Charactered Pieces: stories

By Caleb J. Ross

With Charactered Pieces, Caleb J. Ross presents a varied world of familial discord, one where a dead fetus evokes more compassion than its mother (“Charactered Pieces”); where two brothers offer the destruction of a family legacy as a birthday gift for their aging father (“My Family’s Rule”); where one brother’s love of Holocaust documentaries pushes his family through the aftermath of his assumed suicide (“The Camp”).

Charactered Pieces peels away the superficial armor of public life to reveal the flaws beneath and treats those perceived weaknesses not as hidden sources of pain but as reasons to celebrate life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: OW Press
• Release date: Jan 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781599482286

Caleb J. Ross

Caleb began writing his sophomore year of undergrad study when, tired of the formal art education then being taught, he abandoned the pursuit in the middle of a compositional drawing class. Major-less and fearful of losing his financial aid, he signed up to seek a degree in English Literature for no other reason than his lengthy history with the language. Coincidentally, this decision not only introduced him to writing but to reading as well. Prior this transition he had read three books. One of which he understood.His fiction and nonfiction has appeared widely, both online and in print. He is the author of Charactered Pieces: stories (OW Press), Stranger Will: a novel (Otherworld Publications, 2011), I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin: a novel (Black Coffee Press, 2011), and As a Machine and Parts (Aqueous books, 20–). He is an editor at Outsider Writers Collective and moderates The Velvet Podcast, which gathers writers for round table discussions on literature.

Book preview

C haractered Pieces

Stories

Caleb J Ross

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Copyright © 2009 Caleb J Ross

Published by OW Press, 2009

2nd printing, 2010

www.outsiderwriters.org

ISBN: 978-1-59948-228-6

Produced in the United States of America

by Main Street Rag Publishing Company

www.MainStreetRag.com

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

(additional title information)

praise for

Charactered Pieces

…Ross shows us, without a doubt, he is a master of tragedy made gorgeous

-Mel Bosworth, author of When the Cats Razzed the Chickens & other stories (Folded Word)

In each story the characters’ struggles are the result of some long-incubated despair, intimate and undeniable as a deathbed rasp.

-Oxyfication.net, Jason Kane

His prose is compact, dense with meaning, eloquent in its brevity.

- Present Magazine, Pete Dulin

(additional praise)

A Special Note to You, the Reader

No amount of pandering here can express my gratitude for your simple act of opening this book. I don’t know how you got here, but you got here. Chances are, someone told you about this book, so you took a chance on it. For that, on behalf of all writers, thank you.

As you likely know, book buying has been increasingly maligned in recent years as a fading nostalgic referent. You and I know that the book is the trophy, the relic, the outward icon of inner thought. The book represents the creases in our brains and the thoughts we carry. They open us to others like few things do.

After reading Charactered Pieces, but before you reach for the next book in your to-read stack, please, continue your active role in the literary community by sharing your thoughts about Charactered Pieces, good or bad. A quick review/opinion at your personal blog, forums, bookseller sites, local newspapers, anything, would make this poor writer glow. Literature relies on word of mouth to stay alive. Our advertising effectiveness is limited only by your breath.

Even if you don’t talk about Charactered Pieces, please, talk about any book. Join a book club or book community (I recommend www.outsiderwriters.org, of course, and www.welcometothevelvet.com for fans of darker literature; my username is thirstygerbil over there) and keep your love alive.

Finally, if you do post some thoughts about Charactered Pieces, please let me know. Send an email to [e-mail]. I will respond with embarrassing pictures of myself.

Caleb

Table of Contents

Charactered Pieces

My Family’s Rule

An Optimist is the Human Personification of Spring

The Camel of Morocco

The Camp

Refill

A Chinese Gemini (a non-fiction)

Acknowledgments

Charactered Pieces

(back to top)

Facet

Years ago, the childhood years, Lori’s mother would break her daughter down in person. She scored Lori’s younger days with indirect criticism: more makeup, not everyone wants to see your pockmarks, "you could draw attention downward, if you were that sort of girl." Now, after her mother’s face having been blown off by an unchecked prop gun on the set of a beer commercial, Lori and her mother communicate only by telephone.

Tell me what you’ve sold, her mother says with heavy, static breath.

Nothing today, Lori says.

You have such lovely teeth. Try smiling.

If pressed Lori might remember her mother’s eye color, but distance has dulled the hue. Blood doesn’t translate well through telephone lines.

Girdle

Lori holds a diamond the size of a corn kernel out to a woman with taut skin smeared in rose makeup. This woman wears a blazer like armor and exudes wealth on the scent of knockoff Clive Christian no. 1. The air tastes like rust; Krabel Jewelers doesn’t do enough business for a ventilation upgrade.

Let me see a bigger one, hon, the woman says. She points to a molar-sized gem, something Lori’s mother would describe as a gift only the right face can get you. Lori reaches down. No, no sweetie. Lower. Below that tiny thing, honey.

Lori dips deeper. Through the warped glass-back of the case, varicose veins net the old woman’s entire calf. The spindles wrap the skin, crawling into the dark bramble beneath the woman’s cashmere skirt. Lori bangs her forehead against the counter edge upon standing. The glass thunders in an otherwise silent shop.

When she returns to the woman’s accessorized torso, Lori massages the swelling on her head and stretches a smile, presenting the diamond.

"What do you think? the woman asks with a rhetorical edge, her eyes already glossing over. I don’t know." She pays Lori’s injury no attention.

"I

Reviews for Charactered Pieces

[ginger72_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I had read another book by this author and it really wasn't my thing. However he was nice enough to send me this book also so I thought "What the hell? What have I got to lose." WEll...THANK YOU , CALEB ROSS !!(screamed with sarcasm and eye rolling)I have had nightmares all day and night from the story "Charactered Pieces". Oh My God !! At the end, when Lori sits down to paint Monicas toes, I thought I was going to die, from laughing so hard and yet being sooooo grossed out at the same time. Really, even thinking about it now makes me giggle yet my skin is crawling .I believe that a good story brings out emotions. Good emotions and bad ones. So for that I say KUDOS to the author, because I feel like chuckling yet am completely replused by the scenario of the story. Seriously though, I tip my hat to you for that one.The book on a whole just was not my thing, again. Everything was depressing and contained a lot of what I think must have been metaphoric stories. I'm just not that deep of a person, so alot of it was lost on me.