David J Ebner

Summer

2010-05-07T00:12:00.001-04:00

There is something eccentric afoot. Something in the air that sweetens my mouth. Maybe it’s the fireflies in there night dance for the moons muse, producing a sweet nectar that floats through the dense mug. The moon is but a patron at a gentleman’s club, shouting and hooting for the fireflies to caress the bewildered leaves of grass below, begging, yearning for more. In return the moon gives a sacrifice as the natives of this land once did to him, one of flesh. He gives the flies his warmth, his life, his light. The moon is what makes them fireflies.
I can taste it though. I can taste their musk. The pollen from the trees cry with envy, they get but Spanish moss to drape their unsightly woodworked sills. Their canopy offers partial relief, but nothing can protect man from the heat radiated from the ground up, nor a leaky roof.
No the taste is more of wild berry pie and sweet corn. It’s the taste of water savory banana peppers and dirty deep red tomatoes. It’s the taste of fresh picked raspberries. It has notes of children laughing and the scent of sulfur ridden sparklers. It is summer and it is berthing from the womb of the defrosting Mother Nature.

Sky Mall

2010-01-02T11:58:00.003-05:00

“You can find the weirdest things in this Sky Mall magazine.” Jerry set down a glass containing a sip of scotch as he read his magazine at the kitchen table.
“Yeah.” Nancy continued to clean what had become a filthy kitchen.
For twenty years the couple had been known as the Howell’s, they went through all the motions that society dictated a married couple should do, except having children.
Jerry looked up at his wife. “What’s wrong?”
“Noting,” Nancy blew some hair from her face, “this kitchen is just so damn messy.”
“It was worth it though. Don’t you think?” Jerry left his magazine and his scotch to help his wife clean.
“I guess.”
“You guess? Honey this party meant the world to Bobby, it’s not every day you turn three.”
“Jerry, he’s a sloth. And will you please stop cleaning, you just got home, you should be resting.”
“I don’t need to rest, I want to help. And I thought you cared about Bobby more than that.” He picked up a dish and began to wash it. “Bobby’s all we have. He’s the closest thing to a child we’ve got.”
Nancy tried to hide it, but the tears streaming down her face made it impossible.
“Nancy, what’s wrong honey?” Jerry embraced her as she dropped slowly until she was seated on the floor.
“There’s something that I need to tell you.” She escaped through sobs.
“What is it?” He moved the hair out of her face to reveal her watered eyes.
“I had an abortion last week, when you were working.”
“What?” He slid away from her on the tile floor.
“An abortion, I had an abortion.” She tilted her head to avert her eyes.
“Why?” Salty streams then began to flow down his face.
“Because I was pregnant-“
“I’m not a fool Nancy! I understand that. I want to know why, after twenty years of trying, you would do this now? Nancy, Why?”
“I didn’t want to have a child. I’m forty-two years old, what would people say?” She stood up and started to walk away from Jerry.
“Did you think about what I would say? Did you, for one second, stop and think of the consequences? What this might do to us?” He stood and directed his comments at the back of her head.
She stopped.
“Of course I did. I just though you loved me enough to understand.” She turned around to face him.
“Nancy, I love you more than anything on this earth. I love you more than life itself. But not even Jesus loves you enough to understand this.” Jerry numbly walked to the bedroom and packed a bag.
“Where are you going?” Nancy leaned against the doorway.
“I’m going to see if I can pick up someone's flights for a few days. I need to think.” He walked toward the front door.
“I love you!” Nancy yelled out of the house after him. She received nothing in return.

An old friend : Julian Rosen

2009-12-28T22:49:00.002-05:00

Julian Rosen sprinted with all his might, with all his will to live he ran. Large billows of white breath steamed from his mouth and he gasped. His hair was tired but still had the faint remnants of a pompadour. His bow tie untied, his dress shirt partly brown with stains of soil and dried blood, tiny tears couldn’t be seen in the ruffles of his blouse, and he didn’t care. Six ounces of flour-white sand gathered in his left shoe while only four ounces weighted his right.
His legs moved faster than time would allow, so fast that he began to out-pace his surroundings. The waves embarked on their endless quest for the perfect shore with patience. The small birds scampered in linear form away from the water, but did so at leisure. The hermit crabs retracted into their microscopic caves singing their praise to the sea for a swift getaway, the birds couldn’t catch them, not even at this pace.
Julian remembered that he had hands, and clamped to his left was a cuff, which was welded to a chain, attached to a locked metal briefcase. In the briefcase was the last possession that he would ever own, but that was not why he was being chased.

