The Society of Misfit Stories Presents...(June 2022)

By The Society of Misfit Stories

Each issue of The Society of Misfit Stories Presents... is a celebration of long-form fiction. These novelettes and novellas will entertain and surprise fans of the form. In this issue: William Suboski, Sarina Dorie, Daniel Foy, Anne Sherman, Gary Battershell, and David Gilman Frederick.

A sampling of the stories in this issue:

A ghost seeks to convince a scientist to believe in the existence of ghosts in Psychology for the Living Impaired.

A food pantry volunteer finds herself caught up in a peculiar mystery when a strange man registers for services to feed his “guests” in Gregory and the Gregorii.

A struggling chef at an exclusive restaurant discovers just how cut-throat the hospitality industry can be in Check On!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005054502

Book preview

Gyre

By William Suboski

I HAD THE DREAM AGAIN last night. A Homburg in a haystack. Except that it wasn’t a haystack. It was just hay spread out, with a Homburg in the middle of it. I didn’t know that I knew what a Homburg was – a place in Germany? But there it was, and I knew it was a Homburg. And I knew that it was not a Fedora. And yet I have never owned or worn or even been in the presence of either type of hat. And that was all; just a Homburg in hay.

I’ve had this dream – well, not exactly this dream, but similar – ever since the accident. Sometimes weeks go by and I don’t have it. Sometimes it will be two nights in a row. They say the only dreams you remember are those you were having just before you wake up. When I wake at night, often with a jerk as if I just stepped back from a cliff, I have usually been dreaming of hats. And I am bemused and struggling to remember something just out of reach.

I dream so often of hats. Odd hats in odd places; a Homburg in hay. One time I dreamt of a strange hat on a finely manicured lawn, a hat I did not recognize. My research revealed it as a Garibaldi. I did not know that I knew what a Garibaldi is, yet there it was, a Garibaldi on a golf green. I dream of hats.

Gabby is asleep and I let her sleep. I pad quietly from the bedroom to the living room and sit quietly on the couch. Gabby is not Gabby anymore. More precisely, she is no longer Gabrielle. I cannot prove this but I believe Gabrielle died in the car accident. This woman, Gabby, seems to be her – even having Gabrielle’s scars – but she is an impostor. My beloved Gabrielle died, and this impostor has taken her place and none the wiser except for me. Sometimes late at night, I think silently to myself, Shhh – be vewy vewy quiet – we’re huntimg wabbit.

I still cannot remember what haunts my mind, just out of reach. After a while I go back to bed. I pad as a panther, I lumber as a buffalo, I am an unsilent force of nature and an injured man recovering and stumbling around in the dark. Gabby murmurs as I settle beside her. I fall quickly asleep.

WE DON’T WORK SINCE the accident. The settlement was quite large and surprisingly immediate. We sought professional investment advice and have managed, despite purchasing a house, to make our small nest egg grow. Gabby has created a small studio and is trying her hand at watercolors. I walk, much of the time. I still have pain in my right leg, but it is less each month and I intend to make a full recovery. Until that time I walk, mostly in parks, often sitting on benches in shade by the duck-ponds.

How can I live with an impostor? I asked myself this at first, convinced that I could not. I raised a great commotion, and everyone was against me. It seems that only I see it. Everyone else accepts her. Not merely accept – they assure me and argue that she is unchanged and see me as the problem. They look at me with concern, their faces warm with compassion, and remind me that I was in a serious accident. If I had not stopped objecting, I believe I would have been committed. And so these last eight months I have smiled blandly and innocuously. That Gabrielle is gone is done. I cannot change that.

Oliver Sacks wrote a book which I read but Gabrielle is not a hat and I do not mistake Gabby for Gabrielle. Gabby is no form of apparel, although sometimes I think otherwise. Maybe she is an old shirt, with small holes and permanent stains; a shirt that should have been long ago discarded. Or perhaps she is a pair of ragged sweat socks, frayed holes in the heels. Sometimes Gabby may be no more than clothing, a presentation, a wolf in sheep’s clothing? More like a goat in sheep’s clothing. Gabrielle was cashmere, Gabby is polyester.

