To celebrate the one-year anniversary of Set the Page on Fire, Steve O'Keefe set himself on fire on Facebook by writing a short short story every day for a month. The entire collection of stories is published here in their original order, plus five bonus stories at the end. Enjoy!
The Story of Life
A short short story by Steve O'Keefe
The Earth is the result of a formula gone wrong, exploding the near-perfect universe into a billion billion pieces of debris flung into the void, including the Earth.
For a long time, the Earth was a frozen ball of ice, then a belching ball of volcanoes, then a smokey ball, then a wet ball, and now an in-between ball.
The Earth came into near-perfect balance, replenishing exactly at the rate of erosion, when the equation took an unexpected turn. The individual pieces began working in concert to disrupt the extinction cycle. They ganged together to form life, and have been growing and colluding ever since, to the point of knocking the Earth out of balance.
Then it was a hot ball. Then it was a wet ball.
Bad Key
A short short story by Steve O’Keefe
Gotta bad key on my thumb piano, won't sing like the others. Tried wigglin' it. Tried snappin' it. Tried pushin' and pullin'. Still won't sing, so I void it.
That ain't so easy 'cause it's right there half-way up on the left-hand side, kinda hard to git around. Sounds like a flat tire. Has a 'cussive quality that's not bad if you're lookin' for that sorta thing.
Since I couldn't void the bad key, I decided to just my playin' on the others, add a little thumbnail, bring out the beat, let go the tune. Worked pretty well, so I went up high where the bad notes usually are and, sure nuff, couple of them wouldn't sing neither. I moved back down and tried to keep it together.
Why did I bring this thumb piano today? Why didn't I check it before I left? I kept up playin' with the bad key an' a lotta thumbnail, testin' the high keys. Then I figured I could use the bad high keys plus the bad key and go all 'cussion, no song.
Sure nuff, that worked! The whole thing was a hot, jangly mess of tongue depressors and nasty naily noises, all built up 'round that bad key. Bad key just took over and came the tonic and the low notes got shut out! That bad key was just sittin' up there froggin' it out with its distant relations in the upper registers, soundin’ like a choir of rascals! So much fun!
When I got home and heard what I got on the corder, I cut ‘er down and put ‘er out six weeks later as "Bad Key." Wouldn't ya know, it came my biggest hit, downloaded a zillion times, memed all over an' used in a movie! People ask me to play it all the time. 'Cept I fixed that thumb piano and try as I might, can't git that bad key back!
ANTS
A short short story by Steve O'Keefe
I left my apple core up on the ridge as an offering to the critters I've seen up there. The next day it was gone. So I left my apple core again and the next day it was gone again.
The third time I left my apple core it was still there the next day. It had fallen from the rock pedestal to the ground where it had been set upon by a horde of small black ants.
The ants had organized two lanes, incoming ants to the east and loaded-up, returning ants to the west. The ants waited for their turn to ascend the core, rip out a huge chunk of white, sugary flesh many times their own size, then queue to take the prized fruit home.
No arriving ants tried to steal apple from returning ants, nor did they offer assistance. Returning ants were frequently stopped by arriving ants as though exchanging pleasantries before resuming their hauling.
I didn't get back to the ridge for a couple days. When I did, there was still a piece of the apple core left -- the top part -- but the flesh had turned brown. About a dozen black ants, slightly bigger than the ones I saw previously, were laying on the core. I thought they were asleep until one staggered away and I realized these ants were drunk!
Big, lay-about ants were sucking the alcohol out of the fermenting apple. There were no lines of ants coming and going, just a dozen big, inebriated ants hugging the apple like a security blanket instead of whatever they were supposed to be doing back at the hill.
I gave the core a little nudge and the ants all stumbled away and quickly returned. Ants with a drinking problem! You never know what you're going to see on the ridge.
Typewriter
A short short story by Steve O’Keefe
My wife is always interrupting me during my writing time in the morning. I’ve tried to explain how difficult it is to regain the moment, but it makes no difference.
“How am I supposed to know you’re working,” she asks.
“If the door is closed, you can assume I’m working,” I say.
“So I’m not supposed to knock for anything” she asks. “What if there’s a fire?”
“Yes, you can knock if there’s an emergency,” I say, but somehow she considers being able to interrupt a marital right and I have no right to get upset about it.
Then one night before the pandemic we’re at a gathering with friends and I hear her say, “When he’s typing on that old manual, I would never think of interrupting….”
The next morning, I made a recording of myself typing on the manual for about an hour. Then I opened the file in Audacity, took out all the swearing, took out any pause long enough for anyone to think, “Maybe he’s done,” exported the file to MP3, and uploaded it to the cloud.
The following morning I selected the track “Smith-Corona” from my playlist and blue-toothed it to my smart speaker: Presto! A 30-minute track of uninterrupted, percussive typing. I turned up the volume, sat back and relaxed.
After that, any time I didn’t feel like writing, I would flip on the Smith-Corona and go read a book or masturbate or Facebook, knowing she “would never think of interrupting” as long as that manual typewriter is going.
