Jeff Brandt
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The Tall Dresser
The Tall Dresser Year Zero Simple, inane and all to latent, I remember being in your room looking at the yellow walls and reading all the misspelled obscenities' to lewd proposals all scrawled in sharpie to the phone number of the local radio station that would play drunken voicemails live on air. It was all to visceral and in the middle of it all the focal point of my eye was your dresser all to top heavy and also rigid. It lacked any real beauty. In contrast to the small vase with a singular marigold propped up barley high enough to crest above the top. I myself didn't know you at the time. It was warm not hot that summer, this was the first time in my life I had been in a girls bedroom, yet the glamor wasn't intimate nor licentious I was all to innocent. Just a third wheel who in later years became a second brother of yours. You dated my friend and I sat idling in a state of perpetual wonder, oblivious to what was actually happening on the bed behind me.
By Jeff Brandt5 years ago in Confessions
Independence Day
Independence Day The Brown package It's 1:25 pm lunch time; The new cook just sliced his finger open on the meat slicer this is day 10 of my continuous shift it began when our manager quit as a result I was placed in charge its now the 4th of July. I unlocked my car door through the windows that faced the employee parking lot so I could get him into the car and off to the ER. I grabbed the small bottle of cologne I keep in my desk and sprayed a lofting sprits that damn near hit me in the eyes. I feel as if I'm going on a date. I haven't left the kitchen in what feels like months. Inside of the car I noticed the bleeding began to stop a little, he seems to have some knowledge of first aid. Upon dropping him off at the Emergency entrance I wished him good luck all the while neglecting to tell the poor guy that a mandatory drug screen was awaiting him. Lets just say he wasn't worried about the gash in his finger as much as you would think. I remember when something similar happened to me. I was here at this same entrance 4 days after the 4th with alcohol poisoning a year ago. After that night I went sober. I got back to the kitchen and everyone had resumed their positions and was hauling ass to get done on time. I went back to my office and placed my things the the locked drawer only to come back into the kitchen to see what looked like a USPS package sitting on the aluminum prep table. It had no postage on it and a handwritten name addressed to me. Immediately I asked around to see who dropped this off. Jackie the other cook said front desk came and put it here. It must not be a threat to our safety then right? If reception let it in through. I asked more and more people to see if they had any clue, maybe this was a prank, or even someone in the building. Hell I just took over the supervisor role and now the new guys in the damn hospital there's this damn brown paper box with no postage or return address siting in the middle of the kitchen and nobody seems to give a damn. Its business as usual. I couldn't stand around any longer I had to finish prep and find the paperwork for the drug screen as well get in touch with HR yet. I stood in the chefs area hastily and haphazardly working on prep with Jackie and the PM cook both who were eager to get the hell out of here and or expedite the night. My curiosity is becoming dangerous, my concertation is anything but sharp and the damn slicer is decommissioned for the time being, what the hell is this box? I feel the tension rising in my heart and I'm having flashbacks to that night in the ER and a tinge in my left arm where the IV was. its almost time for the AM staff to leave, thank God there is a gap before the high schoolers to come in and work my patience is thin, this box is haunting me and now I have to be here all night. "I'm out of here everyone have a good one!" Jackie said. As she passed the box something inside vibrated it sounded like a cell phone. I've never seen Jackie run so fast in my life, hell I've never seen her run at all. It was at this moment I reassured everyone that the package was harmless and took it into my office. I shut and locked the door then placed the package on my desk. I took a long and then terse look at the handwriting, in a panic I cut it open. Inside here was nothing but a pre-paid cellphone. It wasn't even a smartphone. I was surprised to see a flip phone in there the novelty of that took me off guard. It was just in there all loose with no packaging around it. I took a deep breath and carefully opened the phone. It read. "One unread message". Before I read it I checked to see if there was anything in the contacts, or even a set up voicemail all nothing. After delaying the inevitable I read the message. The message read on a single line.
By Jeff Brandt5 years ago in Fiction
Lake Effect
Lake Effect By Jeff Brandt Out past the breakwater I saw a man in a leather jacket on water skis attempting to jump over something. I haven't slept in days usually the movement of the sea provides some kind of consolation. The voices of people on the pier now occupy my senses. I looked to my left and had seen a horseshoe crab upside down on the railing moving in their unnerving fashion as I watched a young man put his hand on the crabs legs all the while filming it for the internet. He turned to me and said " I don't think most people know they can do this." I nodded and smiled as the crab continued to hug the fingers of his hand. Its been quite a long time since we had any business I guess recent fear amidst the public over shark sightings at the local beach will do that to people. I myself have a touch and go relationship with the creatures. I'll be fine if I see them from above the surface, but you'll never catch me in the cage submerged near them. I see it each day at work. My boss has a 46 foot boat he rigged up with the necessary safety requirements and is up to spec with the coast guard and what have you. I'm pretty sure he rents this thing out for swingers parties after hours. I've found numerous articles of women's and men's undergarments' as well cell phones abandoned here. I guess the thrill of sharks open water and infidelity is the way to go, that is if your thing is getting off where most people vomit from the sea sickness. My title if you can call it that is either deck hand or glorified pool boy, there is little that I don't do and seeing my boss has me on call I'm here for reasons unbeknownst to me, yet I never had witnessed any of these parties only seen the people boarding the ship. He knows he can trust me. I'm not into that kind of thing anyway. I took this job as a way to pay for school so I wouldn't have to do shit like this for too long. I got a call from him saying to meet him down here by the dock like and hour ago; his text read "Be down by boat around 7:45 thanks." its going on quarter to eight now. I decided to head to the boat and do some maintenance on it in efforts to not look like a bum. The fuel levels were good the straps all secure, cages all set all in all I ran a routine check and waited for him to show up. It was now almost nine o'clock and in the distance I saw them. My boss lead the way not far behind him was a man and a woman who looked to be a little older then me, more mature looking erudite something about the way they dressed and walked. It was clear when they came into sight.
