Short Story Selections

By Asa Montreaux  I guess there’s one thing important, and if anybody remembered something from my childhood I 'd probably want it be this. My Dad was the sweetest man anyone ever saw. He never got angry once my entire childhood. I suppose I tell you now, one day it was time for me to go back to the future. But I always popped in after the gang they killed me. They sank two planes to kill me. But it wasn’t seriously even in that time. I was probably just ai. And they not even knew. Most people think they hallucinated me. But I was there. Reality is only what we see. And I was always just as sweet. And he was content doing anything. He would read for hours, he said he always needed to read something he hadn’t wrote. He read the new so obsessively, because he said he could hardly fiction he’d read when he went back to the past. And that was a joke. So just because he had the time, he became this man that was knowledgeable about the world as it was. At the time he was growing up, I gu...

By Asa Montreaux  We didn’t hear from the gang for a few days, just your their very eager to get to know you leader. He was not so friendly. As we carried out our day, halfway through the gangster man stood out there, with his arms crossed, listening to everything. Occasionally commenting on things, saying why had you said that, or why had you done that, one of the first times we’d all been acutely aware of someone trying to map our behaviors through walls, from outside. After a while, and each and every day, you’d hear the same threats. You’re dead! He’d say.  And he wasn’t that anyone that went away. My father would say, hey what are you doing out there, would you go away? And he wouldn’t respond, as if he hadn’t heard you at all. Then he’d repeat the question, in the same way. And then the man would say, Nah! I stay here. I need kids. I need Andrew. The most!  There were not many reasons he could give for this, not many good reason. But look, it was this kid with telek...

By Asa Montreaux  My mom was a somewhat famous model. A very pretty woman. So when we landed, and strolled through the terminal to baggage. We actually had one or two bags, a few reporters, or whoever, had taken her pictures, our pictures, as we walked. Well, way to stay under the radar I guess. I think both my parent’s knew, and I knew, that it would only be a short time before the gang figured out where we were. We got in a cab, and my Dad gave the driver the address, of the house. And he began driving us there. Halfway through the drive, my Dad., in a better mood, said. I haven’t even a clue where we’re going.  When we arrived, he said that wasn’t so far. The cabbie said why had you said that, perfectly rude. My Dad said you aren’t used to driving. The cabbie seemed confuse, so he added, we’re from LA. Oh, okay, the cabbie said. It was weird because he still hadn’t got it. LA is a big city. So you have to drive a lot more to get anywhere. And there’s so much traffic, too. T...

By Asa Montreaux  I suppose it was in 2005 that I was born into this world. My conception probably happened in January, maybe December. But anyways, I was born at the end of November. November 29. In the middle of then night. Though my mom will always say it was November 30, just make the gestation period a little longer. I guess that was full of love. She does just sidestep my point about not being born right at 12 am, and being something of an evil child. It was definitely not exactly 12, it was almost exactly 11 pm. But we always skip over it. My parents met on the lawns of Harvard. My dad was in medical school, and my mom was still an undergrad. My dad was almost finished his medical degree, and was going to specialize in psychiatry after, and my mom was studying psychology. They were married, and they’d been together since her second year. She had graduated by the time I was born.  When I was born, I was a healthy, normal size, maybe a little on the lighter side but still...

By Asa Montreaux  That night of course he tried to kill me the entire time. There was a helicopters overhead, people talking about it on the news. And police, screaming at him come out with your hands up. Leave Andrew alone. You might be retarded, they told him. Then it was another six hours. No, he didn’t have to leave because was gonna run and die. No, it was gonna work, this is mind control. I’m gonna make him so sad. He’s gonna think I work.  Then he sat there on the couch, asking when I’d fallen asleep so he could try to get in there, and kill me more easily. Sometimes he’d jack off. For a while he was watching porn. He rewatched the entire Canucks game from that night with his arm on the edge of the sofa and one foot on the coffee table. He said Andrew I’m positive you have to do it. A little later, This is the way to survive. And a little later, do this and maybe I won’t ask for a million dollars. Then he flicked the channel with the remote. I probably gonna kill yea, a...

By Asa Montreaux  The saga continued on, and than returned back to the house a few days later. He played contrite, but I knew that was all it was. He would return to evil ways. He was quite throughout the afternoon, though you could hear quiet though menacing thoughts that he spoke aloud to himself, as he walked around the circles, clearly having nothing to do. By dinner, you could see something was still wrong. He ate sourly. All but refusing to talk to his wife. He just ate his food and muttered angrily to himself. A few times shouting at himself. Almost half the time, it was about how I needed go on a run so I’d die. At one point he screamed out at his plate Andrew go on a run now. And then he grabbed his steak and held in the air. He was about to put the whole thing in his mouth, but the neighbors stopped him. They shouted, hey, that’s how you choked. You almost died. Well okay, he said. Then he put it down slowly. And then said, and I almost had him. Then he stabbed it hard wi...

