Be sure to check out Ben’s book, What He’s Poised To Do, and the related site, Letters With Character.

Object No. 5 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Joe Meno, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final  price: $48.50. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

(A note found in grandfather’s chest of drawers.)

Dear Small Vessel,

“The Brief War of 1851: a compleat (sic) novel in miniature”

Prologue: On the green-twigged outskirts of Macon, Georgia, one Mister Bradley Granger meets the fair, emerald-eyed Miss Melissa Stuart at a cotillion when she perchances to drop a white handkerchief. Courtesies are exchanged. Miss Stuart’s dance card, as it turns out, is full. But under a cowardly moon, said handkerchief is pressed into Mister Granger’s hand as a token of mutual admiration. Bradley Granger, an orphan, nearly eighteen, holds the perfumed handkerchief to his face, repeating the young girl’s name on his long walk home, issuing romantic vows to cloudless stars.

Chapter One: The very next day, the entire city of Macon, Georgia declares itself a sovereign nation, some ten years before the War Between the States (1861-65), through a poorly-worded telegraph sent to President Zachary Taylor’s attention.

Chapter Two: Bradley Granger is pressed into military service. Because of his social standing and his dead father’s renowned fearlessness during the War of 1812, he is appointed as a junior grade lieutenant.

Chapter Three: Bradley Granger kisses Melissa Stuart beneath a gum tree and declares his intentions to return to her after the war is finished. Once he rides off, all she can remember is the smell of cordite and smoke.

Chapter Four: Soon after, Melissa Stuart begins her course of schooling at Wesleyan College against her parents’ wishes, as it is the first college of its kind to grant degrees to women. Her studies include field dressing a head wound and how to tie a proper tourniquet.

Chapter Five: Supplies in the city become drastically limited: and so it is decided that everything will continue to be produced but in complete miniature. Canons, horse carriages, parasols, candlesticks, pistols, hats, spectacles, rain barrels, vases, all of it the same but one tenth the actual size. This does not bode well for a poorly-armed Macon militia.

Chapter Six: During his first raid against the Federalists, Bradley’s tiny rifle misfires, and he loses the use of his left eye. His is indefatigable however and, on horseback, he leads his men to burn a Federal encampment to the ground, using very small torches. Miss Melissa Stuart writes miniature love letter after miniature love letter to her beloved, asking him to please be safe. Bradley keeps this small letters in the cuff of his left sleeve.

Chapter Seven: Bradley is shot through the shoulder by a Federal soldier riding a dun-colored roan. He falls into the Macon Creek. Bradley’s horse, Up-and-away, finds him downstream. In his agony, Bradley takes the reins, and is dragged to a nearby cave where he hopes to recover.

Chapter Eight: Miss Melissa Stuart’s miniature letters are found amongst the trenches of the dead Maconite soldiers. Who can assume anything but the worst in moments such as this?

Chapter Nine: Thinking her beloved is dead, Miss Melissa Stuart accepts neighbor John Handley’s marriage proposal. Bradley returns to town, leaning on a crutch made of rough-hewn branches. A duel is fought between Bradley and John, their weapons rapiers one tenth the normal size. Parry. Riposte. John Handley is dead. Overcome by his feelings of guilt, Bradley retreats to the woods, where he attempts suicide, but the miniature pistol he holds to his head only causes minor harm to his right ear.

Chapter Ten: The city of Macon burns to the ground and soon after issues its surrender.

Epilogue: Bradley and Melissa are reunited and ride off to the north astride a very small horse.

Object No. 4 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Scott Snyder, has ended. Original price: $0 (found object). Final price: $80. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

Dear Emma,

I’ve left you this tiny wrecking ball because it’s what brought me back.

I found it in an antique shop two weeks ago. I was with my girlfriend; we were on our way to visit her parents upstate. She was looking for shaker furniture and I was wandering around the shop, killing time, and suddenly there it was, sitting in a row vintage toys –  little dump trucks and steam-rollers and a crane made of tin.

The sight of the thing stopped me in my tracks, because suddenly I was back inside an afternoon we’d had. We were in the back of your father’s van and we’d just slept together for the second time ever; we were lying on our backs, sweaty and naked from the waist down and I remember feeling stunned by how much better it’d been than the first time and just then you rolled toward me and said:

“What do you want to happen when you kick the bucket?”

