8 likes
15 comments
The tiny little plastic phone rang. He picked it up.
“Ken?”
“Speaking.”
“It’s me, Barbie.”
“Oh. Hi Barbie. What’s up?”
“Have you got a minute? It—it sounds noisy. I called at a bad time, didn’t I? I should just…”
“No, no, no. Don’t be silly. Hold on a sec.” After a minute of mumbled confusion he came back on the line. “Okay, that’s better.”
“Really Ken, if this is a bad time…”
“No, no. It’s just, I’m, I volunteered to help coach the Lego team in the upcoming Toy-Olympics, and…”
“Really! That’s wonderful Ken. What are they competing in? The Balance Beam? Water Hockey? Triathlon?”
“Tobogganing. I think. It’s what they’re best at.”
“Really. Well, I wouldn’t expect them to enter the high jump, or pole vaulting, of course, but…”
“Well I don’t expect them to win either, but I expect them to give it their best shot.”
“Of course you do, and I’ll be pulling for them too.”
“Well, thanks, Barbie. I’ll be sure to let them know. So. Uh… what did you call about?”
“Mmm, it’s funny that you’re coaching the Lego’s because, well, my agent called me a few days ago, and told me I’d be doing a movie with Batman.”
“The’ Bat Man? Wow. So you’re calling to rub it in? Jeez, that’s harsh as…”
“No, you don’t understand, Ken. They want me to do the movie with the Lego Batman, not the real toy.”
This news presented Ken with an amusing mental image that might have made him smile, those long lithe legs standing next to that tiny little Lego bat creature. He kept his amusement out of his voice as he asked her, “What’s the problem with that?”
“Oh come on, Ken. I’m a foot tall, what’s he, about six centimeters?”
“Ah yes, the love scenes, could get awkward.”
“The love scenes? The whole notion of putting me in a movie with a bunch of Lego toys is humiliating. But my agent says I can’t opt out.”
“That’s what contracts do.”
“And that’s what lawyers are for, Ken.”
He wondered why she was suddenly consulting him. What her real motives were. “What happened to Blaine? I thought you two were ‘besties.”
“Ooooh,” she said, “You didn’t hear about his leg?”
“No.”
“Got bitten off by a Great White Shark while surfing off of New Zealand.”
“Is that a big deal?”
“His leg is gone, Ken.”
“Doesn’t he know any plastic surgeons?”
“Well sure, but you know how it is, it’s part of his new persona.”
“A one-legged persona? What’s he gonna do for a living?”
“He’s a para-olympic athlete, and quite an inspiration to all the kids and a lot of adults, too.”
“No doubt, no doubt. It figures. What’s he training for?”
“Cross-country skiing.”
“With one leg?”
“No one said it would be easy. Besides, he says there’ll be less friction on one ski.”
“No. It would be easier to have someone snap his leg back into place, but…”
“Now you’re just being spiteful, Ken. You obviously haven’t gotten over our breakup…”
“I’m not being spiteful. Honest, I’m not.”
“Really Ken.” She shook her head. “The way you hold onto things, it’s absurd.”
“You mean things like my legs? Yeah.”
“No.”
“I should give my legs up?”
“No. Stop being ridiculous. This is serious. And I broke up with Blaine ages ago. Don’t tell me you’re still carrying a grudge over that little fling?”
“That wasn’t a fling. You left me flat—for a beach bum. I didn’t see you for three years…”
“Well, what can I say, Ken? I wanted something different, something more, something…”
“Like an Australian beach bum,” Ken finished for her.
“He was a surfer.”
“Now he’s a skier with one leg. How original.” Before she could answer he added, “Who broke it off, you or him?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“The shark, Ken. I wasn’t even there.”
“I meant the relationship, not the leg.”
“Oh. I broke it off, Ken. And you know that.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“That’s… Oh, you’re just trying to unnerve me. You know how it works, Ken. I date, I flirt, I fling, but I don’t marry and I don’t have babies. I’m not that kind of doll.”
‘Ken was smiling. Ken was always smiling. Maybe that was what was so annoying about him. G.I. Joe never smiled.’
As if reading her mind, Ken said, “How’s everything working out with G.I. Joe?”
“Ucht.” She groaned. “Like you care.”
Ken sat up a little straighter. “I do care. You know I do.”
