Receivers

by Ra'Niqua Lee | Jan 19, 2021 | flash fiction

Thursday nights, half the country gathered in their living rooms to watch Chad Dylan Scott shake blonde hair out of his eyes, curse his football teammates, and strip down to his Hail Mary boxers. His abs were like the ridges in an ice tray, rigid, but a jostle and a shake would be sure to make something wet. Dena Brown, twelve and sprouting, watched with her momma from their apartment on the end of the city where the rent was still cheap. “I hate sports,” her momma said one Thursday, “but I like this show.”

By sixteen, breasts had sprung up from Dena’s chest like sunflowers from dirt. She had to tell a boy “No” for the first time. She stepped out of his Cadillac and marched away from his headlights in heels a size too big. Later, inside the apartment, she found her momma watching TV in the easy chair. “You’re late,” she said. “and go put my shoes back where you got them.”

That season, Chad Dylan Scott began his fifth year of high school, second officially, and fell in love with Angel Hearting, the butt-chinned Baptist who waved pompoms as he ass-ed, damn-ed, and hell-ed his team to victory on the football field. Angel could hell as well as Chad. She had the same blue eyes and hair sleek enough to line the coffins her father sold. When she appeared on screen, the dubbed-in studio audience applauded.

Dena graduated two years later. No one clapped for her except her teary-eyed momma. “That’s my baby,” she said, “all my dreams come to bear.” Dena was five feet even, brown like polished wood, and she wore her high school graduation gown like a coatrack in a blanket. She wasn’t big enough for her own dreams, let alone her momma’s.

The finale aired. Dena and her momma watched together, mother and daughter still bonding over fake football and abs, touchdown perfect.

Chad Dylan Scott graduated from fictional high school with two state championships; a prom king crown, sash, the whole tacky get up; one pregnancy scare he never found out about since Angel kept that one in her silk-lined pocket; six fistfights, which made for six come to Jesus moments, glory and hallelujah; around two hundred beers, at least once per episode; a DUI; and a pity date for Lorraine Woodhouse, a wheelchair bound spitfire who spoke four lines in a single episode during season three. Scott went out in a blitz, confetti over the football field, him on the shoulders of his teammates, wide receivers, mostly extras. The screen went black, rolling credits, the end of the scrimmages, the offsides, the hell Scott charged toward Angel.

“That’s done,” said Dena’s momma. She had not yet taken off her work attire, all black with her security guard badge. The evening news started, wildfires and politics. They watched for a moment before turning it off to sit alone together.

Chad Dylan Scott took to doing made-for-TV movies after that, the kind where he could be the boyfriend, the husband, the killer, the man of drool, sweat, and dreams.

Dena watched other shows. She started college, tried beer, hated beer, and dated one boyfriend after another. The older she got the more damns she found in the back of her throat, the pit of her stomach. Nothing quite as soft or as sweet as a Thursday night spent with her momma, thirty-minutes, an abundance of Scotts, all interchangeable, in a prime-time peace that surpassed understanding.

The Big Dipper

by Meg Pokrass | Jan 14, 2021 | flash fiction

The pool was four feet deep, and we bought it at Target half off. You could float on your back and think, “fun times are here,” because at least you weren’t burning hot.

Mom and I watched it fill up with hose water. She looked around at the back yard, the neglected fruit trees, and said, “I’ve got to call those idiots and make sure they get a gardener.” It stunk from rotting fruit and dog poop.

I wasn’t going to worry about anything. I would just float on my back in my bikini. I would be weightless. There was an annoying flea bite in the crook of my arm, which I sucked on.
The pool was going to be my way of making more friends. I was sick of the two friends I had from last year. Lila and Blythe were both considered to be strange. Lila wasn’t ugly when she washed and brushed her long hair—about once a week. She memorized animal facts. Blythe looked like Pinocchio. She was a violin prodigy. She had a European hair cut—short, black, severe. She was proud of her breasts, which were large, adult size. I didn’t have any breasts yet, but the doctor said not to worry.

I wanted to know if late development meant small breasts. Mom said it didn’t, that she had been the same way. “Worth the wait,” she’d say with an exaggerated wink. Now that dad had his own place and his bi-polar disorder, she had all kinds of new expressions.
In my new pool, I would float on my back when it was dark, looking at the stars. Nighttime swimming had been my dream.

Since there was no one else, I invited Lila and Blythe for a nighttime dip on Saturday. Lila couldn’t come because her family needed to drive to Oxnard. Blythe said she sure as heck would be able to make it. She was all about nighttime and pools and stargazing.
“Show me the big dipper,” Blythe said. “I want to make sure you know which one it is.”
Blythe was wearing her bikini bottoms, but she left her top on the side of the pool. The pool seemed much smaller with her beside me. I was glad it was cheap.

Terribly absent were Lila’s cigarettes. I pointed to the area of the sky where I saw the Big Dipper.

“Uh huh,” she said. “A long bent ladle, right?”

Blythe looked wet and slick—her womanly breasts gleaming. I felt angry at her for taking her top off.

