Short Happy Stories

Volume 2 is now available! The book contains 50 stories. Order here, or inquire at a bookstore.

The Man of Gloom

For The Man of Gloom, the whole world was a tomb. You could feel his feeling when he entered a room. It loomed.

Forty-four years had passed since The Man of Gloom had been cruelly deposited into Existence, and eighty-eight weeks had passed since his wife had left him—saying, just before closing the door, “You’re just too gloomy.”

But her explanation didn’t seem reasonable—for he was, after all, The Man of Gloom. (Once, when asked when his gloom began, he said, gloomily, “My gloom bloomed in the womb.”) He didn’t understand why his wife had suddenly punished him for being the way he’d always been.

Her departure did, however, give him the warped satisfaction of having yet another seemingly valid reason to indulge in gloom.

The day was warm. The Man of Gloom was sitting on a comfortable chair in embracing sunlight with a refreshing gin and tonic at hand and a big newspaper in his hands. The big newspaper blocked most of his view and told him about awful things happening all around the world.

Awful, he thought as he finished an article, and shook his head.

Awful, he thought as he finished another article, and sighed.

Awful, he thought as he finished a third article, and shook his head while sighing.

Sitting there, in sunlight and gloom, he believed that anyone who lived with enthusiasm had consented to make delusion home.

He reminded himself that he was forty-four years old. He reminded himself that his life was likely at least half spent. So what? The world stinks!

He felt the cold glass with his left fingers and thumb, lifted the cold glass to his mouth, took a sip of cold beverage while listening to the movements of ice. The gin and tonic tasted… like clarity. Then arrived a perfect breeze: strong enough to provide a nice little relief, but not strong enough to cause newspaper difficulties. Part of him knew that his immediate situation—sitting there just outside his back door—was not at all bad, was indeed quite pleasant. But he considered such pleasantness a trick: an attempt to distract him from real reality. But, with the help of his newspaper, he would not be tricked: he would remain committed to his perception of a crappy world.

His close study of a long article about a horrific sequence of events in Africa was interrupted by a laugh. Instantly The Man of Gloom folded a corner of his newspaper and looked in the direction of the source and saw his neighbor standing on grass, bent over a telescope. “Wow,” said his neighbor in apparent wonderment—which naturally exasperated The Man of Gloom: his neighbor was obviously trying to make him curious, obviously trying to elicit an inquiry that could turn, if he wasn’t careful, into a friendly conversation.

The Man of Gloom unfolded the corner. Once again those big pages and small words dominated his vision. Soon he was picturing a massacre described by an ambitious journalist with perhaps too much dramatic relish.

“Jim. Hey Jim,” said The Man of Gloom’s neighbor—for The Man of Gloom’s name was Jim. “You’ve got to see this. I just got a special solar filter for my telescope, and… Let’s just say it wasn’t a waste of money.”

“What a relief,” said The Man of Gloom in a tone that said “I’m not interested in pursuing this conversation.” And he did not remove his eyes from the newspaper. But here’s the strange thing: despite displaying absolutely no external indication of interest, The Man of Gloom actually was curious about how the sun looked through the telescope.

With discernible hesitance, his neighbor said “Do you… I mean… Don’t you want to take a look at the sun? It… It really is worth a look.”

The Man of Gloom was relieved his neighbor was essentially insisting. Such insistence meant he could go over there and act like he was only going over there because he didn’t want to seem rude. With odd emphasis he folded the newspaper and, with his back very straight, went over to his neighbor and the solar-filtered telescope and bent a little and placed his right eye in the proper position.

The sun! The sun! The sun!

What power! What certainty!

How strange—to stare fixedly at something your eyes have always avoided.

“I can see,” said The Man of Gloom, “leaping flames.”

“The solar flares! Yes!” said his neighbor. “Especially on the top left.”

“Yes… There does indeed appear to be… special activity over there.”

“You know, a bunch of earths could fit into any one of those solar flares. And… Also, the solar flares aren’t actually flames, but… Never mind. Anyway, I was going to… Oh, right. Apparently, like, a million earths could fit into the… into the main part of the sun. How do you process that? I mean… That little sphere is one million earths. Roughly. Something like that. At least I think that’s what I read… But I almost wonder if I’m getting that wrong. Because… A million earths! Sorry to repeat myself, but… I’ve just never been able to grasp that. Still can’t, obviously.”

