Some gals we met through a local “Open Mike” event invited my family and I to pop out to their high school and participate in a public reading.

We love to show our support for stuff like that and were delighted to accept.  The only problem is, I needed something new to read.  And over the course of a couple of days, a notion for a short tale presented itself to me, pretty much full-blown.  A few touch-ups here and there but nothing serious.  It’s wondrous when that happens.  All the proof I need that the universe is conscious, sentient and permanently beyond human ken.

The story’s short, vivid, to the point.  Read on…

Faggot

“Bagshaw,” my father says suddenly.  He’s been silent nearly an hour and his voice gives me a start.

“What was that, Dad?”

“Who I was talking about.”  Shooting me a stern look.  “The little queer.”  I don’t remember any reference to Bagshaw but, never mind; clearly he’s been off on some kind of mental ramble.  “Worked at head office with me.  A swish, and not ashamed to flaunt it either.”  He pauses to get his breath.  His lips are dry and grey.  Everything in the process of shutting down.  Propped up to help him breathe, Demerol to handle the pain.  He’s making a sound, wheezing, could it be…laughter?  “Lord, how I tormented that man.”

“What did you do?”

His face is still drawn but animated by something that looks suspiciously like a smirk.  “I’d put thumbtacks and pins on his chair.  Not every day, spacing it out so he’d always be caught off guard.  I was down the hall but I could hear him squeal.  Served him right.”  I’m leaning forward, fists clenched.  Make myself ease back in the chair, force open my furious hands.  He angles his head toward me.  His eyes sunken, lusterless.  Dark holes in his face.  “Other things too.  I’d send him flowers, have them delivered right to his office.  With a card, Love, Charlie or whatever.”

“You’re kidding.”  I can’t help it, blurting it out.

“Sure.”  His thin smile confirming it.

I haven’t seen this side of him before; I’ve often found him thoughtless but never believed him capable of out-and-out malice.  “You hated him that much?”

“He made me sick.  And I wasn’t the only one.  But I was the sneakiest.”  A sly wink.  “I’d call him, late at night.”

“Call him…”

“Never from home.  Sometimes from other cities.  He’d change his number, get an unlisted one…”  His face crinkling with mirth.  “Didn’t matter.  I worked with the guy.  In Human Resources, no less.  Jesus.  I knew where the bodies were buried and how to find them.  That’s why I lasted so long.”  He gestures for the water glass and I automatically move to comply.  Holding it for him while he sips through a straw.  One final indignity he must endure.

“What would you say,” I ask, once he’s done.  “When you called him.”

“Sometimes nothing.  Just letting him know I was still out there.  Other times I’d be all…uh…y’know…you queer, you dirty, little faggot…you’ll get what’s coming to you.  Just spooking him.”  I back away, fumbling behind me for the chair.  Then I realize I still have the glass and must rise once more, replacing it on the nightstand beside the bed.  Finding it difficult to approach him again, this stranger I’ve known all my life.

“What was his first name?”

“What?  I don’t recall.  He only lasted a year.”

“He quit?”

“Couldn’t take it, I guess.”  There’s no remorse, that’s the thing.  He’s talking about running over a dog in the street, thirty years after the fact.

“And then you left him alone?  Or—”

“Hell, no.”  Frowning at his foolish son. “That might look suspicious, give him ideas.  I kept at it six more months.  Just to be safe…”  He’s fading again, ebbing away.  “Old Bagshaw.”  Almost a whisper.  “You know, the bastard actually lisped?”

My father is sixty-four years old and staunchly conservative.  A self-made man.  In our house, he was the one who held the reins and cracked the whip.  Stern but fair, I guess you could say.  My sister sees it differently; she believes mom worked and worried herself to death, trying to please him.

I should tell him.  Right now.  Go over and spit it right into his face.  Just to see his reaction. God.  Wouldn’t that be something?  I’m dying to tell him, I’m about to tell him…but at that moment his mouth sort of sags open and my dying father begins to snore.

© Copyright, 2011 Cliff Burns (All Rights Reserved)