Cold At First

by Hannah Grieco | Sep 26, 2024 | flash fiction, publications

After signing the divorce papers, I get in my car and drive the three hours to my sister’s house. I can smell the ocean from her driveway as soon as I open my door. “Yes, Jesus, thank you,” Beth says when I offer to take Nelly and Grandma to the beach. It’s freezing, even now in late April, and Beth laughs when I complain, tells me, “You’re just not used to it. That’s how the people and the water are in Maine – cold at first.” I grab Nelly’s coat and hat, picture moving here, something I’ve thought about ever since I held her in the hospital four years ago while Beth slept, cradled that tiny baby and knew I’d never have my own. At the beach, I follow Nelly to the water’s edge. She points at a huge boulder and begs to swim out there, not that she could swim in the forty-degree water, even with floaties on. Grandma begins to pick her way over the rocks. “Beth is usually too busy to bring us here,” she calls, but it isn’t a grievance, just something that is, like the wet mist turning her hair limp as she pats it, or the slow, careful way she has to navigate the rocky section before reaching the sand, knowing a slip might break her.

James is a thousand years ago now. “Good,” Beth said when I called her, crying, the night he left. So simple for her, like when she caught her husband sleeping around. “Fuck those fuckers,” she said that night, whispering it in my ear again today as she handed me a cup of coffee. I love her as much as I hate how she towers over me like a tidal wave. But maybe she could teach me. Maybe if I moved here, I’d swim in the ocean every morning. Maybe I’d learn to love the sharp bite of cold and find the patience to wait for the burning heat that comes next. Or maybe I’d just walk the wet sand every morning and accept that this is me, like grandma, who stayed married for fifty-seven years to a man who barely spoke. “He never hugged me, not once,” Mom told us at his funeral. Grandma joins me by the water, finally through the rocks and on to the soft smush at the tide’s edge. She takes off her shoes, digs her pale ghost toes in the sand. Nelly throws fistfuls of pebbles into the water, shouting, “Eat these, sea! Eat these!” and grandma smiles, reaches down to pick up a cracked shell. “Eat this, too!” she shouts and tosses it into a small wave at her feet. I squat, scoop wet clumps of sand and rocks and shells, throw them in, scattered splashes like tiny fish jumping. A shallow wave soaks my shins and butt before I can scoot back.
​
“Eat this, too,” I whisper.

Originally published in Perhappened.

Two Coins

by Leslie Walker Trahan | Sep 23, 2024 | flash fiction, publications

She’s seventeen years old and standing at a bus stop in East Texas. It’s raining, and her hair is pulled into a ponytail. She’s wearing a backpack, and on the bench beside her is a green duffel bag with a broken strap. 

The bus is late. Her shoes are wet, and the cold is seeping in through her socks. She looks at her watch and back up at the road. She reaches inside her pocket, feels her bus pass there, two coins alongside it. 

Imagine the gas station behind her, the payphone on the wall outside. Imagine her turning toward it, then turning away.

A car pulls up to the curb in front of her. There are two women in the front seat. Imagine the window unrolling, the blonde head poking out. Imagine the duffel bag strap getting caught in the back door as it closes. 

But maybe it’s not a car, maybe it’s a truck. Maybe it’s a red one with a man in a ball cap driving. Maybe he’s wearing torn jeans and a mustard-stained shirt. Maybe it smells like rust and rain. Maybe she wipes her wet shoes on a newspaper spread across the floorboard.  

Now let’s try a station wagon. Think of the family inside. Two young children, a boy and a girl, in the back. There she is, in the backseat, feeding apple slices to the children. Imagine the couple up front. The woman turning around in her seat to talk. And the man driving, how he bunches up his shoulders and stares at his new passenger in the rearview mirror. 

But what if the bus wasn’t late after all? No, that can’t be right. She never made it to California. Imagine the bus stalls out on the way, and when she gets out, there they are. The women, the red truck, the station wagon with the kids inside. 