Barbie sighed. “It’s exciting…No. I take that back. It’s exhilarating, not exciting. In fact it’s boring. Every time we go out, he ends up killing someone. Always a bad guy, for sure. But it’s always the same goddamned mele, different address. And it’s invariably a bloody, gory, mess. I’ve lost or ruined so many outfits it’s not even funny anymore.”
“What did you expect? He’s an action figure.”
“And the eye patch. It’s so stupid.”
“Why? What’s under there?”
“Nothing, except his eye.”
“You mean he can see?”
“I don’t know, Ken. The point is, he never washes it.”
“His eye?”
“His patch, for God’s sake. It stinks to high heaven. He refuses to take it off, even when we’re trying to…”
“Trying to what?”
“Really, Ken. It’s not—let’s not go there.”
“Go where?” He said, innocently.
“Down to that tired, old, pointless—place.”
“It’s not a place, it’s an activity.”
“That we can’t really engage in.”
“I’m not sure if that’s true,” Ken said, “I don’t know if it’s you, or if it’s me, or both of us, but we seem to lack imagination in this….”
“Are you serious?” She said. “Have you seen some of my outfits?”
“In this particular area.” Ken continued. “No, yeah, of course I’ve seen your outfits. Maybe we could transfer that creativity to a different kind of activity.”
“Ken, please. This is, so difficult, for both of us. You simply lack the equipment, for reasons that still escape me, after fifty years…”
“Yeah, I know but…”
“It’s so frustrating…”
“Yeah, I know Barb, but listen to me.”
“Ken.”
“Barbie listen.”
“Ken.”
“Barbie, shut up and listen. I discovered an online site that sells toys.”
“Ken, we’re a little old for toys.”
“Miniature toys, Barbie.”
“Miniature toys? What would we do with miniature toys, Ken?”
“These are adult toys.”
“And?”
“Think about what I’m saying Barbie.”
Several seconds passed as Ken waited, patiently. His attraction to Barbie was molded into his PVC soul. The clock ticked off several more seconds.
At last she said, “Oh! Adult toys! Oh my God. That’s brilliant, Ken. But—wait, how is this, will they work?”
“Who knows. Who cares? We’ll try ‘em out. Have fun. See what happens.”
“You may be dumb, Ken, but you’re amazingly resourceful.”
“Are you free tonight? Or spending another crime scene with G.I. Jack?”
“Oddly enough, my calendar is suddenly wide open. Nothing on it for days.”
“Then there’s only one thing left to settle.”
“What’s that?”
“Your place or mine?”
You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.
I think you could have recounted the story of your life with your cat, possibly making it a rosy pink cat to ensure you met the prompt, then recounted the story of the less than rosy, cat-atonic (see what I did there?) woman entering your life. Look at the time you could have saved yourself by not inventing something new. Or was this story always bubbling under waiting to be written? Great fun.
Reply
Hi Wendy M.,
Thank you. I think the most important take away, is that cats make everything rosy.
Reply
Ken Cartisano I enjoy some of your stories almost too much,you definitely throw the comedy in there as drama just starts to climax,and I love it because thats how you keep the story going! Please continue writing these amazing stories!
Reply
Thank you so much, Dakotah,
Your comment pleases me very much. However, you cannot enjoy a story too much, unless it makes you drool, and you're drooling on your keyboard, and it makes the keys sticky, and then when you want to type 'drool' it comes out 'droooooooooooool.' That, as far as I know, is the only downside to liking a story too much. We don't want that to happen.
Seriously, thank you so much for your encouragement. It's always good to get that from someone other than my mother.
Reply
Of course Ken! after all no one wants to drool over their keys....and especially not on themselves...that would definitely be worse :T...
Reply
So much fun ! Who broke it off indeed!
Lovely bit of playfulness bringing a bit of adult humour into the mix! Good luck to them!
Reply
“Doesn’t he know any plastic surgeons?”
Laughed too hard at this line and the whole exchange over the shark was just marvelous.
Everything flowed so well Ken, really great job 👍
Reply
Thanks Kevin,
I thought that was one of the funniest lines in the story. (That, and the 'who broke it off' joke.) I read the story to five of my closest sharks and none of them seemed to pick up on the humor of that line.
Reply
This was fun. Great dialogue and you pulled off a whole fun story in the barbie world. I really liked the who broke it off-shark joke. Barbie and Ken dont fit together like legos, so the ending was a happy one for them🤔
Reply
Thanks Scott. I liked that 'who broke it off' joke too. "I wasn't even there." It just kind of fell into the dialogue. Thanks for reading and commenting Chris.