“Some things are ungraspable,” said The Man of Gloom, with his eye still at the eyepiece.

“Another crazy thing about the sun is the fact that the most outward part of its atmosphere is hotter than the surface. The core is the hottest part, and things get colder as you move from the core to the surface—but then, as you move out from the surface, the temperature increases. How does that make sense?”

“That’s… weird. Yes… that’s very… weird. I guess it’s just another one of those things that… just… just…” The Man of Gloom finally removed his eye from the eyepiece. Turning, he did something he had never done before: “Would you like a gin and tonic?”

“Oh!” exclaimed his neighbor, shocked—for he pretty much knew that Jim was The Man of Gloom. By the end of their very first interaction, he’d formed the sturdy assumption that Jim would never exit his gloomy world, would never submit any friendly offer. And when he was preparing to tell Jim about the new solar filter, he even experienced some clear fear: how would Jim react? But he’d disregarded his fear because he found those solar flares so thrilling, and felt it would be positively wrong to stay silent when Jim was so close.

And the result…

Jim just offered him a gin and tonic!

“The tonic part sounds great,” he told Jim. “Thanks. It’s getting pretty hot out here.”

“It is, isn’t it?” said The Man of Gloom—and immediately thought, with disgust, What an inane expression of agreement. When did you start… just… just saying things just to get along?

Something about staring at the sun…

A million earths… burning and burning and burning… endlessly burning…

That isn’t correct.

Someday the sun, too, will be gone.

Everything seems so insignificant, so pointless… There’s obviously no reason not to be gloomy about life. However… if everything is indeed pointless… there can also be no reason to be gloomy about life. Pointlessness means there can be no reason not to be any way you want to be. That should be liberating!

So… How do you want to be?

In the days that followed The Man of Gloom made two decisions.

One: he decided to stop stopping himself from smiling as soon as a smiling sensation began. For as long as he could remember, he’d suppressed his smiles—because he’d wanted everyone to know that he was Serious. But now he would maybe even, on occasion, force himself to smile.

Two: he decided to expand his wardrobe’s palette. For as long as he could remember, he’d worn only black—because he’d wanted everyone to know that he was mourning Existence. But now he wanted some other colors, some lightness. He went shopping and bought some grey pants and some brown pants and a dark green shirt and a dark blue shirt and a dark red shirt. One store had a light blue shirt he came very close to buying—but it was just too light. He wanted to be lighter, and he was getting lighter—but he just couldn’t get that light. At least not so fast.

In the weeks that followed The Man of Gloom embarked on a new relationship. His sister was responsible for the introduction. Many things about this new woman he liked; some things about this new woman he didn’t like. But she was cheerful, and some recent thought processes had delivered him to the tentative conclusion that there is nothing more important than cheerfulness. If you are cheerful, he theorized, almost every situation will be better for you and, more importantly, for the people who happen to be around you.

And so, with great effort, The Man of Gloom tried to be cheerful. He seldom achieved genuine cheerfulness—but, more importantly, he usually seemed cheerful. His instincts kept challenging him by pointing him toward gloom—but he had started to suppress those gloomy instincts; and, as weeks and weeks and months continued to pass, the suppression of those gloomy instincts became easier and easier and like a new form of breathing; and though those gloomy instincts provided no indication that they would ever go away, Emily never even suspected, as far as he could tell, that he was The Man of Gloom.

Something he again and again, every day, told himself: It’s better to not be who you actually are, so you can become someone better.

In the years that followed The Man of Gloom and Emily got married, and twice brought new life into the world, and celebrated every Thanksgiving with his sister and her husband’s family, and celebrated every Christmas in another part of the country with Emily’s parents—and he felt simultaneously inauthentic and authentic. He felt inauthentic because, despite all his efforts, he still pretty much felt, within, like The Man of Gloom, whom his wife and kids didn’t know. But he felt authentic because he loved the family in which he was enclosed, and knew that the family would not exist without him and specific decisions he’d made.

