Literary Crumbs: Poems & Short Stories to Savor by D. Ryan Lafferty

By D. Ryan Lafferty

It slipped out so easily the first time, he nearly laughed out loud.  David had surprised himself.  For a mere fraction of a second, his mind lurched forward to correct the misstatement out of guilt, like one would reach to catch a falling glass knocked over the precarious edge of a table. He was going to grab the mistake and fix it in an instant, but another thought entered his mind. It gave him pause. Hesitation.  “Let it go…,” he whispered inside his brain… “…why not?” as he nearly grinned. His shifting little eyes twinkled as this first falsehood slipped between the ears of his playground friends so easily and so wholly unnoticed. The lack of any response startled him. There was no flash of lighting, no tremors of the ground, the mystical hand of the almighty remained surprisingly disengaged, and most importantly, was nowhere to be seen. He decided he’d have to try this again for sure. 

That day, of course, was years ago and the lying had become an artform by now. Fully grown, he was a virtuoso of deception, the deceiver extraordinaire. The world, his canvas, more specifically, his gullible coworkers, his foolish friends, lovers, family, and most of all his boss. Boy, did he delight in feeding him lines of pure nonsense. Fabricated tales of gold, woven out of whole cloth. 

Davey Biggs was a liar. He wouldn’t know the truth if it showed up in a dayglo suit juggling napalm on a motorized unicycle and slapped him across the face.  Not that he ever had any use for  it anyhow.  Maybe it was his overactive imagination?  Maybe it was just good old fashioned revenge for the rough childhood he’d had; moving from home to home in the system.  

He could recall that the one social worker who he had liked, the one that would sit with him on those afternoon weekday visits and play Uno with him at the kitchen table, had told young Davey long ago that it was, how did he put it, a self-protective psychological inversion. Or something like that. He couldn’t really remember for sure.  At least that was what he told himself now that it had become a lifestyle, but deep down, he knew. He had always known, from  that hint of guilt, that twinge of resentment for not just speaking the truth. It would burn there at the back of his neck at the very top of the spine. The weight of it all imperceptibly increasing little by little with each passing day. Over time, that sinking feeling in his gut churned into ulcers that scorched his throat and always  made him feel somehow under the weather.

  The worst part of all this was keeping it straight. Flipping through the afternoon television programs, he’d so often heard his favorite, the venerable and wise Judge Judy, shouting from high atop her courtroom bench, “If you tell the truth, you don’t need to have a good memory. Understand?!” and boy was she right. He always felt like she was looking at the camera and talking directly to him. She reminded him of someone so familiar, but it hurt too much to put a name to that face. His tangled web always needed tending. Keeping track of all the stories he told, to whom he had told them, and when, just about made Dave neurotic; obsessive to the point of sickness, but this was the life he chose.

One morning, while searching his aging face in the bathroom mirror, getting ready for another day of conning the world, he noticed the deep creases from his sour frown, the crows feet from wincing so often in pain, and the worry lines carved across his forehead.  Davey looked his reflection straight in the eye and uttered the worst lie yet. “This is fine.” But, he knew it wasn’t true.

Dr. D. Ryan Lafferty is a local Bordentown poet, writer, and the author-illustrator of children’s books. To see more of his work, visit DartanionPress.com