Chief

by Sigurd J. Strand

 ‘Apparently he’s short, but wears stacked heels’, someone whispered as we waited for the lift lights to blink their way up to floor 40. We craned our necks to see him as he exited. Rubbish, I thought. He was tall, with a long skinny neck. He was however followed by a guy who was less than 170 cm and walked with the gait of a man in heels. They came from Diversified Services, a department we didn’t even know existed. They weren’t on LinkedIn.

‘Immaculate’ said the new boss. He sat at the middle of the table as though he chaired a Cabinet meeting. The heels guy beside him.

‘Reports, notes, presentations. We apply six-sigma standards. Appearance too. I can’t tell you not to have beards…, but trimmed neatly please. Stay fit, too. Slim slays!’  He looked at me. ‘No business casual – no such thing. Nor dress-down Friday. Every day is business day. Nobody buys advice from slobs.’

One couldn’t have said these things a year ago.

He looked at Jennifer and was about to say something but instead smiled in a way that conveys no happiness. His gaze was oriented towards her right ear where various studs were pinned into the helix. He whispered something to Mr. Heels, who took a note.

‘You call me Chief,’ he said at the end of the meeting. ‘My door is always open.’  

He rose, nodded, and walked out of the boardroom, across the open-plan workspace and into the glass-panelled office of his recently deceased predecessor. The short-stepping adjutant followed him and shut the door with a solid click behind them.

An electric-powered opaque white screen descended across the glass, evidently installed during the weekend whilst everyone was at home wondering what the new boss would be like.

 ‘What the fuck’ whispered Jennifer to the cluster of colleagues standing around her desk.

‘Is that what he cares about? What we wear. Did he really tell us to diet?’ said Jimmy.

‘Shhh! They might be listening! He put those blinds in on the weekend. God knows what he’s installed. Bugs and shit.’

‘I heard he’s a trouble-shooter and hatchet-man,’ said Pamela, an introvert whose eyes gleamed with the excitement of telling her colleagues something they didn’t know. ‘Stefan in Stochholm told me. The Fund sends him around to different businesses for a couple of years. They call it integration. That’s all I got.’

‘What trouble? We’re profitable. Twenty-one percent EBITDA last year. Best performers in the group!’ Jennifer pointed to a graph on her screen.

‘But down two percent from’23. Even if last year was our second-best ever, it wasn’t as good as ’23. We’re doomed by our success.’ Jeff the bookkeeper drew his finger across his throat.

Jennifer asked ‘Do Diversified Services even know what we do here? They’re bankers.’

A buzz emanated from the Chief’s office. The blind rose. Standing behind it, side by side, revealed from the feet up, were the two men. Both, not smiling. But neither were they frowning. Nevertheless, the message was clear.

Everyone shuffled back to their workstations.  

Five weeks later

Chief and Heels wore navy-blue blazers, charcoal-coloured wool-flannel trousers, shirts with buttoned-down collars, and ties with diagonal stripes. ‘Messrs. Brooks Brothers’ Jeff called them when they were out of earshot.

‘We’re appointing you Supervisor.’ The Chief sat at his desk, across from me. The sidekick, whose name was Mike, perched at its end with nowhere to put his knees, so it was lucky his legs were short. He awkwardly leant forwards to take notes on the desk. I imagined he didn’t want to jot notes on his lap, lest he might resemble a secretary – which essentially is what he was.

‘I thought that was your job’ I ventured, not very prudently.

The Chief coughed. ‘Interesting. I’m Managing Partner. I design strategy. I need someone to execute!’

I digested the unfortunate phrase and after restraining a chuckle, I said ‘We’re only 12 people here. If you tell them what you want them to do, they’ll do it. You don’t need me to intermediate your vision. We’ve never had a supervisor before.’

His eyes narrowed. Clearly, he neither appreciated being contradicted, nor the implicit comparison with his predecessor’s less complicated management style.

