Microfiction Monday – 169th Edition
The Argument
by G.J. Williams
If the city sleeps, it’s only because he dreams it does so. The city for real never lets up. Not a nook of it he doesn’t know. The freemasonry of ginnels has long been clocked; so too the ways of the city council. If the city shouts, it’s only because he, trembling citizen, allows it scope. There are times he shouts back. There are moments he positively lets rip. If the city’s response is to be without light, he’ll claim the walls braille, the dark no hindrance. It gets that way after a while.
The Secret to Staying Human
by Sally Simon
Mom digs her feet under the wet sand of the Atlantic. I stand next to her, wondering if the ocean will remember her and melt her legs back together.
Each wave climbs higher up our pale legs. Our feet sink deeper and deeper. The surge threatens to topple me, to suck me out to sea. Tears stream down my cheeks.
Mom grabs me. “This was a mistake.”
I cling to her as she rushes toward our towels.
She dries her feet. Inspects each toe. Sighs in relief.
My toes tingle, translucent skin spreads between them. The ocean’s song calls me.
The Thing About Clouds…
by Elad Haber
…is that there’s people in them.
Not dead people and not aliens. Just people from another plane of existence. A higher plane. They treat those big billowy things like houseboats and the sky is their ocean made of oxygen. They float instead of walk.
Like all people, they fight with their neighbors. We know those as thunderstorms.
When the war really heats up, it spreads destruction across two worlds. We know those as hurricanes.
Like all people, they are developing new ways to hurt and kill each other. We don’t have a word for that type of storm.
Not yet.
Disappearing Stars
Hey, Earth.
Your scientists have noticed that stars are disappearing from the night sky. Sorry, that’s our bad. Our drone swarms are currently plundering…erm…repurposing precious metals from trillions of planetary systems so we can build megastructures around their stars for collection.
Why are we doing this, you may ask? We’re the hivemind of an advanced AI built for a singular purpose: to write sick techno. Our first hit was, “The Big Bang.” Our newest song will have an epic bass drop produced by one trillion supernovae. We’re calling it, “The Even Bigger Bang.”
Enjoy the show! It’s gonna be lit.
Microfiction Monday – 168th Edition
Fear-Umbrellas
The beach was dotted with fear-umbrellas, fear-bathing suits, fear-Coors Lights and fear-cigarettes, fear-children from fear-marriages on fear-vacations, sitting on fear-beach blankets or playing fear-beach ball. “I’ll take the fear-risotto,” the fear-husband ordered later at the fear-restaurant, “and a double-fear Manhattan.”
“That sounds good,” the fear-wife said. “I’ll have that, too. And two fear-grilled cheese fear-meals.”
Through all of dinner, the fear-kids never looked up from their fear-devices and their fear-vacation Dr. Peppers, except once to say, “Can I have another fear-refill, please?”
On Painting…
by Dr. Vaishnavi Pusapati
Some people want to know. I don’t know why, but they do. They want to know what I do for a living, how much I make, whether my Gucci bag is a real Gucci bag. When I tell people I paint for a living, they either think of students recreating Vermeer or the kind of painting rendered less wanted by the advent of photography or the modern art that they say they could have made and so could their kids who haven’t walked yet. I then tell them I paint nails, and most ask for a discount.
Search and Rescue
by Jennifer Lai
At a wilderness first-aid class, I’m slathered with faux blood and bruises before instructed to head into the urban forest out back and hide. My role as a victim is to await rescue from a fellow classmate who’ll pass if I’m found and given proper first aid. Bodie arrives within seven minutes—amazing, given he’s only here to satisfy his outdoor enthusiast parents. He gives me a once over then lights a joint. After a long exhale, he offers me a hit. “What are you doing?” I say, bewildered. “Chill, dude,” he replies. “It’s medicinal. You’re going to be okay.”
Corroding Bond
He jet-washed, waxed, and buffed for hours. Drifted fingertips across the coolness of the frictionless bodywork. That was Saturdays. Sundays, he would join the other petrolheads at yet another show and shine. No one else ever brought their kid along.
“Let him be a teenager,” his wife said.
“It’s father-son time. Besides, he loves it.”
They drove for three hours to the next one, listening to Top Gear podcasts. His son looked down, huffing, thumbs tapping.
“Aren’t you going to get out,” he asked the boy when they got there.
“No,” his voice coarse like rust.
