SMT Holiday Storyflod Part 2

For this holiday season, we’ve selected a few favorite stories from earlier in our third year to share — unlocked — with readers far and wide. We had a difficult time choosing, as they’re all favorites (just like last year — we feel very grateful to all our authors for writing such spectacular stories). If you love what you’re reading, please share and recommend, and dig into the archives for more. As well, please tell us YOUR favorites from 2024 in the comments, and by emailing morningtransportnewsletter@gmail.com

This week’s unlocked stories are Leslie What’s “The Eleventh & Three-Quarters Hour” (August 2024, below), Juan Martinez’ “Lesser Demons of the North Shore”(April 2024, linked), Mary Anne Mohanraj’s “Fated” (May 2024, linked), and Martin Cahill’s “There is Music After This” (September 2024, linked)

Enjoy them all.

~ Julian and Fran, December 22, 2024

This month’s stores began with tales by Jenna Hanchey and Alex Irvine. We hope you love these, the Storyflods, and all the stories to come in the new year — as much as we love bringing them to you on Sundays.

Bringing out great short fiction each Sunday depends on the support of our readers. Our first story each month is free. We hope that you will subscribe to receive all our stories, and support the work of our authors. If you already subscribe — thank you! Please pass on the word, or a gift subscription if you can.

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The Eleventh & Three-Quarters Hour

by Leslie What

Shortly before her death, her mother had warned Gabby that most people began falling apart in their seventies. Gabby had ignored the old woman, as she most often did. Today was the morning that changed her mind. Better late than never. She perched atop the low wooden stool, knees jutting so far forward her bones crunched when she leaned in to deadhead her bluebells. The day was early enough that their fragrance was still dreaming, as her mother used to say. Their perfume would awaken soon, only to fade once Gabby added the dry blooms to the compost and earthier smells replaced the delicate scent, a garden’s version of ashes to ashes.

Gabby had followed her mother’s complicated directions for the garden’s care as best she could since inheriting the house. Sure, the gardenia leaves were a bit yellowed and the bushes had not flowered since her mother’s death, and okay, the basil had died before giving up any usable leaves. Too much water? Not enough sun? Or perhaps caterpillars chewed up the plants and pooped out green caterpillar pesto? Who knew? Every garden was a cozy mystery masquerading as a paragon of cause and effect.

Her mother, a judgmental woman whose superpower had been making Gabby feel inadequate, would at least have been pleased that Gabby kept the compost thriving. Gabby hadn’t done as good a job nurturing her son, but at least multiple generations of winged and wriggling creatures had not found her wanting.

A layer of marine fog seeped through the pores of her tracksuit; her hands cramped with chill. Moisture from the San Diego Bay sailed inland, as it did most August mornings. It would dissipate when its shift ended and the afternoon weather crew showed up to blanket Chula Vista with heat.

As she’d aged, Gabby’s mother had spouted off random proverbs and silly prophecies, things like, “Beware the Eleventh Hour, for once the clock is triggered, it can never be reset,” in a voice conjuring a Greek chorus and not that of an old woman sitting on a bedside commode. Her mother had tried to understand things any way they could make sense to her, even if they made no sense to others. They’d be picking up prescriptions at the Rite Aid on Telegraph Canyon Road and when the pharmacist would ask if her mother’s insurance had changed, the old woman would answer something like, “When the penis is erect, the mind is empty.” She would tip the Amazon driver a twenty and tell him, “You know that hot dogs get their taste from chopped earthworms,” information that he ignored because what mattered was the tip. In any case, people tended to ignore any women who had managed to survive past forty, especially when they seemed a little, or even a lot, crazy.

But now, as Gabby’s trowel slipped from her grasp, it carried her right thumb along for the ride. Gabby stared at the negative space where her thumb—the thumb formerly used for hitchhiking—used to be, and her mother’s warning about falling apart looped through her mind. Gabby hadn’t actually seen anyone near the end. Her father, her husband, her mother . . . they’d all died alone at the hospital. Until today, the falling-apart thing was only theoretical.

