Clamhead

777 words

This is awful. But with a hundred floor of frights, they can’t all be winners.

He tapped his pen rapidly against the Formica tabletop. Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap. He usually did this when he was deep in thought or reading. He was doing the latter at the moment. He squinted at his laptop screen. It was an Acer, at least seven years old, and on its last legs. Glancing around the coffee shop, everyone else seemed to be displaying silver laptops featuring glowing fruit. But those laptops, he knew, were too pricey for him.

Taptaptap. Taptap. Tap.

His lips moved unconsciously as he read. He nodded vaguely, then retrieved his phone from his worn leather briefcase. He noticed messenger bags were all the rage right now, but he preferred what he had. He’d been using his once-glossy leather suitcase for almost 30 years and didn’t see a reason why he should wrinkle his carefully pressed shirts by flinging a canvas strap across his chest. He also thought those bags looked, well, sloppy. Untrustworthy. A man with a briefcase is a man you can trust.

He held his phone next to the laptop screen, his eyes darting between them, comparing the two. Unlike the laptop, the phone had been purchased recently. It was a smartphone, technology now required of all employees of the Betterfield Realtor Team. It had to do with the app. All employees must have the Betterfield app installed on their phones to give each client “the complete attention you deserve when finding your home sweet home.” He’d had to give up his beloved Blackberry, which was a shame. He liked the tactile buttons and the satisfying click they made. This new phone had a strange, smooth screen, and though the phone makers had programmed a clicking sound plus some sort of mechanical thunk—he could feel it in his hand—fake buttons just weren’t the same. But he had to admit he really liked that Candy Crush game.

But now the company needed him to install an additional app. It was a several-step ordeal, and they’d sent out an email with instructions. The directions were lengthy, and began with, “It’s easy. Simply…” He didn’t think this was easy. And the process was not, to his mind, simple. He could have gone into the office and have Steve, the IT person help him. And Steve would have been more than happy to do so, without or condescension. He was a good guy. But having someone else do this would be admitting he needed help, and needing help with technology was yet another sign that he was getting older. “Not ‘older,’ he thought, peering at his phone, ‘old.’”

He sat back in his booth and uncapped his pen. It was one of the good ones he liked—a Uniball. He reached into his briefcase again without looking; his hand felt around and pulled out a yellow legal pad. Another blast from the past he couldn’t give up. Everyone else seemed to take notes on their phones or laptops; he preferred pen and paper. He flipped up the top page, folded it behind the cardboard backing, and set it on the table. He wasn’t sure why he needed the pad right then. He supposed he felt comforted by it in the face of technology.

He was doodling when the woman walked by. His doodle depicted a smartphone with a speech bubble floating next to its little screen. The phone was declaring, “I HATE PEOPLE!”, but the screen itself had a little smiley face. He glanced up at the woman, made eye contact, then returned to his legal pad.

“Oh hey, it’s you,” the woman said, stopping next to his chair. She had a look of amusement playing in her eyes.

“Pardon?” he said, startled. He looked around. “Me?”

“You’re the bench guy,” she said, motioning toward the shop’s front doors. “The real estate agent? I see your ads on the bus benches all of the time.”

“Realtor,” he said. “It’s… a trademarked thing. Most people don’t know that.” He shrank inwardly. It was a pedantic thing to say. But he continued anyway, unable to stop. “You have to take a test and everything. Get a license.”

She smiled. “What’s your slogan again? Something like… ‘Welcome home’?”

He laughed. “You’re close. It’s, ‘Your home. You’re home.’ The two different ‘yours,’” he felt himself babbling again. She was an attractive woman. “Um, it’s a play on words. It’s better when you see it,” he said.

“No, no. I get it,” she said. “It’s clever. Really.” She waited. He wasn’t sure what she was expecting.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I’m Kevin. Kevin Lancaster,” he extended his hand.

“Maddie Markel,” she took it.

814 words

Oof, this was hard. I wasn’t sure where I wanted this to go, and exposition has always been a challenge for me. Looking back, I realize I’ve been shifting between tenses, so if this becomes a full-blown short story, I’ll need to do some hefty editing. Also, I clearly read too much Stephen King (if there is such a thing as that).