“It looks like a crooked dick,” I said. The pool was a bee cemetery. I scooped two up and threw them out.

“I don’t even really know what a ladle looks like,” I added.

I could hear all the neighborhood dogs talking to each other. A bee might have been marching down my arm. Something tickled.

“You know what a crooked dick looks like?” Blythe said. Her face was large, or maybe it was the moon.

“Not exactly,” I said, trying not to let my eyes get caught on her nipples, “but I’ve seen them, and they all have different shapes.”

True. I had a subscription to Playgirl. My mother had given it to me for Christmas instead of a new bike. Once she’d found a beat-up copy of The Happy Hooker under my pillow. I’d stolen it from a garage sale. When I came home from school, I found it laid out on my dresser next to my hair brush and retainer case. Nothing seemed to freak her, as long as she had two martinis.

“So, like… whose?” Blythe asked.

“I haven’t seen that many dicks, I just have…” If I told her I had a subscription to Playgirl she’d tell Lila, and then God knew what would happen when I stopped being their friend. The water in the pool was getting cooler, the smell of new plastic making things worse. I hoped she hadn’t peed in the pool, though I would not put it past her.

“I have a lot of cousins,” I said.

She smiled at me so brightly then, she almost looked pretty. She squealed, half laugh, half death cry. She said she was getting cold—hey, what a great idea, let’s bake oatmeal cookies.
Suddenly she said, “Could you imagine sucking one of those?”

“God, no,” I said, fast and soft. Her eyes looked back at me big, full of thought. She moved in.

“What do you imagine they taste like?” I knew better than to speak.

“Corn on the cob,” she whispered into my ear, spitting, “with a bit of salt.”

This was not happy news. I knew that violin prodigies lived exotic lives, they were much older than other teenagers. They traveled to Europe.

I imagined Blythe kneeling in front of an audience, her mouth open like a baby bird.

“I’m not ever going to do that,” I said. It sounded fake, as if I were acting in a play.

Blythe moved to the far side of the pool. The moving water sounded smooth. She kept still, cupping her chin in her hands. I wondered if our friendship was done. Her nose was cartoonishly off-kilter, as if a person had sculpted the middle of her face blindfolded. She practiced three hours a day after school, was going to be on CD covers wearing velvet dresses. She was going to be rich. She already knew everything that was going to happen.

(originally published in Damn Sure Right, Press 53

User Profile for the Recently Bereaved

by Jessica Cavero | Jan 11, 2021 | flash fiction

I’m looking for

the way it feels to stand behind doors sliding shut on a train to Ikebukuro and you bow goodbye to me from the platform and I bow to you. I am on my way to that monster cafe we loved, where the slippers they gave us were fuzzy and green with small yellow talons, and you looked like a child come out of a storybook then, balancing on tiptoe, but sitting across from me at the table, you were just a man. The root beer floats had rubber eyeballs popped on the straws. One eye, blue and mean, caught between your teeth.

The way to win me over is

the stationary shop, let’s wait out the rain, you said, our tongues sweet with vanilla-rum. I picked up memo pads with smiling cats on the pages. Happy Birthday, Congratulations. You bought gel pens of varying line thickness, traced my profile on a sheet of newsprint, but only the outside of me and said this is Contour. When I stared at the space like my body was a house I’d just moved into, wondering how you would fill it, you shook your head.   

The highlight of my day is usually

lunchtime, looking out my office window. A woman walks her dalmatian past the maple trees and sometimes she will take her dog’s paws, lift him up. They dance on the sidewalk like that, for one full minute, and when the dog tires of the two-step, it rolls in the grass, belly up. Old style, you used to call it, putting your hands on my waist to teach me.

A random fact I love is

Hachiko’s memorial outside Shibuya Station. Now it’s a place where tourists line up for pictures, touching his bronze paws, or where drunk salarymen congregate half-asleep at dawn. But every day for nine years and nine months, exactly at the train’s moment of arrival, he waited for his person, even in death. 

I know the best spot in town for

weeping. It’s at the bus terminal in Shinjuku, best if I’m crouched between the lockers and payphone, too drunk to care if the palm reader asking for my hand is a fraud. What are heartlines? What is a life? My palms are exposed and creased with dirt. I offer them up, and the palm reader tells me you are alone in this country, as if it’s a revelation.

Favorite holiday tradition

Tiny Gracie, she is called. The cake topper for my sister’s 10th birthday is a smiling wax girl in a blue dress. After I sing Feliz Cumpleaños a ti over Facetime, my sister balances Tiny Gracie on the kitchen island, sets her on a paper plate raft and her small hands are the waves and the waves hold both of us.

Go-to karaoke song

Name anything by The Cure and I will sing it for you. I will sing Pictures of You. I will sing you were bigger and brighter and wider than snow.

I’ll fall for you if

you lead me through the rooms of your house when the power goes out, my hand in yours. If we take wide-slow steps like we are deep sea divers learning how to walk. If I cannot see your face. If you say, baby, say everything is fine.

My most irrational fear

is that it won’t be illness that gets us in the end. It will be a mouth opening deep in the earth with teeth jutting from the base of its throat, and you falling in, quick and brutal.

