By Craig Rodgers
Craig Rodgers is the author of ten books, a handful of lies, and all manner of foolishness.
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Comic Strip #1
Tag: craig rodgers
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His Castles
By Craig Rodgers
Each day he builds a castle. So many he’s lost count. The oldest of them is sand piled and shaped, no craftsmanship, no detail. The ones he first made when he washed ashore are only the idea of castles.
As the days go on and the line of castles spread each day’s work grows more elaborate. Parapets and crenellations begin to appear. Little carved windows. A drawbridge of sticks.
He finds the bottle while digging out a moat. Fogged glass buried long years in sand. He holds it up, he shakes it, thinking. Wondering.
He writes the note on the label. Bleached skin peeled from the bottle with delicate hand. He puts coordinates such as he knows them. HELP, he writes. SEND ME A SHIP RIGHT AWAY.
The cork he palms hard into place, tight. He gives it another pat just in case. He shakes the bottle again. The note rattles inside.
His best throw is so little, and the ocean so vast. Once it’s beyond him he sits on the beach for some hours watching it bob along before it vanishes from sight. Then he returns to his work. His castles.
Each day he builds a castle. The oldest of them has begun to crumble with age. Its detail fading like the lost wonder of a once great kingdom. The newest is formed through long hours with care. Stone walls are raised to protect the soft sand within. A sigil is shaped on the door of this fortification in an impossible realm. And each day when his task is done he sits and watches the sun fall away behind the world as he waits for another day to come, a chance to do it better again.
Each day he builds a castle. The oldest of them has sunk back into the sand, lumps of some forgotten wonder. The ones he first made when he washed ashore look like nothing at all. He’s carving twigs into flagpoles topped with leaves, he’s filling the moat with borrowed sea. Long hours go by in great care, staring and imagining and willing this citadel into being.
It is a glance that shows him the glint. He turns again and it’s still there, riding the seesawing lap of ocean’s reach. The bottle stirs at sand’s edge. He sits, he stares. He can hardly believe. Then he is running, and he is stumbling, he is falling where it lay in sputtered foam. He takes the bottle up and with a hand he wipes it clear. And there inside, where before there was rolled his note, now sits anchored a ship.
Craig Rodgers is the author of ten books, a handful of lies, and all manner of foolishness.
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GEORGE’S FIRST DAY
By Craig Rodgers
The ladies of the nineteenth floor love George right away.
“Oh my God, he’s precious.”
“Look at him, that sweet boy.”
It’s his birthday today. Number fifteen. They tease at first, poking and laughing. Pinching cheeks. He laughs and shakes his head. He says thank you ma’am, he says aw jeez. Rose laughs too, and she pinches his cheeks again.
The men from accounts are having a meeting. A few from upstairs too. Some standing, some sitting. The blinds are up and they look over at times, to watch the ladies ribbing George, to laugh along between bouts of their talk.
George tries to work. He scrapes the top layer off worksheet errors and he notes their corrections. The women watch him go. They woo and he blushes. Mary waves and he blushes more.
The men in their meeting huddle. More are sitting now. Spells of quiet congeal. Figures are thrown out and booed. The day exists beyond the window over the city roofs below.
The ladies crowd his station. They ask about his day. How he likes the office, how he likes the work. He goes on with his tasks as they talk and he talks and then he wipes his brow and he puts the eraser in his breast pocket and he tells the ladies I don’t know, I don’t know. They laugh still, they pinch his cheeks still. Ruth says she’s going to give him a kiss, and Mary says she is too, and he laughs, and he huffs, and now they’re all laughing, and he’s running, around tables, past desks, and the ladies are running too, laughing and running, and his feet twist and he falls forward, and now there is a gasp.
The men stand at the table where some accord is found. Some stare down at pages of numbers while others reach and stretch. One by one they turn as the screams begin to sound, where Ruth weeps and Mary sits blank faced on the floor alongside where George’s body is flopped. The eraser thumps with a slowing pulse, protruding from his heart, and the ladies nudge him with hands that shake but he is already gone. The office stills with but little movements continuing on. Hands over mouths, whispers of woe. Somewhere outside wide windows the sun moves, stretching between the bones of a rising tower. A man turns away and then another, their gaze drawn from this tragedy and on to the day’s minute onward tick as knockers and climbers rivet into place blocks of long steel that in their slow way shut out the sun’s insistent presence.
Craig Rodgers is the name stamped on ten books, a number of letters, and one day a grave.