Flash

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.

Big Red Button

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Sally like pressing the button. It didn’t do much, just send a few electrical impulses along to a machine that raised an arm and then lowered it. The arm held a little iron heated by an internal mechanism so that every time the arm was lowered, it pressed the white-hot foundry stamp into a metal ingot. The gears that raised the arm also moved a conveyor belt, so a fresh ingot was waiting as the arm came down.

She only got to press the button when the computer system was down, because the computer handled it without involving the button at all. Sally thought this was unfair, so she used her position as the floater to occasionally cause the computer system to reboot. Then she got to press the button for fifteen minutes so the company wouldn’t lose out on production while the computer restarted all essential tasks first.

No one knew it was her, messing with the computer. They’d set up security cameras because the managers and IT staff were suspicious, but she had plenty of time to study the cameras when she wasn’t pressing the button. When she was pressing the button, though, there was room for nothing but the satisfaction of hearing it thunk and click into place with every press of its bright red surface.

That was why, today, when the computer system failed to restart and the managers had assured everyone that they’d get it working again before the asteroid base ran out of air, Sally went to press the button. As the air thinned and everyone began to panic, she pressed the button. As the managers and administrators took the only shuttle, she pressed the button. The last thing she did before she faded away was to press the button. It was worth it.

Falling

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He twisted, trying to get his feet underneath him. The air felt thick as he struggled to control his decent. He knew was going to hit water soon, but he couldn’t see. Every time he opened his eyes, they filled with tears and might as well have been closed. If he wasn’t prepared soon, the shock would kill him.

Finally, he felt his hair whip up around him and away from his face. He turned a bit and stuck out his legs, feet angled so his heels would hit first. As he wrapped his arms around his head, he felt the impact on his legs and the pain nearly caused him to lose consciousness. The cold slap of the water on the his body was the only thing that kept him awake as he shot into the depths.

Once his movement slowed, he opened his eyes. He was lost in a murky blue-green world with nothing around him but the weight of the water about him. He exhaled and watched the bubbles rise. Using only his arms, he pulled himself back up to the surface and crawled onto dry land. He closed his eyes again and lay back, just grateful to have made it out.

“Did you hear me, Martin?”

Marten opened his eyes, his visualization gone. He was in the quiet corner of a coffee shop he and Alice liked. Alice was sitting across from him, expression neutral. “What?”

“Martin, I said I don’t want to be with you anymore. I’m moving out tomorrow and staying at my mother’s tonight.”

“Oh.” Martin looked down at his hands. “You don’t want to try to work this out?”

Alice shook her head and grabbed her purse and left, giving him last glance that Martin didn’t see. He was busy falling again.

 

My Dream Car

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Lee stood at the window, folding laundry as he waited for his girlfriend. As he moved deeper into a pile of shirts, he saw a car pull up. A moment of excitement, the car pulled away and he remembered Amy was still too far away.

He took a pile of shirts and put them away. When Lee turned around, he noticed a car pull up to the curb, pause for a moment, and then drive away. Curious, he absently picked up another shirts and kept folding. On the fifth, the car pulled up to the curb, hesitated for a moment, and then drove off again.

Gone were thoughts of shirts and his girlfriend. Lee tossed his laundry aside and moved to the downstairs window. A couple minutes later, the car pulled up to the curb, hesitated, and then drove away.

While he contemplated this pattern, it came by again. The interval between the car’s disappeared and reappearance began to shrink until it came into sight as soon as it vanished. After a minute, he noticed the car creeping closer to his window. He jumped back from the window. He couldn’t see the car past the blinds in any of the windows, but he could hear it zipping around.

Just as it sounded like it was about to tear his house apart, he found himself sitting on his bed next to a pile of laundry, phone buzzing in his pocket. Still listening for the rush of air that was the car, he saw his girlfriend’s picture.

“Hello?”

“I’m outside.”

“Sorry.” Lee hurried toward the door. “I dozed off.”

“Really?” Lee unlocked the door and hung up his phone. Amy’s worried face greeted his.“It looks like a bunch of cars drove over your lawn. How could you have slept through that?”