Once, on his way home from a work trip, he ran into his ex-wife in an airport. Apparently she was now living in this other city. They had a pleasant conversation, during which she remarked on how ungloomy he seemed, and he smiled (was this one forced or natural?) and said he was happy to see her, happy to see that she seemed to be doing well. Then he asked a question about her career. He didn’t want to tell her about his big transformation. He didn’t think she deserved to know anything about it; because she had left him—and sure, yes, overall he was definitely glad—so glad—she’d left him; because he respected his new life… but… Back then, before the divorce, he’d thought they were in this awful world together, each with only the other for true understanding and support… And she’d left him. Looking at her in the airport as she formed words with her mouth, he decided she looked like she’d aged twice as many years as had actually passed—and he smiled again (there was definitely nothing forced about this one). “It’s been great to see you,” he said, “but now I’ve got to catch my plane. Safe travels.”

The Man of Gloom catches his plane and, as the city below gets smaller and smaller, finds it easy to suppress all gloom. All that is required is the remembrance of our puniness. But here’s the strange thing: despite his awareness of his insignificance, of the almost certain pointlessness of this tiny planet, he somehow—while watching someone walk down the aisle, while hearing two sneezes emerge from a few rows back—believes everything is inevitable and deeply connected and moving toward something bright.

Upon stepping into the house, The Man of Gloom is proud of the fact that nobody sees The Man of Gloom: his wife sees Jim and his kids see Dad.

Below the Clouds

You’re a stranger in this world.

A stranger to yourself?

What’s your purpose in this life?

After an uncertain number of days have been weighed down by frustrating existential questions—they make your life feel simultaneously heavy and small—you decide to travel for an undefined length of time. If you extract yourself from your familiar conditions and insert yourself into unfamiliar conditions, you will, you hope, obtain a valuable new perspective—and maybe finally understand what you should actually be doing with your life. How to make your life big. Significant.

After turning in your two weeks’ notice, after making various arrangements, after packing your still-new-looking ten-year-old bag, you get into bed the night before your departure and turn off the bedside light and close your eyes—and imagine a taut thick rope in a similarly dark, but now unknown, space. You follow the taut thick rope with your eyes until you can’t see it anymore. That disappearing taut thick rope is your impending journey, your mysterious life.

But that taut thick rope only appears to disappear: it must be connected to two things—otherwise it would not be taut. Looking down, you realize the rope is connected—fused, apparently—to your chest. But what’s the other end connected to?

With the airplane’s ascent you experience the unsettling transformation of oh-so-important civilization into children’s toys. Insignificant little models that can be easily moved around. Easily stepped on. And you think, with sudden disgust, What were you thinking? Why are you doing what you’re doing?

You manufactured a crisis for yourself. Out of nothing more than standard anxiety. Only now do you realize how comfortable you were, and how pleasant that comfort really was. That comfort was certainly more pleasant than sitting in this massive cramped airplane, flying toward days you know you don’t know. How did you manage to convince yourself that arbitrarily going to a different place would… Oh well. This will actually be, you decide, a fairly short trip; and, after this nice little vacation, you’ll return to the life you were living before you created the silly crisis.

Now clouds are below you. Together they are a layer. Nothing below the layer can be seen. But you know, of course, there are many things below that layer. The world is not everything you can see from your current position. That’s obvious.

You tell yourself that this is not just a vacation. You tell yourself that you were wrong a minute ago. You tell yourself that your resolve was momentarily weakened—but that’s over now. Maybe you were affected by the altitude. You were definitely affected by fear. But fear can be disregarded. Right?

Sure. Why not?

Don’t produce conclusions about anything for a while. For a while, just try to see what’s below that or this layer; what’s around this or that corner; what’s right in front of your face.

Back on the ground you wander around, looking for something you can’t name because you haven’t found it yet, with the sun entering and exiting and entering and exiting the sky—though some days pass, of course, without the sun making a single direct appearance—and you encounter countless manifestations of humanity and, as they enter and exit and enter and exit your ambit—unlike the returning sun, you’ll never again see almost everyone—the too frequent feeling is that you and all of these others are—quite simply—rats. Rats just scurrying around.

Any indication of a purpose beyond survival is a sham.

Though wandering around cities and towns with such an unpleasant perspective—and with such a peculiar combination of aimlessness and serious intent—is tedious, exhausting, you don’t want to fly back to your old life yet. Because you wouldn’t be able to go back, at this particular point in your journey, without feeling like a failure. Without feeling like a scared rat.

