Chris Hansen
Stories (2)
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Wading
Before my father was born, his older brother, just barely old enough to walk, toddled down a fishing dock and fell into a cold Wisconsin lake. My mother’s baby big brother also toddled and tumbled, falling into a blood-warm Floridian blackwater river. My father’s family had a collie-dog named Angus who, like something straight out of a Lassie episode, went streaking into the lake and heroically dragged the child to safety. Little Uncle Tim coughed and gasped, and was once again embraced by the protective boundaries of solid land. My mother’s family, though, had a cat. Uncle Denny drowned.
By Chris Hansen4 years ago in Petlife
Half as Crooked as a Flounder
As you probe for the lock’s combination, remember to be like a barn owl, not a dolphin or a bat. You will live in a world of sound, you will know and map all things through sound, but must never dream of being so crass as to produce any of your own. This isn’t echolocation: it isn’t shrieking in the dark and forcing every fiber in your vicinity to echo back your cry, betraying its position. No: there will be better uses for shrieking, later. What you are doing is pure listening, passive, waiting for each separate thing to reveal itself to you through the quiet sounds of its own existence. Like a barn owl sensing the heartbeat of a distant vole, you must let each diminutive click of your work slide across your cheekbone to your ear, engraving its secrets in a line below your eye. Then, when the right secret has been whispered to you, you must pounce. Click on one. Six is binding. Click. Click. Open.
By Chris Hansen4 years ago in Earth