Imagine her sleeping on a too-small couch, her feet crammed under a pillow. Imagine her in a bathtub with a comforter tucked beneath her. Imagine her on the floor, or a chair, or the cab of a pickup truck, the green duffel bag clutched tight. 

Maybe she drinks weak coffee in the morning. Maybe she has toast, oatmeal. Maybe there’s a box of cereal, a carton of milk. 

Picture her in a red apron, wiping down a table. Picture her restocking cans of beans on a metal shelf. Or maybe she’s pushing the keys on a cash register, sliding change across a counter.  

Imagine her pressing coins into a dryer slot, watching her bathtub sheets spin and spin. How long did she stay in the same place? How many people put her up? There was enough kindness, wasn’t there, to last a month or two? 

And what about the man? The one outside the restaurant who offers her a ride home. Her boss at the grocery store who says, just one minute, I’ve got something to tell you. The one she saw every day on the bus. The one who always tipped her well. The one who held the door open and said, let me help you carry that inside. 

Imagine she fought. Imagine she screamed. Imagine she kicked and tore at him with her teeth. 

Or imagine she didn’t. Imagine he was one of the ones who gave her shelter, who turned his head when she took bills from the register or ate a leftover piece of pie. 

Imagine she thought, just for a moment, that everything would be ok.

Imagine her throwing up in toilets, paper bags, cups. Imagine her standing in line at the drug store, the small plastic bag she carries home. Imagine her looking down at the blue stick, her fingers going numb when she sees that little line.

Imagine her imagining me. 

She’s seventeen years old and standing at a bus stop in East Texas. It’s raining, and her hair is pulled into a ponytail. She’s wearing a backpack, and on the bench beside her is a green duffel bag with a broken strap. 

The bus is late. Her shoes are wet, and the cold is seeping in through her socks. She looks at her watch and back up at the road. She reaches inside her pocket, feels her bus pass there, two coins alongside it. 

There’s the gas station behind her, the payphone on the wall outside.

And what if she turns away before the car pulls up to the curb? What if the car slows down and then speeds up again when her back is turned, water spraying the spot where she’d just been standing?

Imagine she pulls the two coins out of her pocket and drops them into the payphone slot. Imagine there is someone on the other end of the line.

The Breakfast Shift at the Usual New York Diner

by Debra A. Daniel, | Sep 19, 2024 | flash fiction, publications

This la-de-da woman waltzes in. Skinny. Shiny-lipped. Designer facelift.

Lenny, the crabbiest waiter, with his crater face, his cigarette breath, his lady-I-ain’t-got-all-day shrug, shuffles over to her booth.

She, in her crispness, looks up at him in the space of his wrinkled world. Her face cringes like Lenny farted. He hands over a menu, extra sticky.

“No specials today on account of the kitchen got fumigated last night,” he says, “Coffee?” Already, the pot is in his hand, already tilted toward the heavy, no-nonsense mug, the mug with no finesse, no delicate curve to the handle, no hand-painted violets with their provocative twine of leaves.

The tight-assed woman lifts her hand to stop him before the pour. “Cappuccino,”  she says. She sniffs, tries to inhale without breathing in the greasy air around her.

Lenny shrugs and shambles away. “Comin’ right up,” he says, the words tumbling in a mush over his shoulder.

He’s got better things to do. His regulars are here, in their usual places, with their usual orders so that he doesn’t even have to ask, he doesn’t even have to write anything down, he doesn’t even have to refill again and again because he’s left them their own pot of hot coffee on the table. His regulars are his bread and butter, his routine. They make his morning over easy and warm and sunny yellow.

And he’s seen this type before, knows how they want their toast cut into miniature points with those common crusts cut away, how they want the juice fresh squeezed and then sieved to remove the distasteful pulp, how they want their eggs coddled. He knows how they want a cloth napkin and a glass fresh from the dishwasher, and sparkling water and two thin, almost transparent, slices of lime, not lemon. No ice unless it’s finely crushed and catches the light like diamonds.

He holes up behind the counter for longer than necessary, then he brings back a heavier than necessary cup, sets it on the table where the woman is tapping her manicured nails louder than necessary in no rhythm, rather in impatient staccato bursts.

