Tag Archives: flash fiction

The Maudlin Sisters

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Maggie shivered in her dead mother’s nightgown, as the wind hurled branches at the roof, and dust tornadoes formed here and there on the attic floor. She stared into the locket, squinting at the Maudlin sisters- their smug faces and thin lips; the dumb noses which sat upon their faces like blind slugs.

The Maudlin girls… would have been 86 this year.
Had Maggie’s mother not murdered and buried them here.

Maggie closed the locket and went behind the house with a shovel. The Maudlin sisters shrieked from inside, crying for justice.

The ground below Maggie’s feet started to rumble.

 

-originally publ. on 100wordstory.org

Real Talk

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These are real, real emotions, man, and we are on our way downtown. Downtown with our fingers on a lipstick cap inside our jean pocket to suggest a knife. Our hood, our hat is pulled low. We got this worm-lipped grimace on our face. We glide past the bus stop and see him with black, glittering eyes. Waiting at the stop, in khakis and a black raincoat and dark glasses, and he is just asking for it. Something like a fuse sparks in our head. He is pathetic. We are furious- not at him and we know it, but we can taste our own fury sitting like blood in our mouth. Our sweat is murmuring and our hand is a sweet fist- one to pump and kiss the sky. We wonder what it would be like to crush his skull under our blind boot, because our eyes have moved to swallow something small and pebbly from the part of our brain which recalls childhood. And the drama of the everyday never shakes down like this on the sidewalk- not without us slamming into it, not until we make it. And he never even saw us coming. No, he was thinking about divorce as a way out and how his whole life has been a lie and there was no way he could have seen us coming after that. No way, not from miles away.

A Lifetime of Milk

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Carl stood under the umbrella, looking out across the downtown square. In coveralls reeking of machine oils and sweat, made worse by the rain. On the farm, Carl remembered, nothing was ever made worse by rain.

The old man’s farm. Paved over. A lifetime of milk and red earth-tinged memories. Sprouting tall buildings now, where sweet corn and green pastures once flowered. Where an old cow giving birth kicked the daylights out of his five-year old head. He got to name that one, ol’ Milk Dud, on account of how much his head bled.

And now he was the old man. He couldn’t have told you how it happened, but it did, and the city came up all around them. Lost the farm, hired on at the factory. At least he and Barb had the kids.

A tiny spasm wracked his hand and the umbrella slid out. Carl winced. The arthritis was flaring up, more and more these days. He collapsed to his knees. Why the heck did he come back here? And in his coveralls! He stuck out like a sore thumb. And in fact his thumbs were sore, and the truth was that being here made him feel there wasn’t a thing left worth livin’ for.

-originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

Old Heart

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Cheung drew one long breath by the bleachers and coughed, setting his throat aflame. Nerves. Scorching his insides, without fail, year after year.

This year was special. Cheung’s promotion had followed a fierce string of bad luck- the loss of his mother, a cheating girlfriend- but now, he waited to usher in the new year as the venerable Head of the Dragon.

Cheung pushed through the crowd, taking his place at the head while his colleagues lined up behind him. The music began and the scarlet dragon sprang to life, undulating over the crowd’s heads like a silk ribbon threading a sea of black pearls. Cheung swung the pole deftly, in time with the drums and precise choreography that had taken weeks to master.

As the dance peaked, Cheung lost himself in the great smoking head of the beast. Tomorrow was a fresh start- the promise of a new year turned over like a leaf in his old heart.

-originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

Flight 909

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The morning flight to Miami is all hungover bridesmaids and businessmen in wrinkled suits. The vibe gets frisky after take-off, which is too bad, since who is this, coming to sit next to Dave? The most elderly man on the plane. Dave watches as he pops open the overhead compartment, stashing a bejewelled tree branch, which is presumably a cane.

The old man’s beard reminds Dave of his mother’s decades-old oven mitt. Dressed in a crushed velvet robe, his blue eyes twinkle behind honest-to-god spectacles. Dave is staring unknowingly at the man’s gut, when his eyes lock onto a gold pocket watch- its chain swinging like a pendulum over the seat.

Waves of nausea slap the walls inside Dave’s stomach. He looks out the window. The sky is still so dark. A low rumble in the plane’s belly; seatbelt lights switch to ON. The plane launches smoothly, rising in the stratosphere like a ghost ship sinking for miles under black water. The stars look wet. Dave suspects his fear of flying has encouraged a morbid personality.

They have been in the air for some time when the beard finally speaks.
“Dave,” it says, surprising Dave, who has been twisting his pretzel wrapper in and out of knots.
“I am the resident wizard of Flight 909. I must introduce myself using my Holocene name, Chronus. Your species is unable to comprehend my current name, which is-”
A shrieking sound explodes into the cabin like a vicious stream of bats; their flapping dissolves in an instant and Dave’s eyes grow wide. He senses a pattern developing, in a distant land, of time switching back and forth along the arm of a giant metronome.

