1311   Causeway Drive

What if you found out that nobody liked you; that all the laughing at your jokes and compliments were bunk.

And if this were true what would you do?

Would you ignore it and go on or write in your journal or just cry yourself to sleep each night. But what if it wasn’t the real you they despised and put up with but a person who looked like you and was you in every reasonable way, except for your most important part, your heart, with a goodness and kindness that emitted but was rebuffed by anyone who did not look deeper into your soul where you were sensitive and thoughtful, but would only see you as a phony and a put on.

What if that was the only way your personality could be and there was no way to change it, until now; right now; this minute and the true meaning of goodness was buried deep within you and no one recognized it, until today, when all hell broke lose in the world and you were its only salvation.

The End

Oliver stood on the top step of the front entrance to his home.

Home to him and fourteen other people who inhabited the small apartment building of which each one of them called home.

But how could everyone’s home be at 1311 Causeway Drive. It was, after all, this was not a group home, even though each apartment was in close enough in proximity to warrant it.

The air at eight in the morning was thick from smog and humidity and the sky was beginning to unfold from blue to a soft grey, then to blackness, almost night.

A crackling sound erupted from what seemed to be beneath Oliver, which made him place his hands over his ears to blot it out.

The clouds were gone and darkness covered the sky.

The other tenants from the building piled out of their only elevator then shuffled down the stairs from their home and stood with Oliver on the steps, then eventually made their way to the sidewalk.

“What’s going on,” Ellie said holding her hands together in prayer. “Sweet Jesus, it’s the end of the world.”

Ellie was a hold over from the sixties, hippie era. She believed that one day the earth would give up and be enveloped in some sort of apocalyptic hiccup and this was it.

“Calm down. Calm down,”  said Norton Penzer , a literary professor in his mid-fifties who taught at one of the universities uptown.

Oliver looked down his street only to see phantom groups of people hovering under street lights. Many of them were on their knees praying, while others stood erect with their hands waving in the air shouting “Save us. Oh my God. This is it. It ‘s finally happened.”

Love Me Again

By

F. Ulanoff

Once upon a time there was a plant that had enough light to keep himself alive.

With no other nourishment, not even water, through his whole existence, his soil became dry and crackly.

It wasn’t that the plant was not loved, because he was. His owners would come by and from time to time, stroke his stems. He was sure they adored him.

Except for the times they would approach his pot with a shiny object in their hand, and after coming even closer than he’d expect, a pain pierced through his being and liquid dribbled out where a piece of himself used to be.

He did not know what their motive was for these attacks.

Months would go by and he would feel safe, then it would happen again, the shooting pain and the sap sliding down his side. After a while the plant knew his missing parts would never grow back, because each one of them had begun to grow crusty protections, and he was never the same.

Except for the tiny shoots growing from his center core, his body started to shrink and any bright outlook he had began to get smaller along with his size.

He would sometimes, when the sun shined through the sliding glass doors, where he sat on the kitchen table, imagining that he had all his limbs in tact and perhaps life would be as it was.

Weeks passed and the plant still had a lot of his body in tact but since he was not getting any extra nourishment, nor water, he would soon disappear.

He thought, If only they realized I was hurting. He wondered why they had not noticed his slow diminishing into nowhere.

Until one day he heard them talking in the next room early in the morning. They spoke of a great accident on one of their fingers, and if it wasn’t for him their precious Aloe Vera she might have lost her entire appendage.

What does that mean? He tried to hear a little better by leaning to one side, but being careful not to fall over, because of his frail condition.

“We have to take better care of our plant in there, because by cutting little pieces of his being, we saved my finger and healed so many of our  other wounds. I’m glad we finally realized what we had,” the woman said.

“He has been looking a little sad.  Why don’t we go and buy some plant food, and maybe then he’ll perk up. Or maybe we should water him,” said the man.

“Oh no remember what they said at the plant store, when we bought him. Never water them because they are cactuses. And I know we wouldn’t want to hurt him.”

The plant felt better just knowing that he was special and no one was out to get him. He felt useful and loved.