Reply
Ah, yes. Ken and Barbie as characters in real world. With real problems.
Reply
Didn't like it, eh? That's a bummer. I'm surprised. Where else do you run across a bevy of shark, plastic and missing leg jokes? Eh? In Canada? Oh. I had no idea what those Canadians were up to. Shark jokes eh? That could spell trouble for guys like me, plastic, shark and leg- joke guys. I'll be looking for a new schtick soon. I'm looking for one right now, actually. I'm thinking head-phone, goggles and mosquito netting jokes. (It has promise.)
But seriously, now that everyone else has quit reading. What was the source of the name for the story titled, 'Fancy Ranch'.? (I expect 'fancy' is a cowboy derogatory.) I really wanted to comment further on that story, without competing for attention, so I withheld some comments I wanted to add at the time. The point is, the story is, and should be shocking enough without the vampire drivel. (Which was well-written. I'm not criticizing your writing..) It's just that, you described people who are violent, brutal, ruthless and real, and then you described vampires, which, are not even real
It's important to me because, because I was a witness to a woman who had gotten drugged in a nearby bar. Not sure what they gave her, but she must have walked out the bar's back door just as the drug hit her. I surmise this because I lived about three blocks from the bar, and I'm lying on my couch in my living room, with my back to the sliding back door. It's about midnight on a Sunday, I'm reading a textbook, when I hear the screen door slide open, and then close. (I lived alone at the time.) I gave myself a moment to consider what or who I might see, then I sit up and turn around. Here's this cute, petite woman, with curly hair, standing in my dining room, gazing around, like someone looking for cigarettes. All the lights were on, the kitchen, living room, dining room lights, where she was standing, The lamp I was reading by in the living room.
"Can I help you?" I said. It seemed an appropriate question.
She didn't respond. I stand up, walk over. "Excuse me. Can I help you?" It's midnight!
She could stand, and walk, her eyes are open, but she doesn't seem to see or hear me. She was fully clothed, though the back of her jeans were wet as if she'd been sitting in wet grass. Frankly, I'd never seen anyone on 'roofies' before, so it took a while to register as the thing I was dealing with, (if, in fact, I was.) She was clearly drugged with something, but she wasn't unconscious, comatose or catatonic. Just senseless.
I could walk around her, examine her, she was like a fish in a tank, she could not see beyond her eyeballs, somehow. I didn't touch her so I don't know how she would have reacted.
I thought if I called the cops they would arrest her for public intoxication, or trespassing. She had no purse, no I.D. She was absolutely helpless, and yet I didn't realize she was drugged at first. I thought she was scared, trying to hide from someone. But it became clear that she was absolutely unable to communicate. She couldn't even nod her head to yes or no questions. Her eyes were wide open, not red, or puffy, or droopy looking, but she just didn't see me and never gave any sign of comprehension of her surroundings.
I should make an account of the events, since it's real, it should scare the bejeesus out of any woman who drinks alone, goes on a first date, isn't careful,... the list goes on. The fact that this woman slipped through the grasp of some unsavory men, and I witnessed the condition she was in. It was an incredible thing to happen. This woman was not drunk. She didn't even smell of alcohol.
After getting no communication after a half hour or so, I prepared to go to bed. I had an 8 o'clock class the next morning. Last time I checked on her she was sitting at my workbench in the garage. I locked myself in my bedroom at the other end of the house. (Okay I didn't have a lock but I closed the door.)
(I don't know why I didn't call an ambulance. I don't even recall thinking about medical intervention.) If I had, I would have at least CALLED the hospital for advice! I know I asked the woman if there was 'anyone I could call' about ten times but I never got a response, about anything. But she seemed okay. She was not distressed, just senseless. Whatever it was, I was sure she just needed to sleep it off.
I won't reveal the end of the story here, (You're probably already asleep) but my point was that the people you described are quite real. They're not phantasms. You didn't need the blood-drinking. I think it ruined a powerful if unpleasant piece.
Reply
Ok, Ken. For one thing I always like your quirky sense of humor. Did I forget to press the like button? Sometimes I comment first then forget if I committed to a like. Maybe I press it 15 times. I am an old lady, give me a break. With that established let me congratulate you on the longest comment I have ever received. Be prepared for an equally long response.
If your story about the comatose woman walking into your home is true I can't believe your first response wasn't calling first responders. She could have been having a stroke or petite mal or grand mal for that matter. Think Mitch McConnel staring off for 18 seconds or the Pres or Federmann or... It happened to my husband when he forgot how to spell 'the'. He had bleeding on the brain. Maybe to me when I spelled all those names wrong just now.