With a Turn and a Wink

2009-06-23T23:48:00.001-04:00

A young woman made a slight jog up the stairs at Kent State University’s Arts and Sciences building. She composed the full definition of bounce. From her curly fry hair to her pure, white meat bust, she was engineered solely of elastic. Even when she finished the last step, almond hair teased her full cheeks with whispers of contact. The bulky mathematics books were enigmas compared to her milky robust cleavage just inches away. The sweater she wore lacked the button that guarded the border between conservancy and promiscuity. Her slate blue eyes were inviting pools that overflowed with excitement and erotica. Her eyes screamed, “All swim at their own risk.”
As she walks further down the hallway, it is hard to not loose oneself in her posterior. Her hind parts were disclosed by a loose fitting, short, white skirt. The derriere under the skirt could be seen rising and falling from left to right. Time stopped along with the hearts of many men when the sound of her pencil striking the floor echoed throughout the corridor. The sight of the woman bending not at the knees, but the hip, could dislodge a man’s Adam’s apple. The bottom of her skirt ascended just to the point of exposure when she reached the object on the ground.
The woman continued on entering a room with a turn and a wink.

A new brand of insect

2009-06-21T13:20:00.004-04:00

The person that wrote “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone” should have a newly discovered insect named after him. There aren’t many truths that I know of or believe in other than at some point you are born and at another you die. The time in between is what is called life and is yours to make it what you will. There are three forms of life: dying (for those “woe is me… we are all just waiting to die” types), existing (these are the people who scrounge up what little happiness that can be found at the bottom of a bottle and hide in it for fifty years) and then there’s living. Living is what a person transmits, not through action, but absorption. A person who lives, lives on in others even after they die. This person may not do much with their life, but much is done about it when they are gone. People cry about a person who lives and they are selfish. The ones who care the most are selfish; they want the person back for the gain they feel when that person is with them. A person lives when you can look at their loved ones and see not just sadness, but disarray and confusion. The loved ones search for guidance in the abyss of their thoughts for a fading light of the past to direct them through a life without the deceased.
A person who lives never dies, but is saved. Saved for the worst of times and those times in which even God seems to take sides. Saved for an important birthday, wedding, graduation, promotion or meaningful occurrence; to be remembered and appreciated. Love can’t even explain a man who lived. You can love a cat, but you can admire a man who lived.
I know a man who lived. I know a man who was saved. I know a man who is remembered and appreciated. I know a man who calls to me in the fading light of the past and directs me to a future without him. Mostly, I know a man who I admire.
Who would have thought that the first meaningful Father’s Day would be the first I would have to conquer without you? Possibly the man who wrote, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

I love you dad, and I miss you.
Happy Father’s Day,
David

The Musician

2009-06-19T00:01:00.002-04:00

The bold yellow and red light glistens on his suit made of pure silver. The natural glow that he once had is now a whispered memory compared to his reflection in the par can lights. His smile gristly condenses the wrinkles on his face of prickles, and his teeth expose a structure of great precision. The young man’s eyes leer as if they were mirrors peering into one’s own soul. The clamminess of his salty sweat hands becomes apparent to him, and he wipes them frantically on his pant leg. He watches the smoke infuse the room, escaping from the silhouettes whose stares are as blank as their appearances. The reverb is ringing, and the shadows are shouting. Sweat starts to bubble under the man’s dress hat as he reaches for his once block of wood. His hands shake with anticipation and his intestines tremble in fear. He shakes out the demons that he can, and he drowns the rest in a bottle of beer. He knows what is to come. For the next hour there will be cheering, laughing, hooting and clapping. Joseph Vega lets the reverb ring no more, and gives his followers one last leer with his eyes of mirrors as he strums out the anticipation of the masses.

