Microfiction Monday – 203rd Edition
Unexpected Divergences
by Becky Neher
After he left her for another woman, she stopped hiding her newly-emerging gray hair and deepening wrinkles. She went to bed early, grew pansies, ate things with fiber. She bought comfy underwear. She started reading a book.
“She’s much older than you,” he had said.
At first, she had laughed.
Comfortably Alone Together
by Alexander Gerasimenko
Wish this moment would never pass. Cruising through the sunset, windows down, and one hand on the steering wheel. Love of my life rides shotgun, knowing I’ll eventually ask her to marry me. Not knowing when keeps her sparkly. The air is warm and infused with flowers, fresh on the skin as we flow through it; floating without an engine. The radio is off and we don’t talk for a while. Comfortably alone together. Guess that in the end neither one of us wants eternity, we just want life.
The Wasabi Effect
by Swetha Amit
I remember when my mother took me to a Japanese restaurant. She taught me to hold the chopsticks like a pen, scoop the sushi and gently dip it in wasabi. She complained about her nose being on fire when she had too much. She gulped ice water and warned me never to touch wasabi again. I think of her loud bouts of laughter followed by silent sobbing. Red marks on her wrist, forlorn eyes, painful conversations, the stench of urine in the bathtub. I think of how she rocked me to sleep. While I watched her close her eyes forever.
Remembrances from the Deck Overlooking the Yard
by David Klotzkin
The chimes jangled in the wind, and she suddenly remembered the bear.
On an autumn afternoon like this, the bear toppled the fence and ambled in. She’d marveled at it through the railing.
“It came in there,” she said aloud.
“I remember,” said her brother. “Pepper chased it off.”
“No!” she said. “We yelled and yelled, but it wouldn’t go until the cops used air horns.”
“What? No.”
“We didn’t have a dog then.”
They stared at each other, baffled.
The winds blew, the chimes tinkled, the shadows danced; now a dragon, now a horse, now a field of poppies.
Shedding
by Cameron Bertron
There is a girl with a lizard living inside her chest. Every night she must peel back the rind of skin above her ribcage to let it out otherwise, being nocturnal, it will patter over her lungs all night and keep her awake. It is a small, green anole. She used to delight in watching it cling to her sleeve or run over her crayons. But she was just a child. Now, she keeps it in all day. Even though she feels its impatience and, sometimes, the fish-bone thin hook of a claw as it squeezes between organs.
Microfiction Monday – 99th Edition
Evolution
by Rebecca Ford
He knew the importance of fastidiously picking out his clothes each morning. Crisp tangerine shirt, ironed khaki shorts and matching orange shoes donned with a crisp and donning a gray tweed ascot cap. Moisturize. Reflection. Reflect. He grabbed his gray Irish terrier, locked the door and went out for his walk. This is what kept him from falling into tatters. He had been fractured once. His body – limp and lifeless. Enraged and polarized. His skin had sagged. His bones had crumbled and his organs and fallen into themselves. Turned to powdery ash. Of course he knew this at the time.
Jon the Watchman
by Harman Burgess
After many years of experimenting Jon has managed to capture the nature of time within himself.
He did it with rubber bands.
The true meaning of each second writhes around inside Jon’s stomach like a hungry serpent trying to devour its own tail.
It is quite uncomfortable.
Space, responding to time, acts on Jon’s body; folding his physical form in on itself in a mandala of cosmic light.
This is also uncomfortable.
The movement of Jon’s consciousness is one with time. It ticks forward from hour to hour with the world changing around it. All Jon can do is watch.
Left
by Nydiir E’ries
No one would rescue him now. Blue veins protested to the surface like lightning breaking out of the clouds. This was a reminder of life’s cruel torment. Rocking, he watched the sky and eavesdropped on the conversations around him.
“Ma, we did miss you.”
“Driving down is hard.”
“I want to go home.”
“Will you disappear like Grandpa?”
“Why is that old man sitting alone?”
“His family will visit.”
“Ol’ man ain’t go’ no family.”
“Dad.”
“Who would leave him alone during the holidays?”
“Should be, ‘what’d the ol’ man do ta be left ‘lone?’”
Long Term Storage
by Cara Nighohossian
Lisa’s new neighbor, Marcy, sat on the bed chattering about swings and highchairs. Lisa opened the closet to arrange her sweaters on the shelf and noticed a black dress. As she grasped the old wooden hanger, her fingers brushed the fabric. An arm appeared in the sleeve, pulling her inside the closet, inside the dress. From her black lace prison, Lisa saw herself smiling, hand atop belly, coveralls spattered with blue paint. She screamed. Nothing. Marcy prattled on, oblivious.
New Lisa leaned forward, whispering, “Thank you. I’ve been waiting such a long time.” The door creaked on its hinges. Darkness.
The Volunteer
by Alexis Gkantiragas
Today is the day! After only two years, I’ve officially been promoted to volunteer at my firm! No more paying to work – I’m breaking even at only 26.
Maybe my parents will let me have my room back now they don’t have to rent it out to cover my employment. Goodbye futon!
Happy Ending?
by David Klotzkin
When I was a kid, my father read me a novel about lost explorers in the Brazilian jungle. A native boy saved their lives repeatedly but the explorers sailed back to Europe without him, leaving him to the jungle.
I was thunderstruck by the cruelty of the author who left the boy there! I wrote my own ending on the flyleaf, where the explorers civilized the native and brought him to England, and he became a famous soccer player.
Just a generation later, my daughter found the book and asked, what Eurocentric cultural elitist wrote on the flyleaf?
The Turquoise Typewriter
by Liz Dickinson
The turquoise typewriter was not bequeathed to me,
but donated after your house clearance.
“We thought you’d like this,” not,
“She’d have wanted you to have this.”
A gift of vintage typography, in lieu of love.
At my wedding, you refused to sit at the top table.
“I’m not family, seat me near the fire exit.”
I picture you, typing on your keys,
And I wonder, upon seeing my long, piano fingers,
you knew then, I was not worthy
of your typewriter.
When my piano fingers type, I hear music in the typeface:
The reciprocation of an unsolicited gift.
Microfiction Monday Magazine 