Then it happened. About a month later, I had to go to the bathroom and as soon as I stepped out of my office into the hall, and saw her in her studio at the other end of the hall, I knew I had slipped up. She looked at me, looked at the door, looked at me.
“You bastard!”
Now when I’m typing, she’s not sure if it’s me or the recording, so she interrupts all the time.
Guest
A short short by Steve O’Keefe
Smug, son-of-a-bitch Frenchman going to come into my house, sleep in my guest bed, and tell me I’m putting too much water in the cut flowers!?!
F-ing Frenchie doesn’t know I lived with a florist for 20 years. Well, she was only a florist for 10 of those years, but that’s plenty long enough to learn how to set the water level in a vase of flowers!
There’s an art to it, Frenchie! You balance the height of the water with the width of the castellation. Yeah, that’s right, the lip is called the castellation; you probably didn’t know that. I wanted to tell him it depends on the type of flowers and the thickness of the glass, but he wouldn’t understand.
“I speak leetle beet Inglish,” he said, but he knew enough to say, “You don’t need to drown them,” like a sarcastic, smug French bastard sitting in another man’s kitchen sipping bad coffee and reading the morning paper.
Raven tells him I recently bought an old piano and put it in the basement to learn piano tuning. He makes some smug, sarcastic, French comment to her which I can’t understand, and she turns to me and says, “Pierre says the piano tuner is a recurring figure in French avant garde literature.”
What a pleasure it is to host people from different cultures and get their perspectives on the world.
The Closet
A short short by Steve O’Keefe
I had an office on Royal Street in the French Quarter above the Golden Lantern, with a haunted closet that would unlatch and pop open at precisely 4:00 p.m. We were amazed and impressed and always welcomed our invisible guest.
Then I fixed the latch, but it still kept opening at 4:00 p.m. It was unnerving. The handle would not turn -- I watched it. The bolt would retract just enough to escape the strike plate and the door would pop open an inch or two. So we put a brick in front of the door and that put an end to the ghost.
Then one Mardi Gras evening, I dropped in to use the bathroom and the closet door was open about 18 inches. I looked down and the brick was still there against the door. That’s when I saw them.
Coming out of the closet were footprints! Glowing footprints, like phosphorus! Footprints made by boots: small boots, from the look of it, maybe women’s size six, with a heel print and a ball print for every step, left, right, left, right, out of the closet, turn toward the door.
I turned white as a ghost, backed out the door, locked-up the office and went down to the street.
The office was closed Ash Wednesday, so I went in during the day to get a better look. The closet door was still open. The brick was still there. The footprints were gone! However, upon closer inspection, I saw what resembled footprints in the grain of the wood floor! Illuminated by a streetlight at just the right angle, it could look like ghostly footprints.
I went to the Ace Hardware store on Bourbon Street, the one with every kind of hinge you can imagine from the 18th Century, and bought a deadbolt lock for the closet. We didn’t have any trouble after that.
The Call
A short short by Steve O'Keefe
I was ten days into a two-week fast on Easter Sunday. I woke up, did two hours of yoga postures, put in my earplugs, put on my eye mask, and laid down on the floor in the corpse pose.
I was looking for something. Previous excursions usually resulted in a name or two. Sometimes there are caves.
About an hour later, I sat upright and said, “Don Bates.” Then I got up, wrote down his name, and had breakfast: lemonade with cayenne pepper. I looked up Don Bates in my dex.
Don is a PR guy in New York who teaches at Columbia. I hadn’t communicated with him for two years, hadn’t seen him for five years. I had one phone number, area code 212, could be his office, the school or his cell.
Would anyone pick up an incoming call with a strange caller ID on Easter Sunday? I hit the button and it started ringing.
“Hello?”
“Don, it’s Steve O’Keefe.”
“Steve O’Keefe,” he said slowly, followed by a long pause.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” I said.
“No, no,” he said. “I’m in my hotel room in Dallas. I came a couple days early for a conference.”
I said nothing.
“You know,” Don began, “you’re not going to believe this, but this morning I woke up out of a dead sleep and wrote ‘Steve O’Keefe’ on a pad on the nightstand and went right back to sleep. I just noticed it now.”
“I got the message, Don. What do you want?”
Birth
A short short by Steve O’Keefe
The most amazing thing I’ve ever seen is my own birth. I was sitting outside my parents’ house, in my parents’ car, motor turned off, lights out.
I had just returned from watching the movie, Altered States, where William Hurt portrays a college professor whose experiments with hallucinogenic drugs and isolation tanks take him to strange and frightening places. Truth be told, I had been experimenting with a mild hallucinogen myself and was enjoying a “head rush” in the car before going into the house.
I had been trying to remember my earliest memories. I was punished for stealing raspberries off the neighbor’s bushes when I was two. I remember that every time I taste a fresh raspberry. My earliest memory is a brief moment of being held in the air by my father, looking down on him in his brown suit, and being passed to other adults. Based on the ease with which he handled me, I’m guessing I was about six months old.
Sitting in the car, head swirling, the bottom dropped out and I was no longer in my father’s hands but between my mother’s thighs, being pushed into a harsh light. I remember trying to breathe. I remember crying. I remember being put into her arms.
