Black

"You choose."

I am looking down at the two daggers displayed in front of me - one with an ornately carved handle and one black as onyx and my feeling of dread grows.

I can't remember how I have come to enter this old curio shop.  I had turned left down the Piazzale Roma, when I should have gone right and, at the end of a crooked alleyway, some glint of light had caused me to bow into a thatched doorway our of mere curiosity. A flailing misadventure through a tapestry showroom had led me here, amid dusty stacks of cracked parchment and antiquity, face to face with a scowling Italian dwarf offering me a gilded chest.

I am acutely aware that Julia has sent me on a fool's errand.  As the cruise ship docked in Venice, there was some twittering about a birthday gift needed for a great-nephew - one that she had neglected to purchase in Ravenna.  Only one of us had accumulated two passing semesters in Intermediate Italian, she reasoned, and, besides, she wasn't feeling well. So, of course, like a good fiancee, I went.

The musty room of mottled wood was set up more like a storeroom and less like a shop, but a little man with a waxy mustache accosted me as I bumbled forth into blackness.  His suspicious gaze told me that he had already pegged me as a gawdy American tourist.

I somehow felt the burden to speak first.  "I need to buy a gift."

As the dwarf bent down to rummage behind a desk, I had realized that we were not alone in the close quarters of the shop. Bulky forms stirred in the darkness and I could hear the clink of glasses and see the reflection of a gold tooth.  Strange that I hadn't noticed this before.

Now here I am, facing the miniature Italian, himself almost overshadowed by the ornate chest he has cradled in both arms.  Inside the chest are the two weapons, accompanied with those ominous words.  "You choose."

I hesitate.  It occurs to me that maybe Julia hadn't really been seasick - that maybe her haste to get me off the boat and into the bowels of Venice had more to do with the recent quarrels we have been having.

A larger man, burly and muscular, lurches forward from the black and snatches up the onyx dagger.  The second rapier is being urgently forced into my fingers.  Rustles of paper and the glint of a monocle pierce the surrounding gloom.

The dwarf grins and it is the most horrible grin I have ever seen.  "É un duello."

My Italian is failing me.  I realize that my phrasebook is back on the boat, and now I am being forced into the center of the room.

Are those coins jingling in the background?

The larger man aims the onyx dagger.  The dwarf cackles and he won't stop repeating those words, "É un duello."  "É un duello."

What is happening?

Gold

Vibrating light cast through scintillating slats in the football-field-sized skylight decorated the ballroom with somersaulting explosions of color.  At the punch table, a mime broke his vows and laughed at a joke, told by a cowheaded man in a paisley tux.  Two penguins sipped non-alcoholic margaritas through a bendy straw.

It was exactly the type of party that Flat Eddie "Thatch" Burrello would throw - all absurdity and no substance.  This was the type of gala that only the richest of the rich could afford to throw, in order to impress the richer of the richest.

I sat there, in my calloused chair of golden leaf, shrunk to the size of a pea.  To say that Flat Eddie had invited me here would be a misrepresentation.  What had actually happened was that two plaid-suited juggernauts had showed up at my apartment door at half past three with a rented tuxedo, two sizes too small.

"They say you're one of the hottest artists in New York City," the heavier-set of the two bellowed.

"Who is they?"

He didn't respond, but his partner thrust the tuxedo into my hands.  "They do say that."

The first gorilla leered at me.  "Flat Eddie is having a party tonight" (no explanation about who Flat Eddie was).  "A couple of big art investors are coming.  You're to put this on and be there at 8:05 with three of your best works."

I told them the tuxedo was too small, that the pants would barely cover my skinny ankles.

The second man waved his hand dismissively as the muscular duo lumbered back out into the hall.  "Just don't sit down.  No one will be able to tell."

Well, I was sitting, now, in a glass ballroom of madness and debauchery, a famous failure.

A few months prior, I had spilled a can of acrylic paint across a poorly rendered landscape I had conjured up for my community college art class.  Being on a deadline, I had submitted the piece, which, I suppose, had caught my well-connected professor's eye.  The next thing I knew, my splattery neo-masterpiece was showing up in everything from the New York Post to the front page of Gawker.com.  At once, I was the creator of a metaphor for the disrespect technology had for tradition and for the eventual death of Judeo-Christian values.  I was quoted without being interviewed and my artwork analyzed without approaching the artist.

