Category — Flash Fiction

“I love you,” she said.

“I know,” he smiled at her,”I really do.”

She ran her left han through her hair, “You don’t have to worry.”

“I don’t?” He asked with the vaguest hint of a fake smile hanging in the sparkle in his eyes.

She rolled her eyes casually, and started to put away dishes from the dishwasher.

After a few clinks of glass he stopped looking at her and started putting away the condiments and wiping down the stove, “You’ve always had a thing for my brother, it’s fine, I’m not mad or anything. You don’t have to pretend like I don’t know. We all have secrets.”

“You’re nuts, I never liked him at all,” she grimaced and started dropping the silverware into the tray in the drawer.

“Bullshit,” he smirked,”I’m not blind. I see the way you look at him.”

“So you’re saying that if I appreciate a nice body I’ve ‘got a thing’? Is that it?”

“Yeah”

She didn’t say much as she put the last dish away, “That’s ridiculous.”

“Not really,” he said.

“I love you, I have no desire to run off with your brother,” she said seriously.

“I know you do. I know you don’t,” he smiled, almost genuinely. She didn’t notice the difference.

She glanced in the mirror behind the stove, she could see the decades piling onto her brow, and gray building up in her dark brown hair like soap spots from cheap dishwasher detergent.

He filled the kettle and turned on the burner pausing just long enough to enjoy the edge between the blue and orange in the flame as he placed the stainless steel over the heat.

She twisted her lips into the semblance of a smile then asked as non-confrontationally as she could, “Then why’d you bring it up?”

“Sometimes, I just get tired of pretending I’m stupid.”

Her jaw dropped,”What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Sorry. Nothing. I just wish you were slightly better at keeping your secrets from me, there are some things I don’t want to know.”

She raised an eyebrow and wondered if he truly knew what she had done.

She grabbed some cookies off the shelf and sat down at the table as he put two mugs out with teabags in them.

“We all got secrets,” he said,”and it’s ok.”

He took the deck of Bicycle cards and put them in front of her. She cut the deck, and he started to shuffle them.

“Rummy?” he asked.

“Nah, I’m in the mood for some cribbage.”

“Ok, sounds good,” he watched her reach to the shelf and grab the board.

She fiddled with the meddle slide on the back and then shook the pegs out from within, “Green?”

“Sure, that’s fine,” he said.

He carefully dealt 6 cards to each of them and laid the deck down in front of her. They each looked at their hand and put two cards in front of him before she cut the cards again. He turned the cut card over, a three of hearts. He smiled at the irony.

“I wonder what you put in the crib, hope some twos,” he winked at her.

“Hey, it’s a secret,” she deadpanned.

“Indeed it is,” he reordered his cards.

He looked at her with a straight face, “For now.”

She didn’t say anything at all.

He didn’t want to take this any further, that’s enough. He certainly didn’t want her to know the truth. It’s already hard enough without that.

“I love you,” she smiled.

“I know,” he said, “I know.”

Beyond the garbage dump, the sky was a perfect melange of orange and purple. She had seen skies like this a thousand times over the years, but this twilight was more apropos than all the rest. If it’d been appropriate, she might have smiled, but not tonight, even the least worthy deserve that much respect.

A hundred gulls, each more wretched than the one before, squawked as they battled over shards of the half-poor men’s meals. They screeched to demand their space in this cemetery of stuff that isn’t stuff anymore. They almost seemed to call her name, to call her down, “Come here, come here, so we may hate you too.”

But she did not go down. She stood and watched them cry. She watched them scream. She watched them dance by the dozen around two avocado refrigerators full of darkness and probably mold. She watched them believe the world was this small no-place on the stinky-ass-side of town.

She was taken by the silhouette of a broken arm chair at the top of the largest putrescent pile against the rancid intersection between beautiful colors. It was not lost. There is no loss here. There is the delightful hope that forgetfulness will come quickly. There is the disgusting stench of rotting things best left to the earth. There are the billion billion stars, most too faint to perceive, that hang above and mock this joyful place where the corporeal bits of a small universe have been readied for burial. But there is no loss.

As the silence wafted up from the piles of people’s lives disposed and destroyed, the gulls became more quiet. Then, as the silence grew, she noticed one star. It seemed, it was laughing on the arm of the arm chair, but only for a few moments, as it rose with the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy from the slender line of horizon dividing today from tomorrow.

Perhaps, she thought, the moon was too ashamed, as yet, to join the fracas. It almost seemed, she, being half-full, was waiting for the vermin to pick the bones of all the refuse. Coon by coon, skunk by skunk, coyote by coyote, they slinked in as the hues cooled past the purples and the mauves to the navy blues and blacks.

She did not make a sound. She stood and watched this moment, this freedom, this odious air clinging to the bottom of the sky, and she knew, this had been her.

