26 Absurdities
of
Tragic Proportions
Matthew C. Woodruff
Cover design by Matt Woodruff
Stories edited by Gayle Michalak
Copyright © 2018 Matt Woodruff
Edition 2
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced without
the explicit written permission of the author.
Printed in the USA
ISBN13: 978-1720861751
Author’s Note:
The inspiration for 26 Absurdities came from the illustrative works of Edward Gorey.
Illustrator Edward Gorey has been described as "an extraordinary imagination," as being "a great American illustrator,” and that “his works are equally amusing, somber, and nostalgic.” No doubt his works partly inspired people like Tim Burton.
Everyone who sees Mr. Gorey’s work has a strong opinion about it. The illustrations in his Gashlycrumb Tinies caught my attention at a young age and filled me with wonder at the type of imagination that could create such a dreadful masterpiece. For years I, no doubt like many of you, would wonder at the events that led up to the situations that caused these poor children’s unusual deaths. How does one die of ennui, for example, or get sucked dry by leeches?
The following 26 short tales will explore, with some humor, the last few hours, days or weeks of the lives of these ill-fated children. As you read what fate or destiny had in store for them, you may believe it or you may discard it as you see fit.
One thing is certain though, once these tales are read, you will not forget these children.
Enjoy!
Table of Contents
Amy
Basil
Clara
Desmond
Ernest
Fanny
George
Hector
Ida
James
Kate
Leo
Maud
Neville
Olive
Prue
Quentin
Rhoda
Susan
Titus
Una
Victor
Winnie
Xerxes
Yorick
Zillah
Amy
The house was one of those once grand and slowly falling apart places usually referred to as ‘genteel’. The three story, white clapboard exterior was showing its age like an old drag queen – sagging soffits, bulging casements, peeling paint and trees and bushes badly in need of pruning, all combining for an air of futility and lethargy unseen since the latest round of Middle East peace talks. The house was a small microcosm of the whole neighborhood, in fact the whole town which had seen better, younger and more vibrant days.
The more important businesses in Siena, Florida had long since moved down State Highway 27 with the fast food chains and drug stores. It being a marginally more prosperous area and importantly, an area frequented with more traffic. This exodus left behind a main street with a row of single story store fronts, largely infested by pawn shops, off market dollar stores, abandoned county health and legal offices, one old but miraculously still open IGA market with the ‘G’ missing since the hurricane of ‘67(ask any old timer about it), cracking sidewalks and empty, sad spaces.
For Maria, it was perfect.
Maria was herself a small-town girl, brought-up in the northeast in a town that boasted one k-12 school, and two competing diners ($4.99 all-you-can-eat specials on alternating Thursdays). Maria was happy to now be able to raise her daughter in a similar, though slightly more depressing, small town environment.
It was Maria’s Grand Plan, and Maria liked to have plans.
In elementary school, after watching a particularly weird b-rated sci-fi space saga, she wanted to be a robot. As a ninth grader, after seeing a revolutionary war reenactment, she wanted to be a general and in her senior year, for no apparent reason, Maria was going to be a boxer. As Maria’s grandmother, who loved Maria’s winsomeness with all her heart, once said to her, “It’s nice to have plans dear, but yours are just so… inappropriate.”
Maria didn’t think in terms of appropriate or inappropriate or expected or logical. Maria thought with her heart. Her full-bodied beating heart. And for Maria, at least currently more than anything else, she wanted to open a Bed & Breakfast.
Maria had read an article in a magazine at the lawyer’s office which was handling her grandmother’s estate (if that’s what you could call it) that said B&B’s were on the rise. Instantly Maria knew in her heart of hearts, this is what she wanted ‘more than anything,’ her own B&B in a small town for her and her daughter, Amy.
This fit in perfectly with a TV show Maria had seen last week on a travel channel that said tourism in Florida was as strong as ever, even with the bad economy. In Maria’s mind here was the answer to her heart-of-hearts plan, which she had for a whole 15 minutes, open a B&B in a small town in Florida. No thought given to whether or not Amy wanted to be pulled out of her current school half a nation away, and away from her friends to move to a ramshackle and rambling old house, probably haunted (Maria hoped – more interesting for her imagined guests) and be conscripted into the hospitality industry.
At first Maria searched the internet for an existing B&B in Florida that be for sale, but soon realized the money from her grandmother’s meager estate would not be nearly enough. After mentioning her depressing and futile search to her friend Allison, her off-hand comment, ‘wouldn’t it be great to start one up from scratch?’ sent Maria off on a whole new search with a whole new mission and a slightly modified Grand Plan. She would look for a large, old house, preferably furnished, that had potential. The latter criteria was the least important because in Maria’s mind her plan was a sure success. She and Amy could make all the potential it would need.
