Orphan Openings: Unless A Grain Of Wheat Fall To The Ground

The initial coolness was like the peace of death. Before, she had felt and tallied Brian's every thoughtless act or wounding word. Now, real and perceived grievances all beaded up and rolled off of her like rain down a marble monument. It was so liberating to put the pain behind her, to move to a state in their marriage in which she could hide herself away and play the role of wife. They still did all the same things. They got up, danced around each other in the bathroom, went to work, had dinner together, had sex. The sex was better than before, actually, because now there was a corner of her mind where she could watch herself and improve her performance and adjust her mental game when necessary.

But even death is not static. Repose becomes decay. She had thought that she was preserving the marriage by closing herself off. One day she realized that Brian had ceased to expect anything from her. He had become other to her, and now she was other to him. They were two people in a house, partners in management, marking the time with manners. She had died to him, but she had not counted on him dying to her. It was frightening to realize that she was interchangeable.

One day at the office she stopped by Sofia's cubicle to drop off a report. A faded inspirational poster was tacked up to the divider, a backlit image of a stalk of wheat with the caption, "Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit."

"What does that mean?" she asked Sofia.

"I don't know? It was my dad's, it used to hang in his office. I think it's that... the wheat can't grow unless it's transformed? The grain by itself doesn't change, but when it's planted and starts to grow, it bursts open and warps out of shape and is destroyed, and in the process it becomes something bigger and better, something it never could have become on its own. It has to die to go on living."

"That sucks."

Sofia shrugged. "Most living feels like dying anyway."

"But it doesn't really die," she said. "How can it grow into a plant unless it's alive?"

"I guess the grain of wheat part of it dies."

"That's pretty lousy for the grain," she said, unreasonably annoyed on behalf of an anonymous seed.

"It's not like it was going to last forever on its own. Get planted or get eaten."

"And those are the only two options?"

"Or decay in storage," said Sofia, turning back to her computer.

***

On her way home she picked up Chinese food from a place Brian liked. At home she pulled out dishes and candles and plated everything up just like she'd read about in an article about reviving the spark in your marriage. Brian called her as she was throwing away the containers.

"I'm going to be late, babe," he said. "The project is running late, and you know how it is. Don't wait for me to eat. I'm just going to grab a sandwich somewhere up here."

It was like him to spring this on her. Several cool replies simmered within her, and she considered which one would be most effective.

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground...

"Okay," she said. "What if I come up there and eat with you?"

"You want to come all the way up here?" he said. "I'm only going to have about ten minutes."

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies...

"I don't mind. I'd like to."

"Um, okay. Sure, if you want."

"Thanks." She swallowed. "I love you."

There was silence on the line for a moment. She closed her eyes and waited.

"Yeah, you too," he said shortly. "See you."

She picked up the plates and started scraping them in the trash, wondering at the strange bitter pang of the first blade of wheat piercing through the confines of the dead husk.

Orphan Openings: The Next Generation

This selection courtesy of Eleanor's summer scribblings:

...and Eleanor found out that if you sit sideways on the living room couch and eat sunflower seeds, you could toss the shells backward onto the radiator. Of course, you had to account for the sunflower seed shells on the floor and in the toy bins, but otherwise, it was a pretty good system, especially if you had a book to read.

Orphan Openings: My Fair Wheat Field

On the Arabian island, the farmers could read the signs of the times. As the skyscrapers rose out of the desert and the sheiks raced their Maseratis down the shimmering King Fahd causeway, the demand for food increased. The leisured classes and the construction workers alike needed bread. That food could be imported, or the money could stay close to home.

The land was against them. Government scientists had been searching for a way to reclaim land from the sea, to make the small amount of arable land more productive, but all but the most dedicated agriculturists knew that the real value of the land was in the black gold beneath the surface. Grain could always be imported from Egypt -- why waste time and manpower on cultivation? The press, which has been testing the limits of the new and more lenient regime, criticized the endeavor in increasingly strident editorials.