I held up my shaking hands. “Look at that. Are your fingers tingling?”

You threw your leg over mine. “I said… what do you want to happen to your body when you die?”

I told you that I didn’t know, but that I’d probably get cremated.

“Well I’m getting frozen,” you said in a matter of fact way.  “I read about it. The moment after you die, a doctor injects you with anti-freeze – the same stuff that animals in the arctic make naturally, penguins and polar bears? And then he submerges your body in liquid nitrogen and seals you up in a canister.”

“And?” I said.

“And what?” you said.  “And then you wait for someone to wake you up.”

“Some weird guy in some weird future,” I said.

You smiled and pressed harder against me.  “Ooh, you sound jealous.”

“Sooo jealous,” I said, but in truth I was actually a little jealous.

“Well I promise,” you said, “I’ll wait just for you and only you to wake me up, prince charming.”

“I’ll be sure,” I said, kissing you between words, “to bring my can opener and a wrecking ball to bust the ice.”

I soon forgot about this conversation. I never thought of it again – not when we headed off to college. Not when we broke up. Not in the years after.  Not even when you died.

I was teaching English overseas when it happened.  I didn’t get the news until almost a year afterwards, and still I didn’t remember the conversation.

But then out of nowhere I see this wrecking ball and it all comes back.  So I dug up your parents’ number and the funny thing is, I knew even before your mother told me that you’d gone through with it.

Now I’ve come to see you.  Each steel container has a blinking green light on top, and a valve that periodically gives off a little sigh of vapor. According to the doctor (is he a doctor?), this one – number 77 — is yours. He said the facility keeps safety deposit lockers for its clients – for any personal effects they might want to keep nearby.

I know they might not wake you up for a hundred years. And I’ve read about the possibility of brain damage – ice crystals rupturing the pathways of your brain.  I know you might not remember that afternoon at all. Or me.

But even so, I want you to go to your personal locker when you wake up, wet and shivering, and find this letter, and this tiny wrecking ball, and know that I was here.

The winner of this auction will also receive Scott Snyder's story, mailed by the author.

Object No. 3 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Terese Svoboda, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $42. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

Dear Wicked One:

As in “wick,” your sat-upon heart suggests so much to all of us on this Planet Nolove, pronounced to rhyme with olive, which whirs toward our sun at an alarming rate reminiscent of sperm lash. We lack heat and your visage, so pinkly coy, so silvered as if off a chalice, so bent-buttocked in the curve, your heat if lit — though miniscule it appears — would be just enough to energize our zip so we could snap our airlocks tight to the sun at last and sigh and smoke the way actors in your features express their heat thus slaked. But such a suggestion is not appropriate from the female side of Nolove, the side inopportunely pivoted toward the sun for the last nth, so we realize, keening, nothing at all can come of the electron flashing, wick-kissing heat you promise. We mourn for another nth then we get on our exercise drums and lean so far into the cosmos that a revolution (manned and unmanned) occurs, and Nolove rocks. That is, the male side cheers. Gaining on the pointer side, they forget all too quick who did the leaning, who kept to the drums when nobody had even a pull-cord. We’re the ones who find old sticks floating in the no-air and rub them slowly, oh so slowly, ourselves in ricochet, until a spark appears — the elements after all that time (we have it, time, on loan sometimes) seep in if you wait, some of the more idle elements, the ones with only one electron available. With that spark so carefully husbanded by ourselves across so many thrillions of pixels, we trusted your sensual self to rise up on those silvered haunches of yours and receive and burn. Yet never have you so much as leaned, you who must know that leaning is how it’s done in the cosmos by our kind, leaning into the spark? Wick-ed yourself then — our sun is not yours, we call it Love, and you obviously care nothing for Nolove and its potential — still — to collide and produce endless synergy that would so far outRabbit your whole system that you wouldn’t exist after that, for system is all you have, you bitch, probably consoled and iPudded and wii-ed up the wazoo, but we have the — someone hold them up — pull-cords. It isn’t another little galaxy we’re wanting, believe me, you little wick.

Terese

The winner of this auction also receives Terese Svoboda's story, mailed by the author.