Before she could retrieve her thumb, stick it in milk until it could be reattached, or whatever TF one did in such a circumstance, a goldfinch flitted by and beaked what he must have thought was an especially juicy grub. Gabby caught the flash of his shiny black eyes just before he flew away, no doubt to feed her thumb to his hungry babies. Gabby screamed, pushed herself up from the stool with the intent of chasing the finch. In the process, she brushed her right hand against the stool’s edge, the gentlest of fist bumps—really more of a friendly pat than a bump—but this time, she lost her finger, not to mention the Victorian-era emerald ring that had belonged to her grandmother. She really was a terrible caretaker of the past. And in the blink of an eye, a crow landed nearby, lowered its translucent third eyelid (called a nictitating membrane) as if praying to the crow gods, and carried both ring and ring finger away. Gabby kicked the stool in anger. Something jostled inside her left sock. She hoped it was a pebble, suspected it was a toe. Only now could she fully acknowledge the validity of her mother’s prophetic warning. The Eleventh Hour had struck.

Oddly enough, nothing hurt. No blood, no pain, no numbness, no tightness nor tingling . . . just that irksome feeling you sometimes get, like when you’ve left something in the car but can’t remember what it was or why you’d need to retrieve it. Things felt wrong but not so wrong as to call the doctor. They would just tell her there was nothing they could do, or that she should visit urgent care if she was really worried.

The heirloom tomatoes were plump, crimson, and ripe. Birds would sip their juice before her son, Tomás, remembered there were vegetables in the garden. Like his father, he was someone who preferred eating dinner from a bag. She stumbled toward the house, her footfalls landing with tiny shudders, and used her hip to bump open the door. Her pelvic joints loosened and made squeaky clown-honks with each step. She hobbled to the couch to sit beside her son. Tomás was immersed in Warcraft. When she smoothed his hair, he batted away her hand. She felt a pop and found she could no longer move that arm. Good news, bad news. At least, unlike her thumb, it was still attached!

“Tomás,” she said, “I’m really, really sorry to interrupt you, but could you take a break and look at my shoulder?” When he wasn’t playing Warcraft, Tomás worked as a physician’s assistant at the Sharp Chula Vista emergency department. He knew how to fix things. He just chose not to.

“Mom,” Tomás said, “can’t it wait?” He wore workout clothes, more of an aspirational statement than a wardrobe decision. He was too depressed to actually make it all the way to the gym. Not that long ago he had spent his days in his underwear, so this was a huge improvement. Sometimes he even got as far as logging into the website and reading over the financial and legal disclosures one needed to pretend to read before applying for membership. Gym clothes were the formal wear of depression. His breakup with his wife had broken him in ways that were impossible to repair. Things were different for Gabby. Her husband’s death had left her mostly intact; when her mother died, she’d felt crushed by the weight of that loss. She stopped answering emails from her friends. Her migraines came on more frequently, more fiercely. She’d quit volunteering for the food bank, stopped returning texts from friends. Her hair thinned, leaving a meandering, pale scalp-riverbed. Her counselor had called it detachment, said the physical changes and the distance that kept her from seeing others was a normal response to loss, especially the cumulative loss caused by the death of two of the most important people in her life. It was normal for each new loss to compound existing feelings of grief. Her counselor had suggested mindful meditation, which she’d tried and abandoned after a couple of months.

She kicked off her left Birkenstock, unrolled her sock from her foot, and worked to turn it inside out, quite tricky with only one arm willing to follow her directions. Sure enough, as she had suspected, her little toe fell out onto the carpet near Tomás’s foot.

“Mother! That’s disgusting,” said Tomás, so grossed out that he kicked the toe across the room.

Just when you thought things were as bad as they could be, they got worse. Her goldendoodle, Clifford, pounced on the toe and spirited it away to another room.

“Drop it! Bring that back!” she yelled. The dog was like a child to her. A child who was always happy to see her, especially now, except that now she understood how he really felt about her.

“Hope he doesn’t get sick from your nail polish,” Tomás said.

With all the commotion and goings-on, his Warcraft character had been killed in some explosion or another, and he looked genuinely sad at losing his temporary avatar friend. Tomás set down the controller, stared at Gabby’s hand and the way she held her limp arm, said, “Whoa. Mom. Sorry. Hadn’t realized how bad this was. Looks like this could be your year, huh?”

“I suppose,” she said. Her body felt like it belonged to someone sitting in a different room of the house.

“Well, gawd, Mother,” Tomás said. “At least try not to lose anything else before the weekend. I’m on call for the next few days. Nobody’s gonna be around here to help feed you.” He had been an impatient child who’d grown into an impatient man.

“Don’t worry about me eating,” she said. “I can fend for myself. If worse comes to worst, I could stand to lose a few pounds.”