‘That’s evident. People ignored the advice on dress codes I gave on my inaugural day. They don’t wear ties. They wear jeans, and they bare tattoos and piercings publicly. It’s unprofessional, insubordinate!’

‘And this is what you want me to communicate; to enforce – your vision.’

He nodded. Mike, at the end of the desk, also nodded.

‘We’ve always been free to choose what we wear here. It’s normal in our industry. We don’t want to inhibit creativity.’

Mike guffawed. Chief shot him a stern sideways glance, followed with a sly wink that I probably wasn’t supposed to notice.

‘I want you all to dress like Mike. I expect to see a change by Monday team-meeting.’

Monday

Chief beamed at me as I greeted him at the elevator. ‘Snap!’ he said and pointed at my tie. Mike followed with an encouraging thumbs up.  

They entered the meeting space, set up auditorium style, for the weekly kick-off meeting. The seven men of the office stood waiting for them, all wearing navy blazers, white shirts and striped ties.

The two executives sent from Diversified Services nodded and smiled, but less certainly now.

Then the women filed in.

They, too, wore blazers, buttoned-down shirts and ties.

Chief and Mike looked at each other, brows raised.

The assembled team chanted in monotone robotic unison ‘Good morning, Chief. Good morning, Mike.’

Chief inhaled the stale air of the office and exhaled slowly through his nostrils.

They turned towards me, not smiling now.

I bowed.

Once I’d straightened, Mike peered upward towards the crown of my head, as though taking a reading from it. He perhaps noticed just then that I stood a couple of inches taller that morning.

He looked at my feet. My heels, more precisely.

He reddened.

Chief sat.

Mike sat.

We all sat.

Where would this end, I wondered.  

Subversification

By Jeannette Cook

You may have heard that poetry

Makes nothing happen.

This is fake news.

Fellow poets, this is a call.

Not to arms, but pens.

In this day and age,

What choice do we have

But put our voice on the page

If this is our art.

In numbers we may be few,

But we are free

To speak our hearts.

By means of rhyme

And repetition, we affect

The human condition.

So let us engage in radical acts

Of iambic pentameter

Without parameter. Let us build

Not walls but stanzas, let our rule of law

Be scansion.

May our metaphors

Open doors. May we resist

With alliteration, may we persist

With subversification.

It goes without saying

We’ll make up our own words.

Like the best minds of all generations,

Let us write, undeterred.

For whether they are whispered or shouted,

Our poems must be heard.

100-in-10 Flash Fiction: Next Sunday

‘Next Sunday, a day of rest? Nice one,’ said Petrus the Pirate to the admiral, pocketing a bag of coins. ‘Nice. Coasting around in the Caribbean sun.’

‘So you’ll let us pass? No aggression?’

‘I respect a day of rest. Good passage, Admiral Wessex,’ said Petrus, showing Wessex off the ship. ‘Your men will be impressed with your authority,’ he shouted.

Petrus’ men crowded around. ‘Sir, being paid off, sir?’

‘Drinking money.’ Petrus tapped the coins.

‘We didn’t sign up for this,’ complained One-tooth.

Petrus laughed. Didn’t I tell you – pirates are wicked. No rest for us. Sharpen your blades.

By Patrick ten Brink

---

Next Sunday

It will be over 250 days

Next Sunday I might not be here

Next Sunday is a lifetime away

Next Sunday next sun …

What sun?

Next Sunday will be over 250 days without sun

Next Sunday beef will be roasted

Grandmas and wine will be toasted

Next Sunday the world will change

Once again

The sun may disappear for a while

But then, there will be another Sunday

And another one and another one

And as people from the lowlands know better than anyone in the world

Even behind the darkest of clouds

the sun always shines

By AlexS

---

Next Sunday will be better than last Sunday. Last Sunday I ran out of both cat food and clean underwear. Which to remedy first?? The cat miaowed a lot, so I put on the last pair inside out and went to the market. On the street were several reserved parking notices, each displaying the date, June 2, June 2, June 2… I was on foot, so parking wasn’t an issue. But there was something about this June 2. Today it hit me, June 2 is my mother’s birthday. Well, like I said – next Sunday will be better than last Sunday.