Response to Sticks and Bones

2009-06-17T23:01:00.002-04:00

To date Sticks and Bones is one of my favorite pieces because it is a reflection of my life. When I was eight my family moved to Barberton, a medium sized town in Northeast Ohio. We only moved from the next town over, but to me it could have been a new world. A world of excitement and adventure; one of possibility and imagination. That world was the woods. In the woods you can build your own future, literally; forts, tree houses, trails, sledding shoots, paintball arenas, anything. You can run from life in the woods or you can be chased by it, you can hunt or be hunted. I lived in the woods with my brothers and our neighbors; it’s where we escaped from school and arguing parents.
Those were the last happy days before the great shit consumed my life. After my mother and father got divorced we moved from the woods, ironically down the street from where my dad lived. We moved to a subdivision, no woods and no adventure. From the time I was 12 until about two and a half years ago when I moved to Tampa and became a true student at the University of South Florida my life was not very appeasing. The interesting thing is that those eight years were my development years. The man I am today was built on the tears and the lonely nights of those years. Those years will be further explored in stories to come.
To sum up the reason this story is so important to me; it was my pre-development years. It was the time in which I was truly free and didn’t know it. I think that is the only time you are really free. When you don’t know you are free you don’t know what freedom is because you haven’t experienced the prison we call the daily grind.
Feel free to write comments and let me know what you think of my writing.
Flood the Levies.