Now, here I was, at a bacchanalian banquet, shrinking into my gold chair, as suited investors admired two landscapes and a still life, all crudely drawn in improper perspective with some secondhand pastels.

They say lightning doesn't strike twice, but, then again, they had also apparently proclaimed me one of New York City's rising art stars.  My hand gripped the can of gooey green acrylic paint that I had brought with me.  The lid sat ajar.  I rose, hoisted the can over my head, and sprinted towards my paintings.  This is a masterpiece.

Pink

There was a lot on the mind of Garrison Knight as he stood at the Lexington Market platform, waiting for the next train.

Always on the move, Garrison didn't often get any time to himself to think.  But today, the 9:06 Light Rail was five minutes late, so Garrison Knight thought about his entire life.

The pink hue of the hair ribbon was what caught Garrison's eye first.  Its floppy ends bobbed in time with the assent of the six-year-old girl, nodding her head in mirth at some funny joke that had slipped out of the puckered mouth of her teddy bear.  Her left hand held her mother's hand tightly.

Garrison had once had a daughter.  Well, he still had a daughter, for all he knew, though she hadn't wanted to see him for many years.  He had used to buy her hair ribbons for her birthday - a gift that became a father-daughter tradition.

That was before his job at the steel plant had forced a solo move to Sparrows Point.  "You're a shoo-in for promotion to line boss," Mr. Bellows had said.  Mr. Bellows had lied, as usual, but Garrison had found other sins to occupy his time.

Garrison's stomach muttered.  He had overslept and missed his morning meal.  Garrison ran a tight schedule, and making the morning train had meant listening to his stomach's running commentary.

The pink ribbon continued its airy dance.  Garrison had planned to keep up the annual tradition of hair-ribbon-buying well past the age at which hair ribbons stopped being cool.  A gesture of affection between father and daughter could not be defined by the laws of fashion.  But, last he had heard, his daughter was going to school in Oregon and Garrison didn't remember her address.  He didn't remember a lot of things these days, save for the mundane details pertaining to schedule.

A childish cry broke his concentration.  The ribbon had escaped from its nesting place and was spiraling towards the train tracks.  A single tear escaped the little girl's eye, but her mother held her back.

The ribbon alit, perilously, in the very center of the tracks.  Garrison looked at his watch, but it seemed to have stopped a long time ago, frozen at 7:48 a.m.  And then he broke his schedule.

On the train tracks, enveloped in a concrete canyon, Garrison could barely hear the shocked murmur of the confused crowd.  He bent down and grasped the ribbon.

The canyon shook.  People screamed.  A bright light shone directly into his eyes.  He couldn't see the ribbon any more.  Black.

Later on, a blurb in the next day paper would remark on the death of a homeless man at one of the stations of the Baltimore Light Rail.  The man had no identification and investigators couldn't understand what had prompted him to suddenly leap into the path of the oncoming train, instead choosing to classify the death a suicide.

Crimson

The night Jimmy "The Stag" Silver played the last jazz concert of his career, there were twenty-five in the room.

Tipping his favorite crimson fedora, Jimmy blinked into the spotlight's dusty gaze and raised his tarnished trumpet to his lips.  Then he played.

Forty years ago, to the casual jazz music hepcat, Jimmy Silver was a trumpet genius, working his way into the heart of a corps of underground fans - the type of fans who championed Silver's '65 masterpiece, Sonnets After Seven, into a near Grammy nomination.

The nomination never came and Silver went from legendary jazz musician to legendary recluse, popping up in various neighborhood bars and back alley venues to croon his brassy lullabies, but never again enjoying the pinnacle seat in jazz lore.  He played a show on a street corner in Lyons to an elderly man in a pinstriped suit, then politely refused the man's tip.  Someone said they saw him join the throng of a high school marching band in St. Paul, Minnesota on New Year's Day.  Tonight, he was balanced on a rusty bar stool in a watering hole in Havana Cuba, in front of twenty-five bar customers who probably didn't know his name or his music.

The first notes of Jimmy's opening piece broke into a hushed angry argument between a middle-aged wife and husband.  The husband stuttered, his concentration broken, and he never found the time to return to his previous biting remark.  Something about the way his wife's hair got brighter in the reflection of Jimmy's trumpet bell shut him up for good.