You’re desperate to feel like you are, somehow, significant. But is there any way to do that and stay outside of delusion?

The day is hot. You bet the inside of that big church is nice and cool. You walk across the square—creating a diagonal line—and step into the big church. And it is nice and cool.

And brighter than you expected.

And song-voices are flying around.

The song-voices are a different language—the language of this land—but, even though you don’t understand the exact words, you believe you know exactly what the song-voices are saying.

The song-voices are saying there’s no difference between the light coming down from the windows and the stones ascending and completing the nave. And the stones and the light are also the same as every country and every drop of moving blood. Absolutely everything, you believe the swooping song-voices proclaim, is one thing. And so the notion that some lives are big and some lives are small is rendered absurd. We’re all part of the same life. Each of us is—quite simply—an eye.

You listen to the song-voices until they stop. Stepping out of the church, you believe you have achieved a new mode of perception, in which nothing could possibly bother you.

Then a bird poops on your head.

Squirrels

Another Sunday. Joe has a couple of commitments this afternoon, but this morning is free of everything except his dog and this pleasant triangular park. Yellow leaves swirl.

They play fetch, which Truffaut seems to enjoy very much—bounding around and occasionally rolling on the grass. Then Joe moves a few yellow leaves with a foot and sits on the grass and Truffaut stretches out next to him. Not far away sit two women. One is staring at a book and the other is staring at a little screen: though they’re on the same blanket, they’re in separate worlds—and Joe’s in yet another world. Joe feels superior to them, because his world is the actual world: he isn’t allowing anything to distract him from his actual physical surroundings. It hasn’t been easy: years of mental training have been required to allow here—wherever that happens to be—to be enough. But he has done the hard work, and—

Truffaut’s sudden spring disrupts Joe’s self-congratulations.

The inspiration? A squirrel.

Truffaut runs after the squirrel. The squirrel reaches a tree and runs up the trunk and disappears—at least from Joe’s view—in the branches. Truffaut barks and barks and barks at the branches.

What, Joe wonders, will barking accomplish?

Joe yells “Truffaut! Come back!”—and Truffaut, despite his instincts, returns to Joe’s area. And sits. Sits there, almost bursting with the belief that he isn’t doing what he’s meant to be doing. He knows he ought to be barking up at those branches. He ought to bark and bark and bark and bark until that squirrel comes out of the tree, at which point—

Another squirrel! Truffaut springs—and runs and runs in sun and yellow leaves, after the squirrel.

They run around a tree.

They run around another tree three times.

They run around the first tree again.

Over the course of the chase, a few moments arrive in which Truffaut opens his jaws and gets them so, so close to the squirrel—but then, at what seems like the exact last possible moment, the squirrel, with a motion that seems almost magical, changes course, causing Truffaut to close his jaws on nothing but crisp fall air.

“Truffaut! Stop being so stupid!” yells Joe. “You will never catch that squirrel. You will never catch any squirrel.”

Truffaut stops running. Some yellow leaves settle. Is Joe right? Is he a dog who’s incapable of catching a squirrel?

No man or beast knows the future. But Joe presumes to know what will never happen? Presumes to know Truffaut’s limitations?

Truffaut starts running again—this time straight out of the park.

Joe’s pathetic cries—“Truffaut! Truffaut! Truffaut! Truffaut!”—cause Truffaut, shortly after reaching the sidewalk, to pause and look back; and he sees Joe running in his direction; and he knows, just knows, Joe will never catch him.

Hours later Truffaut enters the woods. Instinct tells him there are many squirrels here—and there’s one right there! He’ll catch this one!

But he doesn’t.

But there’s another one! He’ll catch this one!

But he doesn’t; and when he finally stops barking at the branches where the squirrel found refuge, the woods are in eerie peace.

Weeks later snow falls on a big house. Truffaut shivers as he stares at the warm-looking yellowy orange rectangles. He didn’t see a single squirrel today.

The squirrels are probably cozy in their burrows or dreys—while he is out here, slowly turning white.

If he hadn’t run away from Joe, he would now be warm. He would be lounging in Joe’s comfortable living room, back in that town however many towns away. But he would also be submissive to someone who doesn’t think he’ll ever catch a squirrel. And sure, Truffaut hasn’t yet managed to catch a squirrel… but… Well, it just hasn’t happened yet.