He squatted. The tide swelled apathetically around his feet, and oily water seeped into his worn, too-large shoes. He should have removed his shoes before stepping into the water; keeping his feet dry was important. Walking on soft, wrinkled, water-logged feet for long periods of time could cause blisters and ultimately open sores. And once his feet became damaged, he would no longer be able to keep moving. But as he dipped his hand in and out of the contaminated water, he felt he had more pressing matters at the moment.

He held up his hand. His raw, pink palm stood in sharp relief against the iron-gray sky. He watched as thin rivers of red trickled down his forearm and collected at the rolled-up sleeve of his flannel shirt. He unfastened the shirt buttons awkwardly with one hand, gingerly slipped out of the sleeves, then dropped the shirt to the ground. He planted a wet shoe on the placket, and with his good hand, pulled hard on the sleeve near the shoulder seam. The threads were popped and frayed, and the sleeve easily came loose.

The puncture wounds began to seep a deep, syrupy red, and he pressed his wrist to his breastbone. His undershirt, already shiny with grime, didn’t register the new addition. He lifted his wrist, placed the severed sleeve against his chest and held it in place with his injured arm. With his right hand, he wrapped the flannel around his wrist then tied it in a knot, tightening it with his teeth. The fabric left a gritty residue in his mouth, and he spat a few times to clear it.

It was an impotent effort toward dressing the wound. He shuffled toward the shipping container, the one he’d slept in the night before, and sat down heavily. Most of the container was submerged in coarse, damp sand, too thick to clear away with bare hands. The sheet of plastic he’d used to protect his sleeping body from the wet had since collected water—condensation from the air, maybe—and he could feel his pants become cold and sodden.

He pulled his knees in close, digging his toes into the sand, and listened. There was no sign of the dog or any other living form. There was the shoosh of water on the shoreline. There was the dull, hollow thud of old plastic containers knocking between rocks, trying to free themselves. There was the crunch of pebbles under his soles as he shifted his feet. There was nothing else.

He marveled at how different his situation was now than just fifteen minutes earlier. Before the dog, he’d been whole, and about to have the first meal he’d had in days. His feet and clothes had been mostly dry, and there was no immediate death sentence waiting for him. Had he known, he would have conceded the can to the dog. “One hand for one can,” he said aloud. Finally, he pushed his body upright. It was time to walk. There was nothing else he could do.

He stayed close to the water, examining the tide pools. There used to be crabs, starfish, sea anemones. Any of those would be a welcome feast. But those had either long been picked off by the last remaining birds or people, or had died off themselves. Every so often he’d see a bloated fish—a rockfish or a halibut—floating in one of the pools. He’d been hungry enough to bite into their rancid, flabby carcasses, bones and all, but he restrained himself. The fish had absorbed the worst of it. Judging by the seabirds who had taken the chance on a sushi dinner, succumbing to hunger would be a decidedly superior fate than the death they’d faced. He’d seen them strewn across the shore. Their swollen, black tongues lolled out of gaping, lifeless beaks; their eyes oozing and crusted; their bodies a crumple of feathers and flesh. Of course, he hadn’t seen any birds—dead or alive—for a long time.

He walked carefully among the rocks. Although they were the best chance he had at finding something to eat, they were also dangerous. An ankle could be easily broken by one wrong step, and should that happen his death sentence would be moved up.

“How’s Thursday for you?” he said aloud. He’d started doing that lately, speaking out loud without even knowing he was doing so. He needed to break that habit. He didn’t need to alert others he was around, or let any wild animals hear him. He was a meal, too. With this thought, he wondered why the dog hadn’t taken him. It could have. Why didn’t it just kill him and pull the flesh from his bones? Maybe there was just enough domestication left in it to honor that once concession.

“Or maybe it just wasn’t quite hungry enough,” he thought.

929 words

I wanted to continue on this one. And since I make the rules with this challenge, I’m allowed to (as long as I’m still writing 750 words). The new writing prompts will be moved to different days.

She made no reply or move. “I’m heading west,” he said. She looked at him, not sure if that was an invitation or a distraction.

“I’ve been there,” she said. Her hands stayed where they were, as did her dog’s ears.

