Pockets Part One: A Story (Sort Of)

This is a segment of a short story I am currently working on (“currently” is herein defined as “in a state of ongoing activity”; “ongoing” is herein defined as “started but not yet finished – teehee”; “teehee” is herein defined as “the ultimate Jill-Elizabethism).  As you may have noticed with the last post and now this one, I am trying to not only write blog posts about what I’m thinking/feeling/reading, but also to actually put some creative writing up as well, since the whole point of the blog is to stimulate and promote that kind of writing, not just to be an end in itself.  This segment is the beginning of the backstory, currently positioned in the middle of the 6.5 pages (single-spaced, in a normal and normal-sized font, thank you very much) of the larger story.  It is the first chunk of the setup for the bizarreness in the larger story (the current short story stuff in my head/making its way to paper all has some bizarreness to it – teehee, thus spake Jill Elizabeth, right?)

Uncle Albert was the coolest uncle ever to live.  He was Beverly’s mother’s youngest brother, and he was only ten years older than Beverly.  While trying to make scrambled eggs after a drunken orgy in college, he accidentally stumbled upon an unbelievably simple (yet unimaginably clever) invention to remove broken bits of eggshell from a bowl of cracked eggs (the Incredible Egg Magnet™).  He promptly sold the patent rights to a Japanese company well known for manufacturing time- and labor-saving devices for bored and lazy American housewives, and had been living off of the proceeds ever since.

He drove a succession of fast cars, faster motorcycles, and the fastest women.  He was always impeccably dressed, lived in impeccable apartments (kept so by a combination of housekeepers paid by his Japanese royalty checks and products provided to him as additional in-kind royalty payments by the Japanese company), and gave expensive gifts in impeccable taste.  Most of the time, Uncle Albert sent these impeccably tasteful gifts through the mail, as he was usually to be found wandering the world in search of even faster cars, motorcycles and women.  But in a move that would change Beverly’s life forever, one fateful day Uncle Albert woke up and realized he was getting tired of wandering the world.

Upon returning to his impeccable apartment on the next available flight, Uncle Albert saw the invitation to Beverly’s birthday party and realized that if he jumped into his latest fast car, he could arrive just in time for cake.  However, he also realized that in the rush to terminate his latest wandering, he had neglected to buy a present for Beverly, and was fully aware that (a) it was rude to show up empty-handed and (b) it would damage his reputation as the coolest uncle ever to live if he did so.  So Uncle Albert began to furiously comb his impeccable apartment for an equally impeccable (albeit hurriedly discovered) gift.  He searched and searched and searched (well, actually he only single-searched – he was, if you will recall, already pressed for time), but could not find a single acceptable gift for his thirteen year-old niece.  In a burst of inspiration, Uncle Albert called upon his drunken-scrambled-eggs-deshelling inventiveness and devised a brilliant solution to his gift-giving dilemma – The Wish Pocket.

The Wish Pocket was nothing more or less than a square cut out of an old suit coat.  It had, of course, been an impeccable suit coat, but Uncle Albert was desperate and willing to sacrifice fashion in the name of avoiding rudeness and maintaining his reputation.  The Wish Pocket was a five inch square piece of fabric cut from the left-hand side of the suit coat.  It was made of the softest black wool-cashmere blend ever hand-crafted in Italy, with a green and white striped silk lining that was completely smooth and snag-free, as it had only ever held Uncle Albert’s left hand.  And it was entirely empty inside.

You see, Uncle Albert knew that there was no way he could find an adequate gift for his thirteen year-old niece lying about his apartment, impeccable though it (and his taste) may be.  He knew that a twenty-six year-old man and a thirteen year-old girl do not share interests likely to result in appropriate lying-about-the-house gift-giving opportunities (especially given the fast, faster, fastest interests of Uncle Albert).  But what he also knew was that even thirteen year-old girls (perhaps especially thirteen year-old girls) were interested in magic.  Not abracadabra magic, or card tricks, or sawing people in half, but the kind of magic that spins the mind and teases the senses.  The kind of magic that a teenager walking the tightrope between childhood and adulthood was especially susceptible to, that involved nothing more or less than complete faith in the possible and the ability to suspend disbelief beyond all rational thought.  The kind, in fact, that only the coolest uncle ever to live could ever dream up – or adequately pull off.  And so Uncle Albert hurriedly wrapped The Wish Pocket in a sheet of hot-pink tissue paper he happened to have lying about (he had no idea why), headed out of his impeccable apartment, and scrambled into his latest fast car.