Tag: flash fiction

Bluffs Surround Us by Brett Biebel

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We watched the movie in Julie’s basement. Back when she had a mansion. Back before her parents got divorced. The plot was convoluted. The runtime was excessive. They’d filmed it like 20 minutes away in La Crosse, and we recognized about a million Wisconsin landmarks, or I did anyway. I was sitting three feet from the screen. Julie fell asleep on Keith’s lap, and I could hear occasional rustling behind me, Keith moving softly, Keith trying not to make things weird. In the movie, there’s like some kind of minorly mutated flu virus, and a bunch of old people refuse a vaccine. What happens is they die. They die, and they do so in enough numbers to constitute like twelve percent of the difference in a real close presidential election that swings to the Democrat, and there are media stories. Academic studies. Outsiders flood this town, and a bunch of kids like us get together and use rose petals to write “STAY STRONG” in front of every single former home of a now dead voter. The roses look all bloody on top of the snow. It’s hard to tell if the movie switches to black and white or if everything’s just so grey that it’s all indistinguishable. I caught Keith in the glare. He was scrunched way to the side of the sofa, Julie snoring away with her hair rolling over his legs.

“I figured you were having some kind of boner situation,” I said, on the way home.

“I was trying to like move her head real gentle on account of I didn’t want her to wake up. It wasn’t supposed to be creepy at all. And then like two clumps of her hair came out in my hand, and I kept daydreaming she had cancer.”

“Fuck,” I said, looking at him. Not wanting it to be true. But also imagining if it were. Watching Keith do the same.

“I’m not good with sickness,” he said, and I told him how the thing about cancer was that people who had it didn’t want to think about it, and you could do a lot by mostly ignoring it. Mostly waiting, which was all we could do. We waited for Julie to show up bald or dead, but the closest we got were wigs. I liked the blonde one. Platinum with bangs and cut tight shoulder-length. Keith was into the same style, only he preferred it jet black. Nobody else seemed to have an opinion. Julie’d walk by, and the hall would kind of tense up, and Keith would give her his math homework. Statistics, it was. I didn’t have much to offer until Julie started sleeping at her mom’s new place. Maxine’s. It was a lot smaller. Two blocks from the high school. We got invited over more often. We invited ourselves. Julie laughed louder. The movies got lighter. We tried to play games. Sometimes, Keith had an early curfew, and before he left, he’d look at me, kind of ambivalent, kind of asking.

“Gonna catch a ride with someone else,” I’d say, and he’d nod and shut the front door real quiet. One time I stayed until 2AM, and we watched music videos while Julie played with her bangs. We talked about the bands you play when no one’s awake to hear and she told me not to tell Keith how late I stayed, “Not because anything happened, but he’s probably not ready to hear it.”

“Okay,” I said, and I never told Keith. Even though I wanted to. Too scared he’d see right through me. 

Julie lost weight, then she put it back on. We didn’t know if she was getting better. Time was passing. It was senior year. Winter. Some weekends she’d spend at her dad’s place, and Keith and I would drive by. Julie drove this yellow Jeep, and sometimes it would be parked there. Sometimes not. Sometimes there was music. Sometimes not. On one of the quiet nights, Keith kept driving in circles. We couldn’t see the Jeep.

“Didn’t you say she’d be here?” said Keith.

I shrugged. “I don’t remember what I said.”

Keith pulled over. The mansion was behind us, built into a bluff. Somewhere below was the river. We couldn’t see it in the dark. “Listen,” he said, “If you want me to, like, stop, you just need to say so, okay?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I looked at the house and thought about movies and basements and the way people fall asleep.

“Like.” Keith drummed on the dash. “I’m just trying to make her feel better, I guess, is what I’m saying. If it makes you feel weird or whatever. That’s all.”

“I don’t feel weird,” I said.

He nodded a little. I nodded back. He put the car in drive, and we wheeled around town for a while. Stopped at the Hy-Vee. Keith grabbed some roses, and I did too, and we found the Jeep parked outside Maxine’s. The lights inside the house were on. Julie was talking to her mom in the kitchen. Her hair was short and a little patchy.

She didn’t see us write “STAY STRONG” in rose petals on her lawn, but, on Monday, at school, Julie shrieked and hugged the two of us, hugged us like the ship was sinking and here were two logs in a broken life raft, and she went to prom with Keith. He said nothing ever happened, “nothing except some cloudy intense shit I don’t even understand,” but I didn’t know if I should believe him. I didn’t know how much I cared.

But that night with the roses, the moon was on us. We fought a little over the last petal or two, Keith in front of me, me in front of Keith. Laughing. Joking. Then Keith drove us away. Keith was more confident. Keith always drove. And the whole way back to mine we talked about last summer. About this uniform they made Julie wear at the drive-in, this knock-off nostalgia place where the high school girls put on roller skates and shorts that were too long to be sexy and too short to be chaste, and we let that image hang there, whispering. No music. No more talking. The bluffs cast frozen shadows, and the purity of our intentions sat there between us. Its levels were static and jumpy, all of them muddled as leaves beneath the reddened snow.

Brett Biebel is the author of three collections of flash fiction, 48 Blitz, Winter Dance Party, and Gridlock; and A Mason & Dixon Companion. His work has appeared in many magazines and been selected for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. He lives, writes, and teaches in Illinois.