]]> http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/16/heart-shaped-candle-terese-svoboda-story/feed/ 3 http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/15/napkin-ring-james-hannaham-story/ http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/15/napkin-ring-james-hannaham-story/#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:54:28 +0000 James Hannaham http://significantobjects.com/?p=7165 Continue reading →]]>

No. 2 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by James Hannaham, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $28.50. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

June 6, 2010

Mr. R.S. Pennyback
Shady Acres Estate
Houndsville, AL 35808

Dear Mr. Pennyback:

It has recently come to my attention that certain practices of your establishment, hereafter known as “Shady Acres,” have affected my client, whom you know as Bethuna, in an extremely negative fashion. We have therefore decided to take legal action against “Shady Acres” on multiple charges, including fraud, discrimination in hiring, forced labor, and sexual assault. Ms. Bethuna is seeking damages, including retroactive wages owed as well as compensation for psychological and physical distress caused by “Shady Acres,” its associates, and their relations.

In a sworn deposition which she gave to me on May 19-21, 2010, Bethuna stated that her tenure with “Shady Acres” began at her birth, on September 14, 1855. Yourself and the previous proprietors of “Shady Acres” (see Appendix A) required my client to operate as a culinary, housekeeping, gardening, landscaping, and childcare professional. During the ensuing one hundred and fifty-five (155) years, my client prepared an estimated 168,987 meals, including 121 Christmas and 107 Thanksgiving dinners, made 15 beds a total of 56,206 times, dusted 18 rooms over the course of her life, and nursed a total of 54 children, 33 of whom were not her own—including yourself—and the balance of whom were the issue of herself and various proprietors and associates of “Shady Acres.”

While initially these practices were not punishable by law in the state of Alabama, my client contends that the owners of “Shady Acres” conspired to conceal the change in her legal status indefinitely, thereby preventing her from discovering and curtailing the criminal activity of “Shady Acres” to the extent that this required keeping her from acquiring any skill in the reading and writing of the English language, and prohibiting contact with any persons, organizations, news outlets, or other publications which may have informed her of the change in her legal status.

My client also maintains that during her tenure at “Shady Acres,” she suffered frequent and unrelenting physical and sexual abuse, culminating in the removal of a circular portion of her lower abdomen, through which the owners of “Shady Acres” then threaded a string attached to a piece of paper intended to advertise a sum of money for which her services would be rendered to similar local organizations at no compensation to herself. The whereabouts of, and/or the purpose to which the removed cylinder was put by “Shady Acres” were not divulged to my client. In addition to back wages, the monetary equivalent of benefits, legal fees, and other damages, my client’s lawsuit also requires that the abdominal subdivision in question be returned to Ms. Bethuna’s possession and repaired to the extent that medical science may accomplish such a reparation.

Sincerely,

Ms. Minerva Lee Battle, Esq.

The winner of this auction will also receive James Hannaham's story, pictured, mailed by the author.

]]> http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/15/napkin-ring-james-hannaham-story/feed/ 1 http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/14/wind-up-monkey-irina-reyn-story/ http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/14/wind-up-monkey-irina-reyn-story/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:59:03 +0000 Irina Reyn http://significantobjects.com/?p=7190 Continue reading →]]>

Object No. 1 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for his Significant Object, with story by Irina Reyn, has ended. Original price: $0 (found/donated object). Final price: $30. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

To: You

From: Saskia (the Monkey)

Subject: Help Visitor From Future – Earn Riches in Afterlife

My Dear Human:

Under normal circumstances, I would never be asking you for money. We monkeys consider this an act of coarseness, a vile human quality. But extreme circumstances have forced my hand, and now I must appeal to whatever spirit of charity nestles in your so-called soul.

I’m not sure how much you know about time travel. I will assume next to nothing and not confuse you with time dilation and the twin paradox. In any case, during routine maintenance of the temporal deflector console, I found myself transported from the future and landing in a place you call New York City. You may wonder what the future holds for humanity. The short explanation is: you will all be dead. A peaceful, civilized society is ruled by monkeys. If it’s any solace, please know that evolution has done its proper work.

Finding oneself trapped in the past is inconvenient, not to mention prohibitively expensive. I had read about your attachment to currency, but it is far more deep-seated than anything our historians have imagined. Even your Ritz Hotel, fabled for its hospitality, refused to provide a few weeks’ respite for a guest lacking a valid credit card. Outrageous. In our society, we would be lining your bed with the finest Frette sheets, greeting you with the most lavish of spreads, (well not you; if we discovered an actual living human, we would probably execute you).

