French, to Russian, into English translation.  I have had various translators at Fiction House Publishing verify its accuracy.  For theater aficionados, though you may quibble that the interpretation may not be reflective of Miss Bernhardt’s theatrical vision – however, content-wise, it is pristine.  ~ ~

“You bats may remain no longer in this cave.  For it shall forever thus be the domicile of his honor Efraim Ephraim, Sir Winston, the grand Turt, and (bowing, sweeping wings from her stalactite perch) myself, Captain Polly.”  Captain Polly rolls her r’s, a’s, and n’s, and they echo.  For I am the grrrr-aaaa-nnnnd dame of all caverns.  You shall vacate, you bats:  Immediately.  For we need this space.  Yes!  You must leave!  Or expect all the day’s light whence we commence excavating.”

(Bats swooping about, whimpering and screeching)

“Do not fight it, thou honorable flying mammals, the only of your kind who have been deemed the privilege of flight.  Why fight it?  Must you be exposed to perpetual insomnia before you realize this?”

“Where will we go, Captain Polly?”

“What will we do, Captain Polly?”

“Do not turn us out, oh Captain.  This is but a humble home, but it is a golden cage to us:  Golden, for it is our treasure; a cage, protecting us from the harsh world, not imprisoning us away from it.”

     “We are not heartless humans, birds, animals, and creatures.  To show you that we be not cold blooded…  Oh, I am so sorry about that my bat friends.  Nothing personal and I’ll hope you’ll not take it that way.  To show we are not cold spirited, we have found you another cave.  One perpetually rat infested.  Prime cave estate.  Follow me now, and I shall transport you to a bat heaven-paradise all in one cavern.”

That is how I, Shelva Fiction, a dedicated Bernhardt-parrot-bat interpolator  see it happening, I say to myself as I peek into the cave to see if Efraim is in.

NEXT WEEK:  Shelva’s startling discovery inside Efraim’s Man Cave

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

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No. 34: EFRAIM BUILDS HIS MAN CAVE, PART 2

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

(Witnessed and written by my great grandmother in the 1890’s)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse. 

     I look out the window of the Fiction House.  I cannot believe what mine eyes beholt.  Never, ever in Moscow could I have imagined I’d be seeing such a sight when I come Amerika.

There’s Turt, emerging from the river, with4 logs, a foot in diameter, twenty feet long at the least, roped to  shell.  He looks like cannon wielding turrets on mighty Russian gunships once upon a time in my Caspian, I see.

Turt is slip sliding on the soggy bank.  His fin-claws cannot catch hold.

I hear a sharp shouting, “Plant them.  Plant them.”  Turt lifts his sturdy legs one at a time and rams them – shoosh – into the mud.

Anchored.  Smart move.

     I look around; see no person who could have made the suggestion.

Captain Polly circles the river.  Her colorful feathers rainbow against the blue horizon.  Ach!  It is she, who shouted.  Probably flying reconnaissance for Turt, warning of sandbars and pesky, getting-in-the- way lunky catfish.  I cannot imagine – who possibly could – what are the duo doing?  I slip on a sweater and bonnet and hurry to the river.  Then I hear, “”Hi ho, Mz. Shelva.  How are you this mornin’?”

Instantly I realize, it is a trio project involving Efraim Ephraim – mine hirert hand.  “Efraim,” I say.  “What in the blazes are you, the Captain and Turt up to?”

Efraim is leading our old gray mule, Sir Winston, from the barn.  A rope circles Efraim’s shoulder. “Well it’s a long story Mz Shelva.  So’s I can un-barge Turt’s cargo burden quick as I can, I’ll ‘splain as I work.”

The legs of his trousers are wet, and algae green.  It appears to me he went riding on Turt’s shell before fetching the mule.

We walk to the river where Captain Polly, midst swoop,  snaggles a crawdad.  She lands on Turt’s head, sharing it with him by dangling it in front of his beak-snout.  The way they happily lick the slimy treat in unison reminds me of two Moscow children, me and little brutter, Ivan, once sharing a wriggly varenki, stuffed dumplin’.  (In time, I’d come to think of dear, tall-taling Efraim, as a brutter.)

Efraim harnesses Sir Winston to a log, and then unharnesses the log from Turt.  I walk beside Efraim and the mule just far enough up the bank to reach level ground.  Four trips we’ll make.  He’s telling me,  “The way it is Mz Shelva, I needed ceiling supports for my in-hill residence…”

“Your cave, Efraim.”