Like the twilight, she was who she had been. It seemed to her that the rise and fall of each mound was as a wave, rolling off to nowhere. The fading of light, and her thoughts suggested to her that perhaps it was time to set that person she had been upon this heap, upon that chair, beneath that nasty star, and walk away.

Freedom only comes when the garbage is gone, this much she knew too well.

Now that the house was empty of it, the barrels empty of it, the rubbish bins empty of it, the cellar, the attic, the yard – all empty of it – she was free.

But she would not smile yet, even garbage deserves proper burial first.

The heron on my roof seemed preoccupied
with the quick shimmy of squirrels up to the roof
to tan and discuss new age philosophies in all their nakedness

The heron casts a little squint, possibly it was sympathetic,
maybe he wanted to pull up a chair and tell the squirrels
about his time in Baton Rouge. “I’m as American as the next heron,” he’d say, “but that doesn’t mean I have to agree
with every stupid thing we do.”

He squints again as he starts to show off
the frames of his great uncle Merv, his Grand-Pepe
and the overly Catholic display of his great great grandmother Anna Banana Von Blue.

Then he’d slip on his snakeskin moccasins, jump
to the middle of the room, and bounce around as he told
the story of the first time one his kin encountered a bulldozer
in the pre-purple loose strife swamps.

My childhood was the art of of a soul annealed in the heat of a father’s cold disdain inside a house surrounded by forsythia and a rotting picket fence. I only tell you this so that you can understand why crabcake make me queasy.

My little brother stood up in his highchair, his mouth frothing with the insanity of his toddlerage.

“Pa, why can’t ya get the little louse to stop, I’m tryin’ to eat my crab cakes. Gawd!” I said.

He glanced at me, and then at the mercury that read something over 90 degrees. He sighed, then I felt the walllop of his rough hand slam against the side of my head.

Hours, days, months working with chisels and sander sand others implements of construction had left him strong. He had smoothed and bevelled and built a multitude of beautiful things for anyone but us. Here, he only put together pain and set up hurt.

At work he was cool and sturdy – a hammer, a screw driver, a tool to make something from lots of bits of almost nothing. At home, he was icepick.

After dinner, almost every night, I dreamt of slamming his head into stone walls. Of dressing as a night and wielding a morningstar. It’s impossible to love a cold bastard breeze, particularly when you know somewhere out there is a zephyr, warming lush. Singing summer into some maybe less deserving family.

“Get to bed, you little prick,” he said into my still-ringing ears.

I don’t remember much of anything else really. Just a doodle of a cat on a napkin. I think he did it. I’m not sure. It was beautiful. Everything else drifted away into the night. It was me in a quixotic search for the connection between his cruelty and this cat.

“G’night Pa,” I said over my screaming brother.

Ma nudged him, “G’night kiddo,” he let out a long sad breath.

I went and brushed my teeth with the thin excuse for paste – store brand Colgate or something like that.

I could hear my mother and father arguing about money, she called him god damned niggardly and a fucking miser. and then I heard his hand across her face.

I started down the stairs, I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn’t thinking. My head was still fuzzy from the impact. I don’t know. I just started down the first step and paused, when the riposte of her words stopped.

He was crying.

It was a sound like drill in a dentist’s office going through me, I wanted to scream. I wanted to run.

Pa got up from the table, walked to the sink and started to wash his face.

My little brother was slathering food all over himself, and no one seemed to notice.

“Jesus, Irene,” and spat out, at my mother like she was a spitoon, “I love that kid, but he don’t know respect. He dont’ appreciate a damned thing.”

“Jesus, Irene,” like a record he skipped, “I love that kid.”

I slipped back up the stair toward my room to fortify myself against another bleak tomorrow.

Then I laid on my bed as the last rays of sun came rosy through my window. I listened to a mosquito buzz around my head until my mother screamed one last time before the lights went out.

Did you ever have that dream about publishers? You know the one where you’ve called them together in your posh New York City office to discuss the millions of dollars they want to give you to aggregate your insanity into a multi-book deal.

“No, nonono. Look, I realize Penguin has been dying to give me donkey-loads of cash in the form of gold coins just back from their secret storage facility somewhere under the alps, but you have to understand, I hate penguins. They smell bad and they have those nasty pointy beaks that scream out to the fact they’re going to try to peck my eyes out. It just won’t work, I’m sorry”

“Look, I realize Harper Collins is somewhat reputable as publishers go, but, I’m sorry, if you can’t pay me in some combination of Rolex watches and platinum doohickeys, I feel like you’re not really serious. Also, I think I need references.”

“Real Estate? Well, Ok, how much? The state of Montana? Hmmm.. can you throw in the odd little strip of Idaho that makes no actual sense squishing there between Washington and Montana? No? Why are we bothering? You people make me sick.”

This is the story of the only real pleasure that exists. It is the truest lie I can share about Meg. Don’t get all upset. I know, You think you hate lies, but you’re lying to yourself.

The best lies are the ones that trickle out slowly, all covered in truey litte bits. They look delicious, they’re a bit salty, a bit sweet, a bit scary to look at if you know, but they’re perfect in their own way.