The one thing I’d love to know about you is

how you get through the worst of it. How do you not keep the TV on through the night, so the brush of static is like a hand in your hair, and it is close enough for you to call it a haunting? And how do you not look for signs in every winged creature? The praying mantis that sticks to your windshield as you drive too fast on the interstate back home. The dragonfly that lands on your chest pocket like a new button, stays there for hours. Tell me. How you love the world so much, even when it breaks your heart.

I’m convinced that

my sister was right when she said to speak to yourself like you would speak to a friend. I was wrong about my contour. My body was not a house. It was a landscape in winter but light existed in me too.

All that I ask is that you

teach me how to draw, not like the Italian masters, but like a child. I am not trying to make a beautiful thing yet. I want the grit of vine charcoal under my nails. I want the formless sweep of many lines on top of each other, the rise and fall of shapes like breath, yours, mine. Here, alive.

Grown-Ups Also Lie: Three Micros

by Melissa Bowers | Dec 14, 2020 | flash fiction

Punch Me

he tells his son. It’s okay. You need to learn.

Tenderly, the father kneels, and the boy makes a four-year-old fist, aims for the broad chest, tensed and squared and fleshier than the father remembers himself. Little knuckles against aging skin. A slapping sound.

Not like that, he says. Not with that side. With this one.

He demonstrates in slow motion. The boy studies his father’s hand as it approaches: the flat, hairy planes of it, the calluses. It stops just short of connecting with his tiny shoulder, but the boy hasn’t yet learned to flinch. Instead he lifts his face until he finds his own reflection in the glass of his father’s eyes, a blurred version of himself, watery, like the time he tripped in the rain and fell flat on his stomach just above a puddle, still rippling with wind although the storm had almost passed.

The father looks behind at his life and sees: the bus stop where they pushed him into the street, the classroom where they tied his ankles to a chair, the cafeteria where they poured ketchup down his pants, the park where they stole his bike before dusk, the student lot where they keyed COCKSUCKER across the hood, the party where they took turns peeing into his beer, the locker room where they trapped him and touched him and tore his clothes and left him there, bloody and naked.

The boy looks ahead at his life and sees: beauty.

Try again, the father says, and his son does as he’s told.

A Gathering of Fireflies

The child presses one sticky finger to the window, toward the hilltop, and asks if this is how clouds are made: thick wisps of smoke spiraling above the trees, gentle puffs of impending damage. Dispersing. Disappearing.

No, the child’s mother starts to say, and she considers calling it a bonfire—have you ever heard of them, my sweet?—its warmth only for charred marshmallows and numbed toes, its crackle only for soothing everyone to sleep. She considers calling it a celebration of fireworks, a parade of rocket ships, a wishfall of stars, anything innocent and beautiful to explain this strange new brightness in the night sky.

Yes, she says instead. That is how clouds are made.

While she packs a suitcase, they talk about colors: Green leaves that sometimes glow orange. Blue skies that sometimes turn black. Almost like a bruise, she says, kneeling, touching tenderly the marks along each tiny shin. The child clutches a yellow duck in one soft-skinned fist, rubs at the tufts of fur.

But it’s more of a mountain than a hilltop. And it is not a bonfire, and they are not fireflies, and sometimes the smoke goes deep, deep gray.

The Difference Between an Earthquake and a Storm

It rocks you awake, sweetheart. Almost gently, the ground bubbling beneath your bed, and for a moment you can pretend you are nestled once again in an elbow’s crook, that you have not grown up, that you are not alone. It disorients: Why is the whole world shivering? Just as you identify it, just as you give it a name, it ends—if you are already moving, you might not notice it at all.

It lulls you to sleep, the thrumming. It soothes: The machine you needed for naptime, white noise tucked into the belly of a stuffed owl. Preset 1: Wind. Presets 2, 3, and 4: Ocean, Birds, and Cloudburst, respectively, the rain like static. Even lightning calms you—each rumble of thunder is just a heartbeat.

*

Everywhere feels different but looks the same. There is still sun and light, or stars and dark, whatever existed before the air began to quaver, all the objects wobbling as if disturbed by something spectral. The hands of a ghost. Maybe a portrait comes unhinged and crashes to the floor. Maybe the street goes jagged, a crumbling bolt split through the pavement, the damage invisible until something is destroyed.

Everywhere you look, there it is. On the rattling windows and the flooding lawn, all the gray heavy with wet. You can breathe it, you once told me it has a smell. Like sharp, you said. Like safe. Your footprints—mud-coated, staining the floors, proof of you. I will never see a puddle and not want to reach for your hand. I will jump, even when I’ve forgotten my coat and boots, even when I am helpless and unprotected.

*

You asked questions beyond your years:

Do superheroes always win?

Which one is worse, an earthquake or a storm?

When I hug you, why do you hold me sooo long?

Did you know some things self-destruct? Just break, all on their own?

*

Now that I’ve finally learned the answer, you won’t listen. One of them you can see coming, and the other—out of nowhere—is a catastrophic act of defiance.