...would it make you feel any better if I told you her name was a homonym?

This is my first post. Hi. This is going to be primarily my writing blog; these first few posts will be works I've done in creative writing classes, but I'll be expanding it to others as we move along. Currently it'll be limited to short stories/microfiction, but it'll probably eventually include poems as well. At a certain point I may begin limiting this blog to exclusive (that is, made-for-this-blog) material, but I'm not ready for that just yet. Anyway, this first piece was done under the pretext of portraying a character who's vastly different from myself. enjoyez.

manpower

The bell jangled sharply against the glass door. Jonathan came out from the back room. His customer was already at the counter. “Can I help you?” Jonathan asked, staring at the man’s left hand. It was missing an index finger.

“Probably not,” the man grunted. The groan of the assembly line was in it, and the low voice of the conveyor grinding to a halt.

Jonathan renewed eye contact, embarrassed. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was—“

“Relax, son. I’ve seen it all before.” He tossed what looked like part of a doorbell and some wires on the counter, next to what looked like a government check that he’d already placed there. “I just have two questions. Do you take signed-over checks, and can you fix this?”

Abject. Horror. Jonathan double-taked between the hand and the doorbell. The blood on the hand was old; the doorbell’s injury was fresh. Thank the repair shop gods, they were two unrelated mangled things, connected only by being mangled.

He squeezed out a reply. Doubtless the man had caught him staring. “Sorry. We uh, don’t take checks at all, I’m afraid. There should be a sign on the door. Just cash and credit. What is that, anyway? Social security?”

“Something like that.” Jonathan realized he was staring again. “You’d be surprised how much disability pays if you live in a big city like Youngstown.” The old man laughed, coughing violently as he did so. “So, can you fix it?”

“Oh. Sure. I think so. It’s a doorbell, right?” Jonathan felt embarrassed, but the button was gone, and the rest looked pretty beaten up.

“Indeed it is,” he said, chuckling. “It wouldn’t stop ringing. I tried everything I knew how to do, and this is what it came to.”

“Yeah, I should be able to fix it. Be about 40 bucks, installed…So you ripped it out?” Jonathan asked, looking at the mangled hand again.

“Yep. I ripped it out.”

kester taylor