the corner of the student union

Working in a school, where the students stay the same age and I get older, has given me an odd sensation. Even while sitting alone at a table in the corner of the student union working on coffee, my physical body is slowly drifting back from everything before me while my view is magnifying to a greater extent. I've been double-crossed by a seemingly good-hearted mentor, who inspired me enough to take up teaching, and a feeling of dread is working its way up my back, straightening my spine and fusing all its joints. I turn my neck to look behind me and there is nothing. The world is falling into the back of my head, which is now unbearably heavy and pressed sideways against some stone pillar.

The Dentist's Office

Scraps of broken buildings lay landpiled everywhere like bodies of dead whales, hunked and white. I needed to get home. People on all sides of me strove forth leaning, dogged like swimmers through a sudden city downpour.

A stranger came in front of me and leaned up to look into my face. His hair buffed out black, cloudy, his eyes white, slick and clayfaced, and he muttered some plangent sound at me but he was clearly underwater, and I could not hear him. Nevertheless he grabbed my hand and led me down the street as if it was now his way we were taking. He yanked on my wrist and it hurt me with that uncomfortable slip that wet skin has against anything. I struggled pettily. The wet was thick, and grabbed my feet.

He brought me to the dentist's office, a white ramshackle half-hexagon kind of place with chipped rose moldings and walls paneled with whitewash now peeling, showing black. A roaring wind was in there, and the wet man shouted in my face to never go where I was going, but I fought against the wind. A plaque on the wall screamed SSSSHHH at me and I reached the door, the carpet squirting under my feet. The man blew out the other frame, a white wind sucking up a handkerchief, and as I crossed the threshold in the black night all was still.

Write about a dream (without saying "I dreamed").

"They're bunnies," the skinny guy said. He had the brown clothes, the brown truck. "Everyone likes bunnies. For one rabbit, we sell six bunnies. Sign here." He tapped his clipboard with the pen. They were hopping on each other, pinkish, on my porch, crowding the door, open a few inches. The lawn was covered with them, you couldn't see the grass. I kicked one back with my boot.

The guy gave me a look. "That one has a heart condition," he said, and touched his chest. "He can't take much stress." I looked at his name, above his pocket, embroidered: N. But when I looked again, it said: Nikolai. It's my name, I thought.

-Steven Barthelme, Nice Boy (Gulf Stream Magazine #3)

Hi from the Herkimer!

This week, write about a dream, but don't say "I dreamed." Make it as real as possible.

The weirder, the better.

Write with guts!

Pink bunnies, surprise oceans, and a strange sense of urgency,

HERKIMER

Evan Christopher

To fourteen year old Evan Christopher, the night was a stage on which his story would be told. A forbidden world that, while his parents slept, drew him like a pirate to the sea. The magic portal to this realm, his first floor bedroom window. Metal-framed and sideways sliding, he had oiled it to a hush. The only sound a gentle scraping as it slid on its track, an incantation that brought forth his favorite music. The rhythm of crickets. The dialogue of frogs. Insomniatic birds. The distant wash of city traffic. The occasional whoosh of car tires on wet pavement, rising and then falling away on the highway near his home. A beautiful, chaotic symphony of promise.

Ready now. 1:00 AM. It was time. One sneaker on the threshold, hands braced on the chilly frame, he hoisted himself and teetered on the precipice. There by the wall his trusty bike, gold and glistening in the light of the gibbous moon, conspiratorial, waiting for him. Somewhere out there was a place he'd never been. Something he'd never done. He believed danger was a beast that, though it might touch him, would never taste his blood. Fearing nothing, he leapt once again into the abyss.

The Mailman

We put the mailman out the window feet-first, with Robby standing in the stubble of the back yard on a bucket and me on a chair inside lifting the guy by his armpits. He was still sweating. His face kept pressing up against my belly the whole time, so his mouth would gape in his white face, like he was snoring. Each time I wedged it back shut with my forearms. The guy's teeth were like little bits of hominy, all gristly, the back ones with black fillings like moldering peas.We got him through that window good and then I stood there, on the chair, looking at Robby panting. The smell of dust was in the air from the metal sill. The mailman was on the ground, and Robby kicked him.

"Here," he said. He wiped his brow with the back of his arm and then held out his hand.

I took his hand with mine and vaulted through with my other hand on the sill below me. I felt the chair kick out from my feet and had memories from TV of hangman, of suicides. The sill cut into my hand. The air was fresh when I was moving through it.

Write someone coming through a window or a door.

Transitions are hard. For a reader, a poorly-executed one means either a moment of blindness or a slow-motion bog of details.

What do you need to focus on for a good transition? This week, try it out by writing someone going through a window or a door--in the first person. You might find it surprisingly tricky.

Also, stay tuned for the Herkimer's first-ever giveaway, coming up this month! What'll it be--diamond tiaras? Box sets? Opera tickets? 99-cent grab bags? Who knows? READ ON!

Write with guts!

HERKIMER

It's better this way

Tired of making excuses for herself, she kept quiet and fixed her eyes on the glove box. Long after this moment she would realize what she wanted to say to her mother, who was driving her home, "I had to be more than just picked up, I had to be excised from the birthday party like a malignant lump in a sackful of yet harmless but susceptible tumors. Mother, I commend you for taking action as soon as you did. You saved the birthday party from utter ruin." If only she could have had these words properly arranged before they pulled into the driveway, and her mother commanded, "You just sit right here and think about what you did. And don't move until I say so." The beloved daughter appeared shamed, but really she was frustrated at not having found the words to succinctly express her feeling that her playgroup sucks.