I’ve done a modest inventory of the items needed to repair the time machine and blow this Casa de Morons:

Two weeks at the Ritz (Royal suite): $30,000

Transport (BMW or comparable automobile): $80,000

Tools and sundries: $1,450

Quantum mechanic: app. $250/hour

Cocktails: $3,000/week

In the past days, I’ve reached out to a dozen aid organizations (human only, they insist), to no avail. Is your race as ignoble as we’ve always assumed? Thankfully, you have the power to change humanity’s legacy. I could return to my community and say, “You know what, guys? That Mr. So-and-so (you) is not like the other inferior life forms. Let us inscribe his name in the Who’s Who Scroll of Humans or at least name a drink in his honor.”

Checks or money orders are equally accepted at PO Box 222, Soho Station, NY, NY. If you would like to directly deposit money through PayPal, please find the link below. I think $5,000 would be a reasonable, if modest sum.
Let this holy monkey in my image be a token of friendship. When you wind it, know that somewhere in the far future, I will be raising a (Your Name Here) blood orange mojito. I promise you this: you will not be forgotten.

Gratefully,

Saskia

The winning bidder will receive this story, from author Irina Reyn.

Dear Significant Objects Readers and Prospective Significant Objects Buyers,

My new book of stories, What He’s Poised To Do (Harper Perennial, June 20), is about letters and letter-writing. In the stories, people use letters to embrace other people, or to keep them at arm’s length, or to express reality, or to evade it. Letters are highly significant things in each and every story, from a series of devotional pieces a young Cuban writes to the woman he loves (in a story called “Hope”) to letters a young man sends to his sad mother (in “17 Different Ways to Get A Load Of That”).

Given the letters and the significance, I thought it would be nice to combine the two and curate a week of Significant Objects with a letter-writing theme: objects accompanied by stories in the form of letters.

Once I had the idea, I set out to find a cause. I have published a story in the great literary journal OneStory (it was called “The Tremulant,” is now called “The Hunter and the Hunted,” and is in the new book), and so it occurred to me that the money collected from this round of Significant Objects should benefit OneStory, and that the stories would be written by writers who have also published in the journal. The five I contacted all said yes, heartily: they are Irina Reyn, Terese Svoboda, Scott Snyder, James Hannaham, and Joe Meno.

The week of OneStory/Significant Objects collaboration will culminate in an event June 21 at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. In theory, it is a launch party for “What He’s Poised To Do,” but I am hoping to minimize the part where I read and maximize the part where other people tell you about interesting projects they are spearheading. Jonny Diamond, of the L magazine, will read. Nicki Pombier Berger will speak about Underwater New York. Todd Zuniga, of Opium magazine, will read from Paris with the help of Fancy New Technology. And the actress and performance artist Okwui Okpokwasili will read James Hannaham’s Significant Objects
story, as Mr. Hannaham is indisposed that evening. Details here.

So, you know the drill. We will post an object each day, accompanied by a story by a OneStory writer. Objects will be on auction for one week. If you win, you will receive the object and the story.

And given that this is series of letters, we’ve made a special arrangement with some of our contributors — those stories, where noted, will actually be mailed to you by the writer.

Go to Town,
Ben Greenman

We have a special week of all-new stories, starting Monday.

Three-time S.O. contributor Ben Greenman has stepped up as a guest-curator of a special Epistolary Week. Ben has a book out this month, What He’s Poised To Do, in which the stories take the form of letters. This inspired him to line up a great team of writers to write stories about Significant Objects, also in the form of letters. Ben has decreed that proceeds from Epistolary Week will go to OneStory, the admirable non-profit literary magazine that features one great short story mailed to subscribers every three weeks.

We’ll have full details on Monday, but here’s one to tide you over: If you’re in New York, mark June 21 on your calendar, as Ben will have an event for the book that night at Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore, and that event will include a live reading of one of next week’s stories. While the story is by James Hannaham, the reading won’t be. “The actress and performance artist Okwui Okpokwasili,” the New Yorker explains, will be “reading on behalf of the Web site Significant Objects.”

How can you resist?