“Looks like you might have done that this morning,” he said with a half-grin that seemed to be asking for approval before it committed to a full smile.

She was sometimes slow to grok events in real time, but she got that joke. “I doubt a couple of fingers and a toe add up to more than a couple of ounces,” she said. She stood and powered through a wave of wooziness that passed through her before disappearing without a fuss. “Gonna make myself a cup of coffee,” she said. “Want any?”

“Can you add a shot of whiskey?” said Tomás.

“That isn’t funny,” she said.

“I’m just kidding around,” he said. “Sorry.”

His clumsy humor was his way of coping. Her husband . . . his father . . . had been an alcoholic. Whoever said that alcohol was a preservative didn’t know about stomach cancer.

Tomás followed Gabby into the kitchen and watched with grim disapproval as she turned on the tap to fill the teakettle. Her hand trembled. Water from the faucet washed away a few fingernails before Tomás grabbed the teakettle. “Maybe you shouldn’t be drinking hot beverages,” he said. “What if your tongue falls off next?” His forced laugh made her uncomfortable. “Not like it would make much difference. I try not to listen to you now, but without a tongue, no way could I understand you.”

Though it sounded cruel, could something true really be cruel? Once her hair had begun to gray and fall out, shopkeepers and strangers had stopped hearing her. Same with her son, her primary care doctor, even her dog. If she were being truthful, she’d have to admit she’d treated her mother the same way.

Tomás set the teakettle in its cradle, flipped on the heat. When it reached two hundred degrees, he filled a mug halfway and stirred in instant decaf coffee, cooled it to lukewarm with tap water and low-fat milk.

Tepid coffee. This was what she had to look forward to if he became her caregiver.

“I wish you’d have waited to do this until September,” Tomás said.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but it has to be now.” Not that she had a choice, but too many people waited too long.

“Okay,” he said. “Whatever.” He passed her the mug, passed her a dozen napkins in case she spilled, took her phone from her pocket and left it open so she could call 911. “Just in case,” he said.

“Just in case.” She sipped a drink too weak to do any good and sat with its bitter taste upon her tongue before shuffling off to the bathroom to pee and manage the difficult task of a one-handed underwear pull. She washed her face, found a vintage black wool cape with side pockets that was easier than her sweater to get on and off. Even cloaked in the drama of that cape, she looked unremarkable. She hobbled back to the living room.

“Tomás,” she said. It was difficult to get the next bit out. “Would you mind . . . Will you take me to the canyon?” she asked.

Tomás glanced at his watch and said, “Now? You have to go now? I have a shift tonight. I might hit rush hour on the way home. And I still need to wash my scrubs.”

“Sorry,” she said. “The timing is out of my control.”

“How about you come with me to the hospital? Do it there.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll just take an Uber.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Of course I’ll drop you off on my way to work. But I really can’t wait around until it happens.”

“I know,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to.” He had other things to do besides babysit her. Work. Laundry. The next Warcraft level. There’d be time for him to understand what it felt like for her. In any case, she had to do this alone. No one else could help, not really. It was simply her turn, as one day it would be his. “I don’t need you to wait,” she said.

He laced up his Adidas. She leaned on him to limp to the car. Clifford trotted beside them and jumped into the front. Tomás helped Gabby into the back. He tightened her seat belt, winced when her shoulder made a cracking sound. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “Do you want me to pop it back into place?”

She tried shrugging, but it was too uncomfortable. “No point,” she said.

He nodded, closed her door, opened his.

“Forgot one thing,” said Tomás. He left the car door open, jogged back to the house.

Clifford barked.

“Come on, boy,” Gabby said, patting the seat beside her. She broke her fuck you finger at the knuckle. While it stayed attached, it dangled in more of a fuck me position. Clifford stared at the front door. He barked until Tomás reappeared and set a paper sack on the console.

Gabby whispered goodbye to the house.

They drove through crowded streets and took the turnoff toward the viewpoint above the canyon. “Tomás . . . ,” Gabby said when they arrived. There was so much more to tell him.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Let’s not do the long bougie goodbye,” he said.

“Sure,” she said, but it felt wrong.

He retrieved the paper sack, got out, opened her door and helped her to stand.

Clifford barked.