“Certainly, Mz Shelva.  But it sounds better the way I say it, don’t you think.  All the eleegible ladies in town most assuredly do, when I spout about it after Sunday come-to-meetin’s.  I get the feeling they’re almighty anxious to see it.  But I can’t tell ‘em where it is…just yet.  If I did they’d be all about pestering me with romance.  Shoot!  I’d hardly be able to work.”

Humoring him:  “I see how that could be a problem, Efraim.”

     He stops tussling with the ropes and looks me in the eyes.  “Tut, tut,  Mz. –Little do you realize my prowress with the gender opposite mine!  But you shall see.  Once I complete and establish my, hear how it flows off the tongue… ‘In-hill rezz-i-dence’…

“Well anyway, me, the Captain, and Turt made a deal with a logger downriver.  Captain Polly did most of the negotiating – a shrewd one she is.  Ya can tell she’s flown around the world more than a few times in her life.  Logs exchanged for my ‘shrooms.  Captain Polly gets lifelong grazing of his sunflower crop and Turt gets unfettered fishen’ in his trout lake.  Not bad, eh?”

“Indeed, Efraim.  You didn’t just, possibly, come-upon the logs?”

“Cross my heart.  Back me up, Captain Polly.”

“BRAACK!  Efraim wood.  Efraim wood.”

Hmm:  Or is she saying Efraim would?  I wonder.

When the last of the logs are firmed into place, Efraim hands me the reins of Sir Winston – he’s named for a young man whom mine husbant says is up coming, politician.  My husband met him once in England.  Mine Doc, he’s fond of saying, ‘No offense meant to either honorable party, but Winston and our mule are spitting images.  Put a cigar in that snout and you’d have your American version of that Churchill bloke.’

“Mind stabling the beast-a-burden for me, Mz Shelva?  We’ve got three more voyages to make today; Along with some fierce negotiating for other materials.”

I console our mule by petting its pointy ears, whispering into them.  “He doesn’t really think you a brute.  Just joshing:  Thinks you’re, how might Ameri-kans say it, keen.”  The mule nods.

Captain Polly and Turt finish off their treat.  Efraim climbs aboard Turt.  Turt lifts fin-claw anchors, shoosh.  They launch.  Efraim slides a flask of stump juice from his pocket and raises it.  “Nostrovya, Mz Shelva, as they say in your land.  Cheerio, good Sir Winston.”

Captain Polly leaps to Efraim’s crow’s nest shoulder; keeps a sharp eye for trouble.

     I lead the mule away.  “What do you think, Sir Winston?  Will that scheming trio barter a cave into a palace.”  Sir Winston stops at the log pile.  “Nee Haw.”  I pull, no budging.  “Oh, I see.  You want to join in.  Make their trio a quartet.”  It nudges me with its snout, toward the logs.  “You want me to make it a quintet.”  I tie onto a log.  Sir Winston does the rest of the work, so I bow my bonnet to its head to shade the sun.  1, 2, 3, 4 trips to mouth of the cave.

     As we make the journeys, I converse one-sidely with Sir Winston.  “Efraim’s right.  We should look at it as his ‘in-hill residence’.  I will add feminine touches – antimacassers, nice curtains, and whatnots – to make it more a home:  In case, if by some slight chance a woman someday just might come a calling.”

Never in the world did I think I’d get involved with Efraim’s man cave.  Even more unthinkable, I kind of like it. 

Next week:  The build continues.

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

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POST No. 33 : EFRAIM BUILDS HIS MAN CAVE, PART I

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Raji Singh

By Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse. 

These days, the man cave, is all the rave.

Goliath screen tv’s to capture Gargantua footballers, and Pegasusical steeple chasing.  IRON BARS – on the windows and doors to keep out the misunderstanding spouse.  PLYWOOD BARS – veneered with fad-again 70’s shag, stocked with ample hooch to satisfy any weekend louse.

The man cave:  Who hasn’t seen the hundreds of varied styles on the popular Better Caves and Garden cable network?

125 years ahead of his time, Efraim Ephraim built his period-piece man cave near the Fiction House…

My Russian immigrant great grandmother, Shelva Fiction met many a cave man in her youth when her family took excursions from their Moscow home to the countryside.  She was afraid at first, but her papa told her, “Do not be.  Respect them, daughter. They have just chosen a different path.”

So when Efraim approached for permission to build on the Fiction property, not just a relaxing place of escape, but a home, Shelva didn’t think it unusual.  She deemed it unnecessary though, as she wrote in her sometimes halting English, “Mine sweet druzhyna and I offer you, Efraim, perfectly goot hirert hand boonk-house lodging.”

