Debts in the Dark (NYC Midnight Short Story Competition 2013)

Johnny Flanders saw three new text messages from “Unknown.”

“I’M COMING TO SEE YOU,” read the first. Johnny wasn’t expecting any visitors.

“YOU’RE GOING TO GIVE ME THE STANDARD DEDUCTION YOU PROMISED.” Johnny groaned. This was work-related.

“SEE YOU REAL SOON,” read the last.

Johnny sent back a text: “Who is this?”

Within a minute, he had his response: “238279. I’M ONLY A NUMBER TO YOU PEOPLE AFTER ALL.”

Just a little Saturday diving

Last week I had a dream about diving. I slowly waded into the bay until I could no longer see the ocean floor beneath me. The sun was hot and at my back, imploring me to descend beneath the surface. I leaned forward and looked beneath the surface of the water: there was life. Dozens of yards beneath me I could see entire ecosystems at play: Kelp forests, rocks encrusted with barnacles and sea stars, fish swimming in schools and small sharks moving quietly above them. I raised my head with a gasp, waking myself up in the process. What would I do if I saw any sharks? Would I freak out or just be silently impressed? Since watching Jaws as a kid, I'd always been afraid of the ocean; diving, and enjoying diving, was a small step towards releasing those fears.

Today, the Dive Club of Silicon Valley had a few planned dives at Breakwater Cove in Monterey; early in the morning, followed by/accompanied by a rescue dive training session, and then another dive in the afternoon. I opted to drive down solely for the afternoon dive knowing full well that my time in the car would probably be equal to my time in the water. By the time I got there folks were just beginning to come up from the beach after a dive, threw some burgers on the grill, and waited for their next safe dive. For about an hour I stood in the sun, toting my gear to the distant side of the lawn from the parking lot and talking to my dive buddies-to-be.

When burgers had been eaten and nitrogen levels had dropped, we suited up and made our way down to the beach. We waded through the waves then swam out for a good five minutes. At long last, we had reached our point of descent. Orienting ourselves to the beach, we signaled each other to descend and released the air from our vests. Down we went, slowly but surely...or at least, for about two feet.

I could not descend. My buddies checked for operator error: was I holding the release valve at the highest point? Yep. Was my vest totally empty? Yep. Perhaps my breathing wasn't quite right; maybe I was too excited and couldn't release enough air. We tried that as well. At one point we opted to "jump start" my descent using the assistance of kelp to pull myself down into the next level of buoyancy. At about five feet, I knew I was being propelled back to the surface. I just didn't have enough weight on me.

We swam back to the beach. I loaded up more weight (I'd made a miscalculation when I initially loaded my weights and double-counted six very important pounds). We swam out again, a bit less air in our tanks. This time, we dropped a bit closer to shore and followed a small pipe along the ocean floor until we found another, larger pipe to follow. The surge was fairly strong and the visibility low; my sight was directly limited by what looked like tiny pieces of fish flesh, or perhaps fish poop. Whatever it was, it was everywhere, filling every view with visual static noise. The ocean floor was crowded but not very busy; what wasn't covered with bits of kelp and sea stars was littered with various sea anemones and holes in the sand promising unknown (to me) treasures.

We swam slowly along the pipes, past occasional fish (lingcod and some other, unknown-to-me smaller fish) and a plethora of giant sea stars. One in particular was about two feet wide from point to point and whitish grey, though there were innumerable of smaller size, usually bright orange or deep purple. On my way out, I came across a tiny jellyfish that could have certainly fit in the palm of my hand. On the way back to shore, one of my buddies had a light and illuminated a tiny jellyfish (possibly the same one, but probably different) illuminating it in vibrant purple hues. I'm not sure I've ever seen something as delicate as a jellyfish amid its underwater flight.

Apparently when we turned around to return to shore, I just missed seeing a small sea lion and a rather large jellyfish. Oh well. I saw a large jellyfish on my first dive to Breakwater Cove and was so surprised by its sight that I fell to the floor like a rock, not an ounce of breath left in my chest.

