Flash Fiction

Morning Coffee

Chris 2 Comments

Harris woke to the scent of frying bacon, birdsong, and early-morning sunlight. He blinked his eyes, trying to adjust to the light from the window Linda had thrown open.

“C’mon, get up!”

Harris pulled the blankets over his head. Linda sat down on the bed, pulled the blanket back, and gave him a kiss on the nose. “If you wait too long, breakfast is going to get cold!”

Harris smiled as Linda pulled the sheet back, putting up only a token resistance as she hauled him out of bed. “Alright, alright.” Harris pushed himself to his feet and hugged his wife. “You win.” After putting on his bathrobe and new slippers, he followed his wife’s singing down the stairs to the kitchen. He watched as she flipped pancakes for a moment and then started making coffee. Five minutes later, they were eating.

“I’ve got a few errands to run, Harris, but I’ll be back shortly after one.”

“Alright. I’m going to work on getting our taxes filed after I clean up here. Should be done before you’re back.” He smiled at Linda.

He lifted his mug to take a sip, but the handle slipped in his hands and hot coffee poured into his lap. Even as he leapt out of the chair, part of his brain pulled at him and, instead of a coffee stain on his robe, he was looking at his bedroom.

The shades were drawn and the window was closed. The air smelled faintly of sweat. He looked around his room and tried to see it as he had when he was still asleep. He tried to remember his wife as she had looked that morning, but all he could remember was how her face had looked when she handed him the divorce papers later that day.

Doing Some Squats

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Nelson stuck the last plate into the dishwasher. After drying his hands off, he put soap into the dishwasher and set it to start in two hours. He wiped down the counters, swept the floor, and then mopped it. Once the kitchen was sparkling, he turned toward the living room and called out. “Kitchen’s done.”
“Four more rooms and then we’re finished.”
Nelson picked up the cleaning supplies Allie had left on the table. “I swear, you should have finished the living room by now.”
“I would be if we hadn’t made such a mess out here.”
Nelson chuckled as he walked into the dining room. “I guess we were a little too enthusiastic.”
“You were the one who wanted to do this with me. The last step is always cleaning.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Nelson sighed and started cleaning the dining room. Dusting, vacuuming, furniture polishing, and tidying. After finishing, he went into the living room and found Allie just wrapping up.
“Finally got the stains out.” Allie grimaced and picked up her tray of cleaning supplies. “Let’s tackle the bedroom and then you can get the small bathroom while I get the big one.”
“Sure.” Nelson followed Allie up the stairs. “This is way more work than I expected.”
“Proper domestic care takes time.”
“Yeah, but I thought the whole point of breaking into vacant houses was to avoid doing this kind of work.”
Allie shrugged. “Better than getting caught.”
Nelson grumbled as he helped Allie clean the bedroom. Halfway through, Allie paused. “Did the dishwasher just start?”
“No.” Nelson checked the clock near the bed. “Not for another hour.”
“Then what was that rumbling?”
Nelson looked out the window. “That was the garage door.” A family was climbing out of the car parked in the driveway.
“Shit.”

Sensitivity Assessment

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I clicked on the link in the email and watched the video message load. It was an advertisement for some kind of new electric toothbrush and I stifled a yawn as a parade of cheerful white woman in their late twenties marveled at how clean their perfect teeth felt.

After it ended, I watched it a few more times. Once I’d gotten everything I could, I typed up my notes, stuck them into a reply email, and sent it off. A few minutes later, my phone rang.

“Hello?”

“What do you mean ‘it needs less white women.”

“Fewer. You have almost two dozen actors and they’re all white women. It needs some diversity.”

“The agency sent us these women. What the hell where we supposed to do?”

I shrugged, shifting the phone so I could use both my hands again. “I don’t know, Shannon. You wanted a sensitivity assessment and I gave it to you.”

“In the most unprofessional way possible.” Shannon was pissed and I held back the urge to sigh.

“Did you want me to pretend it was fine? I answered everything according to our guidelines and there’s nothing in my response I haven’t sent to you a dozen times already.”

“Whatever, Kent. I can’t do this right now. I’ve got to go talk to the director and let him know we’ve got to reshoot the entire commercial.”

“You called me.”

I imagined Shannon slamming the phone down and smiled. She got so angry every time I sent her the feedback she requested. I probably could have been a little less blunt in my email, but she was just so much fun to wind up.

Hurry Up!

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“Hurry up!”