by Jeannette Cook

100-in-10 Flash Fiction: ‘I’ve often been told that French people stink, especially women’

La Liberté Qui Mène Le Peuple. Peinture D'Eugène Delacroix. 1830

---

  I’ve often been told that French people stink, especially women. It was my grandmother who told me this, often. I’m not sure why it bore repeating as we didn’t know any French people. My mother told me to take no heed of her mother, yet this was the start of my fascination with all things French, odorous, and female. My mother never put two and two together when I elected to take French in high school, became obsessed with Betty Blue, and took a fancy to brie. But my grandmother… oh, mon dieu, nothing got past her.

BY Jeannette Cook

---

"I've often been told that the French stink, especially women", I overheard a rather insignificant man say to an unimpressive and uninterested young woman, as I jogged by.

She certainly wasn't French: her lips weren't red, she had no style, no attitude, no je-ne-sais-quoi.

As I ran, I thought of my grandmother. She was as French as they come, but she never smelled bad. No B.O. masked by perfume, no musty sweat, dirty socks, overused underwear.

Not my grandmother, nor any French person I knew.

As I ran and started sweating, that ¼ of myself became an obsession.

By AlexS

100-in-10 Flash Fiction: "LE COCQ - Place Fernand Cocq"

***

The banner hung down across the room.

It was black, adorned with mystic symbols, a secret society perhaps. Most prominently, three prawns, to symbolize the crustaciousness of the deep dark oceans, or what?

A few Nazis were green, you know? Calling for a purer, organic existence? There were naturists too in pre-war Germany, but they were not often Nazis. Nazis didn’t approve of any form of liberalism. Did nudists furtively flap their shrimp-like bits around in the open air, running behind swastika-banners when the jack-booted blackshirts came stomping around the corner.

Were Nazi’s in any way kinky? What exactly did Adolf get up to with Eva in the Berghof?

Hitler was a vegetarian!  Trump doesn’t drink. What to make of a genocider who would never nibble on a prawn, or an orange man who dismembers democracy, but couldn’t murder a G&T?

Three prawns, the banner, hung down, waiting. For a cause. For me: a nudist, not fascist, teetotal, vegetarian ecologist!

***

The cellar door hasn’t been opened since 2018, when the previous owner, André, closed it after creeping out once the bailiffs were gone. He took off his red apron, and turned the sign on the main door, one last time, to CLOSED. The restaurant stood empty for some months, as the owners negotiated first with the tax authorities and then with the enterprising new proprietor. André disappeared (perhaps the better word is “absconded”), aided by Covid restrictions. The new proprietor knocked down a couple of walls and put in a new bar. The architects said there was no need to touch the old cellar, so no one did. There’s a very good chance that André’s red apron still hangs on the back of the door.

***

Panelled wood-wood squares cut in fours.

Two of the triangles darkened making Dicky bow shape all over the walls

Designed to give a 3D effect.

Says this place has depth. Somehow the thorn carpet and

The broken light speaks to the 20-something

The raggy worm feel is attractive to them.

If it was indeed owned by an old

Publican who’d run out of money and lost

The will to spruce it up, you’d say OK

But it’s been staged dressed by a canny

Business man our age, to fool these youngsters yet again.

***

Perspective

As it should be

As it should be two men are sitting facing their wife/girlfriend/mistress

One young

One old

They both chew while their partner talks

And they chew and they talk

One is old and bored with the talking

He shoves off his phone while his partner

ignores him and looks out the window

The younger guy chews and she talks back.

That is the difference.

50 years of talking chewing and listening turned to ignoring

At another table a group of young people laugh … out loud . As they should

It doesn’t matter if it’s funny or relevant.