Gabrielle wore earth tones and Gabby wears bright colors. And there are little differences. The outside corners of Gabby’s eyes wrinkle strangely. The sound of her voice is close, but she is not Gabrielle, this I know. Gabrielle died and has been replaced with another. Fare thee well, dark doppelganger, she of the rampant replicants, now altered, a changeling in my bed.

THE NEXT DAY STARTS gray, which is good. Bright days are not the best for pictures. The light is too sharp and the shadows too deep. If you have a June wedding, hope for an overcast day, else your pictures will suffer. I take pictures, sometimes, on my walks, sometimes with a camera, but usually just my eyes, seeking to indelibly capture a moment and freeze it to stillness.

There are signs at the ponds, Please do not feed the ducks.

I think we were married on a June day. I do not know for certain; I could certainly find out, but I am not truly concerned. All memories of that, of meeting Gabrielle, our early time together and the day we married were smashed in the accident. I am told that I once met her two brothers and her sister, but I do not recall that. I occasionally get flashes, but flashes only.

One day a few months after the accident I spanked Gabby. We had had lunch and a playful dispute over some unimportant kitchen issue and I had teasingly threatened to spank her. She looked at me appraisingly, and said slowly and with certainty, You will not. But her demeanor was challenging, and I lunged toward her. She squealed and ran down the hall. I caught her in the living room.

She is petite and curvy. But she twisted like an eel and it was hard to get hold of her. I wrestled her across my lap, head down and bottom up, and threw her skirt up. She wasn’t wearing any underpants. She kept flailing with her arms, away from me, and I told her to stop and to reach back and cross her wrists at the small of her back. She stopped windmilling but did not comply. I said Now! and she crossed her wrists. I held them with my left hand and said, Stop twisting!

I’m sorry. Yes. I’ll stop.

Count them out loud.

She did as told. She sobbed a bit but she obeyed. At one point she uttered a pitiful please, but I continued. Her nose began to run. She cried a bit. Finally I said, Have you had enough?

Her voice was very small. No...I misbehaved. I deserve more.

When I finally let her up, she took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

I WAS SITTING ON A bench near a duck pond when a very official looking young man came walking down the path. I watched as he walked up, he made eye contact, and then he said sharply, Have you been feeding the ducks?

No, I laughed. I haven’t been feeding the ducks.

He straightened and assumed the full bearing of a junior Game Warden, third class upper midshipman extraordinaire, with honors.

I’ve had reports that someone was feeding the ducks.

Wasn’t me.

He fixed me again with his officious stare and said, Are you sure?

And suddenly I was no longer certain. His smart fresh uniform called all into question. His neatly coiffed hair and his almost femininely manicured nails made me doubt all that I knew. How could I dare make any assertion when arrayed against such a solid civic employee? I felt myself shrinking back into the alleyway from whence I came, a petty criminal unctuously and illicitly feeding ducks. This was, after all, reported, not once, but multiple times, hence his use of the plural. I shook my head and broke the trance. Time to fight back.

You know... I said, rubbing my chin, I’m glad you asked me that. I just remembered that I was feeding the ducks. Good thing you asked. I blank out. I feed them all the time. I tried to stop myself. I always knew that someday, I would be busted, for my illegal duck feeding, but I couldn’t stop myself, I just couldn’t –

No need to be a smart-ass.

Better hurry. I think I heard people laughing over there.

GABBY HAS A FOLLOW-up appointment. I wait in the waiting room. I don’t mind waiting. Some people dislike delays. I find waiting relaxing. I skim a Reader’s Digest. Life’s like that. Yes, it certainly is. The best part of waiting is that I have a whole room to do it in; a specialized room. If this were a changing room, I might feel anxiety, not having an alternative outfit, clad only in these sad shopworn clothes that warmly cover me. But no change is required. I have not changed. Gabby changed.

This room is custom-made for me to wait. I turn to an article in the digest, Twenty-nine boring things to do in waiting rooms, condensed from the book. I lose myself in the magical language. I am captivated and I laugh aloud at the insight and witticism of this entrancing article. It is so rare in these mundane days to encounter true genius, and always in the least of places.