“Anything there?” he asked.

“There’s a reason why I’m heading east,” she said.

He nodded. “Well, good luck to you. You sure you’ll be okay on your own?”

She laughed, a high-pitched yelp of scorn. “Me and Banshee will be fine.”

His eyes dropped to the dog. She was still on high alert. “God. You named it,” he said, shaking his head. He was still shaking it grimly as he walked past them, and noticed both heads turned to watch him leave. He guessed they stood there for a while after he left, in case he decided to charge them from behind. She didn’t look stupid. And he supposed if you were a woman, a dog wouldn’t be a bad thing to have around. That one did look like a good dog, still mostly tame, but with a little bit of fierceness that could be called upon in desperate times.

But this dog—this skinny, gangling dog with the perfect ears—did not look like a good dog. It had a sharpness to its eyes that gleamed with brashness. Most of the remaining dogs had come equipped with a healthy dose of fear of humans; this was their defense mechanism. This one seemed to lack that characteristic. “Rabies, maybe?” the man thought. There had been outbreaks, he’d heard. But this one didn’t look mad. It looked dangerously intelligent.

The man stopped his work on the can. “Pssh!” he hissed, and swept his arm above his head. “Go on! Go away!” The dog did not make a move to retreat. Instead, it minced forward, as if it were walking on glass shards. The man noticed the dog’s yellow eyes were focused on the can. It had learned, the man supposed, that food comes in cans. Or when a human’s attention was focused on an item, it was probably something to eat. The dog had probably been watching him for a while.

“No way!” he yelled. “This is mine. I found it. Go on!” He picked up a smooth stone, twisted his body toward the dog, and hefted the rock. His awkward seated position provided no momentum, and the rock dropped feebly at the dog’s large paws. The dog did not so much as twitch, its eyes hypnotized by the can. The man began to get nervous, but knowing  dogs can smell fear, tried to swallow it down. His right hand found a larger rock and he grasped it, but he kept his left hand firmly attached to the can. His eyes on the dog’s face, he stood up slowly. The dog’s eyes followed the can, but still it made no move.

The man cocked back his right arm as far as he was able then shifted his weight forward, arcing his arm in one swift motion. He let the rock fly. It hit the mark: the rock connected with the dog’s visible ribs with an audible thud. It had struck hard enough to hurt, the man knew, but the dog made no sound.

And then the dog was on him.

It had happened quickly. The dog closed the gap between them in three leaps and launched, slamming his paws squarely into the man’s chest and knocking him on his back. The dog’s teeth clamped tightly around the man’s left wrist, and he could feel his tendons shred and snap. He grabbed the dog’s scruff and bicycle-kicked weakly at its concave belly, hoping to make contact, but from his prone position he couldn’t gain enough leverage to wield a damaging blow. He was dimly aware he was still holding the can, and the dog was shaking his wrist like a long-extinct game bird. He removed his hand from the dog’s neck and grasped at the ground, his fingernails scraping sand and dirt, trying to land on anything that could be used as a weapon. But before he found a rock or a stick, his left hand opened involuntarily. The can rolled away from his bloodied palm. The dog snatched up the can and ran from the shore. The man could hear crunching metal between sharp teeth.

The man sat up on one elbow and surveyed his ruined hand. The fingers were left in tact, which was a mercy, he supposed, but his wrist was so badly damaged that his fingers were almost useless. He tried to move them; his thumb and forefinger were still responsive but the middle and ring finger barely moved. The pinky didn’t twitch. He was surprised to see how little blood there was. It had missed the arteries, but the puncture wounds were deep. There was probably nerve damage. Even if the dog didn’t have rabies, or if—very unlikely—he didn’t contract an infection, this hand was no longer available for service.

“Closed for business,” he said, looking at the red-muddied palm. He walked toward the water, looking behind him to make sure the dog wasn’t coming back for seconds, though he doubted it would. He dipped his forearm in the water. The water wasn’t clean, he knew, but he wasn’t wasting what little drinking water he had. Even with clean water, with no proper bandages or dressing, he understood the punctures would invite the germs and parasites that would kill him. He’d rather save his clean water for drinking.