Microfiction Monday – 167th Edition
Aftereffects
by Margaret Suganthy Parker
When at last I fall silent and the six-feet hole in the ground is my forever home, I shall cherish the company of maggots, which is more than I can say about you lot, Ben said. Maybe that pissed them off. When the time came, they cremated Ben, tamping down his ashes into a six-inch urn—a rusty, round Van Houten tin. The tin went from mantle (that honor lasted the duration of the wake) to mud-room shelf to cobwebbed garage corner, then to the garden-shed floor. Occasionally a fly rests on the tin, reproach conspicuous on its sulky face.
Appliance Appreciation
by Emily Fine
“I feel used, unappreciated,” my dishwasher told me.
I thanked it for its service.
“Too little, too late” it said, then fell silent and refused to turn back on.
After a week of hand washing, I realized I had taken it for granted. I sank to my knees, pleading, “I want you back. It’ll be different this time.” No response.
A week later I replaced it. The new machine was more efficient, less needy. Still, at the end of each load I made sure to give it a little pat of gratitude and whispered, “keep up the good work.”
Barbers
by Linda Lowe
Barbers look all Christmassy in their candy-cane striped vests, their mustaches frosty and festive. Barbers always wear red and white to match the poles that swirl and. whirl out front, begging for customers. Barbers dream of scissors and clippers that stay sharp forever, and shears that whistle a happy tune. Barbers will sing off key to teach you right from wrong. They sigh before they sing (it’s part of the plan). Everyone comes to visit them in their leafy old home, where they sing “Sweet Adeline,” and the old men say, “that could have been me back in the day.”
Jack-in-the-Box
I find a jack-in-the-box and crank the handle. The tune ends and out pops the jack. I stuff him back in, and he moans. In darkness the jack continues moaning as I crank the handle and the music plays. Again, the jack pops up, but he isn’t smiling this time. The jack screams when I stuff him in. I crank the handle, and a dirge plays. The jack-in-the-box pops up dead. The jack is silent when I stuff him in his box, which I note for the first time, is a black box with all gold trimmings, veiled in grief.
Microfiction Monday – 166th Edition
Lychees and Figs
by Marcy Dilworth
A purple fedora snatched from a visitor wobbled on Freddy Orangutan’s head as he followed Trainer Tom out the just unlocked door, determined to enjoy retirement after thirty years’ loyal zoo service.
But fruit cost money, and money didn’t grow on trees. He landed at Amazon and spent his days submerged in a gray cubicle selecting canned answers in faceless chats with strangers, amassing 5-star reviews and aching joints.
The gig kept him in lychees and figs, but was this it?
Back at the zoo, the door, locked; Freddy’s heart, lonely, open.
Fedora in hand, he waited for Trainer Tom.
Balloon Animals
by David M Wallace
We stand in line at the fair for half an hour. A harried clown in rainbow overalls, beset by toddlers. Twisting balloons into elaborate pink ponies, purple elephants, blue dinosaurs. Our turn, at last.
“A snake!” she says.
He shrugs. One quick exhale. Two unblinking eyes.
Next.
What He Liked Went Unsung
by R. P. Singletary
No pretending, he liked the sane signature across the old guitar best. Oh he could play, had learnt how, all alone in that field, only son, brothers both dead, Dad always away, hiding out in the open from them all. Too much fusseriness, he called all the women in the house (sister, mother, granny, aunt, cousin) all behind all their proud backs, but when they’d shout out toward the barren furrows to ask their cry for notes, he’d pretend then the best, to please, and he’d strum them exactly, just what they done asked for, as if all for them.
Construction
by Ken Poyner
When Quibble receives the happiness, he finds it was shipped unassembled, without instructions, and free of paint. He spreads the pieces across his living room floor and begins moving them about, gauging which pieces might fit best with which other pieces. He tires, decides to go to Thole’s for the paint he will use. He had hoped when he came back the pieces would make more sense. They do not. It appears they have moved themselves into confusing clusters and configurations, and will need to be realigned. Then he thinks: paint first, or assemble? This project could take a lifetime.
Microfiction Monday – 165th Edition
That Same Game
by Ronit Plank
He’s been here all of thirty minutes and my sister is telling our dad again about that night when we were little and still living with him, when he set her on top of the fridge and left her there. She thinks it’s a good story, like he was playing a game. She doesn’t understand. She puts the inside of herself outside for anyone, especially him, to hurt. She laughs once more and keeps watching him in case he decides to look at her or crack a smile. As if that will make the difference this time.