I shudder at the memory and never told anyone about it, but I replay it all the time and wonder if it is real.
Opera for Life
A short story by Steve O'Keefe, for Kurt O'Keefe
It was considered the finest opera in the country, one of the very best in the world, but in 2020, after the Covid-19 pandemic, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The $3 million reserve was gone and the endowment didn’t come close to covering costs.
The Opera hired a P.R. consultant to come up with ideas for generating funds. “How old is your average subscriber,” he asked. Most tickets were sold by subscription and the remaining tickets always sold out. An analysis of the records revealed the sad truth: the average subscriber was 73 years old. The audience for the opera was in danger of dying out.
“Sell a lifetime ticket,” suggested the consultant. “Non-transferable. Fifty thousand dollars.” He explained the tax advantages to patrons of paying up front, and the attrition rate would ensure a steady increase in the number of tickets that could be re-sold.
“Sell a hundred seats and you’ve got a five million dollar emergency fund. Sell two hundred seats, and you’ve got an endowment of ten million that will provide three hundred grand a year toward your operating budget,” he said. With a little luck in the market, the endowment might cover the whole budget, when you add the separate fund for guest conductors and principal vocalists.
The Opera put the plan into motion and sold 400 "Opera for Life" tickets -- half the main floor -- before they cut off sales. They had a $20 million windfall, enough to cover both operating costs and visiting artists on an ongoing basis. The P.R. consultant was hailed as a genius.
Ten years later, in 2030, the Opera was once again in dire financial straits and considering bankruptcy. The money was good for a few years and the Opera spent more on guest artists and increased benefits. Five million dollars was set aside in an emergency fund. The P.R. consultant got $2 million because a clause in his contract gave him ten percent if the campaign raised more than $10 million, a sum no one thought possible.
The market didn’t exactly go the Opera’s way and the endowment earned less than a three percent annual return. The real killers, so to speak, were the lifetime ticket holders. First the courts ruled an Opera for Life ticket could be passed to a significant other upon death. If the subscriber married a younger person, and the spouse married a younger person when the subscriber died, the ticket could be used for generations.
Then came the wheelchairs. Once word got around that admission could not be denied to wheelchair companions, the Opera for Life ticket holders started showing up in motorized scooters with non-paying companions. Companion tickets were selling for hundreds of dollars per show on Craigslist. The Opera had to spend the emergency fund to remodel the main floor to accommodate all the wheelchairs and their companions. Less than half the seats could now be sold, not the best half.
Soon there was no money for the guest artists and no money for top talent. Every performance was interrupted for emergency medical services for Opera for Life ticket holders. People frequently died during shows. Now the emergency funds are gone, the P.R. consultant is gone, the Opera is insolvent, and the lifetime ticket holders, their heirs and estates, are suing for breach of contract.
Monopoly
A short short by Steve O'Keefe, for Mark Newlon
It was game night at The Bistro. We had a table of six -- three couples -- and we decided to play Monopoly because everyone knows Monopoly. Only Neal didn't know Monopoly because he was an exchange student from Israel. So I explained the rules: you buy property, you build on it, you charge rent, the player with the most money and property wins.
“No,” said my friend, Eric, a chemical engineering student and usually preoccupied. “The winner is the last player left.”
“And you get to be the last player left,” I continued, “by getting all the property and driving everyone else out of the game.”
“No,” said Eric. “The winner is the last one playing.”
It’s not uncommon for Monopoly to cause arguments, but before play begins? I let it drop and we started. Eric was shaking mad dice and buying everything in sight. Then he turned to Marquita and said, “I’ll sell you Pacific for fifty percent of the revenue of the set,” and before anyone could object she said, “Sure!”
Five hours later, we were approaching closing time. It had been down to Eric and me for the last hour. I had all the property and all the money; Eric had nothing. He had a free pass on most properties and a piece of the action on others. There was no way to eliminate him. He spent as much time as possible in jail. Even though he had nothing, he feared landing on Luxury Tax more than anything else.
“I quit,” I said, losing not only the game but my sense of how the world works.
Two Cokes
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
I had free admission to Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro in New Orleans after the owner, George, walked by my table and dropped a pair of hundred dollar bills.
He had just finished paying the band and was putting his wad back into his pocket when two C-notes floated to the ground. I tapped him on the elbow and pointed to the currency. He looked down, looked at me, bent down and picked up the money.
Then George looked at the woman working the door, who saw all of this going down, and said, “He gets in free from now on.” She smiled and nodded. Just like that, I was in!
I started going to Snug Harbor several nights a week. I never missed Ellis Marsalis’ weekly gig. When a piano player was headlining, I would sit in the front row of the loft where I could look down on the keys and pick up a few tricks. Otherwise, my regular spot was in the back, the last seat on the main floor.
I had a solo seat with no one behind me so I could wear my Panama hat. It was a busy spot with a lot of noise from the bar and restaurant -- until they shut the door. Then it became a blissful enclave of privacy. I would sit there and grade homework, scooching into the aisle for unobstructed views when the action on stage got serious.
It’s always wise at Snug Harbor to order two drinks before the set; you never know when you’ll see your server again. I wasn’t drinking in those days so I always ordered two cokes. They must have gotten a kick out of it, because they started calling me Two Cokes.