By Asa Montreaux  When he came back, he was escorted by police to the door. They came in the back, down the patio. And then he burst in, and soon as got in the door. He ran forward, and jumped sort of, both feet landing on the ground, in a wide stance, like he’s back, and he’s going to be just as much of a menace. And as the police left, clearly displeased with him, they said, “You’re a menace.’ And he said, ‘I’m going to be even more of a menace.’ And they walked off, a little struck by what he said, though they did walk off. And as soon as they were out of the alley way, he bolted down the stairs, and came right for me. He tried to choke me with my bare hands. He couldn’t quite overpower me, though he was completely out of his mind, and trying as hard as possible to do that. At one point at let him choke me a bit, to prove his guilt, and he completely had, I stopped him after a few seconds, I counted 1, 2, 3, but then I pulled him off. And when I woke up in the morning, my throat...

By Asa Montreaux  Night after night the man was trying to convince me to do this. Trying to play with my head. Months in advance. In January he started spending the whole night walking around in circles trying to influence my dream. He shout ‘heart attack’, or ‘stop’, then he’d go ‘run, run’ and shake his hands around like the boogey man. Sometimes he’d say, hey Andrew, you awake? And if I answered, yes. Then he’d say. Die that night, the attack got weirder and weirder. He’d run into my room, and grab me and say die that night, or I’ll fucking kill you. He’d shake me. A few night, well, several nights, he tried to slit my wrists. To make me hate myself, he’d sat sometimes, like he didn’t remember the last time. Sometimes I even woke up with a knick on my wrists. I wouldn’t explain what happen. I probably even implied I cut myself. I had not. It was Jamie who was struggling with me, trying to overpower me, and slit my wrists very deeply. Other nights he rushed at me with a gun. He l...

By Asa Montreaux  I always wanted my life to work out as best as it possibly could, and I still want that. I wanted everything to be absolutely perfect, and I still do want that. Though sometimes it seems our life comes down to a few moments. Where everything hinges on a moment, and the success or failure of your life, or at least the next few years hinges on a decision. A moment where you have a choice to make. Where you have freedom, and responsibility for your actions. One day my life seemed to come down to one moment, and one choice. Where I both had to save myself, and take control of my future. When I was a little boy I had been to had very mild congenital heart disease. The doctors have told me that we all little small holes in our hearts, and they never go away. Children have these and they are much bigger in this early part of my life. Eventually they start going away. Just a few of my holes were a little bigger than was considered normal.  I’m not going to go into wh...

By Asa Montreaux  The man in the tall tower Above the hill The house on the haunted hill Banging a xylophone: a clothes hanger A mallet ‘Sir, what are you doing.’ Before: Crash, bang, bang. No music. Shaking your heart Awakening from the dream Falling back to it It was nothing but the shock of it feeling Real. Was he? All these places at one time. But One after the other. I am here. In their words. In our words, past Present and near future. I don’t know my limitations, But I know my soul’s yearnings, And its aches and its disappointments There were some. Some people let us down.

By Asa Montreaux  After that, there was this gap, when actors don’t have much to do. I didn’t mince words, and we re-filmed nearly the whole movie after that, the Amazing Spider-man, I mean. I think maybe what I worked on the most was developing a personality that fit onto the screen. I wasn’t a writer, though I was. I could develop the part, and I suppose I worried all the time about how to speak the part as perfectly as I could. Maybe I was impressionable, and weirdly enough, I was still influenced by Spider-man. I became a geek. I wanted to speak every line perfect, and be able to come with something on the spot, in a way, so everything was natural. My emotional life seemed to be something that I had to harness, to be able to compose myself and then be Peter. Or whoever. It was almost silly thinking writing, all the literature and philosophy I read, would feed into my acting. But it did, beautifully. And as for my interviews, and carrying out a life in the microscope, it worked ...

By Asa Montreaux  At the time I’d just been finishing up with Harvard. It was strange to say I was getting a degree while I was becoming famous, but well, I was. It was to me about people not being aware that I was someone finishing a university degree, and not just in acting. And from maybe he best school. It occurs me to that Stanford, or Oxford, are better. But maybe that’s now. Maybe back then Harvard was considered to be an even better school. Maybe you shouldn’t believe these rankings online. I was finishing very early in life, and I had completed the degree very quickly. I don’t need to tell you how Jamie had disagreed and was already pretending I had not achieved this accomplishment. So I would, now, and when it happened that I earned my degree he would fervently pretend it didn’t happen. He’d only pick up his tempo, make more and more accusations. I guess this is the part where I say I didn’t just have a stage name but really it was the reverse, and I had a whole life that...

By Asa Montreaux  Over the couple days I couldn’t take my mind off waiting to find out would happen when I talked with Calum, but I still stayed focus on helping my mother. There was no improvement. Though it was only two days. I’m sure my distraction had little to do with. I don’t think she knew what I was trying to do or even what was going on, but she was definitely aware that while she was upstairs sometimes, I was silently pensive, thinking about something. So no one asked me about my secret meeting and I was feeling it was all quite, well, secret, indeed. As my pensiveness became more secret, as I noticed here interest in what I was up to, the veil of subterfuge was complete. We would we two meet, and discuss, discuss, and open up a can of worms. Finally, at nearly 2:30 pm, I received the phone call from Calum. It rang, and then it rang one more time and I realized I had to pick it up. It was actually a phone call. I answered as quickly as I could. There wasn’t even a third r...