All in all, it wasn't a very long dive; 31 minutes underwater, the deepest point at 42 feet. It was tiring, having to swim out twice just to submerge, and in that brief hour in the sun my skin browned like a chicken under the broiler (but I needed a little more color, so it's okay).

The drive back to the bay felt quick, though the sunburn and swim exhaustion was already beginning to take its toll. I threw my gear in the bathtub to rinse the sand off but ended up taking a nap on the floor (so as not to get my bed dirty since I was still a bit salty).

It was a good day, and I'm especially glad to have joined the Dive Club of Silicon Valley. I feel like I'm more prepared for my upcoming dives in Curacao next month. More than that, I'm so glad that I started this new hobby.

I'm not sure why I didn't start it sooner.

Sylvia (NYCMidnight Short Story 2012, Round 1!)

Sylvia.

Sylvia.

Sylvia.

Sylvia, where are you?

Sylvia, why didn’t you come back?

Sylvia, why did you stop returning my calls?

Sylvia, will you appear in front of me and make everything better?

Sylvia.

Sylvia.

Sylvia.

            Gil’s thoughts moved aimlessly, his heartbeat audible in his ears, though it no longer sounded like a muted drum. No, the only sound he heard was the rise and fall of her name: Sylvia. Her name was a whisper, just out of reach: Sylvia. Sometimes Gil imagined that his train of thought was on a circular track, like the set from his childhood; even when it passed by the station it was only for an instant. In his mind, he could see Sylvia standing on the platform, waving as his train went by. He opens his mouth to shout her name at the instant the conductor blows the whistle. Still, despite the deafening trill, all he hears is Sylvia.

            Gil looked down at his stack of half-graded tests.

The Filigreed Key

The wind blew sand over my eyelids as I slept, tickling me gently and rousing me from my slumber. Before I could think twice, I opened my eyes and let a dusting of fine grains seek the crevices beneath my lids. My hands raced to my face, my voice suddenly a hoarse cry. As suddenly as it had started, the irritation was gone, slight traces of tears meandering down my cheeks through my week-old whiskers and my vision returned.

OK, I probably wasn't sleeping in THIS canyon...

The sun was still rising, a pale glimmer above the canyon wall. It was time to wake. It was time to drink from the cold stream, while the water was still fresh and before the sun withered it into dust. It was time to check the traps for a fresh hare, and to check my boots for scorpions; either would keep me alive for another day. Either would get me a step closer to the filigreed key.

The stream was chilled but full of silt. My teeth crunched through the grit when I had taken my fill and weighted my skins. My traps were empty, as were my boots. I still had a few bites of jerky to get me through the day, but then I would be on my own. I wouldn’t miss the taste of the old salted beef when I’d seen its yesterday; I definitely wouldn’t miss the way its fine strands managed to become lodged in my teeth for days at a time. I wouldn’t miss the way my mouth became dry and desert as the ground I’d slept on the night before. I would miss the cow, though.

Can You Hear Me Now?

“Hello? You still there?” Pete pulled the phone from his ear and stared at the display. It was dead.

“No, no, no! This can’t be happening!” Pete ripped through his bag, searching for the one thing that might make everything okay, but to no avail. The charging cable wasn’t there.

“Fuck!” he cried, drawing stares from several women walking their grocery carts across the street.

“There’s got to be one around here somewhere...” he murmured as he started up the street. Taquerias, Jewelry stores, restaurants; none of them had what he needed. He had to get her back on the line. He couldn’t leave things like that, not without knowing what she’d said.

He ran. Sweat poured down his arms, lubricating his hands. His phone slipped, for just a moment, tumbling through the air towards the sewers, but he caught it, just in the nick of time.

2 Years, 3 Months and 17 Days

In space, no-one can hear your lonely cries. They used to send teams up to counter-act the solitude, but they discovered there was a cheaper way to handle it. They gave us the Internet. Inadvertently, they gave us dating sites.

She’s lovely. I type into the chat box and pressed Send.

“Hey.”