“Oh, I appreciate that Mz. Shelva.  Truly I do.  But a plant man like me gotta have his walls growin’ with spirit-giving plants, herbs, ‘n such.  Specially mushrooms.  ‘Shrooms won’t grow proper on a regular wall.  Gotta have my own special ‘shroom room.”

“Ach.  Fungus, Efraim”

“Don’t say it with a sour, scrinchy face, but with a smile.  Like this.  ‘Ah fungi.  A special sort of fellow is our Efraim of the Fiction House.  He’s a ‘fun guy.’  See, yer smilin’.”

“Ach.  Lead the way Efraim.”

“Let me escort you, my Highness.  Just a few minutes’ walk.  Downhill both ways, but a little rocky for your fancy city shoes.”

Gah-launtly, he takes my arm.  Away I am whisked by my dingy, garlicky knight.

I must bend to enter Efraim’s chosen porthole to who-knows-where.  I am glad I wear my bonnet.  Don’t know if it’s true, but I hear bats will tangle into your hair – drive you, sumasshedshig, crazy – how might you Yan-kees slang it – ‘Batty’, guano?  I say to Efraim.  “What’s that smell?  Bear?”

Always the tall taling kibbitzer, Efraim jokes, “Mountain lion.  Don’t need ta wary ‘bout ‘bar; the lions in these parts didn’t cotton to ‘em.  They packed together years back and ran ‘em off and took over the caves.  Them lazy lying lions won’t eat us.  I mix up an herb batch that keeps ‘em, all smiles. Nah, Mz. Shelva, really it’s all guano.  But it’s fertilizer for the spirit and body.  One day I’ll show you how to make a tasty drink with it.”

“No thank you Efraim.  And be sure to remind me not to accept any of your invitations to tea.”

Efraim lights the lantern, sees I’m holding my nose.“Not to worry, Mz.  I’ve a passel of plants that’ll scent-away the smell, lickety-split.”

I hear a soft rumbling.  “What’s…”

“Just the earth’s belly expellin’ gas.  Like we all do.  Sort of a soothin’ sound, hmm.”

“Not to me.”

Within a few feet, the ceiling’s height brings me to my knees.  I ask.  “Do you plan on spending your time here crawling about, Efraim?”

“Ha, Ha!  No mi Lady.  It will be a palace, fit for a…”

“A peasant.  Ach!  This place for mole not man.”  I turn to leave.  Efraim seizes my arm.  For a moment, I freeze; afraid, as when I little girl and saw cave men for first time.  Never thought I’d fear Efraim.  Long-winded is he, but not imposing of his will, like a common rodent Cossack.  Sternly, I demand.  “Release me, now.”

Immediately he does.

By the lantern light, I see terror, tears and fear in his eyes all at once.  His face instantly sags.  Never have I seen such a mix of sorrow and shame in someone’s look.  He pleads and apologizes at the same time, all horseplay vanishing from the cracking voice.  “I am so sorry, Mrs. Fiction.  I’d never in the world harm you.  I care for you and the Doc as much as I did for my folks.  If I had a big sister to look up to, she’d be you.  I didn’t intend nothin’ by… nothin’…”  I just wanted you to see everything before you yea or naiad my idea.”

Efraim is no Cossack, yet I am so disquieted.  I feel I am in a daze.  Breathing, movement become difficult.  More than fear:  But at this moment, I cannot explain what.

Efrain rushes to a corner of the cave.  His hands and arms fly wildly about as he pushes at, and rolls aside a big rock.  It covers a hole no bigger than my laundry basket.  He crawls through it.  “Look in,” he says.

Going against all my common sense, I do.  He holds the lantern far above his head.  The rock ceiling must be twenty feet high.  I can see – to the back and to the sides of Efraim for another twenty feet, before the lantern-light’s reach diminishes.  It could be 100 feet more each way, or 1,000.  It is truly an impressive sight, but I do not care.

“Claustropho…” something like that, is what Doc calls it.  I realize this is what I am feeling for the first time in my life.  So scared, I perspire, I shake.

I rush out.

Efraim follows.  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fiction.  I didn’t mean upsetting you.  Just wanted to share my happiness with you.”

“Shh, Efraim.”

I wipe tears from my cheeks and breathe slow, deep.  I feel Poppy Sol’s warm, comforting rays on my shoulders.  ‘There, there, daughter.  You are now safe in my light embrace.’