One night I was in the back corner grading papers when George got on stage to introduce the band. “Before we begin,” he said, “I’d like to welcome two esteemed journalists with us at Snug Harbor tonight.”
That got my attention and I put down my grading pen. George introduced a writer from Jazz Times, then said, “...and our very own, Tuco.” Looking right at me, he said, “Tuco, stand up.”
I stood up and folks applauded and I sat back down and tried to hide my red face behind my hat. Apparently, George thought I was a music critic named Tuco, not a professor named Two Cokes.
Very sadly, George died not long after. He was a big man, lived a big life, had a big heart and it gave out. After that, I had to pay full cover at Snug Harbor like everyone else. But they always brought me two cokes when I came in, on the house.
Mom Praying
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
for RoseAnn O'Keefe
About five years after my father passed, I spent the Summer with my mother in Grand Blanc, Michigan. I was taking yet another two-week entrepreneurship boot camp and looking for financing for a video business. Michigan had lavish tax breaks for the film industry at the time.
While I was there, my mother showed me how she prays. These are not the daily prayers of the practicing Catholic: the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Glory Be. Just as my mother created her own secret formulas for household cleaners (I found her recipe file) she also had her own way of praying.
“Before I go to sleep,” she told me, “I visit each of their homes and ask for blessings for each family member,” she said, referring to me and my eight siblings.
“I go to Tom’s house,” she said, starting from the top, “and ask for blessings for Tom and Frances and Rachel and Erika and Cate and for little Alistair. Then I go to Mike’s house; that’s a little tricky.”
My brother Mike fathers kids from two marriages that came with kids, but she gets through them all by name.
“Then I go to Diane’s,” she said, working her way down the list, sitting across from me in a pink nightgown, her pills arrayed in front of her ready for the morning. “When I have time,” she said, “I do my brothers and their families, and Dad’s brothers and sisters.” That’s dozens of people.
Several months later, back in New Orleans, I was doing “Mom Praying” and I visited my brother Tom’s house and sent good wishes, then I visited my brother Mike’s house and, lo and behold, who was there but my mom!
“What are you doing here,” she asked.
“Praying for Mike,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Praying for Mike,” she said.
We both busted out laughing.
I haven’t bumped into her since.
Goat
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
I was walking on the beach in Port Townsend, on the shore of Puget Sound, when I came across a dead goat that looked like it had drowned.
I called Animal Control to report the dead goat and the next day it was still there. So I called Animal Control again and they said it’s not their jurisdiction. “A dead goat on the beach is Marine Wildlife.”
So I called Marine Wildlife and reported a dead goat on the beach. The next day, the dead goat was still there. So I called Marine Wildlife again and they said they only deal in dead marine creatures, like dead fish or dead seals. They recommended I call Animal Control.
So I called Animal Control again and they said there’s nothing they could do about it. I explained the unpleasant impact on the children of Port Townsend of watching a goat decay on the beach, and they recommended I call the Department of Sanitation.
At some point, I called the newspaper. They wrote a story about the dead goat and the bureaucratic runaround -- with a picture of the goat. The story ended with my call for volunteers to help bury the dead goat on Saturday.
On Saturday, I arrived at the scene with two shovels and a dozen pairs of gloves. The dead goat was gone. Someone had finally come and taken it away. I celebrated with the neighbors who showed up to help bury it.
Time
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
Time has hips. It doesn’t move in a straight line but sashays, left and right.
The Earth should make it around the sun in 364 days or 13 moons of 28 days each, but it doesn’t. There’s a little extra. Cajuns call it lagniappe.
You can slow down time by slowing yourself down. All things being equal, if you slow down your heart, it will last longer; if you slow your respiration, your lungs will last longer; if you slow your metabolism, your body will last longer.
How do you slow yourself down? You breathe deeply when you think of it. You sit quietly when you can. You try to think of nothing, which some people call meditation. You eat the least amount you need to.
When you slow yourself down, time expands. You feel the seconds and minutes linger. Things like meals take an enormous amount of time in your mind, though the same time on the clock. You will find you can get a lot done in five minutes of slow time: fix the car, make dinner, paint the house.
You can slow yourself down almost to a complete stop. Everything around you moves in slow motion, and you are capable of accomplishing an incredible number of tasks. You can travel cross country and be home before dawn. You can write an entire book while having breakfast with your friends.
When you slow yourself to a complete stop, you can do everything imaginable in no time at all.
Love Driving
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
I was nine and a half hours into a 10-hour drive to Michigan, in tight rush hour traffic on I-75 north of Toledo, when it happened.
My wife says my driving changes when I cross the state line into the land where I was born. In Michigan, cops ticket you for going less than 10 over. People drive Mad Max vehicles on roads built for twice as much traffic, weaving from shoulder to shoulder to avoid the potholes, debris and broken down junkers that litter the Motor City’s freeways.
I felt claustrophobic in my lane, with vehicles close behind me and to my right and a semi in right front of me. There was just enough room on my left to squeeze into the lane, so I hit the signal and made my move.
