Dear Mr. Later

Two letters to someone in the future

Lion’s

To all of you:

I know that I did not have much time to spend with all of you when we were around. I guess I could have done a better job. I really liked all of you. I know that when you read this I will still be liking all of you. I just won’t be there because I’m never there. I might be on a weekend vacation in Phoenix, because the tickets were really cheap and I hadn’t played 36 holes of golf since last month. I might be in an office signing a new talent because the people crave new ideas, and I’m not creative enough to come up with one but I know how to exploit them. I might even be plowed, I mean really drunk, because I know that I should be at home helping to make the dinner – it’s been three years since I’ve taken out the trash; she does it – but I’m at a ball with the newest piano player that decided to hit only three keys for a ten minute song and I get to sell it as “Bona fide Genius.” But now I’m thinking of you.

I know that I should not write this in a letter but I’m a fish on dry land. I should, instead, act as the better part of the actions I’m describing, but I know that I won’t. I just won’t. I’m in a moment of clarity now; I know what is valuable. It’s all the things that everyone knows are valuable in life, family, friends, love, laughs, and good food. But me, I, I cannot act in accord with my heart. This is my shortcoming. I know what to change but cannot. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve listened. Maybe my will has been locked off from my heart all along. I know this though right now I feel good that I’m writing this. If only I could keep the feeling I have right now.

The feeling will fade though. The gold with come shining in and my decision will follow a shiny object. I’m distracted easily. At least I was able to get you all that you wanted for your Birthdays.

My kids: I love you like a root beer float.

My wife: I love you like a bee loves nectar.

Just know that for a little while that I care about you. I think about you even when I’m not thinking about you, and I know that to be true because of times like this. It all comes spilling out. I want to be there but I’m here.

Love,

Mr. Grain, Dad

Ceahorse’s

Dear Mr. Velius

I don’t believe an introduction is necessary! There is not doubt, in my mind, that you know who I am. However, perhaps there are some things that you don’t know.

Firstly, I know what you did. I was hiding in the shadows and witnessed the entire act, in all its gruesomeness. Secondly, you can’t be aware of what I'm going to do to you as a consequence – perhaps you can guess, but I'm sure it won’t be right.

Let’s start with my wife.

From my place of concealment I watched as had your way with my unwitting wife. I saw you slowly escalade from peaceful to sadistic. I was forced to bear witness as you smashed my beautiful wife’s face with your bare knuckles. Hell! If that wasn’t enough, you found the fiendishness to please yourself sexually with her unconscious corpse – like a medieval pillager – before you took your fingers to her throat and ended her life forever.

As recoil, the things I have planned for you are quite hideous in their own way. First, I will smash each and every one of your knuckles with a hammer, taking careful time to ensure you’re fully aware of each strike. Following this, I will cut each of your fingers off, making sure to coagulate each slice quickly with a blow torch to save you from bleeding to death. As for the rape, each of those severed fingers will then rape you.

As for what you did to my daughter. Yes! I saw that too, even though it was in a different room. I know that you struck my five year old daughter’s head seventeen times with a Mathematics text book. I’m also aware that after she stopped moving you lapped up the blood like a dehydrated hyena. Did you have to break her dead corpse’s neck?

As punishment, I am going to beat your torso with that very text book. I’d smash your head, but it would kill you. After I’ve satisfied myself with one hundred and forty six blows to the body – which happens to be the equivalent of seventeen blows to a five year old versus how many blows to a 43 year old – I will then draw 2 pints of blood from you and cook up some soup thick like Campbell’s Tomato. This solution is going down your throat with the aid of a gasoline funnel.

Perhaps, at this point, you might be asking why I did nothing when I had a chance. Or why you should be afraid of a man that watched as you did the things you did. Well, the punishment isn’t because of my loss, but because of the principle of what was done. I don’t miss my life as it was, in fact you did the thing that I was to cowardly to do myself. However, that doesn’t make it right.

When all this is done, I thought of killing you. However, I’ve decided to leave your fingerless, bruised and battered body for the police instead. Then, retreat back into my dark corner, in the back of our head, and never come out again.

Sincerely:

Mr. Andrius Laima Veluis

Missing!!

Two stories about something important that is lost.