Instead you leave her sitting next to dangerous tools in your garage! What kind of good Samaritan are you?
Nextly, as far as 'FancyRanch'. That started out as a lost chapter my novel. Which, by the way before you fall asleep,( I am a hypnotist FYI). The first 50 pages of said novel has garnished me a finalist spot in Killer Nashville The Claymore Award in western genre.🥳🥳🥳Blowing my own horn there.
The rich glutton was not exactly a vampire just something passed down in his ancestry that gave him a blood-lust and love for rare meat. He meant to take only a little at a time but was getting carried away with this delightful morsel. He had other wives before that had slowly wasted away by the same treatment. The others were trollops he found at saloons but this one was a refined lady as the ranch hands recognized and named her Fancy.
When we make things up out of our heads we can make things up out of our heads. This version was different than what was going to go into the manuscript. You are in good company not liking the vampire twist as my husband also didn't think it belonged. So I cut it out, reinvented it somewhat to make a juicy horror tale many on Reedsy seem to enjoy. You obviously have more refined sensitivities to such ploys. Sorry you didn't like it.
But, hey, if you are still looking for a good plastic surgeon check out my 'Don't Mean Nuthin'
Reply
Hi Mary,
You are trying to make your comment longer than mine, and I simply cannot have that. I see your comment, and raise it.
Personally? I didn’t think my ‘Barbie’ story was contest material. My wife Kim insisted that I enter it into the competition. She even gave it the title. In retrospect, the story sounds simplistic and misogynistic, which was not intended. It was an attempt at lampooning the whole Barbie mystique. And I know so little about the phenomenon, (and its apparent resurrection) that I felt the story was funny, but clumsy.
As for the other story—well that was true.
The events took place over 25 years ago, before the events of 9-11. The phrase, ‘first responders’ was hardly in our lexicon. I was in my early 40’s, the woman was probably in her 30’s. She was attractive. Retelling the story to my mother yesterday, before reading your comment, I admitted I didn’t know why I wouldn’t have CALLED the hospital for advice, at the very least. I had a phone. I had a business. I lived alone. I had no involvement with the woman, whatsoever. I certainly would not have wanted her to die in my house. I had no witnesses to anything that could have or didn’t happen. Looking back it seems like a terribly dangerous decision to have made. Illogical.
I speculate that when an unknown person enters your house at midnight, your first, my first reaction was suspicion? She came in the back door, I was not immediately visible to her if she had scanned the room before entering, which I assumed she had done. All the lights were on. I had every reason to suspect her of larceny, and her lack of a response to my sudden appearance to be a ruse. Because she did not appear or smell intoxicated in any way, I think I figured that if I left her alone long enough, which I kept doing, she would simply slink out the back door and leave. Which is what I was hoping she might do.
But she didn’t. The longer she sat at my dining room table, the more I was convinced that she was not faking. For whatever reason, I concluded that her condition was drug-induced and temporary. I probably thought about calling the police, but I had no evidence that a crime had been committed. Unless I wanted to press charges against her myself for illegal entry.
But why I didn’t call for an ambulance or some EMT’s, that, I simply cannot remember. It’s a great question. Hell, somebody could have punched her in the back of the head, or a tree branch could have fallen from a tree, I don’t know. I didn’t examine her, but she sat right down at the table and physically, she seemed perfectly intact and unblemished, and yet, totally unresponsive. For whatever reasons, at the time, I was convinced that she was drugged, and I stand by my instincts, which, frankly, was all I had to go on. And whatever my motives were, they were noble, if not intelligent.
Your story dredged up this old, unpleasant, disturbing memory of my own life, and I wanted to convey the fact that the major theme of your story struck me as frighteningly real, and horrible, and based on this one weird experience, I know it, for a fact, to be plausibly accurate. Not a rumor or myth. Or a fiction, for that matter. These things happen.
I guess, now, I would handle everything differently. But I had a cat to worry about back then. I’m sure you know yourself, that, when you have a cat, it changes your whole perspective on everything.
Seriously though, this is not a story of personal sacrifice or heroism, Mary. I failed in numerous respects, with the exception of giving her a safe place to stay for the night.
Reply
So much fun ! Who broke it off indeed!
Lovely bit of playfulness bringing a bit of adult humour into the mix! Good luck to them!
Reply