Suddenly there were horns and lights and yelling and I saw a tiny little tin can car in the blind spot next to me. I hadn’t seen it before. I never slowed down. I just moved right in and, thank the Lord, he was fast on the brake and avoided a collision.
Then he moved into the lane I came out of and roared past me with a two finger salute. I mouthed “sorry” and held my hands up like “don’t shoot.” He pulled in front of me, then slammed on the brakes, and so it went for a few miles, until a car pulled between us. We got off the freeway and finished the trip without incident.
From that point on, I’ve been practicing “Love Driving.” I err on the side of caution and always assume people have a good reason for driving slowly in the passing lane or way too fast for traffic. I don’t give them the finger, I blow them a kiss. It’s been working remarkably well ever since.
NOLA Bookfair
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
Of the hundreds of book fairs I have attended, none have delighted me as much as the NOLA Bookfair in New Orleans. It was organized by anarchists, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron, and since I was an anarchist business owner, another oxymoron, I became a sponsor.
Before the flood, we had meetings down at the anarchist library and bike co-op in a warehouse on Decatur. “When is NOLA Bookfair” ceased to be a question and became a koan for disorganizer G.K. Darby (https://www.gcpress.com). “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges,” was another mantra.
Bookfair bloomed. If you paid attention, you would see it. Sort of like occupancy permits bloomed, and proofs of insurance, and commercial leases, from the printers of the anarchist non-collective, as needed. The after party was always a rave at a secret location revealed by text at midnight. The police often shut it down, leading to the back up after party.
The year NOLA Bookfair moved to Frenchmen Street, I got nervous because flu was going around and the bathrooms in the mostly no-cover joints on Frenchmen were often filthy. These same dives were about to host dozens of publishers and vendors and thousands of fans during daylight hours they were unaccustomed to.
On a delightful Saturday morning, I turned the van into Frenchmen Street at 8 a.m. with my dubious Sponsor Parking Pass and snagged a shady spot on Washington Square under a Live Oak. The van was loaded with toilet paper, paper towels, pump soap and sanitary napkins. I put on my gloves and mask, grabbed my disinfectant and glass cleaner, and started at the Spotted Cat. I cleaned and stocked every men’s room, women’s room, and gender-neutral bathroom of every NOLA Bookfair venue on Frenchmen and finished by 10 a.m. On Sunday morning, I did another round.
No one asked me what I was doing. It was as though I were invisible. No one said anything at all, not even thanks. No one asked me to do this. It wasn’t on a checklist. No one paid me. No one tipped me. That’s what it means to be an anarchist sponsor of an anarchist book fair.
Self Portrait: A Piano Decomposition
by Steve O'Keefe
https://soundcloud.com/pianoraga/self-portrait
“Self Portrait” is a 10-minute tirade on the piano which I recorded some time ago. I was ambivalent about it on playback and almost deleted it. That, in itself, could be a metaphor for the decomposer’s life.
I saved it, but I had no idea what to call it. It’s not a song. In fact, the defining characteristic of the piece is lack of song. It’s an example of why people with anxiety disorders maybe shouldn’t improvise. There is no mercy. It never lets up.
My performances usually start with chaos and devolve to the blues. This piece sustains the chaos all the way through. Ten minutes without rhythm, melody, or structure is extraordinary and, again, a reflection of the decomposer’s life.
There’s a technique I call “playing the hammers” about five minutes in, where it feels like my fingers are 12 inches long and I’m reaching through the keyboard and playing the hammers themselves, not the keys. When I play the hammers, I feel like I’m part piano. It is a sound I endeavor to sustain.
Six minutes in, the playing goes from chaotic to ferocious. The fever is sustained for several delirious minutes, including some of my best right hand glisses or fans or whatever you call a quick rip up the keyboard. At 7:30, Self Portrait goes into a phase I call bash & run, with forearms flying and scampering chases up the scales.
With nowhere to turn, artistically cornered, Self Portrait goes completely primal at 8:40, barking and growling and snarling like a sled being pulled by grizzly bears. As the fingers weaken, solo notes become chords, and the piece winds down with parallel chunky enthusiasm before a Big Finish.
I called it Self Portrait because I couldn’t think of a title, yet it contains some of my favorite techniques stacked on top of each other. Also, it reflects the tremendous anxiety I feel almost all the time, which is relieved only by playing the piano.
Knife
Short Short Stories by Steve O'Keefe
It was only the second time I had been in a squad car. The first time my best friend Tony’s older brother took us for a spin in his cruiser when I was 11.
This time I was escorted into the back seat by Phoenix’s Finest, along with my companion, Lisa. We were given a chauffeured ride off the Interstate, where we had been hitch hiking, to the next exit and deposited at the first convenience store.
Lisa went inside to call a cab for a ride to the bus station. We could get a bus to Flagstaff, jumping off point for the Grand Canyon. I waited outside with the backpacks. Some kids came out of the store and suddenly I was surrounded by African-American teenagers asking a lot of questions.
“She with you?”
“Yes.”
“How come the cops dropped you off?”
“We were hitch hiking.”
“Where you gettin’ to?”
“Grand Canyon.”
“Where you from?”
“Detroit.”