Two Stories by Linda Drach

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TRAVEL & LEISURE

I’d see them in the cardiology waiting room. Not every time, but often. The man, shuffling behind an aluminum walker, his right foot dragging; the woman, slowing her gait to keep pace. Always, her hand rested lightly on his bicep. That was completely unnecessary. A gesture of tenderness, I guess. He looked like my second husband. She looked like the Starbucks barista my husband shacked up with before divorcing me. I’d stare at them until the woman felt me looking and glanced over to where I’d parked myself near the giant aquarium so I could reap the calming benefits of fish swishing. My eyes were flamethrowers that singed her bangs, burned through her skull, and incinerated the smoking cessation poster that hung on the wall behind her. Satisfied, I’d pretend to turn back to Travel & Leisure or Yacht World. 

That was before my doctor shunted me off to hospice.

It was strange. I hated that waiting room. But when the couple appeared I forgot that I was waiting. Suddenly, I had energy and a sense of control, whereas just moments before, I’d had neither. I liked sketching in the details of their lives, imagining the bank statements and what was parked in the driveway. I liked thinking about her slutty lingerie, long abandoned, the elastic going slack in a bottom dresser drawer. I liked thinking about her bitching to her friends over too many glasses of Sauvignon Blanc about the pill bottles crowding her quartz countertops. About the long, tedious nights building puzzles instead of fucking. 

Those were good afternoons for me.

It’s been months since I was there. But sometimes, as I’m staring down the teddy bear the volunteers insist on staging at the foot of my bed, I think of that couple. I wonder if he’s in a wheelchair now. I wonder if she’s gotten fat. I hope she’s gotten fat. These daydreams are necessary; they counteract all this false cheer. I heard one of the nurses talking about me, the only thing keeping that one alive is spite. I’m still listening for rubber wheels rolling down the hallway. To feel a little surge.

THE FARM

Pat calls on a Monday night to tell me my nephew – his son – is dead. 

He never says dead. He says Joel is gone. But I know what he means right away, like I knew when our mom told us Sparky or Boo or Snowflake went to the farm, so they could run freely instead of eking out their short doggy lives in our cramped backyard. 

Gone. That’s all he says. That’s all he can say. 

When I get to the ER, Pat is slumped on a vinyl couch, yowling through clenched fists, like a cat with its tail stuck in a slammed door. The chaplain patting his back looks glad to see me. Five bug-eyed youth silently circle the room, like a school of guppies – stoic little fish, who spend their short lives sucking lines of shit off the bottom of their tank and then spitting them out to try again. Relentless in their efforts to find something delicious. Each time, it’s shit. These are Joel’s 12-Step friends. His goddamn friends, who watched him die.

It’s time to see Joel, but Pat says he can’t – he doesn’t want to see him this way, which is dead. When we were kids, I always took care of the lesser burials. Dozens of goldfish, two turtles, three lizards, and a chinchilla. A grim menagerie interred in our mother’s garden, near the concrete statue of Mother Mary. Our household was rough on living things. This is why I never had children. 

The chaplain leads me through a set of double doors, and there’s Joel, wearing the same flannel shirt he was wearing on Saturday. Our boy needs a haircut. His copper locks, the same shade as mine, are shaggy at his neck and fall haphazardly across the petals of his cheeks. His hand is still warm – only a little bit cooler than my brother’s. Where are you, Joel? I whisper in his ear. The chaplain fidgets. He’s certain Joel is strolling through God’s cosmic vivarium. I shoot him a look and he leaves us alone. Can he tell how much I hate him right now? He knows my type. A lapsed Whatever, with my poems and pop songs and coffee can ashes, making half-assed attempts at the everlasting – when what I want is the farm. 

I tell Joel if believing made it so, I’d make myself believe it. I’d send you to a party that goes on forever and never gets out of hand. Where you could play three-handed pinochle with your mother and grandfather and share a bottle of magic bourbon. The kind that won’t lead to black eyes or scarred livers. I’d make sure you’re happy. That you know you’re enough. I’m crying now, with my head on his chest. Bawling, really, like a motherless calf. I picture the floribunda roses framing my mother’s backyard shrine. Vivid red. Heavenly scent. Climbing the chain link, spilling over in its vigor. Back every year, despite our neglect.

Linda Drach is a poet and writer, public health program manager, and volunteer writing group facilitator for the nonprofit Write Around Portland. Her writing has been published in The Bellingham Review, Cagibi, CALYX, Cathexis Northwest, The Timberline Review, and elsewhere. She studies and teaches at The Writers Studio.

A Reading List for the End of the World by Julia Rose Greider

On By okaydonkey7In flash fiction1 Comment

Robin and I are coping well with the end of the world, by which I mean we usually wake up by eleven and agree that eleven is not bad at all. We start our day with reading: Robin prefers Plato, while I prefer Garfield. My love, ever the philosophy major, has drawn up a list of essential texts and downloaded as many as our laptops can hold, since the Internet will go out any day now. We argued for weeks over whether Garfield deserved to survive the apocalypse. Robin said everyone would hate a fat cat when they were starving, and I retorted that wrestling with Plato would burn too many calories. Eventually I pointed out that matters would likely snowball too fast anyway for starvation to be our cause of death, and if Robin wanted me to be bearable to live with until the end came in whatever way it did, they’d better stockpile some Garfield. They’ve never been able to resist me.

Once we’ve read our fill, it’s time for a late lunch. Robin insists that we discuss our respective literatures to keep our minds agile. They say we’ll need our problem-solving abilities when things get worse. This is another reason they resent my Garfield: they say it does not stimulate the brain. But I point out that, unlike Plato, Garfield is very good at procuring sustenance. While Robin descends into the cellar to make a selection from our menu of freeze-dried camping food, I go out to the yard and look up. Each day it becomes more difficult to breathe. The sky toys with the hues of an oil spill, sometimes green, or yellow, or purple. Most of the time, though, we are cloaked in a grayish-brown that shimmers vaguely, like some vengeful god changed his desktop to a color named death.