“Hey back.”

Whoa, ‘Hey’ never works! Maybe she liked the picture of me skydiving... Maybe there’s something wrong with her.

“So... I kind of stink at this part.”

“What, chatting?”

“It’s not chatting, it’s the first chat. I never know what to say.”

Really. Never. I hate starting with some interest she mentioned because everyone does that. It never works for me. ‘Hey’ never works either, but it’s a lot less to type.

“You’re doing fine. I usually just look at the guy’s interests and find something to talk about. You work in photography?”

It must be different for women.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

                “You really want to know?”

                “Yes. Tell me.”

                “All right, then. I was on my way to work when I saw her. She was nice enough to look at, I guess, but a bit old. Older than me, at least. She was crossing the street and had one of those little hand-carts you see people using to drag their groceries behind them, but she didn’t have any groceries.”

                “What was in the hand-cart?”

                “If you let me finish, I’ll tell you.”

                “Sorry.”

                “As I was saying, she was crossing the street. She didn’t have groceries, though; she had puppies. Lots of puppies. I dare say dozens of puppies. No, that doesn’t sound right. Maybe just one dozen. Maybe a baker’s dozen. Does a baker’s dozen of puppies conjure up the wrong idea? Like ‘ten and twenty blackbirds, baker’s pie?’ I’m pretty sure these puppies were not intended for food, if that sets your mind at ease. Anyway. Puppies.

Garden 2010! A much-needed (?) update

Well, it's been about a month since my last update. I've gotten way busy with my other website venture (http://www.skunkkilledchicken.com) and almost forgot about this one.

So, a month later... this time I'll just try recapping everything and then toss the photos at the bottom. Just for a change in pace. And because I'm extra lazy today.

The tomatillos have almost all gone from flower to husk but they're still (very) slowly filling those husks in. Most of the fruit is still smaller than a cherry tomato. I've gotten several red tomatoes off the vine (probably 7-8 now) and perhaps two dozen yellow pears. The reds have slowly gotten their good flavoring (the earliest handful tasted gross) and the yellow pears are growing into it as well. So far, I haven't had anything from the garden that's FABULOUS, which makes me sad.

I harvested a lot of basil and we've had half a dozen pesto dinners from it. I still have a little basil left which will be harvested in the next couple of days for another (smaller) batch. It seems that my soil mixture was so awful in my herb garden that the turnips are all about two millimeters in diameter and my radishes are only slightly larger (but aren't good). My green onions have also been unable to flourish, leaving me solely with basil from those three boxes. When I pulled out the basil I replanted some green (and purple) bush beans that I didn't manage to get off the vine quickly enough -- they were too hard to comfortably eat but apparently great for replanting.

My bucket tomatoes are still green on the vine but boy are those vines huge! Several of them are several feet taller than I am (putting them at 7-8 feet). My blueberries have pretty well shriveled up this season. I imagine that part of this is due to not wintering well (I should have thrown some burlap over them) and part of it due to my irrigation system being broken for a month without my noticing. Our arborvitae are also struggling, but I think we'll be able to bring them back. I hope! My raspberry didn't fruit last year and hasn't fruited this year, but it has grown a rather long vine. My blackberry put out four or five long and thick canes from which I've picked about a dozen large, ripe, and the sweetest of berries. The only thing that I lament about the berry plants is that it will take an extremely long time before I can get multiple pints (or quarts) of fruit per season -- and to be honest, we probably won't be in this house when it happens.

I'm also very disappointed with my soaker hose in the garden: it doesn't have a problem with water pressure at the end but for whatever reason, most of the water is rolling off the hill away from the roots. This may be due to the soil mixture (which is similar to that in the herb garden) being poor. Next year....

Another day in my garden...

Well, I've backdated this one too. Why? Why backdate EVERY single entry in this blog? Well, I want the blog dates to match the dates the photos were taken. It's a lot easier to look back at the garden's progression that way. Also, I'm far too lazy to write the blog on the same day that I take the pictures. It just won't happen.

