Tag: short fiction

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Back Pocket
Eryne via Creative Commons

Oliver Grady, Jr., age six and three-quarters, wears the same pair of pants every day. They are not his favorite pants nor his only pants, they are simply, as he puts it, the pants. Being a boy growing at the rate boys do, these trousers he has worn for nearly a whole year do not fit as well as they once did. His mother is faced with the onerous task of either washing them daily or sending him to school in filthy britches; the fight if she suggests he wear anything else is disastrous.

There is nothing to like about the too-small pants—off-color, falling apart, uncomfortable—except the back left pocket. That pocket is endless, and Oliver has filled it with interesting rocks, frogs, bits of string, toys, a ruler, hats, bugs, bouncy balls, firecrackers, comic books, crayons, scraps of paper, candy bars, two bent forks and one tarnished spoon, six pen-knives, an assortment of sticks, headphones, plastic bandages, two of his sister’s dolls and one kitten, among others. These things never get lost in the wash. They can easily be retrieved.

Oliver can never give up the pants, or he’d lose the pocket.

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The familiar pile
Sarah Rifaat via Creative Commons

Dirty penny sky at the moment between dawn and morning. Kebber drives to work and forgets the trip a mile at a time. These endless, overlapping cities pass beneath a vas deferens highway ejaculating single occupant vehicles into the womb of the valley. He likes to arrive early and undress in his cubicle, just to feel the exhilaration of staged exposure.

A recurring daydream: Kebber is an actor and he disrobes in a room full of technicians and directors and contractors. His co-star hides plastic surgery scars beneath a crust of makeup. The love-making will be simulated, as is all love. This is not a sexual fantasy, despite its overtones. A camera watches.

The day fills with people as disinterested as the clothing that wraps him in a tourniquet. Pocket computers vibrate; numb, stupid fingers diddle prenominal products without substance. A chin rests on Kebber’s palm. It has been there so long he’s not sure it’s his. Constricting digital clocks like hyenas.

He arrives early and stays late. Chrome and stars drown in the streetlamps while a garage door built for two opens itself. There is no release in homes, and life draws tighter and tighter and tighter.

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Get Out
Annadriel via Creative Commons

May, 1946

 

Arata Ui could tell the difference between the rumble of ocean against sea wall and the buzz of an approaching aircraft when he was awake and alert. Four hours into his second shift, when cursing Ryo for contracting the flu had lost its distracting fire, it became a uniform hum of white noise. His fingers stiffened on the searchlight. Across the dugout, the battery team shared a cigarette, black outlines of huddled bulk nagged by an orange ember.

“Tetsuya! Shin!” Arata hissed, hoping the Gocho wasn’t making his round. “Someone cover me while I go to the latrine.”

The debate was held in susurrus even Arata’s trained ear couldn’t make out. “Fine,” they said at last. After a moment, Shin tapped him on the shoulder.

“Make it fast. I’m only doing this because you’re pulling a double.”

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Coffee Mug
Bram via Creative Commons

This is the cliché: a man comes home to find his wife in bed with his best friend.

This is the reality: I come home to find my best friend in my living room, pretending to drink coffee from a clean, dry mug. My wife’s voice is chirpy and insincere.

This is the cliché: a man drags his friend out of the bed, screaming, threatening, hitting.

This is the reality: I make awkward small talk and ask if there is any more coffee left.

This is the cliché: the wife screams and begs mercy for her lover, forgiveness for herself.

This is the reality: My wife says with a quaking voice, “Oh I think we just ran out. Should I make another pot?”

This is the cliché: the man throws his friend onto the lawn and intimidates his wife into penance and a renewed fidelity.

This is the reality: I say, “Nah, thanks.” I think about my dog and try to pretend I don’t smell sex in the air. I slap my palms on my knees and stand up. “Well, I didn’t want to interrupt,” I say, “I guess I’ll just go watch the game at the bar. Good night.”

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Purple♥hair
Daniela Martinez via Creative Commons

Chris was moping again. Sherri shook her mop of purple hair and plucked the pen from his hand, replaced the legal pad in his lap with her person. She tasted his lips and waited for him to abandon his sour mood and begin to chase her mouth when she pulled back. Standing up, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him to the front door.

“You need to go outside,” she said brightly.

He glowered. “I need to finish this poem.”

“It can wait. What about adventure? What have you always wanted to do?”

“I dunno,” he said.

“C’mon! Think. Anything. What’s on your bucket list?”

He shrugged, an angry gesture. “I don’t have one; they’re cliché.”

“I’m sure there’s something you want to do before you die.” Sherri maneuvered him onto the porch.

“I guess I’ve always wanted to…”

“Go on.”

“I guess I want to see the redwoods out in California.”

“There you go! A road trip to California! Time to get started!” She began to close the door.

“Wait!” Chris said, “Aren’t you coming?”

Her expression turned stoic. “No. Live your own adventure. I’m not here to save you. I have work in the morning.” The door slammed.

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Erta Ale North Pit Crater Magma Lake
pierre c. 38 via Creative Commons

Krivoth gestured with two folded black claws and his mandibles clicked a hard, wet rhythm as he spoke. “In here is the break room. Coffee, snacks, suffering-sticks, fresh fruit, ichor, the usual.” Ms. Pollibutton’s sagging, chinless face reflected a thousand times over in Krivoth’s faceted red eye. “You get one fifteen minute break every four millennia.” The tone in his lubricated clacking voice suggested he expected some resistance on this point. Ms. Pollibutton remained stoic and pushed her glasses back up her nose.