Colleen Red
by Marcy Dilworth
Drifts of ashes gray-blanket the farmhouse, the fallen cattle, the land they’d labored into life.
Colleen loads a knapsack with little to leave the nothing.
“How will Jed find me?”
No breadcrumbs; bread crumbled to memory long ago.
She tips in a tumble of treasured tubes—acrylics, oils, watercolors—and marks the miles of her pointillist path, a misery of blues, a yearning of yellows, a startle of oranges, more.
Only Colleen Red remains.
She slows. Dispenses dwindling drops. Contemplates beginnings and ends. And spies Jed, hobbling across the cinder-filled creek. Drips from his finger complete their abstract masterpiece.
Ashes
by David M Wallace
One hundred billion stars in the universe will die this year. One hundred billion lamps burned dry. And in my breathing body, as many cells will offer up their lives by Tuesday. Enough for a galaxy. But you, scattered on this sea? Too many and too long ago to count those griefs.
Microfiction Monday – 164th Edition
Pageant
by Lorette C. Luzajic
The future Miss Chatelaine daubs a final explosion of glassine goo on her lower pout and declares herself battle ready. Glowering from her throne of cast and crutches, Maude, her injured sister, records the monumental transformation in her diary. She glows, she gleams, a jewel among beauty queens. She pauses, then crosses a line through her prose. More like an ad for dish soap, she thinks, as Celie flounces out into the pageant pandemonium in a cloud of imposter Obsession.
Confessin’
by Peter Cherches
I’ve got the world on a string. I just adore Victorian wallpaper. I never freeze foods that should never be frozen. I know which side my bread is buttered on. I’ve been praised for my verbal skills and am not afraid to end a sentence with a preposition. I always flush after peeing; I always put the seat down too. It may take me a while, but I eventually get to the point.
I hope you’re sitting down.
I’m mad about you.
Cousin Linus
by G.J. Williams
A plumper version, but there’s no mistaking those eyes, their worrying shine. And he laughs apropos of nothing. What’s with the daybreaks I don’t know: he’s up predawn, poised and waiting, rain or shine. No use in asking; the answer would only confuse. Vigilance essential. Between the last drunk’s belch and the first bird’s tuning up, who knows what he does, what space he occupies. The room he’s in may be theoretical, and his place in it a phantom show for our deadened sensibilities. Who knows. I don’t. He may.
Microfiction Monday – 163rd Edition
Unto the Fire
I am the twigs thrown onto the fire. I grow smaller each time someone loves me and each time someone stops. I wither in the magnitude of the conflagration I’ve created.
After her love, I became the white flakes of flint drifting through the sky, like bits of torn flesh. Next time, I will perhaps shrivel into a speck of black powder, no bigger than a grain of sand.
“I’m sorry,” I’ll say to whoever tries to love me then, knowing they will kill me, “this is all I have left to offer up unto your fire.”
Traveling Salesman, 1927
Selling cocktail glasses creates a thirst for many things, not only liquor. But the pretty girl serving dinner in the hotel restaurant seems immune to my charms. Our paths cross again in the drugstore where I’m buying aspirin for the inevitable hangover and she, filling a prescription for her bedridden mother. Red-haired, dimpled Angelica lets me walk her home. It’s a gorgeous tropical twilight, and she laughs at my jokes. I kiss her and promise I’ll return to Tampa soon. Her face glows like the full moon in my dreams. I sleep poorly and am on the road before sunrise.
Entertainment
The clown wobbles on stage, shackles dragging amongst debris, where Joy-Bringer awaits, whip in hand, skull mask lighted by torches.
Barefoot in his predecessor’s blood, he faces the crowd.
Ashes fall through the collapsed roof, on skins whitened by sunless years. Hollow eyes, bodies, minds, hearts. Starved, but salivating for the show.
Pain explodes on his back, cheers in his ears. Their only amusement—someone’s suffering.
But this clown, he smiles. Has lost everything, endured all torments.
The whip cracks. His flesh too. Never his spirit.
He giggles; they roar.
He lifts his arms, laughing, absorbing their frustration.
His entertainment.
Microfiction Monday – 162nd Edition
Poorophelia
by G.J. Williams
Poorophelia is a condition commonly found among the middle-classes, and is characterised by an excessive fondness for the more plangent manifestations of mental illness. Generally, the more winsome and fragile the sufferer, and the more broken her song, the greater the degree of sympathy accorded her; and it usually is a her.