“Cappuccino.” He sets down the chunky mug. One sip, and she’s choking like she’s gonna spew, as Lenny might say. Regurgitate, as the lady might say. Vomir, as she might say if she were in a cafe in Paris.

“You should be ashamed to serve such a vile fluid,” she says. “This would be against the law in France.”

“Lady, it’s diner cappuccino,” Lenny says, “ya gotta understand.”

But this woman doesn’t understand at all, doesn’t even want to. She gathers herself, her oversized purse, her oversized sunglasses, and her oversized huff. She leaves the cappuccino on the table. She leaves no tip. She leaves Lenny without a backward glance.

Lenny wipes down the table, takes the cup back to the kitchen, pours the cappuccino down the drain. He washes his hands, wipes them on his apron. Another customer is in the booth now. He picks up a pot of coffee and shuffles over to take their order.

Sanctuary

by Danielle Levsky | Sep 16, 2024 | flash fiction, publications

The autumn chill permeated Ruth’s wool coat as she hurried through the forest, dried leaves crunching underfoot. She clutched her satchel laden with contraband. If her parents found these candles, herbs, oils, and feathers plucked from her pillows, they’d demand answers she couldn’t yet give.

Soon the sheltering arms of the old willow appeared through the trees. Beneath its curtain of tendrils, Orli waited, tracing the perimeter with her feet under the waking moon. Her hair was wild in the wind, eyes bright with anticipation. “You came,”  Orli whispered, taking Ruth’s cold hands in her warm grasp.

Ruth’s face flushed, as she always did at Orli’s touch. Her dreams these past months had been filled with images she didn’t dare examine by daylight—of clasping Orli’s slender hand, resting her head upon her shoulder, pressing her body close until all borders between them blurred.

Orli took Ruth’s satchel, withdrew the oil, candles, matches, and herbs. “Tonight, we complete the ritual of renewal,” she said. They entered the willow’s hallowed shelter, the green swaying gently in the breeze. As they stepped inside, the wind outside seemed to fade. Stillness. Ruth found anchorage in Orli’s dark eyes.

Reverently, Orli scraped arcane symbols on the ground, cast a circle of salt, and lit herbs that filled the grove with earthy incense. Ruth’s pulse quickened as Orli took her hands. Together, they chanted the prayer Orli had taught her: “Mother Moon, grant us wisdom so that we may shed false skins.”

As the chant slowed, their voices twined until Ruth could not tell where hers ended and Orli’s began. Ruth met Orli’s eyes, luminous pools in the candlelight. A bittersweet ache grew in her chest as she yearned for the impossible—to create life from Orli’s flesh, to mother children woven of only them. She wanted to lay bare the caterwauling of the moon above, to reshape the fabric of her world.

“Now, we consecrate,” Orli finally whispered. Ruth froze, then softened, then shivered as Orli traced oil down her arm, her breath catching at the nape of her neck.

Ruth’s desire overtuned. She returned each caress, skin prickling, praying the ancestors Orli invoked could not see into her thrumming heart. Orli traced Ruth’s hips nine times to unbind as Ruth stroked her shoulders seven times to sanctify.

Where you walk, I would walk, Ruth thought to herself, setting a new prayer, hoping the ancestors could hear. Your people will be my people, your home my home.

Their bodies spilled salt and nectar, with tongue and teeth they exhumed their ways. The trees creaked and groaned as they called out under the moon’s watchful eye. They became conduits for crones turned to ash, chanting to release their buried words. Their braided fingers intertwined at last in the dancing firelight. They kissed with wild abandon, removing shame and garments alike.

At dawn, the salt dissolved, and the wind stilled. The last herbs burned to embers. Orli leaned her forehead against Ruth’s, sweat trickling down. “The old selves are shed,” she whispered. “We can now live as we were meant to.”

They emerged naked in truth. Stepping into light, Ruth hid no more in shadow. Together, they walked and faced skyward.