We force down our reconstituted pad thai or bun-less lentil sloppy joes or scrambled eggs which, in their freeze-dried form, are crispy like chips. For now we’re still vegetarians, but the vegetarian meals down in the cellar are getting low, and pretty soon we’ll be reverting to a more primitive carnivorous state. The idea makes Robin anxious, even though I point out that the animals we’ll be eating have already been dead and bagged for years.

After lunch, we have our nature walk. If I were in charge, I would probably take a nap instead. Doom’s approach makes me snoozy. But Robin says we have a responsibility to exist in the world while it lasts. I slip my hand into theirs, and they lead me into the woods and make me look at things. They make me look at trees and mushrooms and birds (if we’re lucky), and they call them immense rough-skinned intelligences and fleshy fruiting bodies of fungi and the ones who could still escape if there was anywhere to go. They exhort me to fix the images in my mind, and I say what good will it do for a dying beast to remember other dying beasts?

But I only say this in my head, otherwise it makes Robin pull their hand away and pat at their eyes. Robin still finds hope useful, and I try to be sympathetic.

The woods are quiet these days. When we stand still, my ears feel the fuzzy silence of earplugs, like there might be something to hear if only I could take them out. But I can’t. So we don’t stand still very often; instead, we create the illusion of life by cracking twigs under our feet. Today I nearly step on something else: a matchbook. Robin bends to pick it up. The cardboard, still dry, bears the unfamiliar insignia of a bar called Dante’s. Someone has been burning the matches; only two are left. Robin says, Who—? And I say, Don’t think about it. Robin stares at the packet in their palm, and by the time I lead us home, it’s nearly dark. The sun doesn’t set because it’s never there to begin with. The pall just dims and dims.

After dinner, Robin usually tries for something more contemporary: Hegel or Nietzsche, or Foucault if they’re feeling cheeky. But tonight they make me sit while they read Mencius aloud, and for a few minutes I admire the length of their fingers absentmindedly turning the matchbook over and over. They’re looking for answers, but I already have mine. So I excuse myself to the bathroom. They think I have a weak stomach, that the camping food doesn’t agree with me. I let them think this even though it isn’t particularly flattering. In the bathroom, I sit with my back against the tub and grope around in the depths of the cabinet under the sink. From beneath the rolls of toilet paper, I pull out a stack of small square pages that I ripped off years ago from a cartoon-a-day calendar. If we’re still alive when the toilet paper runs out, these pages will see things they never asked to see. But for now, I peruse a few of the cartoons every night. Sometimes I find one that makes me laugh even though it never did before. People used to get that worked up over a family dinner? A fender bender? A fractious boss? Ha-ha. The days are hopelessly out of order, and I never bother rearranging them.

Robin and I go to bed early. I fit myself against the soft curve of their back and nestle my nose into their neck, where the musk of wheat and lilies soothes me just the same as it did when our ends were not so imminent.

In the darkest part of the night, I wake. Robin is sitting up. They’ve lit one of the matches, and it blazes towards their fingertips. Their face is shining with silent tears. Mencius, they say, believed in the fundamental goodness of humans. Shouldn’t we be struggling towards survival like the products of evolution that we are? Shouldn’t we be devoting our time to useful pursuits, figuring out how to hunt and forage and make fire?

I hold my breath as the flame gobbles its own lifeblood. For months this question has hovered between us unspoken. Robin has tried to ask it before, and I’ve stopped them with kisses, eaten the words out of their mouth. Yes, my sage, I want to say. You and I will be the library, and the library must go on.

Just before the flame blisters their fingers, Robin extinguishes it with one sharp hiss of breath. Into the black silence, against the blue memory of fire that twitches before my eyes, I find I can only speak the truth.

I fumble the matchbook out of Robin’s hand and rip off the last match. I fold the book around the nubby tip; from it, I pull a conflagration. And to Robin’s question, I say no. Because survival—isn’t that how we got here in the first place?

Julia Rose Greider lives in New Hampshire and works in Vermont as a public librarian. Her fiction has been published in Nat. Brut, West Trade Review, and CALYX Journal, and she is an alum of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.

Two Stories by Rachel Lastra

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Poor Cheryl

She’s the one we pile it on like a damn donkey on a tourist trek through the Peruvian mountains, opening up her saddle bags and dumping in all that shit, leaving no room for anything but Yes, okay—and But I—and What if we—and I didn’t mean—and I’m sorry I—and Maybe we could—never let her finish a fucking sentence, though each of us blames the others, says we’re not the ring leader of this particular circus, the guide of this donkey ride winding up the mountainside, thinks we see her, thinks we’re kinder, thinks we’d save her if we could, but we can’t, can only save ourselves, can only keep our eyes open wide in sympathy at Cheryl when we’re sure no one’s looking, thinks this makes it okay that she’s a punching bag-scapegoat-doormat-dupe-sap-pushover-pigeon-victim-sacrifice, because that’s what she is, was born to be, that’s what’s needed to feed a prowl of high school pumas in winged eyeliner and platforms, teeth bared, slinking through the grass, scenting blood, ready to pounce before we can be seen as prey.

Love Me Like a Reptile

The salmon has all been eaten. Only a few half-spears of purple asparagus, picked up just this morning from the farmer’s market, litter the otherwise empty dinner plates. The wine bottle is tapped but our glasses are full, golden in the evening light.

“Whoever came up with the word ‘splurge’ must’ve been a great influencer.” Fred leans back in his chair, and I see him. I do. Square-jaw handsome, perfect hair. “They must’ve been a great influencer,” he repeats. “Because splurge is a horrible word.” 

Fred enjoys these kinds of thought exercises. He’s a data analyst—don’t ask me what that means. I know it pays well. Most days Fred has the personality of wet cardboard, but he has his moments. He calls me his statistically significant other.