Two new warm-looking yellowy orange rectangles pop into being.

Months later Truffaut walks between green trees and water and feels calmer than he has in a long time. Trash receptacles are scattered throughout this big park, and Truffaut has learned that the overfilled ones are a fairly reliable source of OK-tasting items. And, if he isn’t lucky in this big park, he can always exit this big park and find something acceptable in the city streets.

People around here talk all sorts of ways. The man and woman Truffaut just passed were talking the way people were talking when Joe would tell him “This movie was made by François Truffaut—the guy you were named after!” But though Truffaut, inspired by Joe’s enthusiasm, would examine the strange changing rectangle, he could never understand what—

A squirrel!

This is it! After months of tricky living, he’ll finally catch a squirrel! This is the squirrel he’s going to catch! No way will this squirrel escape!

The squirrel escapes. Up a tree. Truffaut barks and barks and barks and barks and barks at the branches. “That dog is wild,” says a teenager on the path. “That dog is mangy.” Though tempted to maul the rude teenager, Truffaut keeps barking at the branches. Because incessant intense barking is, he instinctively believes, the only way to get the squirrel to come out of the tree. And he must get that squirrel out of the tree. That’s the whole point of his existence—and he can’t allow anything to become a distraction.

But what’s that new big sound? What could possibly make such a big sound? Truffaut is no longer barking, but silently turning his head, looking in this direction and in that direction and—

A red and white machine slides across the sky. Truffaut vaguely remembers seeing one of those before…

Truffaut barks at the red and white machine—not because he believes this particular barking will cause a specific thing to happen, but because so many things are beyond his comprehension. Beyond his control. Why can’t he catch one damn squirrel?

Years later Truffaut strolls around a little town with weak eyes; but he can see enough—and smell enough—to recognize what needs to be recognized. The back door of the diner, where the man with the limp often tries to engage Truffaut in conversation, and once in a while places on the asphalt a cracked plate of scrambled eggs. The way from the alley to the creek, where there’s always, even at the end of hot summer, at least a little water waiting. The way from the creek to the side of a little ramshackle house, where, quite some time ago now, a little girl started to give him all sorts of leftovers, and before long placed a big cushion thing a few feet away from the garbage—and the big cushion thing turned out to be pretty comfortable, and Truffaut has been sleeping on it ever since.

When Truffaut wakes from yet another deep sleep, he feels like life has started all over again. And though his eyes are weak, he does, now and then, while strolling around town, identify a shape as a squirrel. His countless efforts to catch a squirrel have all ended in failure—but every time he sees one he still feels certain he’s about to accomplish his destiny.

What a thrilling way to live!

Snickerdoodle, Et Cetera

The grocery store down the street sells good cookies. Each cookie is fairly substantial, and wrapped in plastic. You can buy one cookie at a time, or two cookies at a time, or three cookies at a time, or more cookies at a time. Aspen usually buys one cookie, but sometimes buys two cookies. Those times he gives one of the cookies to someone else.

Aspen really admires the grocery store’s variety of cookies: Chocolate Chip Cookie, Peanut Butter Cookie, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie, Double Chocolate Cookie, Iced Ginger Cookie, Butterscotch Cookie, Snickerdoodle, et cetera.

But, actually, “et cetera” is just one cookie: Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. That’s the one type of cookie Aspen will never understand or buy. He doesn’t have a problem with oatmeal, and he doesn’t have a problem with raisins—but Oatmeal Raisin Cookie just seems like a stupid cookie.

While Aspen thinks all of the other cookies are great, two of the cookies actually surprised him. The grocery store’s Double Chocolate Cookie has a sui generis structure: it’s half cookie and half brownie. Magnificent! And then there’s Butterscotch Cookie. Aspen hadn’t known that Butterscotch Cookies even exist—and was delighted to discover a wonderful chew and dramatic flares of flavor.

The cookies, Aspen learned through inquiry, are made not by the grocery store itself, but by a mysterious local entity.

Though Aspen kind of feels like he shouldn’t get a cookie too often, he gets a cookie pretty much every day. His call-in radio show, Askin’ Aspen, can be quite stressful: the callers ask challenging advice questions that he, more often than not, doesn’t exactly know how to answer. As a kind of reward for completing another show, he exits the building for a cookie.