I was nervous, trying to be brave. Just then, my camp knife fell out of the hole in my pocket and down the leg of my pants. I bent down to pick it up and the teenagers backed off.
“You ain’t gotta pull no knife, Detroit,” one of the kids said.
“It just fell out of my pocket,” I said, but they kept backing off.
Then the taxi showed up and Lisa came out and said, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said, opening the cab door, but I was briefly proud that I came from Detroit, that I had a knife, and that no harm came to my companion.
Ghislaine
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
“Mam,” the walkie-talkie crackled, “they say they’re F.B.I., Mam. I have to let them in.”
“Shit,” she said, and dropped the silly device, running to the window in time to see the gate come down and a squad of armed agents invade her compound. “Shit.”
She ran into the bathroom and locked the door, as if it was the drugs they were after. She took a handful of pills and poured the rest down the toilet. Then came the yelling, then the knock at the door.
“F.B.I. Open the door, Mam. F.B.I. We will have to break down the door if you do not open it. Do you understand? Open the door, Mam. F.B.I.”
She reached for her cell phone. “Fuck.” It was not there. She left it on the desk, in the tinfoil wrapper Jeffrey told her would “foil the F.B.I.”
Her millions of dollars could not save her. Her powerful friends were all powerless now. Her lifetime taunting law enforcement had caught up with her.
Now, lying on the floor with a mouthful of pills, she hears the door jamb pop and she knows, it’s all over.
Pool
by Steve O'Keefe
I was a restless child, the fifth of nine, and one day I just wandered away. I was eight years old and I went down the block to explore on my own. I crossed old man Crotchety's lawn, and made my way to the Merriweather's backyard. They had a pool.
It was November and the in-ground pool was covered with a blue tarp which was dished from the weight of water and leaves. I circumnavigated the pool, balancing on the cement rim, until I fell in.
Suddenly, I was covered in water and dead leaves and muck. I flailed and struggled and became wrapped in the bright blue plastic tarp that had come loose from its fittings and now surrounded me. I felt myself going down, the water turning black, I couldn’t breathe.
Then I was out. I’m not sure how. I emerged from the pool soaking wet, covered with leaves, and alive! I walked home and my mother said, “What happened to you?”
“I fell in Merriweather's pool.” My mother was deathly afraid of swimming pools; a neighbor’s child had drowned.
“Go upstairs and put some dry clothes on,” she said. No one has spoken of it since.
Clothesmas
Short Short Stories by Steve O'Keefe
I’ve written about some of my embarrassing Christmases before, such as the year I found all the presents and the year I stole all the presents, but I’ve never written about my best Christmas. I was 12 years old and they asked me to play Santa and hand out the gifts at the annual Christmas Eve party in my Grandma Stella’s basement!
When you are the fifth child of nine, you never get picked for anything good. You’re never team captain, you never get to sit at the head of a table, you never get to go first except on your birthday. A few times I was selected as the person who would break the bad news to my parents.
My mother’s brothers were all there, with their big families, but for some reason, when Eddie couldn’t make it, I was chosen from all the assembled cousins to be the one to put on the beard and hat, stuff the red pajamas with pillows, and hand out the gifts.
On Christmas Eve, godparents gave gifts to their godchildren, and vice versa, and we all gave and received gifts from my Grandma Stella. This was all staged by my mother and my aunts, who determined what to buy from whom, bought it, labelled it, and put it under the tree. Consequently, the gifts were mostly clothes we needed, not clothes we wanted, thus Clothesmas.
I got my Uncle Charlie whatever my Mom told me to, usually a leather belt which my mother picked out and paid for. Aunt Ninfa, my godmother, usually got something from the stationery store.
This special Clothesmas, however, I was the one handing out the gifts to the sneers and taunts of my siblings. My hot looking cousins came and sat on my knee, flashing holiday cleavage. My curvy aunts showered me with kisses while my uncles were upstairs playing poker.
I had a smile that lasted almost a year, until I became a cynical teenager and budding juvenile delinquent. For one amazing Christmas, I was Santa Claus, the biggest man around, for no reason I can recall.
Kuan
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
In the magical land of Kuan, all Kuanians are equal by law, each bestowed at birth with one Kuan, each required to share their Kuan upon death equally between their descendents.
No one can create Kuan, no one can destroy Kuan. There is exactly one Kuan, carefully tracked, for every person who has ever lived. Other than birth, ways of acquiring Kuan include purchase, inheritance, gifting and contests. One can borrow against one’s Kuan.
In all matters of state, every Kuan is worth one vote. Every action of significance is voted upon and the Kuan wins. It is the most fair system that has ever existed.
Today, almost all Kuanians live in abject poverty, while a few privileged Kuanians live in absolute luxury. How is it possible these few Kuanians win every vote, set every rule, and keep nearly all the wealth of Kuan for themselves?
The law allows parents to hold the Kuan of their children and masters to hold the Kuan of their slaves, banks to hold the Kuan of their debtors and conquerors to gain the Kuan of the vanquished. Even though slavery has been outlawed for hundreds of years, slave Kuan was never returned to slave descendants and bank Kuan is still controlled by bankers.