I wanted him to go with me to the market this morning, pictured us strolling arm in arm through the aisles, woven market bags in hand, pausing to feed each other samples of honey and twenty-dollar artisanal cheese. We’d linger near a fruit stand and I’d feed him something juicy. I’d push the hair off his forehead and he’d kiss me like he wanted to merge with me, consume me. He’d taste like summer and lust and peaches warmed by the sun.

But Fred had given me a peck on the cheek and said, “Babe, I’m too hungover.” 

And we don’t even have any woven market bags. 

I drag my fork through the olive oil coating my white IKEA dinner plate and don’t snap at Fred’s conversational bait. He keeps talking anyway, between swigs of white wine, pink tongue glistening in his open mouth. I lick the fork tines clean and think of other, more horrible words. Slurp. Fester. Sloppy. Flaccid. Needing. Wanting. Solo.

I look out the screen door onto our balcony. There’s my neighbor out on his, a mirror of ours. If he looks up, he’ll see me. I will him to, thighs clenched. He leans his elbows on the railing and looks down into the courtyard at the balding trees, the small, sun-bleached climbing structure, the pair of swings sagging like bags under the eyes of a sober drunk.

He’s in his 60s, my neighbor. Bearded, long gray ponytail. Snake tattoo. Strong arms bared by a neon yellow muscle shirt. I bet he could lift me, easy. He’s playing music again: Motorhead.

Fred says: “I mean, listen to this. ‘I splurged on a new computer.’ Sounds gross, right?”

I say: “Uh-huh.”

He reaches for the gold ribbon of the white bakery box on the counter. I stand up. Clear the dinner plates. Grab the white World Market dessert plates. Sit back down.

Outside, my neighbor turns and she emerges behind him. Same age, give or take. Dye-black hair slithering down her back in a tail as long as his. Yin to his yang. She runs a hand up his arm, over the softball of his shoulder, curls her nails in. Then their mouths open, tongues bulging in each other’s cheeks like gumballs. Her other hand grips his ponytail—firmly. His hand snakes up her back to do the same. And then they stand like that, wound around each other, tongue-kissing in the open air.

Fred pulls a cream puff from the bakery box and offers it to me. I decline. Flash of white teeth, jaw wide as if he will swallow it whole. Cream splurges from the end of the puff.

“Fred,” I begin.

The neighbors have gone back inside. They drew the blinds only halfway but I can’t see anything. I bet she’s on top.

Cream dots the corners of Fred’s mouth. I could lick him clean with my forked tongue. 

I open my mouth. Close it. Open.

“I want some.”

Rachel Lastra’s stories have appeared in Tiny Molecules, Barrelhouse, Smokelong Quarterly, Apparition Lit, and other places. Her work was highly commended in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize and a finalist in the Flash Frog flash fiction contest. She is a student in the graduate writing program at Johns Hopkins University and is working on a novel. Find her at rachellastra.com.

Y2K by Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez

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The world might end in 30 minutes. For months, there’s been speculation on the Chicago news channels about electronics failing, of planes falling out of the sky, of the market crashing, of chaos on the streets because we will run out of food and water.  

My baby bump is enormous, I can’t see my swollen feet. My husband’s in jail for being a pendejo but technically for drinking and driving. I’ve huddled myself and my children in the bedroom to wait for whatever Y2K will bring.

“And if we need to use the bathroom?” my eleven-year-old daughter snarks as she bounces her baby brother on her hip. She’s been mad at me for a while now. But who else can I make help me with these kids?

“Pues ahí está, Sofia,” I point to the bedroom door, letting her know she can go in and out as she pleases. 

Sofia rolls her eyes at me and switches to cradling the baby to try to get him to sleep.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Sofia whispers and sticks the bottle in her brother’s mouth.

I wish I could go back in time when I’d cradle her.

Meanwhile, Pao, my middle child, bounces from the love seat to the edge of the bed and back. 

When the doctor said I was for sure pregnant again, I took my daughters to La Michoacana for ice cream, to share the happy news.

“No, the baby’s not here yet. We have to wait 5 months.”

“Five months?! The world’s going to end before then. Sorry, baby!” Pao exclaimed and kept eating her rocky road ice cream. 

Sofia pushed away her vanilla scoops. The slight shadow growing underneath her eyes darkened.

“Ya no quiero.” She glanced at her brother in the stroller. When I was Sofia’s age, I took care of my little sisters whether I wanted to or not. But, yes, I worried, too. How were we going to care for another child?

I placed my hands on my belly, thanking God for this miracle, and praying for the ones I’d lost before. We ate in silence while “Livin’ La Vida Loca” blared from the radio. I craved the charred taste of burnt tortillas.

The phone rings at 11:45 pm and we all flinch at the unexpected noise. The baby stirs and Sofia glares at me like I somehow made the phone ring. 

The answering machine picks up, “This is a collect call from Cook County Jail…”

“Papi!” Pao hops from the love seat to the floor to grab the cordless phone before it’s too late. “I accept!” she yells into the receiver and Sofia shushes her. 

“¡Dámelo!” I lean as far as I can from the bed and pull Pao by the shirt to snatch the phone away. Her little face scrunches as if I had reached into her tiny chest for her beating heart. 

“¿Q’vole? How are things over there?” I can barely hear Manny over the yelling happening behind him. 

“They’re doing lights out in 5 minutes. Everyone in their cells before midnight. Se nota que los guards are all tense and shit at the thought of their fancy locks not working when the clock strikes twelve.” 

“Whatever, Manny. If you miss the birth of this baby, I swear to God!”

