Lightning: A Machine of Death short story

by Thomas Maluck

out! I never tried one before, mostly out of principle but also skepticism. Maybe my slip would read “Naive Optimism,” but I would rather determine how I live than be told how I will die.

  Hold on, “Lightning?” I take the thin paper out and examine it again. The bold font, miniscule size, and use as a bookmark are all I need for convincing. Whose could it be? I retrace my steps. Donations, saggy breasts, don't fear the dragon, lightning, James Patterson! I hustle to the large print fiction and bump into a teenage boy in the aisle.

  “Do you work here?” He rolls the hem of his t-shirt between his thumb and forefingers, muttering to the carpet.

  “Yes, is there anything I can help you find?” I don't know which is rarer, a misplaced death prediction or a teenager consulting his local librarian.

  “I have this book report due and need some biographies about the writer.”

  “Great, we have plenty of databases for author biographies. Right this way.” He takes a seat at a computer terminal while I coach over his shoulder.

  “Here's our site, okay click there, and our databases are open to you with a valid library card number.”

  “That's cool, but I'm looking for Wikipedia?” This little shit. No.

  “Who are you researching?”

  “Ed Elaine Poe.” I point to the computer monitor.

  “Right here is a link that will take you to Edgar Allen Poe's full biography as well as annotations linking his fiction to his life experiences. Which story did you read?”

  “I didn't read it. Do you have Wikipedia on here?”

  “Wikipedia is weak compared to what we have. You can go beyond the story and really analyze the author's life through the library--”

  “--I don't want to read whoever, I just want to get this report done. I need two pages.” He slides the mouse and begins typing in the Google search bar before slinging a “Thank you” in the monitor's direction. I can feel the bubble formed between us already. I may as well be Poe.

  An impulse inside me says the kid can still learn the ways of a dignified researcher, but the death slip came first and I want to reach the Pattersons before anyone checks them out. I pull the book I handled earlier over to a staff computer and look at the previous patron's record. Steve Gerrit, 50, lives just a couple of blocks from this branch. I dial his phone number but a prerecorded voice tells me it is out of service. Steve's had an account with us for ten years, so his information might be outdated.

  Martha claps my shoulder. “Hour break! Get out of here, honey. We've got the fort.” She smiles with the glint in her eye of someone doing a great favor. I return the smile.

  “There's no time like the present.” Now the glint in her eye is groaning for me to leave.

  I grab a small tupperware bowl of baby carrots from the fridge to gnaw and walk out the back door of the library. The sky is a little overcast, but the roads still cough up dust as cars pass. There is enough sun to warm my face and arms and enough breeze to cool my legs and feet. This is the route I would normally walk, just punctuated with a purpose not related to workplace stress for once. As I round the corner of Mr. Gerrit's street, I check my watch to see how I'm doing for time and receive a startling bang in both ears. I have to pat myself down to make sure I didn't just explode, then look around for the source of the noise. My feet slow down as if the sky hung a “No Horseplay” sign.

  After three houses down the block, another loud noise pierces the air, this time a tragic moan.

  “Stevie! No!” The cry comes from the back yard of a fenceless house with toys strewn about the lawn. My librarian code of ethics holds me still for one second, then my humanitarian code of ethics, sworn into power by my morbid curiosity, sneaks me around the corner of Stevie's house. Even in sneakers, my feet savor the soft grass of this property.

  Gathered in front of a wide-open sliding door are an elderly woman with her hands covering her mouth, a tall, skinny, middle-aged man comforting her, and a man in his fifties wheezing and shivering on the ground. The tall man ran indoors, where telephone buttons started beeping. The woman did not question my shy approach at all, instead mouthing the words “Help him.” I place my hands on his chest according to my teenage training as a lifeguard and seem to only pump the life out of him.

  “Steve, don't go! Why can't you save him?” I would slap and hug and ditch her at the same time if not for the waning sound in Steve's breath. Several puffs of air into his lungs later, I was handling a still body, albeit one so solid I wonder why Steve didn't punch the lightning bolt into Zeus's eye. The tall guy emerges from the house.

  “The ambulance will be a while. They'll get here as fast as they can.” The words died in the air with their uselessness. He also accepted my presence with a curious automation. I extended a hand to him.

  “Hello, I'm Liz, I work at the library near here. Is this Steve Gerrit?”

  “I'm his brother, Malcolm.” The woman cried a mother's tears, but touched my hand.

  “I wanted to return this to him.” I pull the machine of death's paper from my pocket and hand it over. Brother and mother suck in air in disbelief.

  “How? How could this be his?” The mother violently shakes her head.

  “How would he know? Why would he go out if this is his?” Malcolm calculates his brother's actions in the space before him.

  “It looks like an accident,” I offer. They both narrow their eyes at me, a united front against this unbidden outsider.

  “He had a life! He never said anything about this death prediction! Of course this was an accident! You have the wrong paper. This must belong to someone else. You can go now. Leave us alone.” The wind freezes my face as I drag my feet to the front yard and trip over a scooter. I take a seat on it and nibble baby carrots until the ambulance arrives to confirm what we already witnessed firsthand. When my hour is up, I return to the library with more questions and no urge to look up their answers in Steve's record.

  The automatic doors slide open on a line of patrons leaning over Martha. She catches my eye and I sheepishly shrug. I look for a garbage can to toss the death slip when I realize Malcolm has it now. Where would he keep it? Would it be buried with Steve or saved to show grandkids? “Here's where Stevie met his end and he couldn't do a damn thing about it.” Except for toys in the yard and a condemnation turned bookmark.

  A little girl folds her hands together and announces the resuming of my shift. “Hey. I was looking for something about the ocean?” I see the interest in her eyes and the inevitable rot that will come in a few years' time.

  “There's a computer open in the kids' area if you want to look up oceans. Want me to show you?”

  “I already googled. I want a book.” She shifts her weight looking for the period on that sentence.

  I point to the juvenile nonfiction aisle. “Let's find you something good.”

  About The Author

  Thomas Maluck found avenues for publishing while studying for a degree in English and Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. Upon graduation, he went straight to grad school to earn an MLIS degree from USC and become a librarian. He is currently a public librarian responsible for teen services, collection development, and ereader tutorials.

  His poems have been featured in different avenues of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative, including the following chapbooks:

  Caverns of Fire: Where Imaginations Meet, edited by Charlene Spearen and published in 2007 by Stepping Stone Press.

  Beyond The Red Barn: Poems Celebrating the Art of Farming in South Carolina, edited by Carrie Young and published in 2009.

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost, I owe thanks to Severin Piehl for lending me his copy of Machine of Death. I would not have read the interesting series of short stories nor written one of my own if not for him. He is an amazing artist whose work is constantly updating at Little Reading (https://littlereading.com).

  Fellow writer Melanie Griffin wrote some stories for Machine of Death at the same time as m
e in 2011, and her creative efforts encouraged me to actually finish a piece of prose (a recent development). She constantly reads, and blogs about doing so at Melanie The Constant Reader (https://melanietheconstantreader.blogspot.com).

  Thank you for reading! Whether you love or hate my writing, feel free to give me a piece of your mind. Every bit of feedback counts.