Glen Pourciau ~ Three Stories

Breakfast

I’m at my favorite break­fast place, Monday morn­ing, hop­ing I can eat in peace, when I see Muldoon enter, just as I’d dread­ed. I’ve already ordered, too late to run. I can’t stand to hear what he’s think­ing, and I can’t stand what he gets me think­ing when I lis­ten to him. I call him Muldoom. He gazes around, and when he sees me, he heads straight for my table, no doubt lin­ing up his words and opin­ions. He nods as he sits, as if we’re in agree­ment about some­thing, waves our serv­er over, asks for cof­fee and gives the serv­er his order.

Muldoom points his fin­ger at me, a habit of his, and begins speak­ing, no time for small talk. He says he believes soci­ety is plagued by a dis­tort­ed sense of jus­tice. He’s held forth on this theme before, so I’m not sur­prised to hear him bring up a mur­der tri­al in the nation­al news. The neglect­ed fac­tor in mur­der tri­als, he argues, is the nature of the vic­tim. Are some vic­tims so despi­ca­ble that their unwor­thi­ness to remain in soci­ety should mit­i­gate the pun­ish­ment of the killer? Should we allow our­selves sym­pa­thy for killers who believe they act in a just cause? He con­fess­es that he at times imag­ines doing harm to peo­ple he knows or pub­lic fig­ures and he can’t seem to con­vince him­self that these peo­ple don’t deserve what he imag­ines they have com­ing to them; there­fore, how can he con­demn a per­son who takes action he con­sid­ers jus­ti­fied even if it does harm to oth­ers? In his opin­ion, behav­ioral stan­dards should be put in the law to assess the moral val­ue of mur­der vic­tims. Can any­one deny, he asks, that the world would be bet­ter off with­out cer­tain peo­ple in it?

I reply that if I were on a jury lis­ten­ing to him try to jus­ti­fy a killing by claim­ing the vic­tim deserved it, I would hold that against him, no mat­ter who the vic­tim was. Would he also pro­pose assess­ing the moral val­ue of all crime vic­tims? And why does he want to jus­ti­fy killing peo­ple he thinks deserve it? Is he plan­ning to kill someone?

Our food arrives and we start to eat. He starts up again as he chews. You can’t tell me, he says, that there aren’t well-known vil­lains you’ve wished would have a heart attack dur­ing the night just so we could all be rid of them. I’m ask­ing, why wait for the heart attack?

I’m ready to end the con­ver­sa­tion. I resent stir­ring up answers to his ques­tions and cloud­ing my mind with ways to silence him. Before I say anoth­er word, an acquain­tance of ours, Cleaver, walks in the door, grin­ning at the sight of Muldoom. He descends on our table with a sto­ry to share. He’s been in an argu­ment with a man he doesn’t iden­ti­fy and this man punched him in the face. Since the oth­er guy struck first, Cleaver felt jus­ti­fied in fight­ing back, so he punched the guy in the stom­ach, dou­bling him over, fol­lowed by a blow to the jaw, top­pling him. He then stood there and watched him groan, he said, the pain from the blow to his face dimin­ish­ing. Muldoom laughs at the sto­ry and doesn’t seem wor­ried about the man on the ground groaning.

I don’t wait to hear more. I put mon­ey on the table and say I’ve been hav­ing diges­tive prob­lems. I rise and leave, sup­press­ing my voice on the way out, my anger remind­ing me that I’m more like them than I care to admit.

~

Benefit

I don’t like it when Marcia leaves our table to talk with strangers at near­by tables. We can’t get through a restau­rant meal with­out her reach­ing out to peo­ple. Tourists vis­it our town, and she likes to ask them where they’re from and if they’re enjoy­ing them­selves. I tell her she can’t know who she’s start­ing up a con­ver­sa­tion with, and she answers that most peo­ple are glad to see a friend­ly face.

The table she’s drop­ping by today is behind my right shoul­der. I can’t see them unless I turn all the way around, and it con­cerns me that I don’t hear laugh­ter or wel­com­ing voic­es. The best thing about peo­ple, I’ve told Marcia, is that we can’t always hear every­thing they’re think­ing. And she steps right up and puts that ben­e­fit at risk.

When she returns, I can see the vis­it hasn’t gone well. I study her face as she sits.

“The woman was ret­i­cent, almost sus­pi­cious. Her hus­band seemed to won­der what I was doing at their table. He asked why I want­ed to know where they were from. That was the only thing he said.”