On the screen, the news switches between people in bedazzled “2000” glasses and images of people looting a Wal-Mart in the Southside, running out with giant TVs. Food is what I’d take. A lot of diapers. Formula for sure. Clothes for the girls. Oooh, maybe a new winter coat. Some lipstick. Hoops that don’t turn my ears green.

“Te habla tu padre,” I hand the phone to Pao, who leaps for the cordless. The sound of Manny’s voice makes the baby inside me kick and vomit rise in my throat.

“Papi, I can jump from the couch to the bed without falling!”

I try to hand the phone to Sofia, but she refuses. I motion for her to place the phone near her brother so Manny can talk to him, but Sofia turns her back.

“Si, si, we love you, too!” I begin to cry because if the world is ending, I wish my husband was at home with us. If the world is ending, I wish I had had a chance to see my mother. The last time I saw her was 5 years ago when we left Mexico. But if the world is ending, I might finally get some rest. 

Sofia yanks the phone and quickly says, “Bye, papi. Happy New Year,” before she hangs up.

I look out the window and see that soft white petal snow is falling—my favorite. I pray this storm isn’t like the one that hit us at the beginning of the year. We were snowed in for days. The snowplows didn’t come through our street. There was no way to drive anywhere. We stocked up on food when the news reported that we should expect the worst blizzard “the windy city” had seen since the late 60s. We got all the formula and whole milk WIC would let us. We didn’t know how long we would be trapped, but at least then we were together.

Sofia gently sits on the loveseat still holding her sleeping brother. I struggle to get myself off the bed and Pao comes from behind to push me up. I scoot in next to Sofia and feel her inching away from me. I pull Pao next to me and she dozes off on my lap.

Someone on TV announces it’s almost time for the countdown. Behind them, someone holds a large poster with the words, “We ❤ robots!”

I take Sofia’s hand, and she presses her sweaty palm into mine so tightly I can feel the intensity of her pulse. I kiss the top of her head.

The announcer counts down: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6… 

My heart pounds and my throat tightens. The baby inside me kicks, their little leg protruding from my stomach. The kick lands near Pao’s head and Sofia bursts out laughing. Soon I’m laughing and shushing at the same time, trying to keep the younger children asleep. 

On the TV, confetti fills the screen. Fireworks and gunshots echo outside. 

“Diosito santo, protégenos.” I hold my children close when the lights go off. 

Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez (they/she) is a writer and educator living in Queens, New York. They’ve participated in writing workshops at Tin House, VONA, and Kweli. Their stories have been published in Latino Book Review Magazine, Kweli Journal, Variant Lit, Strange Horizons, The Acentos Review, Longreads, Okay Donkey, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. Sonia Alejandra’s writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fiction, and Best Microfiction. Follow them on Instagram at @soniaalejandrawrites.

Rules for New Girls by Leslie Pietrzyk

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

1976

That Bicentennial summer everyone talks about tennis, desperate to be pretty Chrissy Evert, thwacking balls into meteors. We’re tired of being Iowa girls. But tennis rackets cost real money, meaning of us five, only Janelle’s got a racket because she’s got one of everything. Still, no one plays tennis, so Janelle can’t much lord her fancy Head racket over us. Boy, that makes me secretly happy. 

Suzanne and Tracy find a ratty badminton set in their garage, so we agree being Chrissy Evert with badminton rackets counts. One problem solved but there’s another: four rackets, five girls. They had been an easy four until my mom, her boyfriend, and I moved into the neighborhood in March—as Janelle reminds us while we rock-paper-scissors to see who plays and who’s stuck being line judge. It’s Donna, the nicest and fairest. “You’re swapping with Donna first,” Janelle tells me. “That’s the rule for new girls.” 

Suzanne and Tracy’s dad sets up the net: no wobbling. We’re in the front yard because the back’s a hill, only good for sledding. Where I lived before was flat and concrete and no yards and no kids. I didn’t know not to like it. “Ew,” Janelle said.

Playing out front will be exposed, with cars passing, strangers eyeing us swat the birdie like it’s a fly in the kitchen, belly-laughing as we leap and miss, crashing into the scratchy crabgrass. I hate people watching, can’t stand people knowing things about me. “New girl’s got a secret,” Janelle told the others yesterday, smack in front of me.

Suzanne and Tracy team up, leaving me with Janelle. She tugs the top off a dandelion. “Fine,” she says to no one, tossing away the yellow flower. “Fine,” I say right back. The thing is, I might actually be good at badminton. Keefer, our cranky gym teacher, liked me best of the sixth grade girls because I can run forever. “This girl,” Keefer said on the last day of school, handing me the highest presidential fitness certificate with the biggest, goldest seal.

Janelle’s terrible at badminton but criticizes me left and right. I’m in her way, she complains, or she shouts, “Stop your dumb, weird breathing.” I whack my racket hard, making air whistle between the strings. Suzanne’s good, and we whoosh the birdie between us.

Then Janelle pushes in front of me so I can’t swing without hitting her, meaning Suzanne wins the point as the birdie arrows feathers-up into the grass. She and Tracy high-five. “You’re hogging,” Janelle says.

“That doesn’t count.” I don’t know why I say that because I don’t care.

“Ask the line judge,” Janelle says.

“You guys,” Donna says.

Janelle arcs her racket through empty space, and I step back. She might never like me, even if I wait forever. We’re not moving back, and those old friends are gone. “No way,” my mom says. Her creepy boyfriend has his important new job. I hate him.

Right then, a station wagon with wood paneling pulls curb-close, and a woman wearing too-big sunglasses rolls down the window and calls, “Can one of you girls pretty-please help me for a sec?” A checkered scarf covers her hair, is knotted tight at her throat. Like she’s the wolf waiting in Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s bed.