By Jeff Brandt5 years ago in Fiction
Fox Road
Fox Road Re-claimed land By Jeff Brandt As a child I was captivated by the dilapidated old barn that stood on my grandparents property. No one was really sure on how it came to be; all my dad ever knew it that parts of his 73 Thunderbird was buried somewhere in there under the part that had caved in. If you looked close enough you could see the front fender of the car still gleaming up from the cavernous hole in the floor. The ambience of that structure was on the contrary of a church despite being similar in how tall the celling was and the light from high windows, albeit these were more a kin to a port hole on a ship just rectangular. It was damp, dark and down right eerie. Nestled on the far southwest corner of the 24 acre plot near the treelined part of the woods this thing looked to be the perfect place for doing illegal things in. Legend had it that a local hermit who lived nearby on a footage of land that he leased out used the barn for a toolshed and or had one point lived in it. This was all conjecture when we found out he had been caught in town trying to lure children to his so called compound. There is a serene terror that is shared in cooperation with the country, half the time its retirees or people who decided that city living just wasn't their thing. That always worried me. One evening at a family outing my then girlfriend Kaci and I after a few drinks over dinner decided to go explore the structure, we were young and just wanted some alone time so where else besides a creepy old barn on the cusp of the woods would be better. Upon walking through the almost a foot tall weeds and other brush and avoiding all the rusty nails we squeezed in to the what seemed to be livestock entrance. We had just started dating and the relationship was still in the honeymoon phase we embraced the mutual eeriness and mystery as well as each other in the dark. Not long after I had noticed something hanging in the rafters. The bats in there for me at least always created some kind of illusion when they would silently flap their wings swooping form garter to truss. I looked carefully and had urged my Kaci to stop for a moment as I pointed up at the what I soon discovered as a pulley. I neglected to shine my flashlight up there in attempts not to disturb the bats and not to find God fearing anything gruesome. It was at this point that she had noticed more pulleys an entire system of them rigged though the some of the trusses. We turned and looked at each other with a shared look of intrigue. Its not totally far fetched right? To have this set up in a barn they needed a way to lift the hay bails right? But this barn was older then that there was no second level and or hay loft. It was at this moment I bit the bullet and shined my light up high into the rafters and saw and elaborate network of not only the pulleys, but meat hooks and even heavy chains. It was here where our fears began to take over and we left.
By Jeff Brandt5 years ago in Fiction
Frontier Line
Frontier line Every few moments once the attacks cease and the silence of the valley reclaims our senses Jared begins to complain. I feel its his attempts to rationalize how we ended up here as soon as his panic stops he begins in again on thoughts of home. Thoughts of who and or what comprises of home for he now knows this is the end. We have lost many men in this fight to reclaim our rights and our land. Now we are here pinned down in a valley in what would have been two counties away from the train station that could lead us out of town; that was before April 9th the day communication ceased. We travelled south from the North woods it was a section of dense tree cover and foliage a place in with no cell towers, nor substations nothing existed there. It was our last bit of hope a place to lie low before we tried one last attempt to flee the jurisdiction of the Ordination. We as humans, individual's autonomous and free became reliant on AI, reliant on a few people who we elected, then Prime minister Andrews volunteered to be the first person turned into an incarnate cyborg the procedure was initially to be done post mortem, but Andrews wanted more he believed in the expedited pace of progress in Next Gen science the combination of man and machine. Soon all of parliament was either given an ultimatum of join us under guarantees' of wealth and safety or be cleared, as if your were cache data. The fabric of our society was damaged beyond repair by the mass clearing. Not since the French Revolution have we seen this much blood shed. Im writing this for the sake of posterity, Jared is sleeping again I'm in a frenzy of exhaustion and hypervigilance. the Ordination troops have a platoon just a top the valley floor, part of them cyborg the other are men. They have our exact location. I know the machines won't kill us unless we move it the men I fear.
By Jeff Brandt5 years ago in Fiction