My voice trembles.  “Take me home, please Efraim.”  I put out my arm, in complete trust again.  Gah-launtly he takes it.  I walk slow and lean slightly upon him.  Do not want to twist my ankle.  That is all I need.  Mentally I sigh.  ‘Better buy sensible shoes, if I am to come to tea in Efraim’s man cave parlor.  But I shall supply the tea.’

“Í am sure you will be a lovely home when you are finished with it, Sir Efraim.”

“Thank ya, Mz. Shelva.”

The kibbitzer Efraim returns, and I am glad.  I smile when he says,

“Tea time’s 2 p. m. Majesty.  That’s when I finish bakin’ crumpets; only with ingredients, you approve of course.  But you better plan to showin’ at the cave door by noon, ‘cause that’ll be about the time all the eligible damsels from yonder town’ll start linin’ up.”

“I shan’t enter if you please, Sir.  I’ll take tea on the veranda.”  I see mine druzhyna in the distance.  I run to him, hug so tight.  “Wait til you hear about Efraim’s wonderful idea for his home.”

NEXT WEEK:  CONSTRUCTION COMMENCES.     

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©2013 Raji Singh

             

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 32: HOW EFRAIM EPHRAIM CAME TO RESIDE AT THE FICTION HOUSE

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse. 

     Another story from my Russian immigrant great grandmother, Shelva Fiction.    

      We return home from our traveling sales.  The hooves of the horses pulling our patent medicine wagon, they rumble below us.  “Clip cloppity.”  Their gentle soprano, “neigh, neigh” sounds almost a Rimsky-Korsokavain aria.  Luny Mum’s glow, oh so soft.  Suddenly, an almost indescribable scent breaches the crisp fall evening.

“Ach,” I say to Doc.  “What did our valiant steeds eat that could smell so awful?”  I hold my nose.  He does too.

Doc chuckles.  “A smart alecky boy probably slipped ragweed into the bucket of oats.  Hmm, kids.”

So easy going, mine druzhyna.  Nothing seems to rustle him.  I suppose that is another reason I love him.  The smell surrounding us – worse than the brimstone stench used in any Moscow staging of Faust I’ve ever seen.  Fortunately, the breeze changes directions.  We breathe easier.

I’ll soon find out – I blamed the innocent equines prematurely.

A ‘clackety-clack,’ sound from inside the canvas shell of our wagon makes me forget the defiled air.

I shutter.  “What’s that?  Someone’s there.”

Just Puss,” says Doc.

I hear ‘click’.  “Since when can Puss load a gun, Doc?”  I grab the propped up wagon whip and turn quickly.  I shout, “AAAUUGGHH!” loud as I’m able, cock-suredly delusional that noise will give me advantage over any flying bullet.

~ ~ editor note:  Fear will make you think anything is possible.  As Shelva would always be fond of saying:  “Just ask Czarina Romanov why she risks a dynasty for the sake of that strannik Rasputin, because she thinks he can heal the unhealable.”)  ~ ~

     Mine valiant shout, it fades.  No gun.  No Puss.  No deranged monks.  “Efraim Ephraim?”  The click was from one of the vials.  He snapped off the latching lid to smell it.  Who knows why?  “Efraim, what are you doing here?”

“Well…It’s a long story, Mz. Shelva.”

“I have no time for any of your stories, Efraim.  You almost made us die of fright.”

“There, there,” Doc says as he pats my hand and glances back at Efraim.  “It’s not so bad Shelva.”

Efraim lowers his eyelids slightly, as if he’s telling a tale without speaking – as if you should feel sorry for him as you would the hemophiliac son-of-a-czar.

“See that callow look of his Shelva.  He looks sad as Puss would if Puss saw a whip poised for striking.”

‘I can just about hear Efraim sly, shy undertone – “meow, meow”.’

     ‘Grr!  Doc has the unmitigated… – I get so furious at mine druzhyna sometimes – to start carrying on a conversation with Efraim as if they’re landsmen, from old country, seeing each other for first time in six years and six thousand miles.

“Ah, Efraim.  I see you are taking a whiff of my lumbago elixir.  Can you guess what’s in it?  Hundred people I’ve queried.  Nary could one identify even a single ingredient.”

As Efraim whiffs in deeply, the wagon jostles.  A teensy amount spills onto him.  Ah, the odor:  It’s not our valiant transporters.  Not from Efraim either, though the onion and garlic bulbs he must eat for each meal is, as someone like he would say, ‘might powerful’.  This scent, surely sent from Hades is a combination of Efraim, and elixir.  (Bottle it up to keep good or evil spirits away.)

I hold my nose again, and nasally say.  “Close it up.  Quick Efraim.”