Mr. Thomas?

I look up to the nurse.

The doctor wanted to know if you can come in to his office.

As I walk down the short hallway I cannot imagine what awaits me. Perhaps Gabby will be displayed in a corner, immobile and quiescent, standing rigidly at attention, a mere decoration and another stunning success for the doctor. I will look at her but her eyes will not move nor blink. Oh, the waiting! They will be dull coins, mere copper pennies, buttons sewn on. Maybe he has decided to keep her to show his colleagues. Or perhaps she will be strapped to a tabletop, tubes entering and exiting her, while we discuss her as we would a car with a mechanical problem.

But the reality is far more every day. She is in a soft leather chair across the desk from the doctor and she smiles up at me as I enter.

He stands, reaches out, and shakes my hand. As we sit he says, We just wanted to check with you. Abigail has expressed some concerns. What are your thoughts about the rate of progress?

His hair is thinning. He looks like he smokes many cigarettes. His head slopes back and he has heavy jowls. I do not like his appearance. On first meeting I thought he was a marmot, the squirrel’s fatter relative. Something about him says Proctologist. I have never before met a Proctologist –marmot, and while I patiently waited in my special room, I have imagined his examinations. I am surprised at his success. Even rodents can achieve advanced degrees and prosper in this workaday world.

I look at Gabby and she smiles again. In my mind’s eye I see her on her knees on his desk, bottom up, while he slides a speculum into her anus. She moans as it enters, while he huffs, hum. His movements are rat-like, his head darting about, ensuring that he sees every angle of Gabby’s internals. Gabby moves in slow motion, as if underwater. Clearly, he used his medical degrees and scrofulous nature to hypnotize her into helpless torpor. Finally the inspection is completed while I wait in my special room. He makes verbal notes into his lapel-clipped microphone: Hum hum, mucosa red and pleasantly swollen, interior full and soft. The trance fades slowly as Gabby returns to her normal non-self. I almost feel sorry for her, but instead laugh at the absurdity of that. The cigarette hanging from his lip drops ash, which falls onto the speculum and slides into Gabby’s rectum. And then, hum hum hum, he closes the speculum and withdraws it while Gabby embarrassedly – bare-assedly – climbs dazedly from his desk.

Wonderful, doctor, just wonderful. Couldn’t be happier.

He hurriedly glances at her. She nervously looks back, then at me with the face of a saint. I see concern on her mask of love – have we been discovered? The doctor also evinces compassion with all the sincerity of a pederast, intently examining me, but I cannot be tranced.

Afterward we have lunch. She is smiling and animated. Apparently, the speculum agrees with her. How strange life has become. The impostor that is not my wife enjoys her assignations with the marmot; how very strange life has become.

Sometime around then I dreamt of an Ascot on AstroTurf. A gust of wind caught it and moved it slightly. I smelled freshly mown lawn when the hat moved and this puzzled me. AstroTurf is artificial. The only scent to it is factory, the dark satanic mills of Blake’s nightmares. I woke with a start. These dreams are getting weird.

GABRIELLE HAD LONG blonde hair with a slow wave. She was a platinum blonde, blue-eyed, with slightly right-wing politics. I met her at a Nazi rally...Just kidding. But her political sensibilities were uninformed and as a result we initially didn’t connect. I understood those issues better, before the accident. Sometimes I try to follow the socio-political economics of the daily news and I am genuinely lost. I am a man in fog, groping to find the doorknob in the dark. Or perhaps only a frog in a pond. Be vewy vewy quiet.

I have only snippets of the early days with Gabrielle. As best I can determine, there is a contiguous three-year block of my life I can no longer remember, except in snippets. In the first third of that block is the time that I met and married Gabrielle. It is not a complete amnesia. As I said, I have snippets, but they are only fragments, shards of green glass of a broken bottle.

Gabrielle was so very beautiful that even a Xeroxed impostor is exquisite.