Now, as I’m sure you can imagine, trying to research and buy something on the internet, like a grand old home, is difficult to say the least. Dozens of emails and follow-up phone calls to incredulous, over-worked, under-compensated realtors (or under-worked, over-compensated, as the case may be) and testy, despondent or just plain bored, ‘For Sale by Owners’ might leave anyone of us just plain worn out.
But Maria was not.
I would like to say that ‘perseverance’ was Maria’s middle name (it’s actually Prudence, after her grandmother of course) but Maria’s history at not becoming a robot or a general or a boxer is fairly indicative of how long Maria’s usual plans endure, that is to say, until the first roadblock or sometimes until the next Grand Plan presents itself.
Maria got lucky though fairly early in her search, (or not lucky, as you’ll see when events unfold). Maria stumbled onto some very motivated sellers. This group of five siblings were strangely in agreement with each other as to how quickly to dispose of their elderly mother’s (now passed) old house and old furnishings located in a town none of them cared to live in, or even very much to reminisce about.
Enter the Bidlers. The five Bidler sisters, all still named Bidler due to tear-heaving, gut-wrenching divorces or just plain homeliness and/or orneriness, ranged in age from the early 40’s to the mid-60’s. (The old woman herself was 84 when she passed.) Motivated doesn’t begin to describe their attitude toward selling their mother’s run-down, infested and smelly ramshackle, drafty old house (and those were its good qualities).
Not that they could be blamed for their attitudes. After all the old lady died in this house and stunk it up for four days before any neighbor thought to check on her and search for a daughter’s number. The old lady’s essence continued to linger in it. Plus, it may have be
en four or forty years since the last good cleaning, who could tell? The Bidler sisters visited a little as possible. It was actually hard to even tell what color anything was anymore.
The initial call went something like this:
Hopeful Maria: “I’m calling about the house you have listed on Craigslist, and I have a few…”
A Bidler (as they have gotten older they are harder to tell apart, all being kind of nasally, frumpy and round) abruptly said: “We can’t finance.”
Maria, only slightly taken aback by the tone: “Um, I have some money. Actually, my grandmot…”
A Bidler (or the other, there may have been multiple ones on the call) in the sweetest tone now that the magic money words were spoken: “We’d love to show you the house, it was such a great old place.”
Maria, now getting flustered: “Um, I’m not actually in Florida, yet.”
The you know whos: “Then how are you gonna see the place?”
“I thought if you could maybe email me some more photos and describe it to me, I could mail you a check? Um, you know, a cashier’s check I mean. I want to open a B&B,” Maria finished in a rush. This was the first time she divulged her Grand Plan to anyone outside her little circle.
Now, something that has rarely happened in the history of man (ask any of their ex-husbands) a Bidler sister was left momentarily speechless. Never in their wild imaginings did any of them think some poor sap… er, I mean buyer, would want to buy it sight unseen. Probably the only way they could sell it, one or all of them thought to themselves upon hearing the news. And certainly not for… a what? A B&B did she say? “Broken-down and bereft,” one of them later guffawed after seeing the check with her own eyes. Sadly, the others all pretty much agreed. But it wasn’t their problem anymore.
“That would be perfectly acceptable,” she twittered. A Bidler sister twittering is not a nice sound, kind of like a strangled frog. “It’s furnished you know, turn of the century, quite modern for its time.” Which century or which time was better left undiscovered.
Though it was a little more complicated, with getting a lawyer and a survey being needed, a title search and all the other things that encumber real estate transactions, that’s how Maria and Amy ended up moving to Siena, Florida to own their own B&B.
Part 2
I don’t need to remind you, poor Amy had no say in any of this. As she had never had in any of Maria’s Grand Plans. Not the time Maria invested a good portion of their meager resources in bulk glass and stone beads when Amy was five (home jewelry making business). Amy almost choked to death on the brightly colored little things. (They found two boxes of them stuffed back in a closet when packing for Florida.) Or when Amy was eight, and Maria thought it would be a good idea to move in with her current boyfriend. He was a nice enough fellow though probably not too bright himself. Unfortunately he lived in a studio apartment, so it didn’t quite work out as hoped. Or the time, …well you get the idea. Amy was blown on the winds of Maria’s Grand Plans, like a sparrow in a hurricane or in this case, like the ‘G’ in the IGA sign.
Amy tried to make the best of it, after her tearful goodbyes and heartfelt “I’ll write every day!” to her best friends. After all, what choice did she have? Amy was nothing if not practical where her mother was concerned. It was gonna happen, period.
Oh, Amy used to wistfully imagine having a family like many of her friends had, a father who worked and came home and helped her with homework and took her fishing on the weekends, a mother who baked cookies and taught her how to apply makeup. Maria did once have the idea to bake lots of cookies and sell them at a farmer’s market, but the facts that Maria didn’t really know how to bake from scratch and knew nothing about the health department or licensing, caused that particular plan to not quite work out. They ate a lot of funny looking cookies though, so that was fun. Anyway, when it was time to go to Florida, Amy was ready.