“Shoot, Mz Shelva.  I don’t need to sniff it no more to know what it is.”  He leans out of the covered part of the wagon, between us, and says.  “Well, Doc.  You got your abundance of phlegm root and snot garzle weed here.  That’s to be expected, knowin’ it cures about anything.  Then you got your…”

Efraim commences naming a dozen plus roots, herbs and whatnots I’d as soon never hear the awful sounding monikers for ever again.

Doc stops the wagon.  “You’re absolutely right on each, Efraim.  I’m astonished.”

“Shoot.  Nothing to it.  I live amongst ‘em since the day I was born.  Mama said I’m ‘one with the plants’.  She say-id once, ‘Why Efraim Ephraim.  I’ll bet each and every plant you pass knows your name.’  Then daddy he laughs and says, ‘In high society they’d be calling you a plant whisperer, Efraim.’  So I tell daddy, ‘Shoot, they don’t whisper to me daddy, why, they just plain shout.’”

Mine druzhyna nods.  I just shake my head, wondering what tale may follow.  I don’t have long to wait.  Efraim crawls to the seat of the wagon and makes himself, as he says, “to home”.  I am almost squish twixt Doc and he.  The garlic-onion odors overwhelm at first, but a person gets used to them.  Besides a breeze comes up and I’m not downwind.  Thank you, Goddess Mariah, spirit of the wind.

“Well Doc Fiction.  Let me tell you what I know about plants,” Efraim starts, and he’ll not stop til we reach the steps of the Fiction House.  “A man of medicine as you, Doc, will appreciate the healing they can bring…”

Mine druzhyna is intrigued.  And I am happy.  Though Efraim did not go to the finest medical schools of Amerika and Europe as Doc, his interest in healing is keen as any of Doc’s colleagues I’ve visited.

     I smile.

     I know.  A friend, an associate, an aid in grand medical schemes has mine Doc.

Little did I know at this time, Efraim would become as great a friend to me.

NEXT WEEK:  EFRAIM BUILDS HIS ‘MAN CAVE’

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh 2013

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 31: IT TAKES A NUCLEAR VILLAGE

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

     Enjoy an excerpt from the galleys for an upcoming book Fiction House is publishing in 2013.  This scene fits well with the whimsical nature of this site.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.

The film studio announcer clears his throat, “hhrum, hhrum.”  Then he leans into the microphone, “Meet the nuclear family of the future.  You can be sure they’ll come to symbolize the not too distant 21st century:  Introducing – Adam Atom and Eevah Sue, his glowing southern belle wife.  There’s their third grader, little Annie Atom, and teen son Ancil Atom.  It’s a picture perfect family…”

Sally Pursells, J.B. Smith, and the production film crew watch the Atom actors leave their spanking new ‘64 station wagon prop and mosey to the studio set just a few feet away, a  lakeside beach. It’s picnic time.

The Atoms wear rubber-like clothes, futuristic, translucent yellows, pinks, and greens.  Lighting engineers paint blue skies, and even bluer water.  They’re meant to reflect the color of joy and optimism of ‘clean’ atomic power- an optimism Sally has spent 14 years contriving.

Boss J.B. puts his arm around her shoulders, squeezes, and whispers.  “Fine job, Sally.  Madison Avenue could not have done better.”

Sally smiles.

Little Annie opens a beach umbrella and says.  “Papa.  My teacher says atomic power will cost just pennies a day to cleanly light and heat our homes.”

“How right she is, Little Annie.”

The announcer comes on.  “Electricity meters will be obsolete in the world of the future, Little Annie.”

“But Mama, Papa, what about the companies that make the meters?  They’ll be out of business.”

“That they will,” Adam and Eevah agree.

Annie looks sad, concerned for those businesses.

Announcer, deep-voiced, ever the serious:  “Fear not, Little One.  They’re not AMERICAN companies.”  Quietly, he intones, “They’re Japanese, German.  We spent years fighting them.  This is their ‘just desserts’.”

Annie smiles again, but Adam Atom frowns at what he sees dragging along the studio beach set.  It’s the once royal King Coal and his wife Queen Kerosena polluting the beach with their presence.  They and their multitudinous family are drab, oily-clothed, and now slovenly passe.

J.B. Smith tenses at what he sees enacted on the set.  ‘Hold on, here.  Sally’s parodying me now.  What is she thinking? She might as well call him King Smith.‘

“Quick, Eevah, Little Annie, Ancil.  Let’s dip into the water.  Maybe they won’t see us.”

