Guest Author Arthur Davis

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the safety instructions coming over the public address system from the eager flight attendant’s squeaky little voice. I didn’t want to hear which exit was closest to me, or how I was supposed to proceed in the event we needed to initiate emergency procedures.

What was the point of it all? If you fell from the sky in a thousand-ton metal coffin, the likelihood of needing either a life preserver or knowing which exit from which to deplane seemed moot. However, that didn’t stop her from completing her droning litany and ending with a nauseatingly perky “Thank you.”

After a few more minutes, we leveled off at thirty-eight thousand feet and the red seatbelt warning sign light went off. It was now safe to move about the plane. Thundering along at six hundred miles per hour, with two massive engines strapped to a long metal cigar in which two hundred people were milling about, was hardly a description of a safe, carefree environment. And yet, here we were, tethered souls on our way to Tampa; most already anticipating what they were going to do after landing, who they were going to meet or avoid at the airport, how they were going to get their baggage before everybody else and what was involved in the next logical step of their lives. A hundred years ago, this would have been unthinkable. (more…)

Guest Author Arthur Davis

Of course, I knew they were coming, though I refused to believe I was the only one who possessed such knowledge. Had I made an adequate effort instead of my typical halfhearted attempt, the earth might have been spared. Maybe it was simply too late by the time I accepted what was happening.

Anyway, here we are under the thumb of Dremlins, ungainly creatures who look like giant golden retrievers standing erect on their hind legs. Except for the absence of a tail and a considerably shortened snout, the resemblance was uncanny. Their long, glistening reddish coat and small toy-like animal heads gave them an air of innocence, of childlike vulnerability.

And that’s how they first presented themselves. As space travelers who had gotten lost, had “taken the wrong turn at Mars,” as a west coast reporter smugly described their arrival eight months ago. First, came the small patrol ship, supposedly off course, filled with a dozen scrawny, fragile adolescent creatures, then, as we were seduced by our collective need to believe the best instead of being cautious about the worst, larger transports filled with yapping, affectionate Dremlins arrived in mass. But a lot can happen in eight months, like the end of civilization, as we know it. (more…)

Guest Author Arthur Davis

Ronnald was a busboy.  He was neither imposing nor content.  He was delighted, as was his bent, to roam the city when he wasn’t cleaning tables, and take hold of any vehicle that passed his way and lift it, passengers and all, high over his head for whatever length of time pleased him.

Walter Lincoln, who was not impressed by his last name, as it was his tendency to change it every few days, was plainly quite docile and, though he stood on the same street corner every day hawking newspapers, he never sold one. But that didn’t dampen his aspirations, or his confidence that one day he would make it big.

Ronnald spent most nights bussing tables at local nightclubs. It didn’t matter how many patrons had been eating or drinking or the extent of the mess they left. He was a master of movement and hand speed, of depth perception and dexterity.  He was also a born juggler, if only of dishes, cups and glasses.  Ronnald was naturally gifted at what he did, and when you’ve been so blessed and you embrace the measure of your potential, there is nothing you can’t accomplish.

Ronnald could clear thirty or forty tables in the same time another busboy would take to clear a half dozen.  When he was in one of his really productive moods, he could work the night shift clearing and cleaning all the tables at two clubs, as long as they were close by one another.  He never thought to ask for more money for his labor.  He collected the same check whether his station included a dozen tables or many times that number.  (more…)

Guest Author Arthur Davis

You had to be there. Lorraine Cassidy was. At five foot-two and a hundred and six pounds, the brown-eyed Cincinnati nurse with a penchant for Bakelite bracelets watched Hector Ramarez gun down his brother in the alleyway that lead to the courtyard separating their buildings.

She wasn’t the only one who heard the muffled pistol shot, just the only one who responded by vomiting up her dinner. It was not that she was more sensitive or curious than most. She had already passed her quota of violence at precisely three-nineteen in the afternoon when a woman was carried into the emergency room screaming and cursing and, oblivious to the handle of a nine-inch hunting knife protruding from her right side. This was a neighborhood where screams and arguments and threats built up after dusk and reached a crescendo by midnight, and were unrelenting on weekends. There was no point in clocking the hellish environment where the Ramarez brothers tried to eke out a living off of stolen cars and sometimes a little grander enterprise.

Lorraine Cassidy witnessed more than a murder that night. She would be witness to the end of her own life. Of course, she could not know that at the time. The horror of working in the emergency room at Oakdale Hospital for three years and in a trauma ward in her previous job had inured her to the most horrific possibilities life could conjure. After a point, as one of her friends said after joining the trauma team, “you just stop thinking and feeling and set your brain on automatic. You switch off when you get there and switch back on when you leave.’” (more…)