You remember the opening of the old TV show “Alice”, where she and her son pack up their car and move to start a new life? Well it was kind of like that, except Alice had a much nicer car.
Part 3
‘Welcome to Siena, Florida’ the sign used to say, Amy supposed. It was kinda hard to tell. Amy and her mother made the trip in only three days, with little or no difficulties and passed over the ‘city’ line, and by the sign, late in the afternoon, just as the sun was touching the western horizon. Interestingly, in Florida unlike New York for example, all municipal areas are either counties or cities, no townships, no villages, no boroughs. The designation is not dependent on size. A city in Florida can be any size. Siena was, as previously discussed, smaller than most and more sorrowful looking then the rest of small town America.
Amy was however trying to look forward to this new adventure, after all, this is the first time they would own their own place, so that was something special Amy supposed. And they weren’t forever from the beach. This being Florida, a beach was never more than two hours away. Amy doesn’t know much about the beach, but her friends thought it was a good thing, so she was looking forward to it.
As they drove through town and down the main street, a normal person, or shall we say, a person without Maria’s enthusiasm for her Grand Plan, would have noticed the rundown and dilapidated feel of the town. Not Maria, what Maria saw and thought was, here is where the new café will open, after they see all my guests, gazing at an empty corner location and there’s a perfect spot for the row of little boutiques my guests will shop at, looking at the mostly empty block, and etc. Enthusiasm and imagination were convincing Maria of her success.
The house was not hard to find being only two blocks off the main street. They pulled up in front and stared out the car windows at a long, broken sidewalk in a badly overgrown, weed infested yard. It leading up to a set of five deteriorating cement steps that may have at one time had iron handrails, ending on a large grey roundish porch. Its narrow round, once painted columns were centered by a large, ugly dark brown set of doors, framed by two long dusty looking windows, too dirty to see through.
Maria loved it, it was exactly as she pictured. She could already see it full of happy guests. Amy, well she was trying, but to say she was a little disappointed is not saying enough. One small sigh though is all she let escape, as she forlornly gazed at her future.
They opened the car doors and Amy started to get stuff out. “Leave that stuff, come on, let’s go right in” Maria shouted as she vaulted from the car and ran up the sidewalk. Amy, who was wrestling to extricate a suitcase from the dangerously over-packed back seat abandoned it and ran to catch up, narrowly avoiding tripping and cracking her head open on the outdoor steps.
“Amy,” Maria admonished for the hundredth time, “watch where you are going. Some day you are gonna fall to your death if you’re not more careful!” Amy rolled her eyes, but so her mother couldn’t see.
They stopped in front of the peeling, strangely lopsided double doors. To the right, on the porch under a rock was a large manila envelope as promised by the Bidlers, containing some papers to be signed by Maria and a set of five keys. All the keys were the same, one happily contributed by each Bidler sister and all for the front door. If there were any other keys for any other doors, they had been lost in the dustiness of time.
Now I would like to say that the inserting of the key and opening of the front door for the first time was a magical and profound experience for Maria and Amy, so I will. It was a magical and profound experience. Here was proof that one of Maria’s Grand Plans for her and Amy was about to come true. Maria had purchased her first house, her happiness at this moment was deep and fulfilling, her gratitude to her grandmother for making it possible was absolute, and rightly so on both counts.
How was Amy feeling? Well she was a practical young lady.
After a little struggle with the lock and sticky door (it’s the humidity) Maria pushed the doors wide open, bathing the entry hall in the dying afternoon light. Immediately they both were awestruck at the vision of the t
wo-story grand staircase that filled the center of the three-story entryway, as anyone other than the Bidlers would be. This was old time southern elegance at its best, run down perhaps but majestic nonetheless.
Why, you ask, had there been no photos of this majestic staircase included in Maria’s emails from the Bidlers? Simply put, the Bidlers were all over-weight and tired, and they loathed the idea of waddling up and down those stairs. They felt two stories of stairs was not a selling point. Old lady Bidler herself hadn’t been up those stairs in years.
Even the ancient and decaying smell that charged out and assaulted Maria and Amy couldn’t diminish the majesty of the central stair. For a brief second Amy felt optimistic about the future in this old house. Amy instantly loved the staircase, with its rich mahogany bannisters and dark deep pile carpeting, that wound up and up with a grand window on every landing. Amy got dizzy following it all the way up with her eyes.
This staircase has seen many things, none of which it can talk about. It saw new babies carried gingerly up its heights. It saw at least two young ladies, dressed in all the finery imaginable come down on the way to greet their nervous, bespeckled and acne ridden prom dates. The staircase even saw one young lady come down to get married on the bottom step, with a long flowing train all in white. It also saw the same girls running back up in tears, after dates, engagements or marriages gone wrong. It sat silent as the hopes and dreams of these five young ladies were dashed on the cruel realities of their lives.
26 Absurdities of Tragic Proportions Page 1