“Oh, I do despise that leaky Kerosena,” spits Eevah.  “She smells like rotten eggs, and she…”

Announcer:  “Eevah Atom’s meltdown is abruptly interrupted by old King Coal and his scary little coal-foals as they slide closer.

“Don’t split, Atoms,” says King Coal.  “Stay with us.  We may be fossils, but we’re always here.  Though maybe we’re not such clean ‘foo-els’, we’re reliable. And we need each other.”

Announcer:  “Uh, oh.  Look.  Not a pretty portrait.  King Coal’s polluting the Atom family with doubt.”

Son Ancil interrupts Father Adam.  “But what about the waste from our nuclear generation?  I hear people saying nothing can be done about it.  We have to do somethun.”

“Tut, tut, Son,” Adam Atom scoffs.  “Naysayers always want to get in the way of progress.  Future nuclear generations will solve the problems.”

Announcer:  “Indeed.  ‘Tut, tut, Ancil.  You must trust your nuclear family.”

King Coal sneers and loudly belches a black plume of smoke.

J.B. squeezes Sally’s shoulder, hard.

“Ouch!  Dammit, J.B.  That hurts.”

“Not as much as the way you’re portraying our vital industry.”  A real-life King Coal, J.B. explodes,“God damn it people.  Coal is our business! Our lifeblood!” He kicks over metal chairs, prop trees and the single-side plywood station wagon. “For the life of me I won’t have it depicted as…”

“Shh, J.B.,” Sally leads him to a corner.  Crew and actors divert their eyes – paychecks haven’t cleared yet.  Sally attempts to reassure J.B.  “We’re flooding the state with ‘educational information’.  We’re gaining the public’s support.  Radio, tv, billboards, our message is everywhere and its succeeding.  That’s all that matters.  Once it’s complete we’ll do anything we damn well please with both coal and atomic.  Who’s to stop us?”  She brushes against him coyly,”Has anyone ever stopped you before, J.B.?” Sally appeals to his rightful vanity.

He smiles.

“You’ll see, J.B.  These latest promotions will get the regulators’ approval – with minimal pain-in-the-tush public opposition.”

She sighs.  ‘After fourteen years…this success will put me behind only you as the most powerful person in this industry.’

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh 2013

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

No. 30: DOC FICTION’S BUST ENHANCERS AND OTHER INVENTIONS THAT WENT BUST!

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.

I am discovering the crumbs of the wry bread of life that sustained my Russian immigrant great grandmother, Shelva Fiction, in her new “Ameri-kan” homeland.  Midst my archiving the reams of notes, documents, letters, and ‘lost’ books of the 19th and 20th century Fiction House Publishing, I continually come across Shelva’s writings.

They’re on bits and pieces of paper, caught behind drawers for over a hundred years, used for linings of disintegrating pocketbooks…  in just the oddest of places.  This disorganized form of journaling somehow brought her a semblance of order in her adopted country.  By what I’ve been reading, it certainly brought her joy.

One of my great grandfather Doc Fiction’s ill-fated inventions Shelva wrote of in the 1890’s nearly burned down the Fiction House.  It almost killed him.

***

My husband, mine sweet druzhyna, ach, he got the idea for the… ever you hear such a cuckoo idea – Doc Fiction’s Fecal Self Monitor (FSM), patent pending.  As if the patent office even to look at, let alone approve, such a device.

I love my husband deeply, but sometime he push my caring too far.  Like those bust builder ideas!  Maybe one day I jot down notes on them.  Hopeful, I’ll have forgotten them by then.  He must have conjured them up in his basement lab-or-a-tory some idea-void night, probably vuudka inspired, or, by what mine good Doc distills and calls his stump juice.

I am an amply bosomed Moscow girl, more so than any czarina is.  Mine druzhyna loves his ‘nightly play in his Shelva’s ‘Elysian Fields’.  So, most surely, these ‘busters’ as he calls them are not – how might the young Freuds and Jungs of Europe say – “manifestations of some dream he desires come true”.  Knowing my husband, I interpret them to be altruistic, sincere wish to support less-endowed women of Amerika.

For his motivation, I’ll not discount his yen for the Ameri-kan coin.  That part I do not mind, since it buy such nice things for his “darlink Shelva”, and it allows me to send nice things to old country relatives who are downtrodden by czar.

But that’s all a matter for some other time, or for a nice Vienna vacation for druzhyna and me, and later a couch chat for him with that city’s all-knowing listener all-knowing listener, Sigmund…

From the the bookshelves of the Fiction House is where my dear Doc he gets the hair-brain idea for the Fecal Self… the FSM contraption – I vow I’ll never say the words the letters stand for, ever again.  He is avid reader about ancient Lindian medicine.  He is intrigued how royal houses made studies of privy remains of princes as they grew, to insure the future Kings were getting proper nutrition, and so that things weren’t going awry within their evacuation tubes.