Today, Kuan Funds have bought up the majority of Kuan and the majority of votes, even though only a few Kuanians benefit. It is the fairest system that ever existed. To change it would violate the rule of one Kuan, one vote. The Kuanians have doomed themselves to poverty for eternity.
Scope
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
“Think of a place that makes you calm and peaceful, and go to that place in your mind,” he said.
My mind went to Bird Island in City Park, a little jewel of bayou wilderness hidden in the center of golf courses and soccer fields. I would go there on weekend mornings and sit at the edge of the bayou where raccoons would wash their hands and alligators would prowl for egret.
I brought gloves and trash bags and picked up trash on the bayou left behind by soccer players and golfers. My last stop was the cop car at the gate, where the police officer providing security for the soccer fields would drop his fast food containers, which I picked up right in front of him, sitting in his air-conditioned cruiser, motor running, and put in the trash before leaving.
Then one day the cop rolls down his window and says, “You can’t come in here no more.”
And I said, “What? I pick up your trash every week.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but the rules are, unless you playin’ soccer, not allowed in this part of the park.” Then he rolled up his window and I left.
“Are you thinking of a peaceful place” the doctor asked.
“Yes,” I said, and he shoved the scope up my ass and destroyed what was left of that memory forever.
Anne
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
Of course I was in love with her. She was gorgeous, an Annie Hall free spirit with a Susan Sarandon brain, a sometimes-lesbian women’s studies major and my housemate in an anarchist co-operative at Michigan State University. What’s not to like?
She would come home, stars in her eyes, spinning stories about one guy or gal after another, sharing too much with me like she didn’t care what I thought. Then she’d come home crying and overshare about the assholes who used her or betrayed her or ignored her.
She didn’t see that I had fallen in love with her. Then one night she came home late with a black eye, crying and swearing and waking everyone up. I stayed with her that night, and the night after that, bringing her chamomile tea and kissing her bruises.
The night after that he was back. He brought flowers. He apologized. They went to dinner, and I was shut out of her room after that, shut out of her life, as though nothing had ever happened, as though I didn’t exist.
Sweep the Ice
by Steve O'Keefe
with thanks to Storme O’Keefe
She was asleep now, or pretending to be. Under the sheets in her dorm room, he wondered, “Is this the person I will marry?”
He had been sent to this school by his parents who were fearful he would otherwise become a factory worker, condemned to dangerous, smelly, low-paying manual labor until becoming disabled, then living off handouts until merciful death. Those are the two possible paths they saw.
He was sent here to find a mate. Someone his own age, his social level, with shared interests and a common heritage. His parents didn’t want him to find a girl in the pub.
She didn’t believe in God, she said, and that made him take notice. It was a bold statement in a room of strangers. “But I believe in angels,” she said.
“How’s that,” he asked.
“You know in curling, there’s a couple guys who sweep the ice?”
She knew curling! He was smitten.
“I think angels are like that,” she said “encouraging you to go a certain direction, but you’re free to go where you want.”
Sears Hill
Short short stories by Steve O'Keefe
I live on Sears Hill, a stubborn piece of rock that’s probably responsible for Staunton being where it is. Sears Hill is at the intersection of the North/South arterial, Highway 11, also known as Greenville Road south of town and Augusta north of town, and the East/West arterial, Highway 250 or Richmond Road. Only these two major roads never intersect because Sears Hill is smack in the way. So the roads detour around it, the railroad detours around it, the creek detours around it, and the north side of the giant roundabout created by Sears Hill became downtown Staunton.
The valley below the east side of Sears Hill became home to an asylum, with architecture by Blackburn, a student of Thomas Jefferson. The sanatorium has spacious grounds along Asylum Creek where people from town would come and picnic. The farm houses that dotted the south side of Sears Hill were sturdy four squares, with four bedrooms upstairs, four rooms below.
Then the asylum was turned into Western State Penitentiary for the criminally insane. Bars went up on the stately victorians with their giant pillars. Fences went up on the perimeter. Guard towers were erected. The citizens no longer came to lunch on the lawns.
The beautiful farm houses of Sears Hill were divided into apartments and rented to prison staff and relatives of inmates. Staunton did everything it could to wall off the south side of town on the other side of the tracks. A subdivision of large homes built on Dogwood Hill in the 1960s was careful to block any access from Sears Hill.
And then the prison went away. Western State Penitentiary closed and many of the remaining inmates were transferred to Western State Hospital located on Staunton’s far east side. After some time, a developer bought the prison and began converting it into mixed use housing and retail under the name The Villages of Staunton. Condominiums in what used to be prison barracks start at about $300,000. Many of the buildings have not been renovated and still have bars on the windows. A cemetery of unmarked graves rises up the hillside behind The Villages.
Now Sears Hill is suddenly prime real estate again. Rentals are turning back into single family housing. Nightmare homes occupied by ne’er-do-wells are selling for 50 grand and flipping for 250 a year later. Suddenly, Staunton wants to embrace its south side, though the kiss has been slow coming.