Sticks and Bones: Part 2

2009-06-16T00:09:00.006-04:00

“Hey Georgie, come here,” Mike waved. “You still wanna shoot the gun?”
“Yeah!” Georgie left Mr. Scruffles and hurried to Mike’s side.
“Now, only real men can shoot a gun, and I’m not sure if you’re a real man yet.”
“I am, I am, I swear.”
“You’re gonna have to prove it.” Mike extended the stock of the gun in Georgie’s direction and they both held it.
“No,” Darien commanded from a few feet away.
“Shut up, ‘tard, let him prove himself.” Aaron held up the knife.
“Yeah, let me prove myself. I can do it.”
“I want you to shoot the dog.” Mike leaned down to Georgie’s height and, fixed on his eyes, he whispered, “I want you to shoot the dog in the head.”
“Why? No. I won’t!” Georgie retreated back toward the dog and held him whispering words of comfort into the dog’s ears.
“Then I will.” Mike wielded the rifle in the direction of the Labrador.
“Hey, don’t point that at my brother!” Darien grabbed the gun, and a three way tug-of-war began.
Mike, Darien and Aaron spun around in a frenzied circle. A merry-go-round fueled by adrenaline, excitement and fear derailed to a rolling wrestle. Boots came sliding off and jackets furiously opened as they rolled flat the powdery surface.
“It’s okay Mr. Scruffles, I’ll save you.” Georgie started to untie the knot that imprisoned the dog.
It was apparent that Darien was out-muscled when Aaron pulled the gun from the group and took aim at Georgie and the Labrador. Darien swung at Aaron and was able to catch his shoulder.
The gun fired.
Hitting the dog in the hind parts did nothing more than startle him. He pulled free of his loosened rope and leapt onto Georgie. Aaron gathered himself from the ground and stood up with anger in his blood and a knife in his hand. Darien turned to confront the boy that almost shot his brother. Aaron slashed the six-inch blade of his father’s Buck knife in Darien’s direction. Missing at first, he swiftly returned for another attempt. The blade sliced past his open jacket across his chest and fell to the ground. Darien was stunned, as well as the other boys, once they realized where the brawl had taken them. Darien dropped to his knees in amazement, staring down at the wood-and-gold-plated grip lying in the snow in front of his knees. His blood was visible on the blade, a dark burgundy dripping onto the bleached snow.
A splash diverted their attention to the canal. Where a smiling boy and a yellow Labrador had once cuddled, now came nothing but the sound of wading waters; then a yelp.
Aaron and Mike took off, running to their houses with the speed of hunted children. Darien left the knife half-buried in a bed of snow. He haphazardly made his way to the water. When he came to the shore he saw Georgie trying to stand in the shallows of the canal, the current deterring his efforts. Mr. Scruffles was swimming to the other side, struggling as well.
“Darien, I can’t stand up.” Georgie struggled and his legs gave in. He began to float carelessly with the current.
“Georgie!” Darien hurried down the embankment and dove at his brother.
He splashed his way to Georgie’s side, and then dragged him to the water’s edge by the sleeve of his coat.
“Keep moving.” Darien pushed him up the bank, gasping in the burning coarseness of the icy air. “You can’t stop moving.” He turned and noticed the dog still fighting to prove the worthiness of his existence. The dog bobbed at a pace that slowed with each tread and his mouth steamed like the smokestack of a sinking ship. No mayday was heard by Darien as Mr. Scruffles went under.
“I’m sssso cooold,” Georgie stuttered as he moved.
“I know, I know, me too.”
The boys hobbled along, Darien holding the left side of his chest. They dropped like falling leaves next to the lantern.
“You hold that lantern as tight as you can, okay?” Darien winced in pain.
“Darien, yooou’re bleeding.”
Darien looked down at his chest and saw that his wound was exposed through his shirt.
“It’s okay, I’m fine.” He zipped his jacket closed. “We have to get inside.”
“Do yooou know where we are?” Georgie looked up in search of a distinguishable landmark, but found none.
“No, not really, but we have to get moving, it’s starting to get dark.”
Both boys rose and as they did it started to snow. Georgie picked up the lantern and Darien grabbed the knife. They marched on through the worsening conditions. They climbed over logs and crouched under branches, but were unable to decipher the pressed path from the wooded wilderness. They guessed once, and then once more, until their guesses became futile in a Tetris of trees. They used branches and trunks to propel themselves forward, but after two hours they were trudging deep in unknown territory where the snow fell, merciless, on them.
“I’m tired.” Georgie had been dragging his feet for over a mile.
“We can’t stop, Georgie.” Darien’s chest was starting to wear on his outer clothing.
“I can’t go any farther.” Georgie collapsed.
“Maybe just five minutes.” Darien fell as well.
The two huddled together in a small hole dug into the earth by some older boys that used the woods for paintballing in the warmer months. The hole’s depth was a few feet at its center, and it was wide enough for the two of them. Darien held Georgie, who never let go of the low-burning lantern.
“Darien?” The hole concealed Georgie’s quiet voice.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Mr. Scruffles is okay?”
Darien debated which lie would be the best to tell. “Sure, I saw him swim to the other side.” The farthest from the truth was the best.
A few minutes passed with nothing but hard breaths between the two.
“Why?” Georgie’s blond hair was now covered with snow in the front, and his brother’s blood in the back.
“Why what?”
“Why did they do this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always know.” A tear rolled down his face before freezing at his chin.
“I’m sorry, Georgie, but this time I don’t.”
“I’m getting sleepy.” Georgie’s eyes began to glaze.
“Okay, you sleep for a little bit and I’ll stay awake.” Darien felt bad that he had no logical answer for his little brother, although he knew that sleeping was a bad idea.
“Darien?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you sing for me?”
“Like Mom?”
“No, like Dad?”
Darien thought for a moment. “I’ve never heard Dad sing before. Have you?"
“Yeah.” Georgie wiggled into a comfortable position. “He used to come into my room when I was supposed to be asleep, and he would sing to me. I don’t think he knew I was awake.”
“Okay, well how did he sing?”
“With a deep voice, you know? Like the Koolaid guy.”
Darien chuckled. “Okay. What do you want to hear?”
“Anything.”
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know...”
Georgie was sleeping within seconds. Darien sat with his brother in his arms and all he could think about was the knife in his pocket, so he took it out. He opened the knife, his own dried blood frosting the blade. He examined it until the sight of the knife produced tears on his chapped face. Darien closed his eyes and the snow continued to fall.