Still, the project had the favor of certain highly placed officials. With support from national funds, researchers at the largest public university had compounded new chemical fertilizers that could be dusted onto the fields of the coastal plains. The project was unveiled to much publicity, and lucky farmers were selected by lottery to have their fields treated with the experimental product. The result was an utter fiasco -- a junior lab assistant had made an error in sending the formula to the chemist's lab, and instead of enriching the soil, the acclaimed fertilizers burned the land. The resulting wheat crop was sparse and singed. Egyptian economists and exporters sat back in cafes and ordered each other another round of tisanes.

The reaction of the press was swift. Papers, still damp with ink and scorn, were flung into the marketplaces and the city shops as the merchants, antagonistic to the aims of the peasant farmers, stroked their beards and murmured over the headlines: Bahrain, It's Plain, Sprays Vainly On The Grain.

Orphan Openings: Decision Point

It was a Monday night when Kristen decided to be unhappy in her marriage.

The day was not, in other respects, an unusual one.  People at work, unhappy to be back in the office after the three day weekend, had as usual behaved as though she were being personally unreasonable when she reminded them at 2:15 that their slides were due for the Tuesday Ops deck by 3:00 PM.  Some day, she promised herself, she would leave them un-reminded and they could explain to the Senior Vice President how a deadline that arrived at precisely the same time every single week could be, every week, forgotten. 

Then at 4:56, as she was struggling to get the last of the slides together, the inevitable text had arrived from Ron, "Can u pick up kids?  Running late and have to finish."  She gritted her teeth, knowing that if she replied, "No." the response would be, "Please...?" 

She announced her entry of the other admin's cube with a can-you-believe-this sigh.  "Ron sends his text-pologies again.  I have to go get the kids before 5:30 or they start charging by the minute."  Jennifer rolled her eyes sympathetically.  "Todd and Kathy haven't sent their slides yet.  Can you put them in when they do?"

Jennifer could.  "Couch," she advised. 

James and Emily tussled loudly in the back seat and wailed when, as always, homework was ordered before television.  There was nothing faster than frozen pizza in the freezer, and the thought of carbs for dinner reminded her of the free cookies which had proved irresistible in breakroom that afternoon, making her doubly exasperated. 

Ron did not appear until after dinner.

"Sorry, hon," he announced himself, dumping his laptop case on the kitchen floor as he swung the fridge door open and grabbed a beer from the bottom shelf.  "Meetings.  Samir was out.  Code wouldn't compile."  Because, she almost thought she could hear him say.  I have an important job.  "Oh man, I'm tired..." he was saying.  As if this was some unique achievement of his, unexperienced by her. 

Steps sounded behind her, but she didn't turn.  Pop went the beer, just behind her.  "Oh hey, pizza."  He grabbed a piece.  "Down by twelve points already," he complained, vanishing into the living room.  A moment later the TV sounded.

She paused, savoring her frustrating and imagining the sympathetic nods that it would draw from Jennifer the next day when properly related.  "He always does this.  And didn't even sit down and ask how my day was."  Always. 

She rose and went to the door of the living room.  He had one foot on the coffee table, the pizza slice folded over in one hand, the beer in the other, leaning forward tensely -- the pizza sliced paused in it's trip to his mouth -- as he awaited the result of a play. 

Always. 

She could hear in her mind the nattering advice of the pre-marriage counselor all those years ago.  "Never say, 'You always...'  That's fighting language.  Say, 'When you do that it makes me feel...'"

But after sixteen years of marriage, and in the middle of watching a game, "makes me feel" would elicit no more than an absent "Uh, huh..."  And all of a sudden the work of not being unhappy in her marriage seemed the one thing she did not have energy left for, however difficult being unhappy might later prove to be.  So thinking of how it would sound when related over coffee the next day, she started with, "You always do this.  You just don't care about my job, or dinner, or...  I don't know what you do care about."