“Look out the window,” the old man says, and Dave obeys, feeling his will come up against something.
“There- the break in the clouds!” The old man points to a golden spray of pure sunlight, burning through a ceiling of grey cloud. It is the most miraculous sight Dave has ever seen; indeed, he thinks it is proof of heaven.
“I’ve been trapped in this epoch for ages,” the stranger continues, “riding in your planes and on the backs of large birds. Hoping to come across this very ‘window’- this golden passage through time- one bright morning and find my way back to the world I left long ago.”
“What world?” Dave asks in a voice that seems not to belong to him anymore.
“A crueler world than this,” the old man replies coldly, and a hushed silence falls over the plane.

As if cued, the plane veers sharply, charting a new course in the direction of the heavenly light. The pilot comes on over the intercom: It’s going to be a beautiful, sunny day in Miami, folks, and thanks for flying with us. Dave considers his fear of flying, which has all but disappeared.

In the seat next to him, an old man fiddles with a gold pocket watch, closes his eyes.

-originally publ. on https://luminouscreaturespress.com

Marooned

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I had made it to dry land, but the sea still swirled in my ears and throat. The memory of the mutiny was as fresh as the sabre wound on my chest.

The taste of my lover’s lips, indistinguishable from saltwater, from sand- now indistinct from that which coaxed his bright soul from its body, numb and unblinking. His pale face sinking into black water under a cruel shape of moon.

It was better not to be marooned. It was better to be both of our glowing, weathered faces- plunging deep and snuffed out along with the treacherous nature of our disgrace. You proved your love in arrogance, and I bit my tongue a thousand times trying to say it. I know this taste to be regret, and privateers’ mouths are full of it.

My love, there are things that I wish I had done differently… Beginning with: why the hell can’t two people fit on one floating door?

– originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

Dollhouse

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The American had seemed kind, at first, and though his kisses rubbed her raw, she believed in some tender promise of love at their core. She knew he was a hero in his war, but not in the war of her people. With her family gone, stolen in the black smoke at Nagasaki, life as a rich American’s ningyô did not seem so terrible.

She touched her wrists, tracing the scars, invoking the unexpected cruelty of her lover: the bizarre, childlike costumes; numbing agents; the meticulous positioning of her broken joints…

Vera glanced at her watch, lowered the umbrella, and positioned the American’s gas mask over her face. She recalled her Mother’s untraditional choice of ‘Vera’, after Japan’s strongest typhoon.

As the mansion burst into flames behind her, she thought of the American trapped inside… She felt a wave surging inside of her and knew that she was strong- stronger, even, than the Vera who had swallowed thousands of lives.

– originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

Stella

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Stella lurched over the last hill, clutching at the front of her dress in agony. She reached the stone domicile just in time; she could feel the bairn being coaxed out by the cool fingers of mist riding low in the air. She ducked inside. Into the black heart of a home, dug into a green hill.

She left her body on the floor, momentarily, when the Tacksman’s bairn finally shuddered out with a single prolonged wail. His face was sweet and red, still slick with her oils. She studied its shape for traces of the Tacksman- she could find none. He was hers alone, at least in possibility; it was possible that the Tacksman’s imprint had stopped short of her son. Given time, the boy could grow to resemble the man that he would call his father. Or else, the scarring on her heart could heal… but over time, men only grow into their monsters.

– originally publ. on flashfriday.wordpress.com

Musical Chairs

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In fifth grade, our class chewed up and spit out a revolving door of music teachers. Our first victim was Mr. Alexander, a tall Asian man with ruthless expectations. He demanded “tone, tone, semi-tone” until we could hear it no more and locked him in the vault, which happened to be the music office. He got his revenge by leaving kids at the side of the road on a field trip, but by then it was too late- Mrs. Hyde had arrived.

Mrs. Hyde/Jekyll stamped her heels with such enthusiasm that eventually, one flew off and struck a student in the eye. Given our campaign (in progress) to record (in secret) her violence to use against her, the principal had no choice but to introduce Mr. Gilbert.

The old man disappeared on an alleged cross-country motorcycle trip. This, of course, when we had just begun to like him.

The Family Meeting

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“My vote is for coleslaw,” Greg announced to the table, sliding his green thumb along the edge of the placemat. Dad snorted, opening and closing his fist as if he held a great clump of fertilizer in his palm. Why we needed to have a family meeting for this was beyond me, but I sat in my chair anyway and twisted my ivy hair to make sure that Mom could see that I was bored out of my tree.

“Violet? Honey, we need your vote…” Mom gave me a kind of pleading look and I saw that her eyes were the colour of milk bottle beach glass. I rolled my eyes and got up to leaf.

“Violet! Sit down this instant. Finish your spinach.”

“F*ck you, Mom. You never cook what I want.”

“Well, what is it you want?” Mom groaned, pretending to hang herself with a green onion noose. Greg and Dad went hysterical. Dad laughed so hard that his big belly bumped up against the underside of the table. His brussels sprouts hopped up and down on the plate, rolling out in a dozen different directions.

“I want eggplant, tomorrow night. And you’re all going to eat it right along with me.”

“F*ck you, Violet. That’s far too exotic. Do you think money just grows on trees?”

I could just kill them.