The authorities gathered their maps and layered their clothes, but the storm had reclaimed the woods. For three days they found nothing and had decided that the fate of the children was lost. They shifted from rescue to recovery. Aaron constructed a story to tell the concerned parties when they asked of the brothers’ whereabouts.
“Darien and Georgie? They were supposed to meet us here, but never showed up. We thought they just stayed home.”
On the morning of the third day, a man hunting for whitetail deer walked onto a shallow depression in the snow and stepped on what he thought was a log.
Crack.

Next Post...6/19

Sticks and Bones: Part 1

2009-06-12T14:44:00.006-04:00

Running is always more rewarding when home is the destination. The two brothers ran upon the slush and snow-covered concrete as if they were being chased by time itself. The ‘yellow Twinkie,’ as they called it, pulled away with screeching brakes; the boys had but seventeen hours until its planned rendezvous. Darien and Georgie didn’t need to speak; their minds yelled in unison: Faster, faster.
Darien’s brown hair shook in conjunction with his back pack, and his eyes began to tear in the cold air. He and Georgie were more than brothers, they were partners. They had no other choice. Three years prior, when Darien was Georgie’s age, their father left. They had to choose: rely on their absent-minded mother or each other.
The house in which they slept was nothing more than a one-hundred-thousand-dollar fueling station where they consumed, excreted and recharged. It wasn’t much to look at, but the boys hardly did. It had grey aluminum siding, a light shadow of mold on the bottom of each panel. The only sign of joy was a basketball hoop covered in snow just off the drive way. It sat in waiting for the sun to reclaim its purpose in the spring when the boys would laugh in joy as they assumed the personalities of their favorite NBA stars. Georgie was always Michael Jordan, and Darien was Steve Kerr.
Darien and Georgie dropped their back packs in the foyer, grabbed a pop from the fridge, and exited through the garage. They ran once more down the sloping, curvy road to their friend’s house.
The boys had just moved to the neighborhood a year prior and were finally receiving some equality among Mike and Aaron who had been neighbors since birth.
“Aaron! Aaron,” Darien shouted at a cream-colored, ranch-style house. “Aaron!”
A boy exited through a side door wearing half his coat and chewing on an apple. His hair was disheveled and his boots untied and dragging. “Hey.” Aaron finished dressing. He was a boy who associated himself with the outdoors and looked as though he did.
“Georgie, go get Mike, and hurry up,” Aaron said.
Darien’s towheaded brother ran the best he could in his two-sizes-too-big winter clothes. He disappeared through the bushes dividing the two yards.
Aaron and Darien walked to the detached garage where they grabbed a homemade lantern and three shovels. The lantern was a metal coffee can that housed cardboard coiled in circles covered in wax. When the lantern was lighted it burned for hours.
“Here, take these.” Aaron shoved the items toward Darien.
“What are you gonna carry?” He struggled with the objects.
“Dude, I’m eating.” Aaron climbed into the bed of his father’s 1984 F-150. He opened a rusting, mounted tool box and his eyes widened. “I’m carrying this.” He pulled a vintage Buck hunting knife from the box and held it in the air. He quickly closed and latched the box.
“Does your dad know?”
“Of course he knows. He always lets me take his knife. Come on.” Aaron leapt from the truck bed and they left the garage.
Georgie, now accompanied by Mike, met Darien and Aaron on the road leading to the bottom of the dead-end street. Darien redistributed the shovels and Aaron found a stick on which to carry the lantern that gave him a likeness to a disgruntled mine worker, delving to the depths.
Mike was less rash than his friend Aaron, but the difference was unapparent when he and Aaron were together. He was tall and lanky and enjoyed his superior position over Darien and Georgie after twelve years of being Aaron’s subordinate.
“Hey, Mike, ya think I could shoot the BB-gun this time?” Georgie asked as he struggled to keep up.
“This gun’s for men only. You think you’re a man?” Mike looked down the sight.
“He’s barely a boy,” Aaron interjected.
“Sure...I guess so,” Georgie said.
“We’ll see.” Mike rested the gun upon his shoulder.
The road narrowed as the boys made their way to its dead end turnaround. They were now in a small valley, the road cutting through like an ancient water way, and on either side houses were perched up on the hill. Periodically, a clump of thick snow would fall from a dead tree reminding the boys of their seclusion.
Every ten paces Georgie would find something on the ground that he felt compelled to prod, falling quickly behind.
“Move your ass.”Aaron chucked his apple at the roadside.
“Hurry up, Georgie.” Darien stopped to wait for his brother.
The rubbing of Georgie’s robust snow-pants was soothing to Darien in the silent, frigid air. The sound reminded him of playing in the snow, but most of all it reminded him of Christmas and cinnamon.
Every Christmas morning played like a rerun in Darien’s mind.

