William Doreski
2 Micros
Likely Stories
When I asked my father if he had graduated from college he looked at me with incomprehension. “Where I come from college doesn’t apply,” he said. When I asked him how he met my mother he said, “I haven’t met her yet.” When I asked how he earned a living, he said, “I steal stamps from the post office and sell then at a discount.” After years of oddly angled conversations I decided to research on my own. The local library had several books about my father. Their subtitles were “A Dungeon Life in Chains,” “A Man of Ease and Bullion,” “A Saga of Intrepid Betrayal,” and “Thriving in the Eye of a Telescope.” I checked out these books and brought them home, but when I opened them, every page was blank. By then my father was old and weak so I sat him down and demanded straight answers. He hemmed and hawed, but I persisted. At last he coughed up a tidbit. “I was hatched from a glacial boulder. Honestly, that’s all I know.” I had noticed that he was getting mossy, but I thought that was just old age. I peeled a bit of lichen from his forehead for my scrapbook and left him in peace.
Bear Baiting
Several bears emerge from the woods. They should be hibernating. But they want to confer with me. They want me to cede to them the forested part of my property. “I’m willing to listen if you promise not to eat me,” I say. They look at each other, then at me. I can see they’re disgusted. “Bears don’t eat rotten meat,” they explain. Rotten meat? I resent that. I apologize for my assumption but feel they should apologize for referring to me so crudely. “People are always killing each other, unlike bears,” they point out, “and it’s reasonable to assume that at your age you’ve been killed several times. Therefore, you must be thoroughly decayed by now.” I’m horrified by this overreading of the human condition but can’t deny that there’s logic in it. Maybe I really am dead and festering.