How many people, Aspen wonders as he walks along the sidewalk, go into the grocery store for only a cookie? I’ve never seen anyone else in the checkout area with only a cookie… But there must be others like me. Because the cookies are so good!

And now Aspen is in the grocery store, looking at the cookies. On the way over he’d thought he would choose a classic Chocolate Chip Cookie—but maybe this feels more like a Butterscotch Cookie day. But… Wasn’t yesterday a Butterscotch Cookie day? But… That doesn’t have to matter. There’s no law that says you can’t have a Butterscotch Cookie if you had a Butterscotch Cookie yesterday. That would be ridiculous. People wouldn’t stand for it. But when did he last have an Iced Ginger Cookie? That’s a cookie with tremendous character—and Aspen can’t seem to remember when he last had one… A month ago, maybe? Or maybe he should… There are those peanut-buttery cookies… Should he go for a simple Peanut Butter Cookie, or for a more complex Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie?

On one hand it’s really great to have so many options; but, on the other hand…

Aspen grabs a Snickerdoodle—because, at a certain point, you must force yourself to stop thinking and actually do something. And “Snickerdoodle” is the silliest, best cookie name.

“So it’s a Snickerdoodle Thursday,” says the woman at the register.

“No cookie has a better name,” says Aspen with unusual certitude.

“You’re probably right. Snickerdoodle. Snickerdoodle. Yes. It’s very fun. I wonder how it got that name.”

And now Aspen wonders too.

Climbing Around On Rocks

The trail ambles along above the ocean. The space between the ocean and the trail is occupied by big rocks—jumbled; falling and rising; unpredictable. Natasha turns toward her companions on the trail and, pointing at a pointy rock from another age, says “Why don’t we proceed that way? Climbing around on rocks would be more exciting than this trail.”

The others say they’re fine continuing on along the trail—so Natasha steps off the trail alone.

The rocks go down and the rocks go up: there are many little cliffs: to keep moving in the right direction, climbing is required: Natasha climbs. With gentle waves in her ears.

The others turn around and look at her a few times—but she doesn’t notice, and when she takes a break and looks over, up, at the trail, the others are gone. The air is nice and cool, but she has started to sweat, and her breaths and the waves are now the same volume. She looks beyond the waves. A massive boat, barely visible, is going somewhere.

Now and then, as Natasha continues going somewhere, she’s forced to decide if she should jump from one rock to another rock, or climb down a little and go a roundabout way. A safer way.

Usually she jumps. To make this more like an adventure. The feeling in the air: I’m alive!

After deciding a certain jump isn’t worth the risk, she descends to a pocket of clear water. The pocket of clear water is a fine format for life: Natasha sees green anemones and a bright orange starfish.

And then she continues climbing around, going up and going down, at least once wondering what she and the others will do for dinner, and there’s something quite pleasing about how one cactus pops up here and another cactus pops up there and another cactus pops up over there, greenly punctuating the rocks. It’s actually amazing, how life managed to happen in this dry hot severe space. And that cactus over there even has a bright orange flower!

While moving with the instinctive focus required to avoid a fall, Natasha wonders if there are rattlesnakes around here, and wonders what here was like long ago, when this vast rocky desert was filled with water. What creatures used to swim above her head?

Though she wouldn’t admit she’s tired, her legs and arms definitely feel like they’ve been working. How many minutes have passed since she started? Twenty or a trillion? She pauses, looks at one hand, looks at the other hand; both are scraped; she puts her scraped hands on another rock and climbs.

She kind of feels like she’s in conversation with the land.

And the rare cactus flower is like a little gift. “Take a look at this!” the land seems to say.

Natasha jumps from one rock to another rock.

She’s alive—and doesn’t want to forget it.

As she brings her body up the most substantial cliff yet, her exhaustion becomes undeniable. But she remains inspired by a hope.

After God knows how long, she experiences an unsettling satisfaction as she secures a foot, as she straightens her body on top of the cliff, as she surveys the sparkling formations all around. These sparkling orange rocks and sparkling green rocks are quite different from anything she ever saw back on Earth. And, looking up, fine lines—orbiting ice and rocks and dust—curve across the lavender sky.

She places her eyes on the horizon.

What’s that odd form of life, bounding across the sparkling formations?

Feel free to contact me at evanpellervo@gmail.com.