Sears Hill is still a mixed neighborhood, rare in America, with white, black, and latino families having lived on the hill for generations. It’s gentrifying from Sears Castle at the top to Hampton at the bottom, source of a considerable percentage of Staunton’s police calls. Recently artists and gay couples have added to the neighborhood’s diversity so that we now literally have rainbow flags flying across the street from a southern cross and a Winnie the Pooh welcome flag!
The crazy, mixed up, multi-cultural, multi-class community of Sears Hill sits stubbornly on Staunton’s south because it was just too big to bulldoze out of the way. I’m proud to be a resident today.
The Last Time I Died
I’ve died a dozen times but none of them have stuck. I drowned three times: once in a swimming pool, once in a frozen river after falling through the ice, and once on a raft stuck in the middle of a lake. I can’t tell you how I survived those incidents. I’m not sure I did.
I’ve died in car crashes several times. Something pretending to be me always picks up where I dropped off.
The last time I died in a car crash, I was coming home from Lowe’s, stopped at a stoplight, crying. I was out of money and I had just picked up a package that turned out to be the first donation I received for a public service program I started that was causing me to go broke. It meant I finally reached someone, even though it was too little, too late. The stress and the relief was all too much. I needed a moment to compose myself.
A large, dark blue pickup truck came to a stop next to me on my left. I was glad the truck was so high the driver couldn’t see me crying in the minivan. His engine was loud at idle and louder once the light turned green. I hesitated pulling into the intersection and then it happened.
As I crossed the centerline, a jeep blew through the red light at 45 miles per hour. I hit the brakes. The driver of another car waiting at the light put her hands in front of her face to shield herself from the debris that was about to explode. Only it didn’t explode!
The driver of the jeep never slowed down. As he passed in front of me, he realized what he’d done. He turned and looked me straight in the eyes, his face filled with horror. Somehow the jeep slipped between the tailgate of the pickup truck and the front bumper of the minivan without hitting either of us.
After a shocked moment stopped in the middle of the intersection, I navigated across the street, surrounded by motorists blessing themselves and thinking they just saw the luckiest guy alive. But I’m not sure I survived.
I’m not sure who picked up the meat suit and continued on, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “me.” I was different and have been ever since. I feel like I’m living bonus time so I should make the most of it. I could not figure out why I, who wanted to die -- or at least was okay with dying -- would survive while some other schmuck who wants to live gets randomly snuffed?
Years earlier, when I was divorced and depressed, living in New Orleans, I went to an anti-crime march holding a sign that read, KILL ME NEXT. I seriously thought the punks should not kill another person in New Orleans until they had killed me first. If they never killed me, maybe the killings would stop? If they did kill me, I would not have to read about another murder in New Orleans. A win/win situation.
I asked my priest if the Church kept a registry of people willing to substitute themselves for hostages. He recommended I contact a therapist, which I did. I would happily offer my life for someone else’s if it would get them off the hook. I would take anyone’s place in a vehicular fatality if I could. Maybe that’s how I got here? Maybe I’m the person who took my place the last time I died?
I tried finding like-minded people willing to substitute themselves for hostages through organizations such as Amnesty International. The U.S. State Department is officially opposed to the idea. My new girlfriend was also upset by the idea, so I let it go.
The last time I died is the most unsettling since the Lowe’s incident five years ago. I’m afraid of heights -- always have been. It has saved my life many times. I get vertigo looking down a steep edge. The vertigo went away briefly after a tussle with Covid-19, but that’s another story. The vertigo was raging when I rented a Genie 40-foot boom lift to do some work on the house.
Alone in the lift, bobbing 20 feet above the ground, I became paralyzed with fear. I would have to peel myself off the floor of the gondola to grab the caulk gun with one hand and pray. Day after day, I was crouched down sensing every breeze in every muscle, certain the next gust would send me to the hospital.
Every time I came down I felt like a sailor on wobbly legs. Every time I went up I nearly threw up. At night, laying in bed waiting for sleep, I could feel the swaying of the gondola and see myself falling through the blackness.
In dreams, I come right up to the edge all the time but I never take the leap. I get just as sick in my dreams as I do looking out from the top floor of a parking garage. Once I was invited to tour the Columbia Center in Seattle as it was nearing completion. The water in the toilets on the 75th floor sloshed back and forth with the breeze. We were escorted to the rooftop patio, which was “fenced” with a skimpy rope around the perimeter. The fall would be certain death. I got so sick I wished I died that day! It makes me nauseous to recall it.
In my dreams I’m usually chased to the edge, but I never go over. If I do, it turns out not to be an edge after all, or a cliff or a pit or a well or a ravine. Or else I wake up. That’s what made this last dream so unusual.
The last time I died was in a dream where I was chased to the edge, but this time I said, “Fuck it! I’m ready to go!” Over the edge I went and there I was, dangling in the air. It was a cliff, there was a ravine, I was certain the fall would kill me! At the bottom, miles down, there was a postage-stamp lake of purest glacier-melt blue. It reminded me of Lake of the Clouds in Michigan.
Then I noticed I wasn’t falling. I looked back at the edge and I got scared and reached out and somehow I made it back. “Wow!” I thought, “I went over the edge and I still didn’t die!” Unless I did and that’s when the guy writing this put on the meat suit.