~ ~ editor note:  Doc Fiction’s idea – create a light source that could be used to be put in a chamber pot so the ‘end’ product could be viewed more clearly.  This was before the proliferation of electricity or indoor plumbing.

(editorial comment – For the life of me G-granfa, why?)

Shelva’s writing contribution to the project was to be a brochure explaining what to look for.  Garnering insight from G-gra’ma Shelva’s tucked away notes I’m sure she must have reiterated to Doc often, ‘For heaven’s sakes, Dearest.  No one in their right mind wants to look at that.’

G-granfa’s light source was, basically, a small lantern that could be attached to the chamber pot, “for”… according to the outline of the proposed brochure, “… sunlight-clear viewing of your product.”

Again, why’ G-granfa?  Why?

Came time for ‘product’ testing. ~ ~

G-gra’ma Shelva writes:

Not in here, Dearest.  Not in my house.  I’ll have no part in this.  To the outhouse with that ghastly munshik gadget.

For mine-misguided druzhyna, who became a late 19th century Julius Caesar, the ‘die is cast’.

The lantern is lit and anchored in place a foot down the drop hole.  Down he sits – to complete his work.

First thing go wrong:  The act of sitting keeps the methane gases in the hole from escaping, and, little did druzhyna realize, birds had built nests in the ventilation stack.  Poor man of mine dreams.  Skin of his ruump’ act a seal.  Cause gases to build up even more.  When he completes countdown, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

That little extra ‘quite’ natural gas’ he adds sends lantern flame quivering.

Then, BOOM!  Into the door he is propelled by explosion of gas.  Hair singes in places that oughten’ be singe.  OUCH!  Rump’s toasted.  Sections of the burning outhouse shoot upward, landing on the Fiction House roof.  It catches fire.  I’m running out of house.  What to do?  What to do?

Meanwhile, back at the outhouse, my Doc safe.  Turt there.  With his mighty shell, he knock it down, and drag Doc to water trough.  But, oy, the house roof.  Dry cedar shingles exploding as red, white, and blue fireworks.  Amerika, Fort of July.  Part of roof collapses and starts burning inside the house.

To the rescue, Captain Polly, and dozens of her pigeon friends.

Together they seize a big burlap sack of Captain Polly’s seeds in their beaks and talons.  Wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t witness with my own two eyes.  Huffing, puffing, they fly it up to the roof ridge, claw open the bag and drain it.  Seeds landslide, ‘click, click, pop, pop’ downward, dousing the fire, first on the roof, then inside the house where they drop in a heap from through the newly created skylight.

Poor dear druzhyna, laying there helpless, and not too pleasant smelling.  He is necessarily occupying the trough to nurse wounds.  Neither of us could climb roof to make sure fire didn’t restart.

Turt to rescue.  A freshly-mixed vat of Doc’s elixirs is near the house.  Turt siphons a gallon at a time deep into his beak-snout.  Over and again with mighty pressure, he fire-hoses it 20, 30 feet up, onto smoldering roof.

It’s hard to believe, but I couldn’t make any of this up, even if I tried.

In no time at all, our house, it is saved!  Fortunately, Doc’s medicine bag of potions is always close at hand.  I rush with it to apply the magical elixirs to his reddening posterior.  I swear, by the bones of Peter the Great, those vials of I’ll never know what, did the trick.

One fortuitous thing came from the incident.  All of mine druzhyna’s drawings and prototypes for the bust enhancers were destroyed when the burning roof caved in.  His heart never there to start them again.  And in my heart, I smile thankfully, my big Moscow smile.

     ~ ~ editor note:  Back to Doc’s FSM’s.  Ironically, there are many such products on the market around the world today.  Sales are brisk.  G-granfa’ must just have been a century ahead of his time.  ~ ~

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

©Raji Singh 2013

Posted in archeo-apologist, Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

No. 29: THE TALE OF HOW EFRAIM EPHRAIM CAME TO BE A PERMANENT FIXTURE AT THE FICTION HOUSE.

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Raji Singh

by Raji Singh (editor, archivist Fiction House Publishing)

Our Founder, James Thaddeus "Blackjack" Fiction ‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.I cannot refuse.

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we’ll never have lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse. 

     From the miscellaneous writings of Shelva Fiction, circa 1890’s:  Shortly after discovering that a tall taler from way back – Efraim – had stowed away in their medicine wagon.

