‘We need something to cheer us up.’ Said, Toast. ‘Other books have a festival. Why can’t we?’ The others began talk excitedly. In agitation, cover flaps opened and shut and dust rose. With a creak, the shelf slowly subsided.
Friday Flash Fiction |
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‘Move over,’ said a dusty copy of Ivanhoe to the new member on the lost books shelf. ‘Sorry,’ muttered the brightly coloured Trainspotting. Further along the shelf came a fluting voice, ‘For goodness sake. Not another modern.’ ‘No need to be snobbish Pride and Prejudice.’ said Ivanhoe. The books on the shelf settled down grumpily. They had been there too long.
‘We need something to cheer us up.’ Said, Toast. ‘Other books have a festival. Why can’t we?’ The others began talk excitedly. In agitation, cover flaps opened and shut and dust rose. With a creak, the shelf slowly subsided. Weathered faces lined with pain as the Covid-19 pandemic stormed on. Losing Sadie was hard. She was the friend who stayed when I was feeling down. Who fiercely adored the real me with every scar, celebrating my flaws without judgment.
Best friends, we window-shopped around the mall and walked the park trails birdwatching. She turned heads wherever she went with those long eyelashes above her soulful brown eyes. And her silky-soft goldish brown hair. Sometimes, I still hear Sadie’s squeaky cute bark as she lunged at my silly black cat, Bruce, looking down on us like he owned the place. Paul looked out his front window and began to observe. From his chair, he could see his neighbor Jeff across the street unloading groceries from his car. He noticed Jeff pick up a large watermelon and carry it into his house. Paul looked down at his laptop computer. Opened up to the local grocer’s website, he typed in watermelon and added it to his digital cart. Jeff walked back to his car and grabbed a case of seltzer water and took it inside. Paul typed in seltzer water and selected the identical packaging Jeff had. Paul was always a copycat.
In an urgent communiqué, nation’s leading psychiatrists announced the identification of a novel mental disorder, associated with ongoing pandemic. They coined the term “Orange Man Anxiety”. There were hints of its existence during current strongman’s ascendancy to power.
In one end of spectrum, the sufferers have been pacing restlessly with blank stare, while muttering “What did we do wrong/amoral to deserve this?” In other end, they are agitated, while losing tempers and cursing words of obscenity (known and invented ones). Unfortunately, any additional research stopped due to lack of funding in “Fake Science”, as coined by the Orange Man himself. She greets me with homemade maple blueberry scones and freshly brewed coffee. It’s been over a year since I made the four-hour drive to the coast, much too long between visits, yet I’m able to talk to her about things I don’t discuss with anyone else. For the next three days, each meal is a culinary delight. We take long walks multiple times a day. I am more relaxed than I have been in months. Back home, I look out the window to watch the sunset and share a tin of tuna with my cat. Life has returned to normal.
Helicopter overhead again. Fourth time today. I expand, stretching to look out and up. She contracts, heels on chair, hugging knees to hunched shoulders, shrinking, only her eyes larger.
Conversation is impossible, but it was without the roar. The words have not changed in this long lockdown season, so we have ceased speaking them. And so we sit in silence until the cacophony fades. She unhunches herself then, feet return to floor, and we, unspoken, eyes unmet, return to what we now pretend is normal. And so we stay, until the inevitable awful return of the noise, and the silence. The queue outside Carver’s General Store and Sub-post Office shuffled forwards as it started to rain. Umbrellas appeared like puffballs.
The doorman counted one customer out, one in. The line moved two metres closer to the shop. A poster on the door asked patrons to please wear a face covering. “Nearly forgot.” The man at the front pulled a black face mask from his pocket, adjusted the elastic to accommodate his dark glasses, and re-positioned his baseball cap. “This is the first time I’ve been welcome in a post office whilst wearing a mask,” he tells the woman behind him. It awoke surrounded by darkness, somewhere deep underground. It sniffed the air and caught the scents of life drifting on tendrils down through the earth. The predominant smell was animals. Mammals, reptiles, birds, and human beings followed sharply by the fresh scent of trees and the sickly cloying smell of flowers.
