Author: Monica McHenney

Monica lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two foster dogs. She taught parents how to raise their toddlers for twenty-five years before retiring in 2015 to write. The secret to toddlers is to make sure you get enough sleep. Monica hasn't found the secret to writing, yet, but is diligently working at it. See links to her on-line stories on the publications page.

The Donkey and the Skateboard

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The donkey brayed a breathless alarm at a skateboard whizzing past its enclosure. The rider screeched with abandon, a bullet speeding down the hill. The sound itself was a warning. One after another, pedestrians on the path moved to give way. Old ladies in saris and young mothers with toddlers moved slowly, but move they did.

With a clear path around the pond, the skateboarder took the incline fast. He leaned, leaned too much and landed in the drink. He sputtered algae, happy the day was warm, undeterred by the sudden spill. Past the donkey he trudged to try again.

Exponential Celebration

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Word spread fast. One juggler tossed two primary colored clubs in the air. Four more brought sixteen hoops. 256 arrived with torches. 4096 watched. The park filled; the street was jammed with merrymakers.

The mayor juggled two, four, sixteen apples from his shopping bag in a continuous cascade of 256 rounds without dropping a single pomme. Someone took a picture that went viral.

The governor attended in a wheelchair. She motored over grassy ground, glad-handing as people made way for her under a sky filled with balloons. Above the crowded scene, an airplane drew Exponential Celebration so all could see.

Mold From Outer Space is Growing in Her Bathroom

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It started as a small patch of mold in the corner of the shower. She meant to clean it before she went to Chicago on business, but then the trip was moved up and her toddler had an ear infection. So many things to do and so little sleep.

On the plane she remembered the mold. She called her husband, but he didn’t pick up. Her phone overflowed with messages when she landed. Her family had fled. The paper published above the fold pictures of infected mold and space aliens. She was completely amazed. She’d never had a green thumb.

Chekhov’s Gun Meets Occam’s Razor

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Mary’s gone crackers. It’s her husband’s fault. Occam thinks the world is an orderly place. He believes in simple, direct solutions.

Mary disagrees, she believes in Chekhovian twists and turns. What’s more, she expects that if there is a gun, it will go off in the end. She is correct.

Mary bought a gun safe for the pistol that belonged to Occam’s grandfather. For months, she nagged Occam to lock it up. She pleaded, she threatened. The simplest solution was to stow it herself. She looked everywhere for the gun, only to find Occam out shooting at zigzagging jack rabbits.

Secret Hoards

Adam73, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I couldn’t find the dog’s bowl. I’d looked in the normal places, sorted through jam-packed cupboards filled with paperware, ceramic plates, cardboard boxes from blenders and other appliances. It had to be somewhere. We never threw anything away. I had no choice but to go into the archives.

In a room stacked floor to ceiling with broken chairs, science projects, NYT and Safeway circulars from 1974 to present, and countless historical documents, I found the bowl. The dog must have dragged it into his secret hiding place because there it was, between his paws, cradling his head while he slept.

Zombies and Nonsense with a Long A.

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Long A words draped the fissures in its skin,
ape and grape, not apple, artichoke, crass. 
The Zombie roamed, eh, traipsed, across acres,
acres of cultivated plant nations. 
Date palms waved their fronds in hollow desert.

Zombie detected alien cave ants. 
Pained by the damage these aggravating
beasts confabulate, Zombie baited, waited, laid
waste to a spate of ant infested crates.
It’s cause: annihilate stealth arthropods.

Exhausted, strained brain Zombie made a lake,
baked a cake, took a stake. Ate dates from plates
that estimate, cogitate, integrate. 
Zombie screamed, brayed, raised an alarm, hungry
it was for repetitive chaining brains.

Elemental

Photo by Monica McHenney

Solstice has come and gone. The days are waning now. Invite the neighbors in for summer watermelon and ice cream sundaes. See out the sunset together. Recall an evening savored for its late fading light, light that illuminates gatherings on porches where people jawbone until after dark.

Remember when kids played keep away on a night like this? Or they brought their mitts out to catch and throw across the street? They’d stop to let a car pass. Maybe you were in that car. On the way home. Maybe someone on the porch hailed you. “Come up, bring the family.”

Reading the Room

Photo by Monica McHenney

If Sadie had any idea this girl, who’d assured Sadie they didn’t know each other, would look at her hand and turn her world upside down, she would have walked right past that “Psychic” sign in the window and bought a sack of corn instead.

The girl said someone was lying to her. Sadie’s sister, always a suspect; maybe her boyfriend was playing around; then again, the neighbor claimed she hadn’t seen the Amazon package that Sadie’s cousin sent.

Sadie recognized the girl in her P.E. Class.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” 

“My aunt’s the psychic. Yeah, I was lying.”

A Parasol, a Stroll, and an Unfortunate Act of Nature

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On my way from Musée Marmottan Monet to Palais de la Découverte, I chanced on a rare display of public temper between two girls.
One held a lacy parasol, the other grabbed it. The parasol moved to-and-fro like the flag on a rope in a tug of war. I couldn’t understand their French, but the pinches sur l’arrière said it all. Oh là là, they went at it.

A gust of wind broke the umbrella. They shouted in unison, “Oh là là, oh là là,” and laughed. It puzzled me, the change of mood, but I guessed they were sisters.

An Amicable Settlement

Photo by Peter Kessler

When I took the dogs out, there was a vulture on the power line across the street. A crow landed next to it. Two others sat above like sports fans on bleachers waiting for the game to start.

The vulture seemed young, inexperienced. It looked at the crow, shook its wings, and a feather dropped on the ground. The crow preened, cawed. The fight was off. 

The dogs pulled at their leashes. Nothing more to see here. It was getting hot. We moseyed around the block, talked with a few neighbors. When we got back, even the feather was gone.