809 words

Okay, here’s what happened. My husband creates these writing prompts and puts them on the calendar for me (he’s awesome). I don’t see them beforehand. Last night, I dreamed of my dog, Bliss, who died eight years ago this month. Then I got up and saw my writing prompt—and immediately burst into tears. 

I knew I couldn’t write about Bliss, or my current dog, Ferris, or really, any other dog I’ve known. This one needed to be different. I turned on the TV as I was getting ready for work, and The Twilight Zone was on, one of those post-apocalyptic episodes. I guess that was in my head as I drove to work, and I came up with this (yes, on my lunch break). 

He’d slept in the shipping container, the one that faced the bay. There were others around it, but most of those were open to the shore. He figured that facing the water was safer; who or what was going to approach him from the water? He could also avoid announcing his presence to the world—any movement, any light could be deadly. On the other hand, of course, he couldn’t see anything that might sneak up from behind. He took his chances.

He didn’t know what the containers had originally held. Whatever goods had been there had long since been washed away, even by this unimpressive tide. He assumed it was probably something that wasn’t of much use these days: cigarettes, toys, patio furniture. But thinking that maybe there had been shoes, blankets, or canned goods, he searched every container thoroughly. There was nothing.

He’d seen food in a can only a few times in the past year. It always startled him when he found one. It was a relic, something he could not believe existed in plenty at one time. He could remember plucking them off the shelves in multitudes: refried beans, tomato sauce, okra. When he thought back, that seemed as strange as going into a museum and taking paintings off walls and gold chalices from display cases and tossing them into shopping carts.

The first can he’d seen since the stores and houses had been emptied contained green beans. There was no brand; just an illustration of the perfect green bean on the front. “Plato’s ultimate green bean,” he’d thought. Of course, he had no can opener, and managed to puncture the metal by smashing the can repeatedly on a rock. He considered sticking his fingers in the jagged hole to pry out the beans, but fearing a cut and inevitable infection, he resisted. He poured the bitter, grassy water into his mouth, being careful not to touch his lips to the fractured tin, then found a long, flat stone to use as a miniature crowbar. He spent the next hour meticulously prying the hole open, pressing the rock into the hole then pushing it downward. It was slow work, but he had time.

He’d almost made an opening big enough to remove a bean when he saw the dog for the first time. It was long-legged and ropy, with large paws and ears like sails raised to the sky. Dogs were almost as rare as canned goods, perhaps even more so. It was medium-sized, thin but with tense muscles visibly contracting beneath its meager hide. Its matted fur was crosshatched with scratches and scars, and he was surprised to see its ears were completely unblemished.

Most of the remaining dogs looked like this. The pets—the lap dogs, the overbred toys carried in purses—were the first to go. The larger working dogs lasted a little while longer because they trusted people. That turned out to be a mistake. Then there were the strays; the ones who had learned to live on their own. But if they had any leftover whispers of domestication, they could be coaxed with even the smallest tidbit of food. They went next.

He’d met a woman who kept a dog. She was going east while he was heading west, trudging uphill through dust and brush. He’d seen the dog first. Startled, he stopped in his tracks. The dog did the same. He then took a step forward, and the dog retreated, scrambling and barking. He chased it, and as he summited the hill, he saw the dog at the feet of a young woman. She had her left hand looped in a small bit of rope tied at the dog’s neck. Her right hand was on her hip; her fingers brushing the handle of a pistol tucked into the waistband of her filthy jeans. She said nothing.

He pointed at the shepherd mix. “Is that your dog?”

“Yes,” she said, but offered nothing else.

“You’re keeping a dog?” he asked again.

“I am,” she said. No one moved.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of foolish?” he asked, nodding at the dog. “You have to feed it, don’t you? And,” he said, visibly sizing the dog with his eyes, “It’s a waste of meat. There’s not much of that around anymore.”

“She helps me hunt,” she said. “She’s loud. She lets me know when there are others around. And she protects me from…” she paused, giving him a once-over similar to the one he had given her dog, “…people.”

He took a step toward her. She loosened her grip on the dog’s makeshift collar but tightened her fingers around the gun. The dog, feeling the shift, moved forward, straining against the rope and pushing her ears back on her head.