They follow cues

The social cues of the genZes or millennials

Different groups, different cues

The mirror on the wall opposite the couples shows the industrial lamps

strategically placed to illuminate the crowd of young and old

each stuck in their lives and codes

***

Looking out at Le Coq from this angle I am haunted by the ghosts of the Old Regence, the residence of the BBW circa 2010 or thereabouts.  I'm having trouble picturing what it was like back then, but  it was, by memory, a kind of tacky and shabby resto.  What I remember in particular is the place’s worn carpeting.  And that they made a pretty damn fine dish of boulettes.  I can picture an older couple, in their 70s or 80s, who would have their dinner there, every single time we were in session, it seemed.  I used to imagine that thus was their big night out on the town.  I can also see the spirits of BWW past  - the two Johns, and Cleve, of course, who have left us. Looking out now I see a sea of younger faces.  The Old Regence has been transformed .... What is it about this space that makes it work?

***

She hung, a river of jealousy, begging the question: what was she hiding?  My fingers, bent sinister holding my gold brew, longed  to caress her, tender, mocking gibes as I slowly peeled her back, revealing nothing but an empty promise.

So often I've called to this fantasy, an empty place, drunk vapor of idiocy behind, to open a door that was only in my mind.  This time, I'll instead sit silent, staring sheepishly, saying nothing and gritting my teeth as I let her keep her secrets.

100-in-10 Flash Fiction: "Backstabbing Gone Wrong"

Footbridge between residential buildings on street (Credit: Hikmet)

The night was cool, a breeze in her hair, just like the song "Hotel California."

The blade was sharp, calm in its sheath that was strapped to her leather-clad thigh.

Isobel took her time approaching the bed. Her client had been specific: her husband would sleep on the right. The woman would sleep to his left. He always slept on his side.

As she crept, the clouds moved away from the moon, exposing his slackened face. But wait -- he was sleeping alone.

A curtain blew out the window. The last thing she felt was sharp metal piercing her lung.

by jeannette cook

Theater Interior (Credit: Donald Tong)

Backstage there was an old man who only ever wore red. Everyone knew him.  No one liked him.

 He had been in the theatre for ever,  “even during the war”, some whispered.

Flamboyant in his red accoutrements, he mostly kept to himself and his job as a janitor. 

 No one quite remembered why he was so hated, but there were rumours. The war. The Germans. Had he worked for them? Against them? There were rumours of a backstabbing gone wrong.

 One morning, the actors arrived at the theatre and found the janitor in his shiny red garments,

lying in a pool of his crimson red blood.

 He was buried alone, taking with him all his secrets. 

by alexs

Spaghetti - AlexS

The plate of spaghetti sat before her getting cold. She got up and … left the place without as much as a glance back. Calmly, without running, her plate left untouched, she walked out. She didn’t even smell the freshly chopped basil on the tomato sauce, or the butter still melting between the spaghetti.

The delectable fumes from her plate must have reached her nostrils but the information was unprocessed, unused and thus completely irrelevant.

As she walked away from the restaurant, she felt whole again for the first time in a long while.

Perhaps the first time in her life. She could not remember ever feeling so calm and composed.

At this very moment, she knew exactly what she was doing, where she was headed and why she was doing it. She had finally found her purpose in life. She had found her inner voice. And she relished in the comfort of it all.

She made her way calmly but purposefully through the market, past the spice stall, with its tiny mountains of powdered colours, past the fruit stall, where the vendor was shouting his latest offer, the smell of strawberries mixed with fresh herbs from the salad stall next to it was hanging in the air.

A woman in a hurry shoved her aside without an apology, without a glance. She barely noticed it as she walked past the cheese shop where the smell grew heavier; musk, amber and mould. She had never liked cheese. She had always loved markets and the Carmel market in particular. She had spent her childhood racing through its narrow streets at dusk with her brothers. Her brothers… It was over ten years now since she last heard from them.

She walked down the street that ran parallel to the main street, the ‘butchers’ alley’. The air was suffocating. It was a little after two o’clock. She was sweating profusely and had a haut-le-cœur. She felt suffocated and covered her mouth with her hand. The smell of blood and dead meat was overwhelming and more than she could handle. She had never liked it.