So, as you can see, my tomatillos have gotten quite a bit bigger and bushier. Each of the stalks has several forks which are approaching 5 feet long...I wasn't planning on putting up any sort of other stakes/ties, but I think I may have to do that now!

For all of the tomatoes, we ended up with a variation on the Florida weave. Every plant is staked up the center, then additional stakes were placed on either side and between the tomato plants so that the string could alternate between them. It looks something like this from above:

.* *

.x x

* * *

.x x

* * *

.x x

* * *

.x x

.* *

*=stake, x=tomato plant, .=spacer for this post (I'm html illiterate, what can I say)

So far it seems to be working out rather well. The plants are something like 6-7 feet tall and each branch has gotten heavy enough to lean on various intersections of string. Hopefully it will hold! Also, hopefully there's enough room for us to get in there and harvest! As of this time, there are only a few dozen tiny green tomatoes. I think we won't harvest until mid-August at this rate.

My peppers have all grown up quite a bit. Above is a view of the jalapenos. The tiny plant on the right is a weed that replaced my caterpillar-eaten serrano :( I think the tall plant second to the right is also a serrano.

Here is a view of my poblanos, starting to catch up to the jalapenos and serrano. With any luck, there will be chile rellenos aplenty in a month or two!

I have a shot of one of my bucket tomatoes. For the most part, they all look like this but it's hard to see in the photo (green leaves on green leaves) -- they're all really quite big, but because they're off on their own in a bucket I haven't been able to do the weave. I actually ended up taking some extra stakes and adding one to each bucket to give some additional support. Unfortunately, these bucket tomatoes are all mortage lifters and other LARGE tomatoes so it's going to be a headache keeping the plant from falling over!

Here's my herb garden. Apparently the sun came out since my last post; the basil is all in full swing and the turnips and radishes are doing a bit better. I don't think my radishes are ever going to live up to their 29-day cycle, but someday they might fatten up enough to eat. You can BARELY see the green onions behind the turnips in the second box; the boxes in this particular order have ended up shading the lower boxes. We'll have to fix that at the end of the season (the soil in the boxes is WAYYY too thick anyway, it needs to be mixed with some sand).

Garden 2010! (Part 2)

I'm back-posting this entry because...well, I'm lazy :(

Here are some photos from about 2 weeks after the last entry.

Here you can see that the tomatillos and tomatoes have grown up a bit (though not a lot); they've about doubled in size. The peppers haven't done much at all in these two weeks except get eaten by slugs. Along the left you can see some weeds sticking out where beans might be (again, slugs devoured the starter leaves).

My rose bush (from last year) has come up quite a lot; eventually it will have a nice trellis to climb, but for now it's just hanging out with some bamboo.

Here's a close shot of the tomatillos; you can see them slowly climb up the stakes; tomatoes are in the row immediately behind.

My orange-bucket tomatoes are slowly getting bigger too. Not bad for left-over seedlings :)

Garden 2010! (Part 1)

There's hardly anything left from last year's garden except for strawberries. Unlike last year, these guys have grown TALL actively reaching for the sun. It's a very neat look, I think.

This year I decided to completely change my garden orientation. Instead of 4 long rows, I have 4 short rows. Sounds worse, right? Well, technically I do have fewer plants in the garden, but last year it was too tight.

Last year, we used these flimsy cheap tomato cages. Given that I couldn't find any more robust cages, and building some stronger cages would be prohibitively expensive (even cattle wire is too expensive), we decided to try something different...very different. For starters, each of the tomato plants is staked so that the center mass of the plant will be supported. In a couple of weeks, we'll put down some other stakes and wind twine around them to fashion a three-dimensional Florida weave (of sorts) around them so that their limbs are also well supported. Why not just do this latter thing? Well, it will be a few weeks (or more) before they're large enough (wide enough) to require this other support, and I think this will be better. We'll see :)

From closest to farthest in the photo above, we have serrano and jalapeno peppers, then a row of poblano peppers, then a variety of cherry tomatoes (yellow plum on the right, then from a mixed packet for the other three), then four bloody butcher heritage tomatoes, then four tomatillos.