He stopped his advance. “Well then,” he said. “That’s a good dog.”

823 words

So tired. I thought yesterday’s was like pulling teeth. This one was like a root canal. Had to fight for every syllable. 

Grandma pulled a box down from a closet shelf. It was a plain cardboard box, and according to the handwriting on the outside, once held towels, clothes, and books. Each item had been written in a different ink, then crossed off as the box was reused. Its most recent incarnation was for “keepsakes.”

“All right, kid,” Grandma said, setting it on the kitchen table. “Don’t expect much. But I think I have something in here that might be useful.” She pried open the top, the ancient layers of yellowed tape announcing its age like tree rings. She carefully folded down the cardboard flaps, their edges soft like felt. The contents revealed themselves to Grandma, and she paused a moment to become reacquainted before removing them from the box. Tamara, saddled with the impatience of a 13-year-old, did her best not to fidget or sigh. Grandma, she knew, would take her sweet time, and no obvious signs of annoyance could make her go faster.

When Grandma finally dipped her mottled hands into the sea of tissue and newspaper, she did so with a reverence rarely witnessed by Tamara. Grandma had strong, weathered hands that had seen their share of grease burns and callouses. She’d seen Grandma pull stubborn ivy from along her garden fence and rip it from the ground by their roots. She’s seen her whip potatoes into submission. But she hadn’t seen this: hands that hesitated and honored. Tamara thought, despite Grandma’s words, there must be something in the box that was extremely valuable.

The crumpled newspapers that Grandma removed first, Tamara saw, were from 1963 and from a place Tamara hadn’t heard of. She didn’t know if Grandma had lived there—Casper, Wyoming—or if the papers had mysteriously made their way into Grandma’s home as a stowaway. She understood that this was a part of Grandma’s history she should probably know, and she was a little embarrassed to ask about it right then. But of course, that was the whole point of the visit.

Grandma plucked items from the box. They were swaddled in tissue, but she made no move to unwrap them. Even so, she appeared to know each item by shape and feel, turning them over in her hands and smiling as she did so. At the bottom of the keepsakes box, she reached another box. This was the item she was looking for. She set this box in the middle of the kitchen table, shooing aside the packing papers and larger box. This box looked like it once had held a gift, perhaps even an expensive one. It was a faded red, but Tamara could tell it had once been rich and velvety. The top was gilded with gold, except at the edges where it had been worn to the cardboard beneath.

Lifting the lid, Tamara could see it held a number of loose items. A library card. A cork. Several hand-written letters with Wyoming postmarks. A delicate gold wristwatch, a souvenir metal globe. But at the bottom of all of these things was a stack of cards held together by an elastic band. Grandma pulled them out and set them on the table in front of Tamara. “If you want to know what this family’s all about,” she said, pushing the cards towards Tamara, “then you’ll need these.”

Tamara looked at the stack of cards. The top one had, “From the kitchen of” printed on the top. Someone, presumably Grandma, had written, “Patricia” in ballpoint pen in the blank space provided. The rest of the card was written in ballpoint pen as well, a list of ingredients with corresponding amounts. Tamara, frowning, attempted to remove the elastic, but gasped a little when it crumbled.

“Don’t worry, it’s old. I’m pretty sure I can find another rubber band.”

Tamara pushed the sticky remainders of the disintegrated elastic away with the side of her hand. She flipped through the other cards; there were about 15 in total. Several came from the kitchen of Patrica, but there were other names. Helen. Rita. Bobby Lou. And, surprisingly, Tom.

“I don’t get it,” Tamara said. “The assignment wasn’t to learn how to cook. The assignment was to figure out our family tree. How are recipes supposed to help me do that?”

Grandma took one of the recipe cards—Tom’s, as it happened—and held it up. “Anyone can go online and type in a bunch of names and have it spit out a diagram showing who married who and who begat who.” She flapped the card. “These, though. Family recipes. They show you how they lived and how they loved. There’s a reason why I’ve saved these ones. Each one has a story. A beginning and an ending. Now. I know you, Tamara. It’s never been good enough for you to do just what’s asked of you. Do you want a list of names, or do you want a good story to tell?”