MY FRIEND THE GAME Warden has changed jobs. I encounter him outside our home, writing a parking ticket for our car. He looks so smart and proper in his bright green uniform. He sees me leave the house and demands, Is this your car?

For a moment I am paralyzed by civic pride. Spit and polish; I am not sure what that means but it seems to apply here. If there were a flag nearby, I would stand at attention. But then I see defeat in his eyes, and seething anger. He has been demoted. Perhaps he illicitly watered geese. I do not answer.

Registered to Abigail Harris...

Wait. What?

But Gabby comes out of the house, coins clinking in her hands. Her beret is slightly off center, very fashionably laid. The duck protectors gaze is pure hatred. He is an unpleasant looking young man and the more so when his face is twisted. And Gabby looks so very wonderful in her bright red beret. I am so proud of her. That’s my girl, game-boy gunsel. Park illegally, baby, and I’ll feed the ducks.

Too late...

Mr. Officious writes his ticket. I put my arms around her and pull her close. This is truly unfair. I feel so close to her in this moment, and she grips me back. I hold her tightly while this pedantic martinet revels in his microscopic authority. I smile at him. I wonder what the next demotion is. Dog catcher? Street sweeper? Rubbish truck attendant? I’ll see you in court and we will find out together. My smile widens and I bare my teeth. Be vewy vewy quiet.

But this is truly unfair to Gabby, and I guide her back into the house. She is upset. She warms a can of mushroom soup on the stove. It is the Warhol brand, the comforting red and white found on the Canadian flag. I am grateful there is no blue; I am not in the mood for patriotic soup. Lead me from the stars and bars, show me where you park the cars. Ninety percent of the world’s mustard is grown in Canada. Few people know this. Imagine how desultory a hot dog would be without that yellow stripe.

We sit at the table and pour first pepper and then crush crackers into our soup. We make shy eye contact as we sit across from each other, eating soup. Then we smile as we eat, and finally laugh together.

She fixes me with her beautiful blue eyes and I desire her more than I ever have. That is why. I never thought she would change. I remember her before the accident, a lithe and lissome creature of great beauty.

Why do you call me Gabby? Her voice is quiet and confused.

Aren’t you? Gabby, I mean. My garrulous girl, and I your laconic lad.

She still looks puzzled, but she laughs and smiles and I lean in and kiss her forehead.

That day is wonderful. We drive downtown and window shop and walk and laugh together. We walk hand in hand down a side street. Gabby, little clown that she is, starts singing and I join in, and we even skip together, shop bags swinging, down the little side street. We stop in a doorway, and she pulls me to her, the bags drop to the ground. She kisses with a hunger raw in its heat, and she tastes like ice cream and freshly mown lawns and rain on a hot summer day, and like everything good in the universe.

That night we lie in bed and she pushes close and whispers hoarsely, I have been very naughty. And she turns away from me, lying on her stomach. And this magic lasts a few days, until her haircut, and she is gone again, even Gabby, and I am left again with the impostor and the yawning absence of Gabrielle.

HERE IS ONE WAY I KNOW that she is not Gabrielle. Gabrielle was driving. There was a light late spring rain as we crossed the bridge. After the accident she was not conscious. But I was. I too was badly injured but I also experienced what I have since heard called in and out consciousness. And in one of those ins, I saw her, slumped back against the door. There was so much blood. I tried to move to help her but I could not. I tried to speak but only a croak came out. And then out again, and fading ins, as first flashing lights and then people gathered around our mangled car.

Gabrielle was also mangled. She was badly injured and there was so much blood. Her face appeared broken. She did not move or moan. No murmur and no breath. I did not see her chest rise or fall and I mourn my wife who died that day in the rain on the bridge.

My next in was at the hospital. I woke in a bed at night in a small private room. Every part of me hurt. My right leg was in a cast. An IV ran into my left forearm. My left wrist was in a cast. I lay looking at the ceiling, thinking nothing. Gabrielle was dead. What else could matter?

In a few days I was up and about. For two days I was in a wheelchair and then they showed me the proper use of crutches. In all I think it was almost but not quite a week since the accident that