“Stay!” he told Clifford, who obeyed, for once. Tomás stuck his hand inside the sack and took out a bumpy heirloom tomato from the garden. “This is for you,” he said. “Something from home. In case you get hungry later.” He slid the tomato into her cape pocket and helped her walk to the vista overlooking the steep canyon walls. Tomás checked the guardrail to see if it wiggled and seemed relieved that it did not. “Should I stay with you?” he asked.

She worried his depression would spiral when she was gone, a stupid thing to worry about because the one thing you definitely did not need to do when you were dead was worry. “No,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

Tomás watched her as if hoping she would change her mind. “Okay,” he said, and walked away to start up the engine.

When Gabby waved after him, her right hand fell off at the wrist.

She caught the movement of a backhanded wave as Tomás drove off and dust obscured the tailgate. She heard growling and yipping and looked down to see a coyote skulking close enough to grab her hand and trot away, tail between its legs as if it knew better. This was what it meant to be alone, to stand at the precipice, waiting as the minutes counted down.

She remembered the moment when Tomás was born, how the epidural had left her trembling enough she feared dropping him. How it took more than an hour before she felt confident enough to hold him to her breast. She remembered his tears the first time she said goodbye when he went off to preschool, remembered her tears when he returned and asked for a snack, remembered her tears when he went away to college, remembered her tears when he returned after each divorce. She remembered how hard she tried to understand her emotions, hoping that the rational mind was better equipped to handle the heartaches of everyday life.

As the distance between them expanded, the image of Tomás’s car grew smaller, smaller. Her memory of her son grew smaller, smaller as well. She turned to face the guardrail at a place known as the Bridge, even though it led to nowhere.

The sun continued its descent, the horizon narrowed. Gabby glanced across the canyon at the jagged walls below and the sky. Chula Vista meant “beautiful view,” and it was true. That beauty could be seen everywhere she looked. She felt calmed by the evening winds until a thumb-sized jumping cholla cactus detached from its mama cactus and the wind blew its barbed spikes straight through her pants and into her thigh. It stung like crazy. She screamed, brushed it off. The mother plant was shrouded in shadow, sending out pups to colonize the desert while she stayed rooted in place. Oh, to be a cactus and let your children go without tears, knowing they were tough enough to survive without you.

Gabby retrieved her tomato from her pocket and bit through the flesh. She felt light, buoyant with gratitude at its sweet taste, its juice a sticky cocktail of grief and delight. She could not contain her emotion. Tears flowed like water filling a teakettle, until there were no more tears, not a one.

An ear worked itself loose and bounced into the canyon, followed by her right arm at the shoulder. She felt a new lightness, as if her internal organs had been replaced by sponges. She slumped to the hard ground and let her legs dangle over the precipice. A foot flew off, a calf, a knee. She watched them all careen downward as she sank lower into the dirt. There wasn’t enough left of her to think about what was missing or worry about what would fall off next. None of it mattered. A steady, whirring hum pulsed through her bones, at least what was left of her bones. Maybe all that mindful meditation was finally working, for she felt alone but not at all lonely.

The sunset sky flickered and transformed into a blue light that met the ocean, a warm and welcoming full-on blue, 360 immersive experience. She turned her face up to its warmth. She felt featherlight and floated. She no longer noticed the earth beneath her. When she opened her mouth to breathe, the sweet taste of blue seeped in. She smelled blue. She breathed blue. Calming notes of blue soothed the discordant chaos of the outside world. She floated in blue, feeling comfort she had not felt in ages, her being light, her thoughts content. If there was a moment in time when life ceased and death began, she did not notice.

It was only in this vast and unknowable blue place where ocean met sky, where one could be without caring about the past or worrying about the future. It was only in this vast and unknowable place where one could be without fear, without pain, without hunger. It was only in this vast and unknowable place where one could be without the need to name the things one could not understand because to understand the infinite is not necessary. It was only in this vast and unknowable place where one could be and be and be and continue to be.

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Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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Leslie What is a Nebula Award–winning writer, and the author of Crazy Love, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her work has appeared in Sunday Morning Transport, Los Angeles Review, Parabola, Lilith, F&SF, Calyx, Asimov’s, khōréō, and other places. In addition to working as an unpaid caregiver mother, she has worked as an unpaid caregiver daughter, and was recently promoted to being an unpaid caregiver grandmother. Let her bio reflect the fact that she no longer has time to be all that interesting.

“The Eleventh and Three-Quarters Hour,” © Leslie What, 2024.

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