852 words

This was like pulling teeth. Had no idea where this was going. Still don’t.  ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Taylor drummed her hands on the desk in front of her. Alex couldn’t tell if she was doing it on purpose, for effect, maybe. It certainly drew attention to her short, blood-red nails. “Talons after a successful struggle with prey,” Alex thought, then realized Taylor was waiting for a response.

“I’m really not sure what you want me to say,” he shrugged. “I’ve pretty much told you everything I know.”

Taylor silenced her nails and flattened her palm on the desk. “You sure about that?” she said. Her eyes, blue and empty, gave Alex no clues. He knew more. A lot more. But from her body language to her blank stare, he couldn’t determine how much she already gathered from his coworkers. He’d love to have her as a poker partner.

He shifted in his chair, uncrossed his legs, and put his feet firmly on the floor. He leaned forward, hands steady in his lap. This was, he thought, a power stance. If she could do it, so could he. She didn’t flinch. “Look,” he continued, showing her his palms in a, “I have nothing to hide” gesture. “I’m guessing I know the same as you do.” There was no response from the other side of the desk. He cleared his throat, and immediately wished he hadn’t. It was an obvious sign of nervousness.

She noticed. Her lips twitched upward almost imperceptibly. “Well then, why don’t you tell me? We could compare notes.”

“I mean,” he continued, “I’ve heard things. But I have no idea if those things are true.”

“What have you heard?” she asked.

“Taylor.” His voice had gone dry. “Don’t make me repeat things I have no business repeating. That would just be spreading the rumor further, don’t you think? Is that fair, when he’s not here to defend himself? It’s not fair,” he said, answering his own question.

“What I have a hard time believing,” Taylor said, sliding one red-tipped hand across the desk toward a manilla folder, “is that you know as little as you say you do.” She slid the folder in front of herself, but didn’t open it. Her nails started their seductive movement again, tapping on the folder in a seemingly absent-minded manner. Alex watched the nails. He was supposed to, he realized. His attention was unwillingly drawn to the folder and its contents.

The folder itself was innocuous. A plain, manilla folder like one would find in any office. He remembered when he was younger—seven, maybe?—he called it “vanilla.” His father, an accountant, worked from his home office back in the early days of the internet, and Alex had helped him by running small errands. He took pride in being his dad’s “go-fer,” and his dad had rewarded him by making him a t-shirt with a little picture of a gopher on it. When called upon to retrieve fresh folders from his supply cabinet, Alex would say, “Here you go! Five vanilla folders.” It was his older brother who finally corrected him with much disdain. “Not VANilla, idiot. MANilla. It’s not ice cream.” Alex’s father didn’t condone such language in their household, and took Alex for ice cream, leaving the older brother at home to think about how he spoke to family members. But Alex never called the folders vanilla again.

“What’s that?” Alex finally asked, nodding at the desk.

“You tell me.” Taylor was giving nothing away.

Alex took another look at the folder. It was about an inch thick with papers. “Old-school,” he thought. Why go through the trouble of printing things out? Whatever she had, it probably came from a digital source. Emails, maybe. He thought quickly. He had been cc’d on a lot of the emails, but he couldn’t remember how he’d received them. Had Brian been fantastically stupid and sent emails through the company server? Even worse, had Alex been equally idiotic and responded to them without noticing? His email program was set up to handle several different accounts, including personal. It was entirely possible he’d been distracted and hit “reply” before scrutinizing an email’s origin.

“Gosh, Taylor. I don’t know,” Alex said, giving her an exaggerated expression of innocence. “Love letters? Fifth-grade valentines? Shopping lists. Your fantasy football picks. Blueprints for your retirement home. How the hell am I supposed to know? What do you want from me?”

“There’s some pretty damning stuff in here,” she said, ignoring Alex’s comments. “Information that, should it get out, could mean investigations. I already know you’re involved. Please don’t deny it. What I don’t know is how deep this goes, and who else is involved. That’s what I need from you, Alex. I can’t promise you’ll come out of this clean. But I can promise I won’t intentionally make this worse for you. And you know I can do it.” She opened the folder and scanned the top page. From where Alex was sitting, it indeed looked like a printout of an email. The pit that had been growing in his stomach deepened.