Flesh Wounds

by Tanya Nikiforova | Sep 12, 2024 | flash fiction, publications

“He’s bleeding out!” These words stampede through the air, disembodied from their owner. “Somebody help him!”

I stand on the museum steps. When the words reach me, I am unsteadied by their desperate velocity, and I wobble on the bottom step.

I hope they have reached ears besides my own, but the green lawn abutting the museum, usually speckled with undergrads, is empty. For reasons I can’t understand and will dissect later, I move toward the voice.

Around the corner of the museum entrance, I find a woman with her back to me, kneeling on the grass as she holds a phone in trembling hands and dials 911.

She sees me, and gasps.

“He’s bleeding out,” she says softly now. “Help him.”

In front of her, a man lies on a red blanket. His eyes are closed and his lips are slightly parted. I gawk, stupidly, letting seconds pass. Professor Liang’s words are in my head: Don’t just look, Kate, see.

No, it’s not a blanket he’s lying on.

He is lying in a pool of blood.

I note hues of cadmium, carmine, and amaranth. And the smell of earthy rot.

Across his neck, there are two short slits that just barely break the skin. But on the left side of his neck, where one usually goes to feel their pulse, there is a third puncture, this one cavernous and deep, and blood gurgles like a brook through this opening.

“Help him,” the woman whispers hoarsely.

I pat down my body, confirming that I have nothing to apply pressure with. I look at my hands. They handle cancerous turpentine, resins, and pigments all day, but the idea of using them to touch a stranger’s blood feels perilous.

I see two young women gathered, maybe ten feet away. “Can you give me a piece of clothing?” I ask. The one on the left looks disgusted, like I’m asking her to strip naked. The one on the right removes a flannel shirt tied around her waist and throws it to me.

I crumple it up and press it to the man’s neck. I hold pressure with the shirt, and blood starts to soak through. I press harder. When I look up to say thank you, they are gone.

“They’re asking if he has a pulse,” the woman calling 911 says.

Not being able to check his neck as I am practically choking him with the shirt, I feel along his left arm. I can’t find it at first by the wrist, but then there it is. A weak, thready thump beneath my thumb.

“Yes, I think so,” I yell back.

For the first time, I look at the man’s face. He is in his sixties or seventies, with a thin smear of gray, matted hair. He is cleanly shaven. He wears a short-sleeve khaki button-down shirt that is tucked into suit pants with freshly pressed creases. A sunken stomach bows beneath a fine leather belt. In the palm of his open hand lies a small kitchen knife, the kind you use to peel an apple, with an ochre wooden handle. While holding pressure with my right hand, I use my left hand to move the knife away and stick its sharp side down into the dirt.

“They said keep holding pressure,” the woman yells. “They’re on their way.” And then, “Hurry, please,” she pleads into the phone, and reminds them, “There’s a lot of blood here.”          The man opens his eyes. “You’re hurting my neck,” he says, but doesn’t move to stop me.      

He doesn’t reach for the knife. “Let me die,” he says.

“I can’t, I’m so sorry,” I tell him.

What am I sorry for? The pain I’m causing him? Or for keeping him alive?

And then he slips into unconsciousness again.          

On the orders of my professor, I was here to walk through the Gauguin exhibit for inspiration. On her last feedback form, Professor Liang wrote, “Technically proficient. Completely uninspired.” Last week in class she temperamentally paced as we painted. When she stood behind me, she asked, “What are you trying to say here?” I just wanted to paint things perfectly and beautifully, but so far in my MFA, I have learned only that beauty is the opposite of art. “Nothing,” I told her, defiant. “I thought so,” she said, and walked away.

I resolve to paint him the way I found him.

Yet I fear that the stress of this moment will overwhelm me afterward. I will disremember every detail when I sit down to sketch, and without the details, I will fail.

I take the knife out of the ground and place it back in his hand. Still holding pressure on his neck, I take my phone out of my back pocket. I bring it to my face to unlock it.

The woman who called 911 is leaning against a tree, looking at the ground and rocking gently. By the low wail of the sirens, I can tell they are a few blocks away.