Orphan Openings: The Unequal Marriage

Few would have disputed that Maria-Lucia was one of the most beautiful girls in the village, with fine, dark hair, delicate features, skin like new-skimmed cream, and full lips that smiled often, showing even teeth. As she neared womanhood, the legs and arms which had been merely thin assumed the subtle curves which drew men's eyes, and her waist and bosom the less subtle curves that held them. Yet she had no pretensions about her, was quiet and dutiful towards her elders and devout to just such a degree as to seem a "good girl", but without excess. And so there was surprisingly little jealousy directed towards her, until the time of her marriage.

Her offense, when it came, was not of the usual and forgivable sort. Had she married a rich old man, heads would have nodded indulgently as they observed that she was very pretty after all, and from a poor family, and so who would blame her? Many voices would have "hoped she would be happy." Similar hopes would have been expressed had she married one of the more attractive young men -- hopefully in the sort of hurried fashion which would allow people to meditate with satisfaction that beauty was not an unmixed blessing, and be thankful for their own daughters' virtue.

Opinion was, thus, outraged to see itself defied when Maria married Giuseppe. He was a quiet man, five years her senior, with no living family left. His farm was small and his looks were plain almost to the point of ugliness, with very large ears and nose, and a mouth that drooped as if sad, though when he spoke it almost always with cheer and kindness. His hair was naturally disordered, his skin burnt brown with many days under the sun, his shoulders slightly stooped, his arms long and his pace very slightly shuffling, such that when they were first seen entering the parish church together after the marriage (which had been small, with only the families and a few friends in attendance) one sharp tongue remarked afterward, "With his looks next to hers, it looked as if he were a pet ape moping along behind her."

Though the marriage had seemed sudden enough -- or at least, if they had spent much time together in the months beforehand, few had marked it -- few could imagine it was because of necessity, save for a few who darkly muttered that she must have come to grief with a man who wouldn't marry her, and only Giuseppe would take her in that condition. Time, however, proved this not to be the case. There was, of course, speculation that she must be unhappy. And that fall Giuseppe found more than the usual number of young men coming to see if he needed hired laborers for the harvest -- though if he suspected that they had actually come in hopes of finding his wife eager for other male company around the farm, he gave no definite sign of the knowledge as he turned them away.

Though Giuseppe's farm was no more remote than most, they were treated almost as if they lived on the other side of the river, in La Rocca, and if they were mentioned at all it was with the observation, "But surely the children will be ugly."

But that was not in fact to be the case.

Orphan Openings: Suburban Edition

It was with a certain irony that Samantha recalled complaining about suburbia, "You can't imagine a real drama taking place in this neighborhood, only genre fiction: mystery, romance or farce," as she stood over the corpse of her husband's lover, wondering where in this hideous McMansion she could hide a bloody knife.

Orphan Openings: Lifechanging Incident Edition

Journalists did not, unfortunately, have the insight of biographers. The headlines would read, "Senator Williams attends funeral of mentor's son." Perhaps some reporter, who had done his homework, would add the prefix, "In gesture of forgiveness." Few would remember that August day back in 1982 as anything but one on which a misfortune proved to have a silver lining for the young George Williams: Senator Jackson standing by his hospital bed saying, "Where are you going to college in the fall, son?"

"Stanford, sir." And with the sudden intuition that at this moment humility would be rewarded. "Well... Maybe. I'm on the wait list."

The older man's eyes lit up. "Wait list? Let me make a call, son. I think I might just be able to do something about that. And about this... accident. Believe me, son, my boy and his friends are going to be in a world of trouble as it is. Trevor's appointment to West Point has already been withdrawn. There'll be justice. But I think you understand... That this was stupid boys in a car with beer. They weren't singling you out," the words said with deliberate slowness, "in any way." A pause. "Were they son?"

"No, sir. I don't guess they were."

Had they? Hadn't they? Had he?

Though the images of that day -- the car in the afternoon sun, the sounds of the big block engine revving, the shouts of, "We're gonna get you this time, Williams!" -- could be readily summoned to his mind even now, he could not say why he had darted right instead of left. Had he, at that instant, understood the full implications of a white senator's son running down a black teenager three months before an election? Surely not.