The peppers won't have this special weave, but we will do a standard Florida weave; you can see the stakes on either end of the row in anticipation of this.

Along the fence on the left are bush beans that haven't quite sprouted up through the fabric yet. We planted two plastic stakes on either end and ran some twine in anticipation of them; they probably won't get as tall as the stakes are, but..oh well :)

Along the fence at the bottom of the picture (where you can't see) are carrots that haven't quite poked out yet). Along the fence on the right are weeds :P

As far as the garden's architecture is concerned, each row has soaker hose running its length (as well as some along the fence-line), then garden fabric was put down and cypress mulch on top of that. Hopefully this will keep the ground warm and moist and prevent requiring a lot of watering. The watering is all on a timer; right now it's daily for a half-hour at 6am and it seems to be working pretty well. The butchers have grown about 3 or 4 inches since I put them in the ground last week. The peppers are doing well too, but some bug has been eating their leaves; I got some insecticide soap spray today and some slugbait. Hopefully between the two, I won't have any more holey leaves. One of my serranos was still a wee seedling when I put it in the ground; whatever bug it was ate all of its leaves (I don't think it will survive).

I started almost all these plants (except the tomatillos) back in March in our basement closet with some 4 foot grow lights in shop-light fixtures. Naturally, we started more plants than we'd have room for in the garden "just in case"...but because we can't throw away anything, we decided to throw the remaining EIGHT tomato plants into irrigated buckets and threw them in the landscaping where they won't kill the lawn. These are predominantly mortgage lifters; for some reason, they weren't doing so great when it came time to plant so I didn't put any of them in the garden. We'll see how they turn out! You'll notice that there are only 6 orange buckets...there's also a black bucket that I doubled-up because I ran low on soil. We'll see how that works out (I imagine not so great!)

Last but not least, we wanted a place to put some herbs and other small plants. The house came with a small planter box (the smaller older-looking one in the picture below) and we decided to make two more and tier them. We opted to make them match the length of the deck rather than the length of the prior box. Each of the new boxes is approximately 8'x1'x1'. From top to bottom, we have two kinds of basil, then turnips and green onions, then radishes and cilantro.

We'll probably end up replacing the smaller box with another cedar box eventually (and maybe the deck too), but that's a project for another day/year.

I'll post updated pictures in about two weeks so you can see how they've grown!

Pumpkins!

I've been waiting all year for Hemmeter Farms to have their pumpkins and today was the day :) (They may have had them last week or something, but I wasn't aware of it, so...)

We swung by Hemmeter's and while they don't have ALL of their pumpkins out yet (like they do closer to Halloween), they had plenty of massive massive pumpkins.

We picked up this beauty for $4.50 (the one on the right!).
We weighed it when we got home - 51 pounds. So...yes, this pumpkin cost us about 8.8 cents per pound.

I wasn't sure how to cut into it - last year, I tried a variety of knives but was having a lot of trouble. The pumpkin flesh is something like 3-4 inches thick which is fine but the skin (in the past) was very very tough. This year, Stacey offered to help me butcher the pumpkin for roasting.

We took it out to our porch, washed it and then....

After about...2 minutes, it was basically done (cut into 3 main pieces).

You can see just how HUGE this pumpkin is!

Stacey butchered the rest of it into manageable pieces, then we took them inside for seed scooping.

Just for kicks, here are the photo taken timestamps:
3:36pm - Stacey begins cutting the pumpkin
3:39pm - Stacey finishes
3:46pm - Stacey and Matt start scooping the seeds
3:52pm - Stacey and Matt finish

So...about 9 minutes work to turn

into

The next step for this pumpkin is roasting. Unfortunately, I can only fit about 4 of these pieces in the oven at a time and it's taking something like 100-120 minutes to roast it. When they're soft, I'll puree them and freeze the puree.

Not too much work for a TON of fresh (well, frozen) pumpkin puree!