“So,” she said, closing the folder. “What would you like to tell me, Alex?”

820 words

Not too difficult today. Don’t necessarily know where this is going, but I like Tracy.

The eggshells were piling up on the counter. She knew she should contain them in some way; raw eggs, after all, were a bad case of Salmonella waiting to happen. But she continued to toss the eggshells straight onto the tiled counter anyway, their viscous insides oozing into the grout between the tiles. It would be hard to clean when it dried. She didn’t care.

The water was as it should be. It bubbled ever so slightly at the edges of the pot, tentatively, as if whispering in burbles. A shy fish perhaps professing its love. The water was also vinegared. This, supposedly, would make the egg whites solidify more quickly. That was what she was taught many years ago, anyway. But according to the internet—the Grand High Poobah of All Things Known—this “fact” was now up for debate. This held true for the water whirlpool.

“What are you making there?” the instructor said, watching Tracy whisk the water vigorously into a steaming vortex. “You making soup?”

“No, I’m creating the whirlpool bath,” Tracy said.

The instructor hissed a long breath out between her teeth. “You don’t really have to do that,” she said. “Why do people think they need to do that?”

“…Because that’s what we’ve been taught all of our lives?” Tracy said, with not a small amount of annoyance.

“Sure, but then there’s the story about the woman who cut off the ends of her meatloaf her entire life. Because that’s what she’d always been taught,” the instructor said. Tracy blinked at her. “It turns out her grandmother’s meatloaf pan was too small,” the instructor waited for a laugh. She received silence. “Okay,” the instructor continued, “my point being. What we’ve been taught our entire lives isn’t necessarily the best way to do things. Stop trying to make a black hole with the water. Just simmer, gently crack the egg into the water, and wait. That’s what’s needed for a good poached egg.”

The instructor turned on her heel and began to accost the student at the next station. Tracy stood over her pot, examining her water. There were fragments of her previous failed egg experiments. “Eggsperiments,” she thought to herself, then cringed. It was a horrible pun. Thin tendrils of overcooked egg whites danced and intertwined; they looked to Tracy like ectoplasm. “Who you gonna call?” she said into the water.

“Pardon?”

Tracy’s head snapped up. She’d forgotten there was another student to her right. She was supposed to partner with him, but she’d simply pretended he wasn’t there. Clearly, he was there to make friends. Even set up a date. Tracy wasn’t interested in making friends. She just wanted to reacquaint herself with the art of cooking.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just talking to myself. I used to know how to do this. I guess I’m just out of practice.”

He nodded, then pushed his glasses into place. They were a little fogged from his own poaching work. “You’d think this would be easy,” he said. “I think of all the times I’ve ordered poached eggs at a restaurant. Never gave it a second thought. Now I wonder if the chef gets angry every time an order for a poached egg comes in.” He looked at Tracy. “It’s a big, fat pain in the ass, if you ask me.”

Tracy could tell he was trying to relate. To connect. Over eggs. She did not wish to connect over eggs. “I suppose you could look at it that way,” she said. “Eggs, in general, seem like they’re the simplest things in the world. Look at it,” she took an egg out of the container, sleek and brown, and held it up in front of his eyes. The orb reflected in his glasses. “What could be simpler? You crack it, and it’s composed of two things: albumen and yolk. Protein and fat. I mean, there’s some membrane in there as well, but mostly, just that white and yellow. And yet, we humans have decided there are specific ways it should be prepared. Fried—over-easy; sunny-side-up; over-hard.”

Tracy took a breath. The other student was watching her, but not unkindly. He seemed to be smiling at her. She ignored him. “And then there’s hard-boiled and soft-boiled. Have you ever tried soft boiling an egg?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “But poaching.” She paused and made a face. “We decided that poaching an egg was something that needed to exist. So here we are. Me and…” Tracy looked into his face and gestured in his direction, “you.”

“Matt,” he said. She noticed he’d stopped his work and had focused his attention on her.

“And you,” she said. “Here, on a Saturday night, with pots of boiling water, and cartons filled with the result of some hen’s strenuous butt efforts. That’s what we’ve got.”