And yet the one thing he was clear about, as he saw again the sun glinting off black enamel paint and chrome in that instant before being hit, was that he'd dodged the wrong way intentionally -- and that as he'd done so and heard the startled screams from the car, going too fast to stop, he'd sensed that he had won.

Orphan Openings: Old Gods Edition

"It's only a chicken."

"Take a chicken to the butcher's and have it killed, and no one can possibly object. But if you sacrifice a chicken in the temple of Mars, you commit a grave sin against Christ."

Marcus Tullius's broad face was set in a stubborn expression, his arms folded across his chest. "If I had known about Christ when I was stationed on the Rhine I would have prayed to him. But at the time, didn't know him. So I swore to Mars that if I survived the battle on the bridge I would make him an offering each year on the anniversary of the battle for ten years. He kept his side of the bargain, and here I stand. I can't believe Christ would want me to break my oath."

"But surely an oath to a false god can be no oath at all. Satan has no good in him, and you can owe him nothing."

"I didn't promise anything to Satan, I promised a chicken to Mars. Mars isn't Satan, though I understand now that he's not God either. And I don't see how my oath to Mars is voided just because he's not the sort I took him for at the time."

Orphan Openings: Housework Edition

Women scope out other women's housework like men scope out women, and so when the children opened the door opened to her knock, the neighbor involuntarily glanced around the living room. Scraps of paper lay drifted like snow across the floor; toys radiated out from the area around the playpen; books were piled high on tables, on chests, on shelves, on the floor. The children, though dressed, had the kind of fine hair that always slips out of barrettes and clips and elastics. The place was not exactly filthy, but one would be hard-pressed to call it clean. The neighbor, having children herself, made allowances.

The lady of the house came jogging down the stairs with her baby on her hip, pausing to kick a pair of old tights under the desk. The neighbor explained her plight: the air conditioner was being repaired; could the kids spend the morning over here? The lady of the house was amenable; the kids charged shrieking upstairs to form a new club and exclude the little brother. The neighbor stepped out into the heat, torn between relief that someone else's house was messier than hers, and a twinge of guilt reminding her that at least she'd known in advance that someone was going to knock on her door this morning.

Orphan Openings: High School Vampire Edition

Amber stood staring at her mirror and wishing that she could see herself in it. She was certain that the bite mark on her neck, especially against her increasingly pale complexion, must be garishly obvious. She could feel a smooth, tender, barely healed patch of skin (if one could speak of "healing" with the undead) and in her imagination it was a livid, red, scarred patch. But with her inability either to cast a reflection or to twist her head into whatever contorted position would be necessary to see her own neck, she could not be sure, and it vexed her terribly.

A scarf, perhaps. But in the summer?

Perhaps this, she thought, explained the regrettable fashion instincts of female vampires in TV shows and movies -- a large, metal-studded dog collar would cover the problem, but changing her entire fashion ethic merely because she was now a vampire seemed horribly unfair.

Orphan Openings: Trauma Team Edition

Though hardened by fifteen years service on the Fruit & Vegetable Clean-up Team, Kurt felt a tightening in his gut as cleanup vehicles flashing lights played across the carnage: some three dozen watermelons fallen off a pickup truck onto I-35. Broken rinds littered the road, the lights of the emergency vehicles making them first more livid red, then purplish blue. Pulp and seeds were thrown every which way, with tire treads running through the carnage and spattering it up on the guard rails.

"You expect to see this kind of thing in a war," Kurt told the reporter from News Nine, trying to assume the tough but sensitive man who's seen too much demeanor that would lead her to call him later. "But this is no war. This is right here at home. Seeds and pulp thrown all over like an artillery barrage hit an infantry battalion."

One of the other men dropped an armful of broken rinds into the cleanup bin, touched the crucifix hanging around his neck, and murmured a prayer.

Kurt shook his head. "How can you believe in God when you see things like this?"