Shelva Fiction and newcomer to the Fiction House, Efraim Ephraim, sit at a table in the yard on a cool evening.  They snap beans for supper and Turt snarfs the scrap ends they toss.

“Mz. Shelva, I just had to come along with you and Doc Fiction.  It commenced becoming right unbearable back home.  Being the town’s ever so handsome, most eligible of bachelors, it got to the point if I moseyed down the dirt surface main drag of a hot summer’s day and little as undid the top button of my shirt to cool my long johns, every Sadie Hawkins with a mattress turtle-shelled to her back come lookin’ to bed me.”

Efraim bends down, pets Turt’s head, and says, “No offense ol’ fella.  Not my intention to link you to any sordid sort.”

~ ~ editor’s note:  Turt’s used to many-a-two-legged sea salt who’s a whale taler, so he’s unfazed by jocular Efraim.  He just yawns.  ~  ~

~ ~ Shelva’s note:  Allow me this brief moment to describe “ever so handsome” Eee-phraim:   Pale and skinny as any hemophiliac czar or czarina of my homeland.  Gaps in his teeth wide as the continent Mother Russia encompasses.  Many balding patches on his head look bare like Siberian tundra.  Unappealing nose is an icicle, a Moscow spire.  And his odor, from living in a musty cabin among his roots and plants he grew for his moonshine, ach, worse than month old borscht.  ~ ~

“Yeppers, Mz. Shelva, some of those mattress-backs, when I undo that button, they begin promenading lickety-split out from shops, houses, even the Meth-e-diss Church to fan me; to keep me from suffering direly from the vapors.  The dust storm sprung up from all those wavin’ Sadie Ladies, well it clogs up the courthouse new fancy clock.  Mayor Blowregards Hizzoner, he comes to the point of askin’ – no – demandin’:

“Either come to town only at night when your beautitude is not so evident in the dark, Efraim, so the females of our fair town aren’t burnished with confounded passions for you.  Either that, or wear the sweltering Sir Knight full body armor from the courthouse lobby.”

“Well, Mz. Shelva, I ask you.  Not much of a choice, eh?  So here I be.  And so to make a long story short…”

Then he continues for a half-hour longer while I am trying to understand – ‘Mine Eee-phraim, why in the name of the czar’s jewels do you wear long underwear mid summer?’  Ach!  But I let him ramble, for, you see, he reminds me of my old tanta who lives in the steppes of Russia.  I liked the old peasant woman’s sweetness, as I like Efraim’s now.  A lot blown up with himself, but that is all right.  He is crude, but, deep in, a goodhearted soul, I can sense.

I can tell mine sweet druzhyna Doc has taken an almost instant liking to him.  He will call Efraim soon for some experiments they’ve already been cooking up with roots and plants, all the earth’s makings for the stump juices Efraim knows so much about.  Their great plan sounds as cockamamie to me as Efraim’s Sadie story.  But who knows, maybe the idea will develop into boon for the future of humanity.  We see, yes, we shall see.

“…Well Mz. Shelva, what finally set my decision in stone, to give you and Doc the honor of my accompany – you see, less than six months away is the every four year Sadie Day.  That’s the day they run to try capturin’ good catches like me.  Leap Year.  29, February.  You probably don’t have it where you’re from.”

At present, I know not what he talks about.  Soon, I’ll learn all those great Ameri-kan holidays like Sadie Day.

“So Mz., I’m a might powerful sprinter.  In the past I could always outrun any mattress-shelled Sadie on the day they run.”  He looks upon Turt.  “Picture ‘em runnin’ all wild ‘ol fella.  Like smelt or grunion on the beach.”

Turt nods, nonplussed.

Efraim turns to me.  ‘But nowadays I’m tendin’ to slow even though I’m just entering my prime.”

Suddenly Turt trumpets out.

‘His version of a chuckle’ I wonder?

Efraim continues.

I am thinking ‘he’s used to reactions like Turt’s.’

“And besides, a new mattress factory opened in the town.  Selling the lightest weight fare, could ever be imagined.  Didn’t suppose I’d be able to outrun ‘em any longer, and I’d end up,” he glances wryly to Turt, than says, “Netted smelt, ready for the fryer!!”

NEXT WEEK:  DOC FICTION’S BUST ENHANCERS AND OTHER INVENTIONS THAT WENT BUST.   

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE, but that’s a different story.  It’s available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.)

Raji Singh, 2013

Posted in Fiction House Publishing, humor, satire, Short stories, Whimsey | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments