J. Timothy King Stories that Expand Your Life™

I’m staring at her animated features from across a half-eaten slab of flounder and a mostly-empty glass of Chardonnay. She drones on. Still pretty as when I first met her, but I wonder if I were to choke on an errant bone if it would give me an excuse…

No such luck.

You wouldn’t think it possible that any one person could know this much about Magnum, P.I. Much to my surprise, you would be wrong. I bet she could recite every word of the script of every episode by heart. Apparently, she maintains her own very complete “Nitpicker’s Guide to Magnum, P.I.” site on the web. I say “apparently,” because I haven’t seen it myself. Probably only two or three people in the universe have. I chuckle at the thought. I guess the chuckle is well-timed, because she doesn’t seem offended.

Rather, she nods enthusiastically. “Really!” Her eyebrows shoot up, eyes wide. “No kidding!”

“But what bugs me most,” she says, “is how he always lets people walk all over him.”

I’m not as expert as she is, but I recall Magnum as a hard-boiled, Vietnam vet, an ’80′s TV private-eye, fearless and shrewd, the sort of guy who could whoop ass in a bar-fight but knows better than to get into one. Don’t let any of that give pause to her tirade. I guess the good-looking, sensitive, Hawaiian-surf image works even in the 21′st century.  Click to continue »

Photo © 2007 Rachel Cobcroft CC 2.0 BY NC SA

“We’re both dead,” he says, “long dead. But that doesn’t mean we can’t grow alive again!”

She can hardly believe what she’s hearing, of course. A fellow zombie, wanting to be human? Aspiring to be like them? If she didn’t know any better, she would think he was still one of them. But his pallor, his fetor, his unkempt appearance, his bulging eyes, his expressionless countenance, even the moan in his voice, all point to the sophistication that characterize their kind.

How? she wonders, Again human? One cannot undo death, cannot un-lose one’s innocence.

“No,” she says. “They want. We good.”

He shakes his head at her. “You have it all wrong. They don’t strive to be like us, and we don’t fulfill their wishes. They just want to be accepted, to be included.”

“We give them!” she shoots back.

“We give them neither acceptance nor inclusion. Don’t you see? We are the ones who have lost our souls.”

He presses on, and she hears his voice quickening, and wonders how he can talk so fast. “We tell ourselves that we’re better than them, but we only believe it because we hear it all the time. We don’t hold their answers; they hold ours.”  Click to continue »

Here’s a very short character sketch I wrote 6 years ago.

She never imagined that this would be the defining moment of her life.

Born Abigail Little, she had grown up with platinum blonde hair and deep brown eyes. As a teenager, she obsessed about her appearance and social behavior. She was smart and pretty, funny and good-natured. She was the girl every boy wanted to kiss and every other girl wanted to be.

As an adult, she married and mothered. Crow’s feet etched their way around her eyes, and though still potentially attractive, looks mattered progressively less to her. She bought nice clothes for her children; sweats and sneakers for herself. Her hair became frizzy and wiry. She put all her energy into her family, all her time into her home.

When the kids were old enough for school, she took a job as groundskeeper at a local amusement park. She was always cleaning up someone else’s mess, but she didn’t mind. In fact, it was an honor, for she knew the story of the broken window. It has been said a building can be vacant for years without becoming dilapidated, until even a single window gets broken; and then the whole building will become uninhabitable within days. Abigail knew that just one piece of trash, and her entire world would begin to disintegrate.

It was this passion she threw into her work. As a result, she was late one day. She was late picking up the kids from their after-school program. She got bawled out. Actually, the woman was very nice to this overworked mother. But Abigail couldn’t see it any other way. She had failed her duty.

It was then she realized, she was being controlled by circumstances. She had lost the excitement, her passion for life, her passion for her own life. She lived for everyone else, where she had once lived for herself.  Click to continue »

Photo © 2006 HD41117 CC 2.0 BY NC SA

Her great claim to fame was that she failed Freshman English Lit. Twice.

How is it even possible to fail English Lit? Think about it. This is a course that has no real requirements, save that you show up and say something. Yes, you’re supposed to read the novel that everyone else is also reading. But lesser students had squeaked by on the Cliff Notes, or even outright faking it.

Even so, she managed to fail English Lit. Twice. And so ended her college career.

She promptly moved back in with her parents. She discussed the situation with them only in sketches. Her father asked her what she was going to do now. She replied that she didn’t know, which was the truth. He quietly accepted her answer. He didn’t seem upset. He seemed a little worried.

She took a service-industry job at a local ice-cream-and-coffee place, promptly proving her klutziness. She was constantly getting ice-cream flavors mixed up, or putting half-and-half in a customer’s coffee instead of milk. When her boss asked her to wipe down the counter, she promptly sprayed cleaning fluid all over the lemon sorbet. This made him none too happy and earned her a sharp rebuke. She couldn’t even pour a fruit smoothy without fucking it up— spilled it all over the floor.  Click to continue »

Photo © 2008 Paul Falardeau CC 2.0 BY ND

This story is a test.

Seriously, it’s a test to see whether I can magically change the future. Really.

I know you don’t believe me, but let me explain. For the past three weeks, I’ve been dreaming the future. Actually, it’s been 20 days. Today will be day 21.

It may have been going on for longer, but I first noticed it on May 21. Actually, at first, I thought it was just a coincidence. It wasn’t until a few days later that I began to suspect something… paranormal. (Yeah, that’s the word I want, paranormal. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the only word that fits.)

On Friday, May 21, a friend of mine was telling me what happened to him that morning on the way to work. He had almost gotten into a 5-car accident. (He would have been in car number 6.) And as he was telling the story, I remembered I had dreamed the night before about the same thing, an almost-accident.

In my dream, an old work colleague, who I haven’t seen in years, was driving a motorcycle down I-95, and suddenly a truck ran over her. I freaked, of course, but then she got up and assured me that she and her bike were okay. It had been a near miss.

Crazy coincidence, I thought, and I told my friend about the dream I’d had. We all had a good laugh over it and didn’t think any more of it.  Click to continue »

Photo © 2008 Jenjke Bykov CC 2.0 BY NC ND

From the moment they appeared at my door, I knew the two men weren’t from around here. The first of them introduced himself as Salmon, told me they were seeking my services, said that Avi had sent them. I looked him in the eye for a few seconds. Good-looking, not too eager. I try to be careful about making mistakes, because there are some services I don’t provide, and I’ve been burnt before. But they looked okay, and they knew Avi. Business travelers, I thought, slumming it up in the red-light district. I let them in.

They gave the room a once-over, my humble abode. I told them where to sit, in the dark corner near where I had been weaving flax into rope. I poured them each a drink, gyrating and throwing them each a wink. I described to them the services I offer—and told them which ones I don’t offer—and how much it would cost. Nods all around.

One of them started a conversation. Nothing about that seemed out of whack. Men often enjoyed a little casual talk before satisfying their baser urges. Salmon said he had heard that I sometimes met high-ranking officials. Even that didn’t make me suspicious. I just told him I couldn’t discuss who I know or don’t know. I may be just a whore, but privacy is still pretty important in my line of work, and I don’t want to get on the wrong side of some of my clients.  Click to continue »

Photo © 2009 Janine CC 2.0 BY ND

All those days sitting through Mrs. Owens’s seventh-grade algebra class, then years staring through Reverend Hardy’s sermons, and now centuries yawning through business meetings, she would have thought she’d have gotten used to the experience.

She shifted in her seat, as the company CEO flipped to another PowerPoint slide, animatedly spewing the latest rendition of corporate spin to the assembled audience. Sales figures and production are up! (Except in the divisions that the company did not purchase this year.) We’re launching several exciting new projects! (Because we weren’t able to finish the last ones.) We now control more gigabytes of shitty software than all of Microsoft and IBM combined! (And that’s something to brag about? Even if it were true?)

She glanced around. Hundreds more faces, just like hers. She was suddenly overtaken with isolation, that she could feel so alone amongst so many others just like herself.  Click to continue »

Ted Jackson reclined on a park bench at lunch thinking about what it was like to turn 30.
The overcast sky had provided him a brief respite from the drizzling rain, and so he decided to stroll through a nearby park during his lunch hour. He wasn’t much hungry, because his mind was full of thoughts, […]

The following two poems reflect the angst of working in a bad job, a dysfunctional employer-employee relationship. It can stress you out, depress you, and make you cry. Sometimes, the only act that can save you is sending your resume to another potential employer, because that’s what gives you hope and makes you feel a […]

(Continued from the last post. Click here to catch the whole story from the beginning.)
Meanwhile, Marietta quietly descended the old, carpeted staircase, having just awoken from a nap. Her clothes were mussed, and her hair was disheveled, and she was padding in stockinged feet toward the kitchen, where she planned to make herself a snack. […]