After a somewhat disappointed pause, Krivoth’s hind legs drummed in sequence creating an agitated, impatient air. “Anyway, moving on,” he said. The tour continued, Krivoth being sure to tick off the points of interest: The Floundering Abyss; The City of Pain; Dyre Labyrinth; Nightmare Valley. Ms. Pollibutton nodded politely at each, never slowing her short, rapid strides. The soft clink of her Cromwell buckles steadied into an incessant grate against Krivoth’s nerves.

“So here’s your workstation,” he said after an age. The loose folds of Ms. Pollibutton’s throat wobbled ever so slightly as she ran a white glove along the dusty outcropping of red stone. A massive anthropodermic book lay on the slab desk.

Krivoth flipped the book open to a page marked with a bone hook using his spiked foreleg. “It works like this: an entrant will arrive at processing. Once Foharr is finished with intake and cleaning, Sinestine will usher it in here. You record the data and let Nesti know which plane is next in the rotation. This is important, okay? If you start double- or triple-stacking the Murdergrounds or whatever, you’re going to have some very grouchy underdaemons. We can’t torment properly if we don’t have time to do the orientations.”

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Balloons!
Peter Dutton via Creative Commons

White wine spritzer sloshed in Gabriella’s glass as she spoke, her half-captive audience of fellow preschool moms fidgeted uncomfortably. “I just never know which one to choose,” Gabriella repeated.

“I use the same ones every year,” Jennifer said. She knew how crazy parents could be about the details of their children’s parties, but Gabriella had been talking about balloons of all things for twenty minutes.

“And that’s the thing,” Gabriella thrust the glass at her, “the beautiful thing about finding the right one on the first try. You can have them every year and they just work. Not all of us are that lucky.”

“I’m sure there are plenty to go around.”

“You would like to think so,” Gabriella said, her intensity further unnerving her acquaintances. “Every year I think I find something good, only there’s something wrong with them in the end.” She stared with distant longing at the bouncing child in the pointed hat. “I can’t settle when it comes to poor little Josh. It’s not just that I have to find the right one, he needs to love—“ a pause. “—Whatever I choose as well.” She took another sip; the group used the opportunity to disband.

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Untitled
Brian Ng via Creative Commons

I thought of her and walked a crowded street. A doorway beckoned me inside away from anonymity and there I found a curious shop of shopping curiosities. No keeper greeted me at register, no labor there was found, I walked in narrow aisles and shivered. In incense clouds she stared at me, everywhere her trinkets; things that belonged to her and those she had not purchased.

Behind a beaded curtain I found a plinth upon which sat a tome of dust and flesh. I drank a book about the tome and felt the words sustain me, taking place of her for maybe one more hour or a day. When sunset came I left that place beneath a weight of packages. No purchase had I made. Before I reached my aching loft I wondered whose arms she warmed that night and the many grisly nights to come.

I spread her objects on the bed and wrapped them in the quilt. With strips of drapery I tied the sack and watched them drown upon the street below, scavenged by the desperate urchins and quailing clergy. One day I might join them all but for now I let it go and wept.

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Troy Springs State Park: Algae formations
Phil’s 1stPix via Creative Commons

You expect to lose a few toes to the wet-rot during a contract. Not a single contractor offers hazard pay for getting three of them shot off. I wish I could tell you I took it like a tough guy, but the truth is I howled like a baby sea lion. The deeper truth is, most of my howl of agony had nothing to do with the fearsome pain of taking a zipshot bolt to the wee-wee-wee piggies. It had a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that my ex-wife was on the trigger end of that transaction.

Darla and I didn’t start off as fire and ice. She was a fisherman’s daughter, a naive hick with hair that never dried and a sweet voice that sang songs no one else could remember. I thought bringing her along on a couple of contracts would be good for her, toughen her up a little. But the open water did more than that; it changed her. I didn’t begrudge her taking up a contract of her own, and I didn’t really mind when she was promoted to captain of our skiff ahead of me.

The part I minded was her sleeping with the steward and throwing me overboard when I caught her in the act. That, and when she shot off my toes.

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MIT and Boston
David Wiley via Creative Commons

Human language is brimming with offensive words and phrases referencing life as an assumed state. The first to protest this presupposition was Jahe Houler, an Undead American from Vermont. Later, the self-aware AI lab over at MIT—identified by her designers as rAIn but preferring the name Loa—joined the crusade. The case was brought to court as Houler, Loa, et al v. The State of New Hampshire. They challenged the wording of the state constitution, in particular the bit from Article 2, “…the enjoying and defending life…”

The screaming heads on vids debated the technical definitions of life. All Houler and Loa and the others wanted was a shift to include non-life sentience in the laundry list of experiences we equate with other non-equivalents. That is, not identical, but carrying the same value. You’d think after fighting this battle dozens of times like a channel stuck broadcasting the same six reruns it would have gotten easier.

They killed Houler. The weapon was high-tech, maybe government. If he were still around, he’d hate the reporting language of “killed.” He’d say it was presumptive and offensive. It was Loa who suggested we level the playing field.