I remove the shirt from his neck carefully. The main wound is no longer bleeding. I bring my phone close to his neck. When I take the first picture, the camera app makes that automatic clicking sound.

The woman looks up, horrified. “What are you doing?” she asks. I don’t say anything. Instead I take a few steps back and take a photo of his face, and then of his body. I am now standing over him, capturing every angle.

“This is disgusting, YOU are disgusting,” she hisses at me.

“You wouldn’t even touch him. You waited for me to get here, just letting him bleed out,” I say calmly.

And then I hear her make a little “Ohhh” sound as she looks down.

He is bleeding again, and now, instead of a slow gurgle, the blood pulses out of his neck rhythmically. I keep snapping.

The sirens grow louder. There isn’t much time left.

Any second now, help will arrive.

We Went to the Museum

by Chris Negron | Sep 9, 2024 | flash fiction, publications

We went to the museum, but we didn’t see anything good.

We sat on a long bench under the great T-Rex, frozen in midroar. Outside, your son wound his way through a fake rainforest, raised pathways running under and over each other. He had darted for the doors as soon as the tickets were paid for. Escaping.

“Go with him,” you told your husband.

The sun spiked its rays between the branches, every few minutes shining straight into our eyes. Every few minutes making us squint. Every few minutes causing us to raise our hands to block out the unwanted light as we lost sight of our families. My wife. Your husband. Your son.

“I can’t see him anymore,” you said.

We were surrounded by the past, but focused only on the future.

The adults laughed as your boy led them around in mad circles. They doubled over, out of breath. Even they, the healthy ones, couldn’t keep up with him. Or maybe they weren’t trying hard enough. Maybe they were letting him run, because, lately, it was all he seemed to want to do.

“They’ll be all right,” you said.

And I couldn’t tell if it was a question or not.

We came here to talk, but that turned out to be harder than expected.

The silence was much easier. It came naturally, carried aloft by the pain that enveloped us both, transmitted by senses dulled by pills and injections. I shrugged my shoulders and gripped my cane harder whenever I felt myself slipping. You shifted and twisted your hips every time your colostomy bag pinched your skin wrong.

Eventually, words came. Some anyway. College, stepmother, IRAs. Next husband, graduation, wedding. First girlfriend, prom. Remember to laugh, take care of my plants, don’t give away my comics.

Your son returned triumphant, pressing his breathless grin into the glass. Our spouses walking twenty feet behind him, talking with heads down, hands tucked deep into pockets, wrists clutched behind backs. They caught us watching and forced smiles onto their faces, sent too-enthusiastic waves our way.

We were the ones dying, but they were the ones it was killing.

“I’m going to miss it,” you said.

Slipping, slipping, slipping. I shrugged my shoulders. Gripped my cane harder. Straightened my posture.

The movie was about to start. Something about whales. In the museum we went to, different movies played every hour, but this particular one, only once per day. Your son loved whales, so we waved them all toward the theater.

“Try not to miss any of it,” you said.

“It only happens once,” you said.

They begged for us to join them, but we were too tired. Still, your son lingered. He leaned against your legs and glanced above you, straight at the giant teeth of the T-Rex. His curious eyes followed the old dinosaur’s bones from head to tail and back again.

He tore his gaze away from the old fossil, and his hands shot straight into the air. He winked his fingers open and shut. Obediently, your husband took one, my wife the other. They pulled him free from you.

And you did not reach out. And you did not try to force him to stay.

One last time, they—your husband, my wife—asked us to join them. They pointed up at the theater, not more than thirty feet away.

There’s even an elevator, they said.

We answered no. One last time.

Shoulders slumped, the two of them trudged up the ramp toward the double-doored entrance. Your son skipped faster and bobbed higher between them with each step closer. Closer to the whales and the ocean, to the deep blue, to the waiting nothingness.     

Closer, closer, closer. Closer and farther at the same time.

Because we followed them, but only with our eyes.

