Short Stories

Last Updated on Thursday, 12 November 2009 06:21 Written by beverlyhills Monday, 27 July 2009 10:20

Short Stories

Angelina The Brat

Angelina the Brat was everything wrong with children. At about three years old, she’d poop her pants and resist getting her diaper changed. She was constantly sneaking into the residents’ rooms and stealing their shit, or pounding on their doors at 5 a.m. to wake them up. She’d eat all the sugar she could rummage up and then run around the hostel screaming all day; she harrassed the cats, unplugged the refrigerators, turned off the lights, locked people out the kitchen, pulled down women’s tops, insist you should babysit her when you were trying to get wasted, bossed everyone around…

- Cris Devine

Crazy Charlie

Crazy Charlie came as if from a rip in the space-time continuum; just blasted onto the porch of the Haight Street Hostel one day. “Yeah, I’m staying here. What’s your name? Nice to meet you.” He thrust his hand toward mine and we shook, while he looked me deep into my subconscious.

Charlie was in his mid 50s. Some people called him Cosmic Charlie too, but he was a lot less serene than the character in that Grateful Dead song. He was so in there, he was waaay out. He liked to have rapid-fire, meaningful conversations about physics, throwing in numerous references to the collective consciousness we all shared.

Charlie was also a speed-freak. He worked on and off for a gardening operation that supplied medical marijuana to people who had cancer and AIDS. They paid him with money when they could, but because of their funding being constantly cut, sometimes they paid him in bags of shake. Charlie was very generous – almost alarmingly so – with his weed. That was one reason he got kicked out of the hostel.

The other reason is that often, Charlie would freak out on speed and hear howling dogs. You would know when he began to hear them, because he’d suddenly stop babbling at us, his eyes would go dark in terror, and he’d aggressively study the sky, leaning over the porch railing and muttering under his breath. Then… “They’re back!” he’d exclaim. “Don’t you hear them?” he’d ask me, “Those godforsaken dogs?!?”

I learned quickly that if I tried calming him down by telling him – honestly – that I heard no such thing, he’d get all paranoid and either think I was lying or that I was one of them. My patent answer, at these times, became: “Why yes, I think I DO hear something!” Charlie’d see the dogs loping across the rooftops in the moonlight, certain they were following him here from his distant past, reading his mind and confusing his thoughts.

At these times, he’d pick up a lawn chair and hold it menacingly in his outstretched arms, in feeble protection of his short, scrawny build. But it was enough to scare the other residents away and off the porch. Even Dana the Shit-Head wouldn’t come out and try playing “King of the Kitchen” then.

On those nights, Michelle would slink downstairs and whisper, “He’s doing it again”. And we could hear him up there, through the planks above our heads, shuffling around, babbling to himself and moving the furniture. We’d feel the dust and dirt he was kicking around up there spray us in the face, land in our hair.

I think in ways, for Charlie, the howling dogs symbolized that part of the collective unconscious that is a hideous, barbaric aspect of humanity. It exists, and there’s nothing to really do about it except to be a good person and try not to be a dick. But sometimes for some people, the fear of that part of humanity packs a punch, and your have to express your fear somehow or go completely insane. I mean more insane than Charlie was, with his muttering curses and rapid-fire incantations hurled at the invisible blackness out there, clutching a lawn chair in his hands, perhaps ready to hurl it overhead and do an innocent neighbor some serious damage…

- Cris Devine

How I accidentally broke into a county jail:

I was in my mid 20s living in Minneapolis and always admired this one old building with a bell tower. I was compelled to climb to the top. So one Sunday I walked into the building and proceeded to try finding legal access to the roof. No dice.

I ended up getting through a security door and was searching the stairwells, feeling pretty smug until I ended up in a hallway with a big sign: “Prisoner Loading Only”.

Oops.

- Cris Devine