Underneath all of these was an overwhelming stench of decay. Chemicals, waste, plastic, and metal. Animal, mineral, and vegetable. It all mingled to make the unmistakable stink of a world rotting. In the darkness, a grin spread across the creature’s face. “Now is the time I rise,” it growled. When she started forgetting our names and repeating stories from when she was a child, our parents’ house became a fortress against words. Words like “dementia,” “Alzheimer’s,” and “madness.” It was as if the words themselves had somehow caused the disease and were no longer allowed inside. Our enforced silence became the hoped-for cure. No matter that it was more about shielding his ears than hers, about protecting him from the poison of fear. After she died, the banned words slowly returned, but they never lost their new meanings, never shed the weight they carried when they had entered uninvited.
March, 2029
Tim couldn’t believe the book! The book was about Jeff, a ten year old like Tim. Jeff sat by his friends at school, not six feet away! He rode home in a packed bus! He went to school every day! There was no online school! He never wore a face mask! There were no lockdowns! A big book festival took place in a hotel, not online! It was all unbelievable! “That book shows life before COVID-19,” Tim's dad said. “It was a different world. A world you never knew. A world,” he sighed, “I’ll never see again.” Victoria pressed the button to ride the elevator to the ground floor from her office. She’d had a long week, and she wanted nothing more than to go home and relax.
However, the elevator walls suddenly lit up in bright colors and loud disco music started playing. She pounded the doors, never having experienced such a thing. When she finally reached the ground floor, the doors opened and she saw a cascade of tie-dyed lights with the ground moving around. Her jaw dropped. “That's the last time I sneak extra dark chocolate into my office,” she thought. “I'm going crazy.” SHORTLISTED, EDINBURGH FESTIVAL COMPETITION, 2020 With tearful eyes, Asako watches the flames burst through broken panes, lost as to why the rioters would cast their destructive anger upon her tiny Japanese pastry shop. Lost as to how any of this relates to BLM, the real message that needs to be delivered.
Lost as to what she’ll do now. She turns away, only then remembering how her great-grandparents lost everything as they were herded to the internment camp. How lost her grandfather seemed returning from the Vietnam War, only to be spat upon. They rose from their ashes. So will she. But somewhere far from Seattle. When I heard that word, my heart sank. What was left for us? Time - a finite amount of time.
Once discharged from the hospital, you were placed in home hospice care. There weren't months to be had, only weeks, which rapidly became days. We laughed over the good times, ignored our regrets, and dearly cherished every hug and kiss we could share. And in the mist of living I knew you bravely held on until I insisted that you leave. For once you didn't argue. But before you departed, you gave me the best gift ever - your endless love. A long shadow cast from the doorway. Rosa, clutching a bloodied rock, turned.
A pair of eyes stared at her white blood-splattered blouse, the rock she held, then the bludgeoned victim on the patio. Recognising the framed silhouette, Rosa swore under her breath. “Daniel. What are you doing here?” “Witnessing a murder!” Daniel screamed. “Oh Daniel, I had no choice!” “Murderer!” Rosa got to her feet, rock still in hand. “Put the rock down!” “Finley was very ill, Daniel. I’m sorry.” Daniel raced into Rosa’s arms, sobbing hard. In her embrace he mumbled, “Can I get a new goldfish, mum?” Behind me stands an assembly of old friends from books revisited. Their memory beckons me back to safety.
I turn aside; I am older, braver. I watch words pass like a river in front of me, enticing in their difference. I wade in. Pages from Fantasy books open and I am captivated. My excitement mounts; I plunge into Horror, come up smiling and dive into Romance. I am drowning, overwhelmed by cloying words and emotions. With relief I grasp a beloved book categorized as Romance. A narrow escape, but Jane Austen has allowed no genre to defeat me. Lottie totters down the street in six inch spikes, red sequinned dress barely covering her modesty—a tasty treat for two rheumy-eyed old men on a park bench.
A coiled knot of bile rises as the Cock and Bull looms. She prays for the world to end. Last Friday she’d accepted her co-workers’ wager after downing three Bacardi and cokes instead of her usual two shandies—this Friday it’s payback time. She can do this…she’s in the church choir. Lottie grabs the microphone. Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red belts out into the beery room. Karaoke—should’ve stayed in Japan. Eight years ago, she took a gun to her lover’s Wall Street office. His boss saw her bruised face and paid her to go away quietly. She invested the money.