Ceahorse's

Keys and Dreams

Sometimes the loss of something can be quite profound, even if only for a short time. It has the ability to consume you? To drive you to the brink – regardless of your will.
Take for instance this case in hand.
I was just parking my car in my backdoor parking spot – the wife and I had spent the day at her parents. It was late, but before midnight. As the engine died off from turning the key, I reached down to my pants pockets to retrieve my house key. I, at the time, knew I had brought my keys, and the car was in fact my wife’s – she didn’t keep the house keys connected to the car keys.
I found my pants keyless. I then proceeded to my coat pockets. Vacant. I looked to my wife and said. “Do you have the keys?”
“I haven’t seen them all day.”
We both let out a sign, mine general, hers directed. Then I did a quick scan of the floor matt and seat, still finding nothing.
“Let’s go back to my parents” She suggested. I started it up and spent the entire thirty minute drive thinking about how and where I could have dropped them – no answers.
In AT the in-laws, they were quickly surmised of my idiocy and began to help me search the places where I had been. They were no more successful then I was – the wife spent this time upstairs, as I assume watching TV and taking her shower.
After a thorough triple over search I gave up and went upstairs. I was greeted with a smirky grin from both the sisters, and an innocent “Your keys are gone!” from the nephew – the wife simply told me to take a shower and get ready for bed.
Showered and changed, I slipped into bed with the wife. She was already in the dark trying to sleep – I had gone back down to check the places they might of fell in the car again.
I am surprised at how fast I was able to fall asleep. Perhaps my conscious mind unconsciously decided to let my unconscious mind take a turn So I slept and dreamt – but I didn’t sleep long.
I dreamt of various quests for keys. There was a search of a house, a dirty clothes pocket divest, a scan of the road side and a bizarre jungle search. The last dream was of myself leaning over to kiss my wife, while I was driving, and the keys rattled down between the her seat and the safety brake – this dream brought me out of dreamland WC.
I laid there for about one and a half minutes before I pulled myself from the bed and went downstairs to check the niche on her side of the car. The door opened – we never locked the car doors at the in-laws, my palms hit the vinyl seat covers and my eyes searched up and over the hand brake. I began to smile. Then I saw, an empty alcove. Then I swore under my breath – the mother-in-law was nearby, she was an early risers so it seems being 6am on Sunday.
I went back to retrieve my jacket and the car keys. I bid the early bird farewell, told her where I was going the left – I was going home to check the ground between the door and my parking spot, a space of about one and a half meters.
The drive back was filled with wonders of where they may have fallen, of re-imaging in my mind the space of where the car parks and where the sewer grates were. Nothing seemed to be of threat and I began to fell optimism.
I parked on the road, and walked around the car and began to search the ground. I gave it a good search but found nothing. Then I got an idea. I went to the landlord’s house – she lives in the house next door, a blessing sometimes – and asked her if she had a spare key. There was a bit of confusion as to how many keys she had given me, whereby I had to explain that one key was lost and the other was locked in the house – why do people have to understand everything – but she soon was searching her key rack.
We found a copy, and she walked me through her house and let me in my own. She offered the key, but I declined it. I then went to my own key box and glanced inside. I found what I was looking for a set of keys, my keys.
My mind raced backwards, sorting through the events. I could recall taking her keys, but I remembered clearly locking the door and walking around the front of the car. I also clearly saw myself getting in the car. I didn’t remember where her keys went after that, but my logic told me that my habit was to always either hand them to my wife or put them in the nook under the handbrake.
The drive back was filled with thoughts like “I’ll show those grinners”. I arrived and was greeting the mother in law – she was only told whose keys were really lost.
The wife then came down, and with that half embarrasses half disappointed look ask me if I had found them. I told her I did, but that they were in the house. She looked confused and even asked me how I was able to lock the door and if in fact I had even done so. I broke it down for her right up until the point where I told her to start search where she had been – I helped her look, and didn’t watch TV in the meantime.
We didn’t find them until she decided to search the car. She found them almost instantly. She didn’t look on the floor, or in the glove compartment. She didn’t search the seats or under the mats. She found them in the passenger side door pocket. She grinned at me.
I had to apologize for forgetting that I had given them to her. I spent the drive home wondering how my dreams had failed me so. Why didn’t I dream of giving things to my wife?

Lion's

Lost luck

It wasn’t one of the flashiest gifts that I’ve ever been given, but it meant a lot to me. I’d had it ever since my brother had given it to me — a horseshoe. My lucky horseshoe. Rusted and weathered, he’d found it while we were at grandpas house. The stroke not long before that visit. The house auction not long after. We, ignorant of our grandpa’s change, played in the stacks of old mechanic magazines in the garage — remodeling the place with a mess free of charge. And in the excitement of destruction — with articles of Ford engines, Buick breaks, and Cadillac interiors, suspended in the air — the horseshoe fell from the rafters. Everything stopped with its sound.
Jessie, my older brother, discovered it first. He gave it to me, a little more than a year later, for my birthday — after grandpa passed.
When I was a little kid I put it over my bedroom door. I’ve done that to every main door that I’ve had ever since. When I moved out to go to University, it was on the inside of my dormitory, above the door to the hallway. After University and in a house with my college mates, it was outside, above of the garage that held my grandpa’s motorcycle. Now, when moving into my own house it’s nowhere to be found — lost.
I packed it with my socks. I unpacked them, and it was gone. I thought of it while I blankly matched and discarded the remainders. All of the socks were matched and in place; my grandpa’s horseshoe — gone. I know, at the start, it probably didn’t have any lucky qualities. But after years of symbolism and willing it to permeate luck some of mine had to have worn off on it.
Before games as a kid I’d think of it. Before tests in school I’d think of it. Before introducing myself to my wife, before proposing to her, and while marrying her I thought of my grandpa’s horseshoe — it was lucky. And always, good or bad I’d thank it.
Now, it was gone. The box was empty. My sock drawer was full and I felt hollow. I called my wife to take a look at the empty box.
“Look” I said pointing at the box.
“Good work,” she said “One less box.”
“No the horseshoe, my grandpas horseshoe, it gone.”
“Ahh, it’s ok hon’. I’m sure you will find it. Where else could it be?”
“Here! Nowhere but here!”
“Well, where should it be?”
I smiled and she smiled. We walked to the front of the house, and there it hung above the garage.
“How’d that get up there?” I asked
“I don’t know, maybe your grandpa put it up there.”
I smiled and she smiled. We walked in.
“Hey hon’”
“Yeah,” she said.
“You should tell grandpa to put the ladder inside the garage next time rather than on the side of the house.”
“I will,” she said.
Thanks, I said internally.