The pieces of discarded flesh, shoved in cardboard boxes and left to rot in the sun exuded an overpowering stench that only a stray cat could be attracted to. Those gruesome cats that seemed to be everywhere in the market and whose fur had lost all warmth, softness and fluffiness. Instead, it was dirty, squatted by unwanted tenants and crusts. She felt as repulsed by the cats as by the rotting meat on the floor.

Further up the alley, she passed a stall where a shirtless man was grilling the insides of some poor animal. She picked up her pace and wondered what had made her stray from the central alley for this one.

In an instant, she was out of the butcher’s alley and into the next one, where the flower shop was. Her mind wandered back to her untouched plate of spaghetti. She had not paid for it. It was the first time she had ever left a restaurant without paying, and she thought she should feel guilty about it.

But the truth was that she felt exhilarated and saw the reflection of her proud smile in the flower shop mirror, but had to turn her face away when she heard someone calling after her.

She turned to see a middle-aged lady with a happy, jovial face waving. She seemed so happy to have found her. She was holding something in her hand and had started waving at her as soon as she recognised her.

It was her bag. She had left it in the restaurant, under her table, under the cold plate of spaghetti.

The kind-hearted lady walked past the flower shop with the bag in her hand and a big smile on her face. She waved again, happier with each step.

The two women looked at each other, one frozen, the other smiling. They were 10 metres apart.

Their eyes locked.

One pair of eyes was deeply happy that she had found the owner of the bag.

The other pair of eyes had lost all purpose and colour.

When the bag exploded in the air – mercilessly taking everything with it, bits of flesh mixed with petals – they were so close they could have touched.

The happy woman’s smiling eyes were transfixed and forever etched in hers.

~AlexS, Tel Aviv

City Sparrow - Loretta FAHY

Sparrow likes hanging around handbags and shoes

waiting for the flecks of cured meats and truffle infused 

breads to fall from the fingers of those above.

Sparrow was born under the restaurant eves 

where cake crumbs snowed down on her daily.

Sparrow waits for days for the magpie man with his

white string tails to unnest the tables and set the places  

for the people to come and drop the crumbs from the linen sails.

When no one appears, Sparrow’s hunger drives her away.

She must dig deep to access some country birding ways.

Sparrow learns to quit its flitting among feet and listen to the

aphids and other hairy moving things give their location away.

She sticks her beak in the dirt and eats the clay crusted flesh whole. 

While dreaming of showers of seed-crusted crackers 

sparrow wonders why she has never tried this kind of birding before.

‘City Sparrow’ was featured as part of the Irish Embassy Belgium, An Irish Garland series in December 2020 and was published in the anthology, Local Wonders,Dedalus Press.

(Credit : MohitKumar22)

Feedback - Sebastian Remøy

She sat there wondering what he meant. ‘It doesn’t get any better than this,’ but he wasn’t smiling. It was as if it was a question, a complaint. Was it sarcasm? Are Norwegians sarcastic? Are engineers, Norwegian engineers? He had a craggy face, and a rusty beard, which made it impossible to read him. She searched for a twinkle in his eyes. Maybe there was one, but what did that mean? It could be kindly, or bastardly.

How long would it take her to know him? 

Every four years a new one, from head office.

Anne had been great.

Ersatz, 2021 - Patrick ten Brink

“Sticks and stones will make my bones and words can always break you,” sang Hex as she pressed moss onto her forearm in the moonlight. But her flesh, while soft, was green. Hex added leaf after leaf. “Skin smells good,” she murmured, “but they will know.” She climbed a drainpipe and listened to Alice’s bedtime story. With each word, a leaf turned to skin and the moss to muscle. The light clicked off. Hex snuck inside and stared at little Alice in bed and whispered in a rustling voice, “Sticks and stones will take your bones, and I’ll be pretty instead.”

First published in 101 Words, 17 April 2021

https://101words.org/ersatz/