Six years ago, she joined the National Guard and aced the marksmanship training. Three years ago, she had plastic surgery and changed her identity. Two years ago, she moved to D.C. These days, she frequents “Off the Record,” the bar popular with politicians and their operatives. Men think she’s another vacuous groupie — and after too many drinks start boasting. She just smiles and listens. November is approaching. She’ll be ready. He rarely listened to the end of my sentences. He seldom listened.
He showed little interest in my new passion for wild mushrooms. I went on a foraging course, downloaded apps, learned to discern porcini from its toxic neighbours. He tasted the fruits of my labours, with more red wine than gratitude. Suspicious of my early morning excursions, he followed me. ‘Can we eat these raw?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we can eat anything raw.’ He ate the mushroom before my sentence was complete. ‘We can eat anything raw; but you will eat the death cap just this once.’ ‘What are the rules?’ I asked. The winged gentleman handed me a thick tome.
‘No rules, only advice. Choose wisely.’ I began with innocence, grew fast. Squandered my youth. I heard the sound of ripping pages. Joined a bad crowd. Became the bad crowd. That ripping sound again. Partied hard. Drank too much. Rip. Rip. Wasted opportunities. Rip. Rip. Settled down. A little. Rip. Blew it. Rip. Rip. Started again. Fresh resolve. Digressed. Rip. Make amends? Maybe later. Rip. Rip. ‘Only weeks,’ said the doctor. ‘I need time!’ Rip. Rip. Empty volume. R.I.P. I remember well those fun times we had while sitting on the beach watching the waves as they rolled in smothering the sand before us. No sooner were they touching our feet than they teasingly retreated from where they had come, waiting for them to return we looked up squinting our eyes as the dusks gleaming rays blindingly showered down upon us, it's time now to end this mischievous game, the day is drawing to a close.
They are now gone, extinguished like a flame from a fire, smothered by the cold dark abyss of time. I remember it well. She finds them at low tide during the morning. Sometimes she digs in the sand to get them. Ever since she was a little girl, she searched for the perfect sand dollar but has yet to find one. They are either chipped or not completely round.
“I keep looking,” she says, “but, to me, they are all special.” “Yes, “I say to my daughter. “Each sea urchin has the secret of nature inside.” I watch her walk along the shoreline, often bending to pick one from the sand. She cradles each lovingly in her hands like she’s holding a dove. The flowers you brought that Friday have wilted.
The Friday when you kissed the inside of my knee and said you’d always love me. The Friday when we managed to fit in a dvd as well as a take-away. The Friday when you left your favourite tie behind on the ottoman and somehow also a single sock. I’d laughed when I found it the following morning. Washed it carefully and left it folded on the dresser. Sent you a text featuring a sock emoji. And you replied with just a broken heart. You didn’t even know I’m allergic to roses. At last they left the restless clay of Earth and took to the heavens. Piercing the void their bright, blue pulse was made all the more brilliant by the blackness that it cleaved asunder.
Leaving time and space and meaning in their wake, the Captain lay back in her chair, unanchored from the real. She pondered the mathematical beauty that brought her here, to the unfathomable distance of the divine. Blinking against the dark she smiled, consumed by the knowledge that whatever purpose the universe had, if indeed it did have one, it was not, could not be, about her. The king and his subjects believed in omens. His fall in the bathroom, though causing no more damage than a bump on the head, was considered a portent of nasty days ahead.
The gardener was the first person the king had seen that morning. There was only one punishment for such ominous persons: death. “Any last wish?” he was asked as the executioner got ready. “A humble submission, your majesty. You were the first person I saw this morning. And I’m losing my life.” The king pondered for a while and then burst out laughing. “Let him go,” he ordered. “Time sure flies. Tomorrow is already his Big Truthful Day.”
“I’m glad we won’t have to lie to him anymore.” “It wasn’t really lying – rather hiding the truth.” “What shall we tell him first? About Santa or the Easter Bunny?” “Wouldn’t you think he already knows this stuff? Probably a few of his classmates must have told.” “Then we’ll tell him we’re not his real parents and that he’s hereditary predestined to be offered to the gods.” Both giggle inaudible. “Sssst… wait… did you hear that?” “No. You are imagining things.” “Perhaps. Are you sure you closed his bedroom door?” |
"Classic"
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