Self-Preservation

by Danielle Mund | Sep 5, 2024 | flash fiction, publications

In the first month of the year after the holiday season she felt out of sorts (the season she got the diagnosis, the season the doctor gave her a referral to the Giant Hospital), Barbara bought things. She awoke every day with the phrase carpe diem on a looping conveyor belt in her mind, showered in frigid water as soon as it shot from the showerhead (to wait for it to turn hot was the difference between life and death), and dressed quickly and simply, for it was imperative she be at the Big Lots! when the doors opened at nine. Not getting coffee at Starbucks across the street, not parking in the parking lot, but actually standing at the door. If she wasn’t, she’d already lost out on the possibility of claiming the entirety of the day’s clearance rack, lost the day’s meaning. Once she was inside and had chosen the right shopping cart, she wheeled it directly to the farthest point in the store and began scavenging down the aisles. She loaded up on whatever was on sale: toothbrushes and bath bombs, Connect4 and Barbie dolls, bras too big and too small, leftover tinsel, a dog bed, a Discman with AM/FM radio, a swiveling office chair. She gathered them as a squirrel gathers acorns, each day collecting and organizing and storing, and just as a squirrel buries its treasure in the space between the heavens and the inferno, so Barbara rocked herself into a trancelike state between the aisles of her own meticulous making at home: Apparel, Holiday Decor, Office Supplies. Day after day she returned to the ever-changing display at the front of the store where a carousel of discounted items from electronics to baby bibs required a Tetris-like rearrangement of items in her cart. On the morning she cracked the puzzle without once having to take an item out before putting it back in again, she let out an audible “Amen,” and that afternoon arranged things at home without rocking. By then she was placing things not in the house but behind the garage, where there was a broken refrigerator she’d found by the side of the road. The fridge had compartments, and that was its point. Because she had a nagging feeling that lining things up along the backside of the garage could be considered the beginning stage of something unspeakable (she did not know what it was exactly, but it had to do with avalanches of tools, hidden insect nests, getting lost without anyone ever realizing), she told herself she was placing things outside only until her husband cleaned up his stuff, only until the exterminator came, just until she could find the stove, only putting things in a new place because it was more spacious, easier to see, only because things had a way of getting away from her in the house just when she needed them. The fridge reminded her that compartmentalizing was key, that preservation was crucial. Outside she didn’t have to worry about an avalanche when she rocked, outside she could stack things farther apart so they could breathe. Space was essential for creating new walls. Sometimes Big Lots! ran out of clearance items, and she’d have to go to Walmart or Target or search for some immaculate yard sale in another ramshackle town along the Hudson, pick up clues leading to the dump at the far end of town, find decaying toilet bowls or fish tanks. When that happened, she moved cautiously, limited only by her truck’s size, feeling, finally, the importance and care each item required of her, the mendable lawn mower, the patchable coveralls, the fractured mirror, the ripped duvet, the oozing boom boxes, the jigsaw that occupied her whole mind, body, and soul.

So that she never needed help, she kept a jack (or three, and a detachable folding hauling bed, ready whenever she needed it) in the back of the truck. She could lift a whole rusted-out car with two hands (slip the jack under its belly, forget the wheels, wheels fall off, wheels were to be organized separately anyway), and she hauled in dishwashers, boilers, and dryers. Sometimes, she would stand on top of the largest mound and stare out at the overwhelming security around her (she always tried to make eye contact with the landfill manager, a sign of impregnable mental control, nothing ever lost in her world), and then she would shuffle back between the heaps, letting the natural bulwarks guide her to the sagging truck. In the first month of the year after the holiday season she felt out of sorts, the season she got the diagnosis, the season the doctor gave her a referral to the Giant Hospital, a horrible season to exist, Barbara welcomed 4,798 treasures big and small onto her property. Sometimes, in the late afternoons, the terror would course through her bloodstream, form a new growth in her brain, shoot her in the eye with vivid visions of rectangular wooden boxes and yellow carnations and insect-filled dirt and the inevitability of what she’d already created for herself in this world, but all that disappeared when she was amongst her things.