I grumbled my way into my bedroom and the clock on my desk reminded me I had half an hour, despite my mother’s nagging. When I went back to hang up my towel, I still had ten minutes.

After I finished tying my shoes, I got in the car and waited for my mom and sister to appear. Dad sat behind the steering wheel, drumming his fingers. He seemed as frustrated with
Mom as I was. She’d been shouting at us to hurry up for the last two hours and, even in the car, I could hear her shouting up the stairs at Nadine.

It was exhausting. She had only suggested we visit her parents for dinner yesterday, so her impatience felt ridiculous. When she eventually appeared at the door with Nadine in tow, we
still had a minute left before our departure time.

After everyone had settled, Dad backed the car out of the garage and drove off. I played sudoku on my phone as we drove and ignored Mom’s constant muttering. Half an hour of
muttering later, we arrived to see Grandma’s smiling face waiting for us on their porch.

The visit felt more pleasant than usual because Mom stopped nagging us, but it passed quickly. As Dad parked the car at home, I noticed a cop parked right in front of our house. As Mom ushered us inside, I heard the cop talking to Dad.

“Hello, I’d like to speak to Andrea Fitzner, please.”

“Can I ask what this is about, officer?”

“One of her senior partners was found dead today and we’d like to ask her some questions related to our investigation.”

“Honey?”

Mom shooed us through door and closed it behind us, cutting us off from her and the rest of the conversation.

Broken Down

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He roamed through the empty halls of his house, wondering when it all fell apart. There was little for him to do at this point, other than wait for it all to end. His life had ended when he’d come face to face with the truth. It took all he had to not dwell on it, revisiting his actions and decisions endlessly, wondering if he could have changed things if he had paid more attention.

He drifted down the stairs and looked at the ruins of his one immaculate yard. There were weeds there now, and a slowly rusting car that seemed to belong here more than he did.

He thought about ending it, but he didn’t know how. There was no reason to struggle, anymore. No reason to try. There was nothing left for him and, eventually, there would be nothing left of him. He was doomed to just slowly fade away until nothing was left of who he once was.

He moved to the kitchen and watched a mouse scuttle across the dirty floor, and could not bring himself to care. He watched it stop for a moment to rub its face with its paws and look about before it disappeared into the wall near his cabinets. Somewhere, a bird cawed. It sounded heavy and dark, like his mood.

He looked outside at the forest beyond his yard and remembered the power he had felt as he walked through that door the first time. And the fear he had felt as he walked through it the last time. His life had been over at that point, he just hadn’t known it yet. The bombshell had already been dropped and it had been seconds from going off.

Dying had been easy. Being a ghost, however, was not.

Cracked

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It started with a small crack. He had underestimated just how much small cracks mattered, but it made sense. A small crack was all it too to eventually break down any rock. One sentence, said once, and it changed everything.

It was always there, in the back of his mind. Other moments that would have meant nothing now had a way to worm their way into his mind. Fears that previously would have had nothing to latch onto now found a foothold. As time wore on and the crack grew bigger, he started to feel like he was looking at life through it. Everything came back to the crack.

If he’d done something about it when it was small, he might have been able to avoid the eventual breakdown. A small discussion or some work to try to patch things up. Anything would have been better than letting it go.

Eventually, it was ruining his life. The fear and doubt had wormed their way in so that there was almost nothing left to him but the rubble of his once unified sense of self. So he ended it. He broke it off.

It did not go well. She didn’t see what the problem was and she wasn’t willing to talk about how bad things had gotten. He wasn’t willing to try to make her see it. Eventually, after many tears on both their parts, they split up.

In the weeks that followed, as he swept away the rubble and tried to figure out what to do with what was left. Once he started picking up the pieces, it became clear he would never be the same. Eventually, he knew he’d be okay. Different, but okay.

 

The Nose Knows

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Martin “The Nose” Samson could feel something was wrong. He trusted that feeling with his life, because it hadn’t been wrong yet.
He was at home, alone, eating breakfast. A normal Sunday. Afterwards, he was going to do the dishes and read because he had nothing going on until that evening, when he would join his friends for their usual movie night.
After finishing his cereal, he walked around his apartment, looking for anything that would explain his foreboding. Gas wasn’t leaking, doors weren’t mysteriously open, nothing was out of place, and there was no around his house.
Mystified, he returned to his routine. He cleaned up, read, and was making lunch before he heard something that startled him. Something was scratching at his front door. Martin didn’t have any pets. He liked to be alone at home, which included avoiding animals. He preferred plants
Martin walked over to his front window and peered out at his porch. There was a woman standing in front of his door, picking at something. He watched her for a moment, but she kept scratching, occasionally stopping to flick bits of something into his front garden.
Unable to squash his curiosity, Martin went to the door and opened it. “What are you doing?”
After a moment of surprise, she shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, I sneezed when I came to your door and I’m trying to clean off the mess I made.” She held out a hand. “Anyway, I am here to let you know that I’m your new neighbor across the street.”
Martin shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.” As he let go of her hand, he realized it was the one she’d been using to pick at the door and the trepidatious feeling vanished.