Suzanne and Tracy stare at the grass. Donna’s face reddens. Only Janelle watches me, a strange, hard, unfriendly smile distorting her face. Like a painted clown who’s not funny. Like she wants me to cry. Like she knows what happened in my old neighborhood though I’ve told no one.

I remind myself to breathe, because Stranger Danger is the scary man with handfuls of candy. He’s a troll, an ogre, the witch in the forest. He’s not real. This is a lady like our moms driving a car with a bicentennial license plate from Michigan.

My own mother worries about strange men, about boys demanding to see my underwear, about the priest. “Tell me if anything happens,” she says, “promise.” I promise. But when it did, I didn’t know any words she wanted to hear. Like, what if he’s not a stranger?

Janelle points at me. “Go see what she wants. You’re the new girl.”

“Are you afraid?” I ask.

“Never.” She tosses her racket way high in the sky and starts sauntering toward the car even before the racket crashes to the ground.

It’s not a game. I despise Janelle, but it’s not like I truly want her to disappear. I pick up her racket, curving my fingers into the grip, touching the warm, worn leather where Janelle’s fingers were.

“Wait,” Donna says, not to Janelle but to me.

Suzanne and Tracy poke their fingertips against the taut strings of their rackets, maybe testing them. What if no one likes Janelle? Maybe the rule’s that the new girl says it. Say it, I think. Give them what they want and they’ll like you.

I say, “Let her go. She’s fine.”

We watch Janelle talk to the woman then slide into the front seat of the car. The door slams, and the car drives off. “She didn’t even wave goodbye,” Tracy says.

“How come dumb Iowa doesn’t have special red, white, and blue license plates for the Bicentennial?” Suzanne asks.

“Great question,” Donna says.

So we four wonder about that for a while, and other stuff, until our mothers call us in for dinner, Janelle’s mother’s voice coming hoarse and wretched through the screened window of my bedroom late into the night.

Leslie Pietrzyk’s collection of linked stories set in Washington, D.C., Admit This to No One, was published in 2021 by Unnamed Press. Her first collection of stories, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Story Magazine, Southern Review, Iowa Review, The Sun, and Cincinnati Review, among others. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize in 2020.

Now I Turn Myself into Origami by Susan Israel

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

I make myself into a chrysanthemum so I can fit in this box, the box our vacuum came in; it’s not so big that I don’t have to fold myself first. Knees drawn up, arms wrapped around me, head down. It’s 85 degrees but my teeth are chattering; I’m a fluttering paper flower. I can still hear the heavy footsteps that stomped through the classroom, stopping to reload, stomping again. Pop. Pop. The teacher didn’t even have a chance to ask why he was there. I hear stomping in the breezeway connecting garage to kitchen. I’m in the box and the box is in the closet and I hold my breath; he’s coming in here too! He followed me from school and now he’s coming to get me. I might puke. It’s not safe to come out. “Rachel, are you here?” he calls, then louder, “Rachel!” He knows my name. It’s a trap. My screaming classmates cried, running to the door, to the windows. Pop. Pop. Pop. I can still hear them. My paper hands reach up and cover my paper ears. I was lucky there was a box in the classroom, a box like this. It was turned upside down. And I folded myself into a swan and ducked my paper head under my paper wing, trembling. The popping stopped. “Is anyone alive in here?” I didn’t budge. “It’s safe now.” I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to see what I knew was outside the box. And then I had to and I saw blood, so much blood, my friends’ blood. I spread my swan wings and flew, I didn’t look at anyone or anything else; I just flew home over the chaos, over the ambulances and police cars and panicked people to my home, to this box and folded myself into a flower, sprouting roots right through the cardboard, through the floor, right through the earth, my heart still pounding. “Rachel?” I can hear his voice breaking. Then, “I was at the school. I couldn’t find her. They don’t know if she’s one of them, they haven’t all been identified yet. So I came home, but she’s not here either. I don’t know where she is.”

Home. I push aside my petals and peek out the closet door. He’s sitting on the couch, my father, his face in his hands, the phone still lit, lying on the floor next to his feet. 

 “Dad?” I can’t fight back my tears any longer; they gush from my eyes. I’m a girl again, not a chrysanthemum and my petals scatter as I stumble into his arms and they fold around me.

Susan Israel’s work has been published in Blink-Ink, Backwards Trajectory, Does It Have Pockets, MacQueen’s Quinterly, JAKE, 50 Word Stories, Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Boulevard, among others. She lives in Connecticut.

Two Stories by Lavina Blossom

On By steve cIn flash fiction1 Comment

Slow Leak

She mounts the first step up from the driveway, hand on the rail. She forgot to leave the front light on but her aging eyes can see well enough from the neighbors’ lights. Wait, had she locked the car door? She depresses the button on the device in her hand, hears the faint unsatisfying click, pushes the button again, a louder click this time. She brings the device up to her face, hits lock and the click is faint, so it’s locked already, right?

But does she have her phone? She rummages in her purse. She can’t feel it in there. Returning to her car, she hits the unlock button. Good, she had locked it. She gets into the driver’s seat and looks in the console. 

She stares out the windshield a moment, weary, then dumps her purse on the passenger seat, shakes it. The phone lands on the pile and she tucks it back into her purse, then adds her wallet, comb, pack of tissues, lipstick, gum, nail file, clippers, the tiny notepad, pencil and pen, a sales slip, her small address book. 

She needs to enter numbers into her phone if she can remember how her grandson said to do it. Every number but Rhonda’s, although yes, she will add that too, and call Jeff, ask how his health has been, although she never cared much for Rhonda’s husband. A pity her friend went first. Up to a year ago, she was full of fun.

