Tag: surrealism

I’m pleased to post a new short story today! House is a surreal story about a house that picks itself up and walks down the road. You can find the story on Amazon for $2.99 (if you feel like supporting me), or you can find it for free below!

Also, on February 1st, I will be publishing my book of photographs, Afghanistan, and the electronic book will be available on Amazon for $9.99. Afghanistan is available for pre-order now.

And, on April 3rd, I will be publishing my next novel, Los Diablos! Los Diablos is a crime novel with a twist, and it is the story of Ricardo Valdivia, a handsome and capable man who rises from poverty to become one of the most powerful men in the western hemisphere.

Finally, I encourage you to buy a copy of my mystery novel, The Murders in the Endicott Hotel, which is available now on Amazon, and which has gotten great reviews!

Thanks to all who have supported me, and I hope that you enjoy the short story below!

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House

Then one day the 1926 two story white house with the green shutters at 4224 Whipple Lane—in that green, affluent suburb with the wide, winding roads—tugged its foundation from the earth and began moving down the road.  The house’s family, when they returned from the mall, were quite surprised.

Little chunks of concrete and wood cracked off the house’s foundation as the 1926 house ambled down the way that led to the port.  Inside the house, a clear glass vase on a hall table shook, and the vase’s water spilled out onto the glossy hardwood floors.  The irises and petunias inside the glass trembled and shook, and the grandfather clock, which nearly always kept the right time, gonged in protestation.  But with a mighty, creaking shrug of its wings, the house yawned through its windows, sucking fresh air through musty passageways.  The air was salty from the sea, and the house’s windows drew up and down slowly, as if deeply inhaling.  Chips of paint flecked off the sills and the bottoms of the windows; the curtains flapped and stretched themselves, and the fluttering Venetian blinds sounded like tambourines as they flexed in the warmth of the summer sun. 

The 1926 house turned down broad, two-laned Maple Street, a quaint residential road with Tudor and Cape Cod homes, and scrupulously manicured lawns.  At the far end of Maple Street was a cul-de-sac, and beyond the cul-de-sac lay a small grassy hill, a fisherman’s wharf, and the gently lapping ocean.  The house continued along Maple and moved so noiselessly and unobtrusively that, despite its colossal mass and concrete foundation, not even a man reading a newspaper at the Maple & 8^th street bus stop noticed the house pass.  When the house was not more than ten feet in front of him, the man, who was immersed in an article on Pennsylvania football, let a page of the newspaper dip and seemed to discover the house which moved blithely by.  But the man picked up the drooping page, ruffled the paper, and continued reading, no more aware of his circumstances than he was a moment before.

Further down the road, the house’s oven door fell open, and the scent of burnt casserole wafted out while crumbs of blackened crust pattered to the ground.  The refrigerator door swung wide, and the cheese drawer fell open to reveal a healthy wheel of Gouda and three quarters of a cold salami.  Shaking from the movement of the house, the milk sloshed in its plastic gallon jug, the zucchinis rolled onto the floor, and two half cut lemons gently bumped the side of the refrigerator. 

A woman beating her rug against her third floor balcony railing threw her hand to her mouth.  The rug slid from her hands and fell at her feet.  It wasn’t till the house had nearly passed her balcony that the woman recovered her voice, yet when she found it, she screamed so loudly that even her deaf neighbor shuddered, and the man reading the newspaper four blocks away pulled up his head, frowning in curious mystification.

In an instant, many of the windows were full of gasping faces.  Doors opened.  Men in slippers and women in curlers flooded onto Maple Street, crowding the sidewalks as if a parade were passing.  Simultaneously, a bus pulled into the station on 8^th and Maple and, when the passengers discovered what was happening, the bus emptied, and even the driver turned off the heavy diesel engine, descended, and locked the bus’ doors.  The family who owned the house had followed the trail of cement, roots, and broken two by fours, and now they stopped their car a few blocks away, merging with the crowd that was following their home.

A woman with a big black camera which had an enormous flash strode up to the house, contorting her body and flipping the camera into impossible positions, and every time she shot a photo, people nearby blinked in stupefaction and had after-image from the flash.  Onlookers began packing together more tightly, jockeying for the superlative view.  With flashing red and blue lights, police began slowly motoring through the crowd of pedestrians, who parted like the Red Sea.  The police dug barriers out of their car trunks, set the barriers parallel to the sidewalks, and formed lines to keep the crowds confined to the sidewalk. 