Through the Eyes of a Statue

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Everything seemed so quick. The little creatures around it moved faster than it could track, but it enjoyed watching the blur of their movement. The humans were respectful, ensuring the constant exposure to the elements and birds did nothing to damage it. It didn’t really mind the birds, seeing as they moved even faster than the humans, but it did enjoy the colder months when the birds were scarce.

There was a door at the statue’s feet and something through that door attracted many humans and their companion creatures. It suspected that the door led to whatever was behind it. It couldn’t turn to look, but it could feel the reassuring weight of something even larger than itself at its back.

It was so long since it had first opened its eyes and seen the wondrous world around it. The area had changed drastically since then, as the humans molded the world to their will. Once it was the tallest. Now it was dwarfed by the structures around it, whose height passed beyond its sight. It could not turn its head and it missed the sky, but there had been so much going on below that it had not cared.

The humans and their creatures had stopped coming around, though. There had been rumbling and a bright light. Most of the humans had vanished, leaving behind black smudges everywhere. There were some humans left and they still moved quickly, but not as fast as they once did. The statue was sad to see them go, but it thought they would be back. There had always been humans around it.

For now there were the plants growing where the humans once occupied. They moved much more slowly, and it enjoyed that. Maybe the humans would too, once they came back.

For Hire

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It should have been everything he wanted. He’d done viral marketing, learned how to use Twitter, and even got a decent camera for Snapchat and Instagram. He’d discretely entered social circles, splashed across the local newspapers, and put up posters where his ideal clients frequented. His dreams of being a friend-for-hire were shattered. His family had laughed at first, but then he started getting calls. Now, two years later, he finished replacing the money he’d borrowed from his savings.

It just wasn’t like he imagined. He’d left his fliers and advertisements vague so no one felt limited, but it had backfired in a way he never imagined. What he did wasn’t bad and he even enjoyed it most of the time. It was just so different from how he’d envisioned his future.

Gone was the idea that he’d make a living by being friends with socially awkward nerds with money. Gone were the thoughts of helping older men get around and run their errands. Hell, gone were even the thoughts of being used as a taxi service to ferry people without cars around since his rates were cheaper than an Uber.

He sighed and sat down at his office computer, opening the program he used to push new advertisements to all of his media accounts. He reviewed the new ads he had composed and, after one last deep breath, published them. Friend for hire no more. In the business world, you had to recognize your niche and do your best to inhabit it. He’d even filed all the paperwork to update his license at town hall. As he turned off his computer and went home for the day, he admired the sign on his door. “Peter Foster: Grandson for Hire.” At least he would never need to bake for himself.

Tire Swing

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There was a tire swing here once, hanging from a tree on a hill.

The swing was a flying machine, carrying its passengers from the ground into the sky, captained by a laughing child as it flew so high they could touch the clouds. It was a portal to another world, used to pay the entry fee to a land no one but they ever found. It was a seat for eating ice cream on warm summer nights as fireworks exploded above the horizon, cradling its occupant in a world suspended and protected from all the problems of home.

The tree that held it was alone, but stronger for it. It was a stopping point on a speedy descent, providing a place to hide for both children avoiding baths and easter eggs in the spring. A home to birds and squirrels, it stood as a testament to nature’s ability to thrive even in difficult places. It was shade and music on windy summer days.

Now, they are gone. There is nothing left but a bit of moldy rope, a hoop of vulcanized rubber, and the rotting husk of a tree choked by creeping plants and parasites. Long before they fell into disrepair, becoming only their constituent parts, their magic faded. They could no longer be used to hide or to escape and slowly other things took them over. They became only a tire swing hanging from a tree on a hill.

Now, they are that no longer. Now, they are destined for a dumpster as their home is plowed over and prepared for a new life as something else. New seeds are planted and new life is laying its foundations.

There was a tire swing here once, hanging from a tree on a hill. Now, they will become something new.