Orphan Openings: Apocalypse Edition

For nearly twenty years, Chris Mortimer had been predicting that civilization would collapse, and so it was a with a certain grim satisfaction that he watched as it did -- after a fashion. When the peak oil theory surprised even its own firmest proponents by being true beyond their wildest dreams, Chris watched the rioting crowds after the collapse of the Saudi monarchy, the Russian federation and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, and wondered how much longer television would be broadcasting.

When gas prices jumped from $3 to $20/gallon over the course of a month, and the electric company announced that it would only be providing power from 10am to 4pm, he got his hand-cranking grain mill and solar oven out of the spare bedroom and took inventory of the canned goods and bottled water. He was prepared. They were not. Survival of the fittest.

Somewhere along the way, however, the event he had long anticipated deviated from the mental script he had crafted for it. Where he had pictured a need for rugged individualists who knew how to hunt and gather and perhaps eventually farm and ranch, others with skills he had despised were, maddeningly, well equipped to thrive in the new world.

Most maddening of all was that his boss, whom he had at first envisioned begging at his door for canned goods and solar battery chargers, had turned a penchant for "networking" into a trading empire that encompassed control of key aqueducts, solar trading schooners, and the southern overland trade route to California. That this short, nervous-looking man who doubtless did not know three different ways of starting a fire without matches could, in this new world, say grandly to people, "Would you step into my office? I have air conditioning," made Chris feel as if the collapse of civilization was simply not all it was cracked up to be.

Orphan Openings: NFP edition

"Come on upstairs with me," she said dryly.

Orphan Openings: Corporate Edition

The human mind is a creature not easily deflected from its current path by a change in circumstances, especially one that takes place in such a short period of time that one can hardly convince oneself that it could be truly consequential. It had been a mere twenty minutes between when Sarah's work was interrupted by a young man who said, "Sarah Wolfe? Could you come down to see the director in Conference Room A for a moment," and the present moment in which she found herself walking across the parking lot with a folder under her arm marked "Severance: Wolfe, Sarah".

That such a brief and low-voicedly polite exchange -- The company is grateful for your twelve years of service. This bears no reflection upon your performance. If you will sign this release, the company would like to offer you eight weeks severance and two pre-paid sessions with a certified career coach. -- could mark a major turning point in her life seemed impossible.

Her mind continued on the track from which it had been so abruptly distracted. Jeff in distribution would have to be called about those processors. Sales would have to be informed of the lead time change. Too much of the morning had been spend on cleaning up messes that could easily have been avoided -- she would need to craft a new PowerPoint about the detailing the standard operating procedures for commodity procurement and emphasizing the importance of obeying them.

And yet little jarring details stood out as she crossed the parking lot. The light was wrong, neither lunch-time glare nor the sinking sun a the end of the day, but bright mid-morning. The rows of cars stretched on unbroken and silent. The lot was full, everyone at their desks. And the street beyond was quiet. All these betokened that the natural order, long reliable, had suddenly been thrown off its course. And her parked three-series, when she reached it, had changed form -- looking no longer like a badge of success but rather like a payment due on the twentieth of every month.

Orphan Openings: A Search for the Worst Pun

Looking back on the years she'd spent with Alastair, it was hard for Melanie to feel regret. At first the only basis for their relationship had been the similarity of their dietary restrictions; but with time, affection and opportunity, even a small similarity can be built into a substantial edifice in Aphrodite's honor. Even with her painful awareness of what had followed, Melanie could not help but see their love as having been a many-Splenda-ed thing.

Orphan Openings: Cooking Edition

[It's time for a new feature on DarwinCatholic, and since we're much better at starting things than finishing them, the task of writing openings for fiction that we have no intention of completing seems an obvious one for us. We can promise many more, but for the quality improving, I cannot speak.]

Working in the hot kitchen often made Gertrude cross, and so it was with her stores of patience already depleted that she discovered that her husband, so often obstinate in life, refused to fit into the cauldron unless completely deboned and sectioned.