He would lie in his bed trying to sleep off his excitement and the smell of apple pie baking in the kitchen. Georgie would come sneaking in to leap on his sleeping brother claiming him as his Christmas captive. Georgie always wore his snow pants in anticipation ofr the outside adventure that followed the gift extravaganza. The “swish swish” of his approaching brother gave Darien ample time to jump at him in a roar, sending Georgie off in shrieks. The last Christmas was different though, there was no Georgie prowling around Darien’s bedpost. There was no apple pie wafting it’s sent to Darien’s sleeping nose. Darien went downstairs to find Georgie opening presents alone and his mother in the kitchen carelessly plopping honey glaze on the Christmas ham. Darien’s father had gone away.

They reached the end of the road and Aaron lighted the lantern. Without saying a word they continued past the yellow barrier and the signs that read “No Dumping.”
“Be careful not to step in any puddles,” Darien said as he turned toward his brother, “You won’t like walking back to the house in wet shoes.”
“I know, I know, I’ve done this a million times before.”
The quartet ventured into the woods almost every day after school. They had begun building a fort from the remains of dead trees in the later days of fall, and they were only a few more from finishing. The only hitch was the loosely enforced curfew at dark, established by their mothers.
The path was clean at first, carved and flattened by four-wheelers and dirt-bikes. Snow was the trekkers’ only obstruction until they reached the end of the path, then they hurdled logs and ducked branches. Every step in the snow came with a crack at their feet. Aaron had told the boys on numerous occasions that they were stepping, not on sticks, but the bones of the recently murdered. He would testify that killers would come out to those same woods just before a snow storm and dump the bodies of the victims. By the time spring came, the bones would have been swallowed by the earth, leaving no trace. The boys always gave Aaron his due chuckle at the end of his tale, half out of courtesy, and half out of fear for the stillness that embodied his voice.
Darien noticed that Aaron was leading the group in the wrong direction. “Aaron?”
“What?”
“Where’re we goin’?” Darien hurried to Aaron’s side.
“We have a surprise.”
“Yeah, a surprise,” Mike added.
“Oh, kinda like a present?” Georgie couldn’t resist.
“Sure, like a present.” Mike cocked the gun and, while walking, fired at a bird in the tree tops above.
Before long they stumbled into a clearing. Darien’s breathing lightened when he heard the familiar sounds of what they called the canal - a strong stream that ran but twenty yards parallel to the Ohio-Erie Canal. The canal had a good current that made it great for rafting in the summer and kept it from freezing on the coldest of winter days. The boys let into a run toward the canal, and didn’t stop until they came upon a yellow Labrador tied at the embankment, wagging its tail at the sight of humans.
Darien stopped short and dropped his shovel. “What’s this?” A look of confusion crossed his brow.
Mike and Aaron walked up behind him.
“It’s a mutt. What the hell do ya think?” Aaron set down the lantern.
“What is it doing here?” Darien turned around to face the two.
“Oh, a doggie!”Georgie ran up and embraced the Labrador. “I’m gonna name him Mr. Scruffles.” The dog licked Georgie’s face.
“We caught him, and now were gonna have a little fun.” Mike grinned.
“What do you mean you caught him? How long has he been out here?” Darien demanded.
“Darien, look, he likes me.” Georgie was now dripping with dog saliva.
“It doesn’t matter. Stop being such a freakin’ ‘tard.” Aaron pulled out the Buck knife.
Darien stepped back.

To Be Continued... on 6/16