So, I’ll tell my story like that. Slowly, and let the all that nasty truth back up behind a dam full of words, until a gooey delicious believable lie can form.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve already told you, I’m lying. You won’t believe me. So, I’ll let you figure out what’s true and what’s not. The truth is usually so crazy no one would believe it anyways.

She was out in the woods, I think Muir, maybe, it’s hard to tell, I can’t see so well anymore. And the trees there we so fucking big. So big.

She was swinging a whisky bottle around her left hand, like some trampy bartender in a 90s movie. I guess she’s better than them, she at least used an empty one. No point in wasting some drunken point she might find inside.

“Meg, I didn’t drive all the way here from hell-cross country to watch you whittle away some brain cells, so tell me what’s going on?”

She laughed. She laughed and put down the empty bottle on a picnic table. Sat there, started to sculpt her nails.

“Stephan, you know, I’ve been married a long time. He’s a good guy. I think it might last a bit longer,” she got out some solvent and knocked the cap on the table to loosen it.

“Ok? Um… great?”

“Aww, dammit,” she shook her hand when the remover got into a hangnail and stung her a bit. “I’m not a vain woman you know. I’m not. But sometimes, I just like to feel beautiful. To feel.. sexy. Wanted. Do you understand?”

I nodded, clipped a cigar and started to chew it. No point in smoking it really.

“You know Meg, a few years back, I was in Arizona, driving along some godforsaken noplace road full of dust and that idea of imminent death. I saw this cactus springing out of the desolation. It was huge and alive, and just there in front of me. It was beautiful.”

Meg raised her eyebrow, “So…. how is this related?”

I watched her sharpen her little pink claws.

“It’s all bound up in the truth of things, you know? Beauty. It’s about where you are and what your’e doing and who you’re with.. and who you are. I think maybe who you are .. that’s the hardest part of the whole fucking thing.”

“Darling, I do love you,” she mouthed the words, but didn’t say them.

I forgave her instantly, “It’s ok. I love you too.”

“There’s no shame in doubt you know, just in a bad passport phone really. That’s what shame is.”

We didn’t say much more. We just walked back to the parking lot. She stashed her lovely little ass back into her tiny little put-put car and drove off. She never looked back. She just looked forward to her old man, and the things that love gives you when your body starts to break beneath the weight of years.

I stood there basking in my own ugliness. Understanding that I’m just a man. I’m just flesh.

I folded myself back behind the wheel, let out a long slow yawn and tried not to think of the 3,219 miles I had to drive to get home.

I tried not to think of the 3,219 reasons I’ll never be loved like that again.

I was crying before I could even hit the gas.

If by harlot you mean a bourbon swigging Thai ladyboy just in to the big city after years tending his father’s soybean crop, then yes, yes, she is a harlot.

But you don’t mean that, do you? You don’t mean much at all. You’re just watching. You are just sitting there eating your squid, watching a bus drive past with a giant ad for some sumo wrestler.

Our ladyboy friend is standing nearly-dressed in something akin to spandex. She looks at the sky and knows It’s about to rain. It’s about to rain, and you watch her for another second, hoping something will slip and prove your pointless point. She’s gone after a garbage truck drives by. You don’t see where she went.

Now you see a fat girl say, “toodles” to her mule-faced anyone as you push a sprig of parsley around your plate. He is dressed in filthy clothes and has just enough teeth to give the effect of silent braying.

She’s so fucking fat. He’s going to go on a bender, you can almost smell the alcohol and crack on his breath. You can see the glint in his eye. He will, steal cash from the tin over his mother’s fridge. He’ll be so high that maple syrup will be good enough for a meal.

The fat girl has gotten on a bus. He smiles as it pulls away.

You finish the last of your food and wonder if it is time for you to step out from the audience, and up to the platform. Instead you order another bourbon, perhaps it can lance, the soul-wound, and save you?

You slam it down, and feel the joy as it subtracts enough braincells to make the world a considerable deal less sticky. Now you are ready for the valley of the shadow of dish. The after-dinner nonsense of a man walking home. Becoming part of a world he only watches.

It is a thousand steps from the hole in the wall to the 8th floor of the building where he feigns a life. He can not think through the bourbon, so he feels pretty good. Pretty good.

She lives across the street.

Yes, she is a harlot. Yes, she hates you. Yes, you will find your binoculars and agonize as she yelps in the nearness of orgasmic bliss, while you masturbate in dark room full of molk and nothing more.

The fat girl walks by, looks up, and sees you with your binoculars. For a moment, she hates you too.

She shakes her head, and walks away, sad for you. Wiggling and jiggling and knowing you watch because that is your world.

The harlot lets out her secret, and another customer is happier than he ever imagined.

The ground approaches.

The bourbon is wearing off.

Adrenaline is like that.

A few minutes later a thin young cop with a crooked badge asks everyone he can find. Why?