Two Cuban businessmen paused from a frank discussion on ethics in global fiscal policy to listen to a specific tremolo.

Near the bar, a young man in a cotton dress shirt that sorely needed ironing found the courage to ask the girl next to him to dance and the two clasped arms in a melancholy slow dance.

An old man in the corner just closed his eyes and laughed for the first time in nineteen years, hee hee hee.  The bartender smiled and poured him another whisky, on the house.

In between songs, a disheveled loafer with matted hair and a matted suit asked the busboy in English if he could use the phone and the busboy, a native Spanish speaker, understood.

A group of five American tourists in the back of the room suddenly found new energy in their conversation.  The one with the rosiest cheeks slapped his friend's back and made a generic comment about that good New York music and no one disagreed.

And a single, sad-eyed young girl with an unfinished glass of wine in front of her simply sat and listened, as if she were the only person in the room.

Jade

Nilmath, the Elf Queen, was sprinting through the forest of Unger, her feet moving faster than the Boars of Azaroa.  The sack of coins in her pocket jingled in time with her fleet footsteps.  The forest heard her approach and shrank away.

Something stirred in the darkness of the wood.  Nilmath halted, her tigress eyes glinting as they scanned the formless shadows.  Nilmath was on a quest to capture the Elf Assassin Groot and she could sense that her prey was nearby.

Ahead, a spear of light pierced the trees, forming a luminescent halo around a clearing.  Inside the halo, surrounded by a smaller halo of sticky blod, lay Groot, dead, and, kneeling over him, was  a smaller, darker elf.  Nilmath recognized him instantly.

"Joel?" Nilmath sputtered, incredulously.

Joel the Elf didn't turn, but continued to loot his kill.

Nilmath corrected herself.  "Finrod?"

"What do you want?"  The elf Finrod spoke in a guttural whisper, keeping his back to Nilmath.

"What are you doing?"

"It's a free mission, open to anyone.  I got here first."

Nilmath approached the clearing cautiously.  "I KNOW that, but, I mean, what are you doing in the World?  I thought you said you weren't going to play any more?"

"We both said a lot of things we didn't mean, the last time..."

Finrod reached into his cloak and produced a jade and yellow strip of cloth, elegantly woven into a starburst pattern.  Nilmath could see that it was a teleportation cloak, but it needed three turns to be cast and, right now, it was Nilmath's turn.

"Look, since you're here..."  A step closer.

"Don't.  Seriously, Joy, I mean it."

The teleportation cloak had begun to glow, casting a sickly pall on the entire scene.

Nilmath, or Joy, took another step onto the mossy grass of the clearing.  "We tried to make it work, didn't we?  But, I mean, what was I supposed to do?"

Finrod's eyes flashed anger.  He was holding the still glowing teleportation cloak with one hand, but Nilmath could see his other hand sinking closer to his sheathed weapon  "I moved to Delaware, Joy, not Mars.  We could have made it work.  You didn't want to."

The last accusing words stung.

Nilmath extended her hand and took one more step forward.  She was almost there.  Looking at the gray elf's grave face, she could almost see a vague expression of regret and was almost positive that the more human visage behind the elf held the same expression.

"I'm saying I was wrong.  We shouldn't have broken up."

The teleportation cloak flashed red.  Three turns had elapsed.  Finrod's eyes widened.  His mouth started to form a syllable.  Then he was gone.

Violet

"A priest, a rabbi, and a duck walk into a bar.  The bartender looks up at them and says, "Is this a joke?"

This is what it has taken me two hours to write.  A bad joke meant to mock the mother of  all bad jokes.  My name is Barry Chumble and, right now, I am sitting in the Des Plaines Public Library, preparing a stand-up routine for my first ever open mic.

The open mic is on Friday.  Today is Thursday.  I have, in my repertoire, a half-memorized monologue about the time I was mistaken for a street performer in Lincoln Park and a probably misogynistic rant against women who drive Smart cars.  It isn't great stuff, but my life doesn't afford me great material.  I'm Barry Chumble - hotel bartender by day, aspiring comedian by  night.  It worries me that I don't have enough anxiety in my life.