“Move on back!” yelled an officer, shooing people back to the sidewalk like they were chickens.  A family—bustling, grabbing their children’s wrists, and quickly counting to make sure all their children were present—moved back to the sidewalk.

“Good heavens, John,” said a woman with a baby in her arms and another six or seven year old with curly blonde hair held by the wrist, “Do you think the same thing will happen to our home?”

Staring up at the house, holding a three year old over his shoulder, and calling to his nine year old boy, John replied, “How exciting would that be!  Lord, would you look at that house move!”

Dogs whimpered at the sight of the house; they ran off with tails tucked between their legs, casting pitiful looks over their shoulders.  A girl limped behind the line of people, holding her parent’s hand and pointing at the house.  The father of the girl, a man with a short cinnamon beard, hairy forearms, and a bag of supplies slung over his free shoulder, observed the house in silence while listening to his daughter.

Past the cul-de-sac on the wharf, an enterprising vendor was selling fresh-caught shrimp out of his stall when he saw the house approaching his stand. 

“Come on, bud,” said the vendor to the fifteen year old who worked for him.  “Go out and tell those people to buy shrimp from me.  There’re two thousand people lining those streets, and I’ve got seventy-five pounds of jumbo shrimp to sell.  Get those legs moving!”

The boy saw the people, all of whom were focusing only on the house that was moving quietly down Maple.  “I don’t think they’re hungry,” he observed.

The shrimper picked the boy up using a hand that only had four fingers, set the boy outside the stand, and gave him a gentle push to get him going.  “My word!  Work, man, work!” 

Shuffling at first along the splintered, soggy boards of the wooden wharf, then rabbiting away, the adolescent began to hawk, “Fresh shrimp, fresh shrimp!”

In the crowds, a preacher nudged his wife and mentioned that the house was a parallel to the parable of the prodigal son.  “That house… It’ll come back,” the preacher reassured her, and she nodded absently, her mouth agape at the sight of the moving house. 

A group of construction workers, greasy and unshaven, with thick arms and suntanned skin came to watch the house. 

“Huh,” observed one.  “Wonder what happened to her plumbing?” 

“Beats me,” replied a tall worker with jet black hair, “Probably broke it off.  Whoever laid that foundation did a heck of a job, though, I can tell you that.  Look at how fast that house is moving—you don’t have a house that moves that fast with a poor foundation.”

“Yep,” nodded the foreman.  “You got that right.” 

The sounds of conversation mixed and buzzed through the air, and the people followed the house’s path, making guesses as to where it was going, why it was moving, and how it moved at all. 

“I know how it works,” said a fellow with short brown hair and brown eyes, nodding his head up and down and pointing at the house’s foundation.  “There’s a motor in the kitchen of the first floor—there! you can almost see it through the window there—and that motor powers the wheels of the house which you can’t see because they’re hidden behind that concrete foundation.  I know that much for sure.  My only question is, why didn’t I think of it first?”

On the other side of the road, the wife in the family who owned the house spoke in rapid, rainy tones to her husband, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?  I never cleaned the bathroom enough, and I just knew that something would happen—”

“Beatrice!” exclaimed her husband, nearly in a shout, “You didn’t know anything like that would happen.  How many times do I have to tell you not to kick yourself for things that aren’t your fault?”

“I knoooow,” Beatrice whined mournfully, “But I just think that if we had treated the house better, it might still be where it belongs?”

Her husband’s lips tightened, and he shook his head. 

“Bill!” said Beatrice, “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” he answered, his tone clipped and short.  “I just think it’s silly that you think a house getting up and walking off is your fault.  And I kind of wonder where our home is going, that’s all.”

“I can’t help overhearing you,” said the preacher, “But I can tell you, where ever that house is going, it’s sure to come back.”

Soon enough, the house came to the cul-de-sac at the end of Maple drive.  The small hill lay to the house’s left, about a quarter of a mile away.  Straight in front of the house—just past the end of the cul-de-sac and the fisherman’s wharf—lay the broad ocean.  At the cul-de-sac the house veered from its path and climbed to the zenith of the small hill, where sailors and citizens backed out of its way.  The house circled partway around, so that its back doors commanded a vista of the ocean, and its front faced the people and their town, and there, with a resounding thump, the house settled.