“They don’t know you. That’s why they weren’t at ease. Our food will be here soon so try not let it ruin your lunch.”

“They treat­ed me like an intruder.”

I can under­stand the couple’s reluc­tance to let her any fur­ther into their thoughts. As a rule, I dread telling peo­ple, espe­cial­ly strangers, what I’m think­ing, and often cringe hear­ing my thoughts spo­ken out loud. It’s bad enough lis­ten­ing to them in my head. Still, it both­ers me they were rude to her.

“It’s dis­ap­point­ing,” she adds as the serv­er puts our plates of food on the table.

“Let’s enjoy our­selves. You could order a drink.”

“No, thank you.”

I resist the urge to turn and look at the cou­ple. What am I going to do if I see them? What would they see com­ing from my face? They’re in both of our heads. We’d like to change the sub­ject, but noth­ing occurs to us. As we chew our food it feels as if we’re chew­ing them. Hers eyes drift to them occa­sion­al­ly. Are they speak­ing? Watching us?

“Should I apol­o­gize?” Marcia asks.

“Should they apologize?”

I imag­ine telling them they should. My mind stirs up a scene. I pic­ture going to their table, lean­ing toward them, star­ing into their faces, but I don’t want to hear more of what they’re think­ing or to hear the words in my head com­ing out of my mouth.

I stay in my seat and do not glance back.

~

Quartered

My day is com­ing. They could knock on my door at any time. What’s behind me is a blank, but I am now liv­ing in a small unit in a row of oth­ers. Will every­one on this row soon be held to account? What have they done or not done? How long have we been wait­ing? Whenever I hear foot­steps in the hall­way I fear they’re com­ing for me. In my case, I sus­pect I’ll face judg­ment because I haven’t done enough. What will I tell them? What do I have to show for eight decades of liv­ing? I can’t imag­ine all the ques­tions they could ask me, and I can’t think of a sub­stan­tial ques­tion I could answer about myself.

Attendants knock on my door each day with trays of bland food I have no inter­est in eat­ing. These peo­ple stare at me as if I make no sense and answer none of my infre­quent ques­tions, either stay­ing silent or mum­bling a few words I can’t under­stand. Expense has to be involved in my upkeep, and I can’t think why those detain­ing me should con­tin­ue to pay for it when I have no val­ue to them or any­one else.

Where will they take me and how long will I stand in line with oth­ers like me? Will their answers be as weak as mine? Will they be as guilty as I am? My fear of judg­ment over­takes me at times and I poke my head out my door for a look around, think­ing I might ven­ture beyond the hall­way. People are always there, atten­dants or guards, what­ev­er they’re called. Once, I took a step out­side my door and two of them con­verged on me and took me by the elbows. When they escort­ed me back into my room and closed the door, I felt defeat­ed. But where would I have gone, any­way, and what would I have done when I got there?

I ask myself why I should resist my decline. Wouldn’t that imply a pur­pose? Can I face the fact that I am bet­ter off here in this void than being car­ried away for judgment?

Two men come for a vis­it. They stand a few feet from where I’m sit­ting and speak to each oth­er. I can’t hear them, can’t under­stand a word, and they do not address me or ask a ques­tion. They don’t seem to care what I’m think­ing, and I don’t inter­rupt them with any ques­tions. They purse their lips and leave. If they offered any expla­na­tion for their vis­it I didn’t hear it.

Will they enter a report on me into a com­put­er? Will it be read at a high­er lev­el? Is that the next step in the process? I can­not lock my door, and when some­one knocks, they enter with­out wait­ing for me to open it. I don’t want any of them com­ing here. I’ve been eat­ing only a lit­tle of what they bring me. The atten­dants stare down at the uneat­en food for just a moment before tak­ing it away. I don’t tell them I’ve decid­ed to eat even less, or not at all.

I’m fad­ing, yield­ing to my desire to slip away through the only avail­able exit: inside me. What am I wait­ing for? Is con­scious­ness, for me, worse than uncon­scious­ness? I stay in my nar­row bed, let­ting myself drift, unre­sist­ing. I ignore any sounds out­side my room. They are not relat­ed to the path I’ve cho­sen. I have no answers and will have noth­ing to do with any ques­tions any­one would ask me.

I am leav­ing with no mem­o­ry of myself.

~

Glen Pourciau’s fourth sto­ry col­lec­tion, Under, was pub­lished in 2025 by Four Way Books. His sto­ries have been pub­lished by AGNI Online, Epoch, New England Review, The Paris Review, Post Road, and others.