Joshua Patterson

"Show me your face," he said. "Your human face."

She hesitated then. She wanted to show him, but it had been so long and she'd nearly forgotten. Then...

She changed. She felt it, the lengthening, the filling out, the ripening. His jaw dropped, blue eyes widened.

"You are beautiful," he breathed. He laughed, held up his hands. "I'm shaking." His gaze flickered around her, came back to her eyes. "Why did you ever hide? You are lovely enough to break the hearts of tyrants."

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He was born in a storm with a look of madness in his right eye. At least that's what all the stories say. Stonedin Village was small like most small places in that small doings could be made very big and big things just weren't talked about. But if one had a few spare coins and oiled the throat of old Caleb Cartwright with Melcom's thick brown ale, he'd hold forth about the goings on up at the castle. Tales to give grown men uneasy rest and keep boys up all night listening for howls on the wind.

But it wasn't a kind thing to do to poor old Caleb for he was a kindly soul and did not lightly tell tales of his betters - at least that is what he'd maintain the morning after while nursing a mug of tea and a pounding head at Melcom's.

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"I'm having a crisis of faith," said Lester Moran.
"Why, whatever do you mean, dear?" asked Thelma, his wife.
"Who wrote the book on morality and what gave him the right"
"God I suppose."
"Bosh! How do you know that?"
"I don't know," said Thelma, looking perplexed. "Because that's what everyone says."
"I wonder what makes everyone so damned smart and me so unconvinced." Lester pulled at an eyebrow restlessly.
"Oh, Les," sighed Thelma. "You're being foolish again."
Lester's grunt was a single eloquent staccato syllable of disdain.

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John sat on the balcony enjoying a cigar. The slow evening air prickled the hair on his arms and neck. Margo was inside doing crossword puzzles. The sun hovered bloated and bleeding just above the horizon.

The balcony door slid shut. "Margo?" The lock slid down with a snap. "Margo?" He rose and knocked on the glass. She didn't answer. "Very funny, darling."

She was playing a trick on him, he knew. She was a good one for practical jokes. He sat back down, drew on his cigar, exhaled, and watched the blue smoke hang in the air. The thing to do now was not to react and then her joke would be spoiled.

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No one knew who he was. He lived in our building but his mailbox was simply emblazoned, Occupied. He was a small man with merry little eyes, his features indistinct beneath an incredible growth of facial hair. His nose pushed out of that forest like the stump of a tree. Brown and weathered like the skin on the back of his hands, he must have spent all his time in the sun. I called him Mr. Occupied for lack of a better name.

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Old material. Beware the amateur!

In Gehenna’s Coffee Haven we get our share of oddballs -- more than our share sometimes. Rich folk, poor people, yuppies, lunatics, eccentrics, you name it, we’ve had it.

I first saw her on a warm September night. I was capping up a latte. Perfect foam. An act of sheer artistry. It nestled on top like a Capuchin monk’s hood.
           

“I said no foam!” the woman glared at me across the counter.
          

I had committed the cardinal sin. There was no chance of redemption. Not an iota of grace to the hapless barista who topped a foamless latte with -- God forbid -- foam!
           

“Oops, I’ll just scoop that off for you,” I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a smile. “There you are. Good as new.”
          

She snatched up the latte, which now had ring-around-the-collar, and huffed out the door, shouldering aside a fat man in an immense fur coat.
           

I swore silently after her for several seconds, praying the latte would upset in her lap as she drove.

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I'm part of the bus stop community. We're like leaves on the wind, blown together for a short time, then whisked apart. We don't know each other's names and it doesn't matter. We mourn the passing of a fellow rider when he purchases a car and vanishes from the worn benches, milky bus stop windows and concrete floors layered with months of accumulated garbage and the smell of old urine.

A fine group of misfits on the bus today. An array of missing teeth, a pale rainbow of vacant smiles, weathered skin, mussed hair and nervous eyes. Too animated, as though life unnerves them. Life pounces on some souls like a cat - not killing them outright, but batting them around with curious detachment. Not cruel so much as bored...

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