Chicken stuffed with bacon and sausage

I saw on the internet some time ago an idea of a bacon lattice that's wrapped around italian sausage. It sounded good (and unhealthy) and while I still want to make that someday, I thought I'd try something completely new for me. A real kitchen experiment....

So, when we were at the grocery store I thought: I want to make a roast chicken. And I want to stuff it with yummy things...like bacon and italian sausage.

I rinsed the chicken off and removed the giblets and then pulled the skin away from the meat and crammed bacon underneath - I ended up using close to 1.5 pounds of bacon on the chicken and filled it out completely. Then I took a little less than a pound of italian sausage and stuffed the inside of the chicken with it. I have this little device that lets you rest a chicken on a soda can (to humidify it from within) and I used it here, though without a can. I like it because the chicken sits upright instead of on its side.

After that, I finely diced some garlic and added it to some olive oil and freshly cracked black pepper in a bowl and rubbed that into the skin.


Last but not least, I poured a few cups of apple juice into the roasting pan to humidify the chicken as it cooked. Why apple juice? I figured it would go well with the bacon :)

I put it in at 350 for about 90 minutes. After about 60 minutes, I put some potatoes in the oven too (which as it turns out would remove some of the heating from the chicken...a mistake) We pulled it out and it looked like this:

Yum! Well, it wasn't entirely cooked (it was still a little pink) so we put it back in the oven for another 25 minutes or so (without the potatoes) at 400. We also removed the sausage at this time because only the outside of the sausage was cooked at all. We cut up the sausage and finished cooking it in a pan.

When the chicken came out of the oven, it was mostly done. Only some of the higher parts of the chicken were still slightly underdone so we just cut that away and ate the more well-done parts.

Here's a shot of the chicken being cut - you can see the bacon sticking out from under the skin!

Finally, the plated chicken (and bacon) with some sausage under steamed green beans and with some potatoes.

So, you're probably wondering: what did it taste like?

I was hoping for something that had flavors of chicken, bacon and sausage. Unfortunately, there was just too much bacon and the sausage didn't really cook to release its oils so instead all of the chicken tasted solely like bacon...which is good, if you like the taste of bacon in a somewhat less fatty way (i.e. in chicken form). I liked it but this recipe definitely needs some work! I think next time I'll omit the bacon and try a SMALL amount of sausage under the skin (basically rubbed under the skin) over a large portion of the chicken's body. That should give it some of the taste but not completely overwhelm the chicken.

If you're interested in the ingredients for this concoction:
1 whole chicken (about 4 pounds I think? or was it 4 dollars...I dunno, not too big)
1.5 pounds of thick-cut bacon (I selected a package that was predominantly MEAT instead of fat - there were many packages which were more like 90% fat, 10% meat)
1 pound of italian sausage (I only used about 3/5 to 4/6 of a pound - I can't remember exactly how many cased sausages there were in the package!)

For the skin-rub:
1 (large) clove of garlic
about 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
about 1/2 teaspoon of cracked black pepper (as if I measured!)

For the potatoes:
5 red potatoes
about 1/4 cup of e.v. olive oil
1 lipton onion soup packet
(chop the potatoes, put in a bowl, add the oil and mix until all potatoes are covered in oil, then add the soup packet and mix until they're covered in the mix) - bake on a cookie sheet (I use parchment paper too to reduce stickage/mess) until done - I think at 350 it took about 45 minutes

For the green beans:
steam green beans. :)

If you end up changing this recipe into something that doesn't taste entirely like bacon, let me know! I'll have to come back to this and change it up but I don't buy chickens very often so it may be a while.

New blog

Alrighty, I've been using facebook a lot lately to post pictures, things on my mind, recipes, etc. but have found that it really doesn't get the same job done as a simple blog. So here's mine. It's simple, but I'll be going back through facebook and transferring some of my recipes and photos in an easier-to-read format. Hopefully, at least!

Also, I've enabled Google Ads on the right pane. Maybe I'll get a (undoubtedly SMALL) bit of money from it...it can't hurt! (I hope.)