Damn, she meant to stop at the gas station. Her son had that gadget to measure air in the tire, but no air pump. Probably a slow leak, he said. But doesn’t that mean she needs a new tire? And which tire was it? She’ll call her son tomorrow, or hell, just look at the tires. It ought to be obvious. Or maybe she will call, talk to the kids if they’ll get on the phone. No, too soon. She has just seen them, only about five minutes before they went to their rooms. 

She rocks herself out of the car, straightens her skirt. Now where are her keys? She leans in and bumps her head on the door frame, sucks her teeth, plucks the keys off the dash. Standing straight, she swipes at her hair that has fallen forward, catching the key ring in a curl. She deep breathes and slowly untangles it. She would get her hair cut really short, but her husband likes it longer. Liked it. Still, when she visits him, she does not want to look different, unfamiliar. He still has some recognition. He seems to know her even if he can’t say who she is.

With the car door closed, she starts up the steps. Did she lock the car? She depresses that doodad thing. A faint click, so unsatisfying. She hits the other button, likes that sound better, being clearer and sharper. She depresses the buttons one after the other, louder click, softer click, louder click, softer click. She decides the final louder click locks.

She wishes she was in bed, but now she can’t recall if she took her umbrella when she left the house. Nearly at her front door, she looks up into the sky. No stars.

There’s a light on her phone, but she can’t remember how to turn it on. She must not fall. Better to live here alone than take one of her grandsons’ bedrooms. They would resent her. It simply cannot happen.

She turns around, looks at the car, shakes her head, turns toward the three remaining steps to the stoop, turns toward the car. She starts to walk down, hating to leave the umbrella in there in case she needs it in the morning. She presses a button, but no click. She’s too far away. Does she have a fresh battery? She walks down farther, testing as she goes, pressing the button with her thumb until she hears a click. She stands a while locking, unlocking, locking, unlocking, matching rhythm to the labored pulse in her throat.

We Wear Suits

They are gray and tailored. We look professional. We look expensive. The women have gray purses, the men, gray wallets. Our shoes match, and our hair. Our teeth are white and straight. I wore braces for a year, but no one here knows this.

We never hurry when walking between our cubicles to speak to one another. We enunciate. We are smart and know where jokes are going, so we don’t need to finish telling them. I used to laugh. Then I smiled. More recently, I grimace.

The curtains are kept closed. I opened them once. I learned that beyond is ripe color. I wonder if our eyes are a betrayal. None are gray. 

I look into the other’s faces. I drop a pencil. No one reacts. I drop a stapler. One person nearby flinches, doesn’t look.

Tomorrow, when I deliver a document, I will touch someone’s hand.

Lavina Blossom is a visual artist and writer. She grew up in rural Michigan and now lives in Southern California. She has written articles on the writing process for the Inlandia Institute and was a poetry editor for the Inlandia Institute’s online journal. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including 3Elements Review, The Paris Review, Poemeleon, Common Ground Review, Gyroscope Review, and Ekphrastic Review.

giving all my heart to the dirt sprayed across my hands by Fabiola Cepeda

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

Sometimes I like to draw on my teeth, but not today. I do not like to draw on my teeth today because yesterday Luis ate dirt. The day before Luis was sprayed across my hands and my shirt; I had to dig a hole in my backyard. I said a prayer for Luis, my friend Luis. Today I put my pillows on the top shelf in my closet, I am giving up sleep for him.

My reasons for anything are always temporary, so it doesn’t matter if Luis killed the rabbit, even when he bit him. I miss my old life, when we would skip over rocks on the river, dip our feet in, get a cold. I miss being frozen in our room, unable to move, forgetting what it felt like to feel normal and healthy, wishing for more than anything to be warm and healthy again.

My feet slipped from under me during class while I fell asleep with my head down. looking out the window, my friend Sarah asked me if I was okay. I do not know how to tell her that I do not have time, I gave time up for Luis.

The rain falls all over the place, and my CD keeps skipping in my ears. Today is All Saints Day, I dressed up as, well it doesn’t matter, now that you can’t see it. My mom made me dress up for All Saints Day, I tried really hard not to celebrate it without you, I know it was your favorite. No one really likes All Saints Day. Mom and Dad’s breath comes from the same bed now, they gasp and are curious; I forget how thin the walls are here. I am going to stop crying all the time, I want to be as alive as one could try to be, even if that means doing the bad things. I want to hear people say, “That’s not like you! Luis would be disappointed,” but I know they are lying.

On the underside of a fog you are so lonely. Alone, with dirt sprayed across your face, wedged between your skin. I don’t want to be shot brushing my teeth with you. Alone in the modesty of our gums, waxed with baking soda. It was easier to avoid a greater sadness than whatever this is, I guess that’s why I did it. Why I buried you in the backyard, sliced up, full of juice.

It is still raining and you have stolen the warmth from this earth. But someday secretly, I will work on bringing you back up. That way we can walk into the theater, hand in hand; see the tiny stage hold up the great fools. Their shadows bouncing behind their eyes. And yes, it is all necessary, to see multiples of you through my backyard window.

The leaves are a yellow and it reminds me of you, and even though the road is closed I go down in. taking in the trees, searching for you. It is hard to find you in the dust that fills the air. I wish I could have looked at you a little longer, Luis. I know I must go but my ears hurt from wind blowing. The new is not important to me anymore, how could all of this keep happening when you are gone. You’ve been far from land for too long, just come back.

I could almost see you floating in class today. I didn’t cry, it was an awkward mask I forced myself to wear. Tall people do not seem to understand, Luis, the destruction of moldering at a wooden altar. At the funeral, others laughed. In your towel my knees killed grass, feet were brown and shone through the crack that ran up the wall. I got thrown to the tub, but I leaked out of my knee and made my escape to your grave. But they twisted me back and lives carried on.