The fluorescent lights in this room are making me sick. How many Republicans does it take to change a lightbulb?  Change?  Why change?

I should stop staring at the ceiling.  It isn't helping me think.

Across from me, three tables down, clad in a violet suit jacket and rosate khaki shorts, Bill Murray is reading a magazine.

It takes a moment for that to register and I begin to realize that I have been sitting in this room for at least an hour with one of my comedy idols, as if this were an every day occurrence.

He looks thoughtful and I can't quite see the title of the publication he's reading, but  I'm sure that, whatever it is, I want to be reading it too.

Nearby to my chicken scratch notes, full of the fruits of "As-Seen-On-TV" comedy classes, there is the dog-eared copy of National Geographic. Its cover article is about the South American snapping turtle.

If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

This is a disaster.  Focus.  Maybe it's not the seminal star of Ghosbusters and Caddyshack  after all.

I sneak another glance.  It's definitely him.

What is Bill Murray doing in Des Plaines?

Doesn't matter.  I need to speak to him.  How many aspiring comedians would kill for this opportunity?

Then it hits me.  I come up with an ice-breaker line - just obscure enough to show that I'm a true fan, but not so obscure that Murray himself wouldn't get the reference.  Maybe something from Meatballs or Stripes?  Definitely nothing after 1993.  Any movie made after Groundhog Day isn't vintage Murray.  I say the line to Murray and he laughs and shakes my hand.  Or maybe he doesn't.  Maybe he cruelly and viciously puts me down with the caustic arrogance of a Hollywood star.  Either way, I have a story, a real story, from which to build my act.

Bill Murray has fixed my writer's block.

All right, Barry.  Take a deep breath.  Get up from that chair.  Today is the day for decisive action! ...or is it?

Blue

The water was a sky blue tortoise back, with nary the aftermath of a scream on the surface. 

As he looked at the pool, Travis knew that he couldn't do it. His toes gripped the gravelly surface of the diving platform, prehensile safeguards against disaster. A drop of water fell fifteen feet from the underside of the platform, as if to say, "Look how easy this is." 

But it wasn't easy. Without his glasses, the up-turned faces of the other students appeared as formless splashes of color. The blobs were wordlessly waiting their turn, waiting to show him how it was done. Travis bitterly wondered why his last name had to be Abernathy-Taylor. 

His last name was Abernathy-Taylor because his father, Dr. Martin Taylor D.D.S., had decided, on February 12th, 1994, to run off to Atlanta, Georgia with one of his dental assistants. His last name was Abernathy-Taylor because, five years later, a charming insurance salesman named John Abernathy, with an equally charming Scottish accent, had come to Travis's mother's front door to peddle his services. Abernathy-Taylor - to Travis - was alphabetical suicide at a school whose teachers were fond of ordering class presentations by last name, and had caused a string of embarrassing misfires for Travis from grades two to six. Abernathy-Taylor was the reason, on his second day of middle school gym class, he was ready to fail again, on a fifteen-foot-tall stage. 

A murmur ran through the colorful blobs, or was it laughter?  Somewhere unseen, a clock ticked.

Travis wondered if he could just stall the rest of the class period out, or fake some sort of sudden illness. Below, without his glasses, the pool was full of swirling waves of fuzzy blue and white streaks. It looked more like a blue sky, viewed from out an airplane window, than the indoor pool at Herbert Hoover Middle School. 

Two years ago was the first time Travis had ever been on an airplane. In 1997, his mother had loaded him onto a flight from San Francisco to Atlanta, Georgia, as a human olive branch, hoping that the sight of the long-neglected son would be enough to melt the iciness of the father's heart. Travis had stayed awake the whole flight, his nose pressed against the window. He had watched the atmosphere swoop by below, holding out hope for a fatherly embrace that was born out of true affection and not obligation. It was the most at peace he had ever felt. There was something calming about sitting with your own thoughts, high above everyone else, knowing that once you landed, everything would go back to being horrible and broken and wrong. 

The platform wobbled. The gym teacher was ascending the diving platform to help get the fat kid into the pool so the other kids could dive. Travis took a deep breath, and stepped forward. There was no way to escape the inevitable. The bell rang, shattering the stillness of his sanctuary. Class was over.