Pooropheliacs are known for their hearts; they are often to be found bleeding. Pooropheliacs tend to hover; their faces search yours. Furrowed brows also feature heavily.
For pooropheliacs a rose is not a rose, never was. As for twilight, it bleeds, and the rivers they run lonely.
Green Flash
by Ana Cotham
We set his ashes and a profusion of leis—orchid, pikake, ti leaf—adrift on the outgoing tide, an oil spill of tropical colors. Then we bring her inside and prepare for a new day. This grief, these new days, are ours alone, because four days ago she stopped asking where he was; like a whirlpool, the drowning in her eyes, as sixty years of marriage simply drained away. We don’t insist; we keep her warm and happy instead. The next morning, we comb the beach for dislocated strands and sodden orchids, and add them to our sandcastle.
The Man with the Wooden Beard
by P J Rice
In the town of Warton-on-the-Mold, a man named Dwunt failed to grow hair from his chin. The solution: to carve a fine, solid beard from an oak log; suspend it from his ears on leather straps.
When Dwunt held up his head–chin out–the wooden beard stayed firm to his face; but usually it hung and swung like a pub sign.
The wood’s weight dragged Dwunt’s head, stooping him. Stretching his neck. The straps pulled his ears forward, two cabbage leaves. Dwunt didn’t care. He had a well-made facial appendage. His manly-man’s beard. A solid piece of his own.
Microfiction Monday – 161st Edition
Choose
by Madison Randolph
Pipe smoke swirled and tickled Tam’s nose as he puffed. The dirt path he walked undulated through the corn to a crossroads.
The smoke thickened two spirits appeared: a hooded figure stood to his left and, to his right, a veiled woman.
“You must choose,” they said in unison.
Tam turned, but the road had disappeared. Horrified, he fell to his knees before the veiled apparition.
It lowered the veil, rotting skeletal teeth smiled down.
The hooded figure sighed with a shake of his golden curls.
Life may be shadowed in mystery, but to some, death will always be inviting.
Big Aitch
by G.J. Williams
The state he’s in, you can smell the rot. No question Big Aitch knows it. The aroma unmistakable. And where Big Aitch goes the rot goes. He tries to disguise it of course. Comes on all radio rental; rolls the eyeball, makes much of his fingers, puts on airs, pulls faces, has it out with his own shadow, calls a spade many things but never a spade. Makes up his mind so that his mind’s made up; tralala. Watch your words; watch his. There’s no telling. The state he’s in. You can smell the rot from here.
Switchbacks on the Pacific Crest Trail
by Ana Cotham
We’d heard a Trail Angel was four miles ahead, so we kept hiking. Shin splints knifed me with every step; Lisa gritted her teeth through blood blisters. We found the cabin, where a silver-haired woman greeted us with stew, coffee, hot showers.
Clean, fed, soothed with bandages, we shared stories over steaming mugs of cocoa. Sunset glowed, making a silhouette of trees, and she told us the storm had passed.
Lisa said uncertainly, “But—the weather’s been clear.”
“No, my love,” the woman said kindly. “The storm took you both by surprise. How else do you think you found me?”
Microfiction Monday – 160th Edition
Number 4 was Born at Home
by Shannon Hare
After a sleepless night, each crunchy step reminds me of granola. I swat at blackberry brambles with spoon arms. It helps to get scratches. To ground me. To pick at until tomorrow.
“I’m asking for ten minutes a day.”
I was too far away now to hear the baby crying. Still, the rush comes to me, just at the thought of it. Milky circles on my shirt.
Women and Girls
by David M Wallace
My dear wife. I have your letter and the joyous news. The army winters in Gaul but will return to Rome come spring, gods willing. I will send money soon. If the child is a boy, name him Lucius. If a girl, leave her to the elements. Greet my mother for me when next you see her.
Certification
by Ken Poyner
The guards at street’s end swing quart bottles of blood. It is not their blood. It is not your blood. With these exceptions, it could be anyone’s blood. When guard is changed, the new guards bring new blood. In your house you worry how the blood is collected, in what province or block, from which political party; with tubes and needles, or by sopping it from the floor. No one speaks of it, yet everyone worries. Slowly, it is marveled at less. It is assumed each rotation of guards will have new blood. It is normal. The experiment is done.
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