My feet hurt from walking across streets for you. I can’t go go home anymore and sleep. I don’t think you would have this Luis, but I can’t keep squinting my eyes just so I can remember you. It is hard Luis, to eat when I think I see you on the kitchen table. It is even worse when I go to Abuela’s house and see multiples of you swaying in the wind. I go drawing on my teeth and smearing my nose on the couch. I don’t miss you anymore, you were just a lemon, Luis.

Fabiola Cepeda is a Mexican-American Writer from San Antonio, Texas. Her work has been published in Gravel, Cargoes, and The Hunger Journal. She is currently pursuing a degree in creative writing and studio art from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. You can find her on Instagram @whatfabifound and @fabiolaleyendolibros.

Fireflies by Rina Olsen

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

Last night I had the dream that my father had had nearly twenty years ago now. But it couldn’t have been the same dream because it wasn’t me on the railroad tracks. It was my daughter.

In this dream I was following her from behind. Far behind. I wanted to hurry. Or at least call out to her. But for some reason I couldn’t.

She was on the track that ran over the river into the woods. The west bank. When she was little I used to bring her out here. We’d take pebbles and rocks home. Pretty ones to decorate the house with. Or she’d pick some leaves and make crayon rubbings of them. My father used to bring me here as a kid often. The last time we were here my daughter was at summer camp and the sky looked like it wanted to rain and he asked me about her college plans. 

She stopped coming with me when she was about fourteen but I still keep those rubbings with me.

In my dream I could see the riverbank through the spaces between the tracks. Pretty spot. Must’ve been my second year of college when we came down here one August. Me and this guy. He took me one night to see the fireflies and while we were sitting on the rusted track he caught one for me so I could hold it before it flew away. Just sat there on my fingertips blinking on and off. They were everywhere that night. Fallen stars among leaf litter. Yellow eyes blinking. I shivered and he put his arm around me and said Cold? and even though I shook my head he pulled me closer and squeezed. So I rested my head on his shoulder and looked up at the outline of his jaw against the sky. He looked down at me and our faces were so close that I could smell the fruity aftertaste of vape and then the taste of peaches was in my mouth hot and damp and then we were on the tracks and then all I knew was soft peach flesh and yellow blinking eyes all around us.

When my father asked how it happened I said nothing. Must’ve thought he could get more out of me than my mother could. But no one got anything out of me. No one ever gets anything out of me if I don’t want them to. All the goddamn time  he was pestering me what are you gonna do what are you gonna do what are you gonna do but I was barely listening because by then I was shut up for good.

In my dream I followed the tracks out over the water. The smell of brine and shit and suntan lotion wafted up. Water brown and stinky as ever. Sailboats dotted it like flecks of white paint on brown canvas. That’s how I knew that guy actually. I used to go sailing all the time before I dropped out. Out with friends in the sun. Tanned arms short white skirts fishing rods. I never told my parents about the drinking. Always drinking back then. Bottles littered the deck and we’d throw them overboard. We threw a lot of things overboard. One time when he was on the boat I drank too much and vomited. Didn’t get to the railing in time and it got all over his feet and my feet but he still held my hair back for me. I can see it in this dream: ribbons of orange trailing after one of the sailboats. Probably his boat. Maybe he’s holding back another woman’s hair now.

In the dream my daughter was already in the forest but I was still over the east bank. Litter flashing in the sand: beer bottles soda cans cigarette packs. High school. Sneaking out at lunch to drink smoke do whatever. The intimacy of a leather steering wheel spinning through my hands at midday. The first burn of Bud Lite on my throat. One time on the sand where the grass springs up nice and tall a classmate put his hand up my skirt and I let him. I never told my father about that. This was around the time he had the dream of me crossing the railroad tracks and him following behind and in the morning he said something like Hey you doing okay? But there’s no way he knew about any of that. I knew when my daughter started smoking but I never said anything. She doesn’t know I know. But I know.

In my dream I spotted my initials on a wood railroad tie where the tracks met the east bank. I’d carved them when I was thirteen or fourteen. The letters used to be a fresh sandy color. In my dream they were as dull and faded as the river. Hungry flowers crawled over the rusted steel. Pickerelweed milkweed marigold. They smelled like my mother’s laundry detergent. As a toddler I would bury myself in the laundry and listen to my mother call my name Where are you where are you answer me and when she was near crying I would pop out and run to hug her. When my daughter was born I always folded the laundry immediately so she couldn’t do the same.

In my dream I was in the woods now. My daughter far ahead. Wait. I wanted to call to her. Wait for me. The fireflies were starting to come out and for some reason I could sense that something terribly wrong was going to happen. Dread grinding against my stomach. Wait for me.

I watched her crouch on the tracks. I wanted to move forward but all I could do was watch from behind which meant I couldn’t see what she was crouching over.

What are you doing?

Wait for me.

Come back!

She stood and straightened. Then: I’m fine Mom. But don’t look. It’s a secret.

Rina Olsen, a rising high school senior from Guam, is the author of Third Moon Passing (Atmosphere Press, June 2023) and The Water Stricken (Atmosphere Press, October 2024). An alumna of the 2024 YoungArts program, Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, her work has been recognized by the John Locke Institute, Sejong Cultural Society, Carl Sandburg Home, and Guam History Day. Her fiction pieces “Bataya Slums, 1971” in Milk Candy Review and “Skeletons in the Closet” in Okay Donkey were long listed for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions in 2024. When she isn’t writing, Rina can be found playing the piano, looking up obscure history, or with her nose in a good book. Find out more at her website: https://rinaolsen.com.