Meg Sefton's Blog, page 67

Flashnano Day 7: Write a story that takes place at a famous location

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Egypt by rocor, flickr

In the Valley of the Kings, the two women, one older, mild aged but well preserved, and the other younger, pretty, blond, yet with a slightly sad face, rode in the tram to the next tomb, that of Seti I. There was a place they could wait before going in, a little stall with small metal tables and collapsible chairs. Rene tried, for the hundredth time to get them to put something in her coke to make it cold, but it was handed to her tepid, the bubbles scratching at her throat. She sipped the liquid through a straw, watching the whirls of sand and dust spiral up into the air and brush against the limestone banks which hid the tombs.

Her much younger companion, Chloe Bruce, pulled her glass bottle of water from her backpack. The top of her head was decoratively banded with a wide headscarf and her neat dark blond hair tucked into a low ponytail. She was travel chic, a Talbots model look, though Rene was sure whatever the child wore this is the impression she would make. Also, there was the coolness in her eyes, the pert mouth that almost never said anything.

How unlikely it was Chloe had pursued morturary science though the young lady did have a kind of remove with which she gazed upon the world, a sort of mask. Maybe that attitude and demeanor was well suited. And maybe something about the keep of the dead had fascinated her because her parents had passed in a car accident when she was in college. Rene took her in during summers and holidays and gave her a place to be when she was home.

Rene didn’t have children of her own. She had helped watch Chloe when she was a child, she had been good friends with Chloe’s parents.  She had taken her to see the opera Hansel and Gretel when it was playing downtown. She bought the child a record player and a vinyl recording of the classic Englebert Humperdink masterpiece. Rene remembered fondly the lullaby from her childhood: “When at night I go to sleep, fourteen angels watch do keep.” She hoped the lullaby and the rest of the recording may come to mean something to the young woman one day.

“I want something to eat,” said Chloe, “I’m starving.” She pulled out a 5 pound Egyption note from her Channel bag and ordered a falafel sandwich from the little cart. Apparently the man who worked the cart kept the warm sandwiches from the drinks, in their own compartment,  though Rene doubted her coke had been insulated at all. Nothing seemed to matter here. You could order all you wanted and there would be smiling and nodding and you would get exactly what they wanted to give you.

Chloe ate hurriedly, shoveling stray bits of cucumber and tomato into her mouth and licking the excess tahini from her fingers. At least the camels were not here like they were at the pyramids, their handlers pressing hard to sell rides around the ancient structures, flattering, wheedling, offering to take “American dollar.” And the Valley of the Kings was fairly quiet and clean because of this, and had probably been an ideal place for the ancient people to hide the riches their pharaohs would need in the afterlife. The tombs where tucked into the folds of the white and pink cliffs where the earth held the ancient secrets of a civilization and a deep faith their leaders would meet with the eternal.

How crass we are now, thought Rene, enjoying a cigarette while Chloe threw away her sandwich wrapping and reapplied her lipstick. We no longer give the same care and attention to our lives, much less our deaths. Groups of tourists passed, desperate figures, some wearing socks with sandals, mounds of white flesh, fanny packs.

When David was alive, he used to hold her hand when they sat out on their back patio every evening, drinking wine. “My queen,” he would say. And they gazed upon the opulent garden they had built within a budget, but still, there was a fountain and tall swaying bamboo, tropical flowers. They took turns making dinner. Maybe it was not having had children that made their devotion and relaxation possible, she wasn’t entirely sure. She didn’t understand when her other married friends complained. They had only been through one bout of desperate fighting and despair, when he had wanted children but she had not. She could not explain her feelings and he had left her alone one night, enraged that she was not open to exploring having a family. He returned the next morning, held her, and they never breathed another word about it.

She and Chloe descended the stairs of Seti’s tomb, the elaborately decorated walls with carved figured and mythological creatures paralleling their descent down further and further beneath the ground. In the huge room where Seti’s sarcophagus would have lain was a deep blue star filled domed roof. The artists, said the tour guide, had provided Seti with a view of the gorgeous night sky, while the many worker preparing his tomb filled his rooms with furniture, gold, food, wine, linens, jewelry, statues, furniture. The deep blue of the domed ceiling inspired Rene to think of Hansel and Gretel’s evening prayer. To think these ancient people really believed they needed to give their dead kings something to gaze upon.

The guide also said that a raid on the tomb orchestrated by the priests seeking money to gain political power stripped the pharaohs of their sacred and eternal powers.

In the cool ride back to the motel, in the nice car they had hired to treat themselves, Chloe said, taking off her scarf and rubber band and shaking her hair: “I’ve stolen from a dead person before.” The comment jarred Rene, as if the car had suddenly ridden over a sharp dip in the road.

“I was starting my internship at the morgue and this beautiful young woman no one had claimed was being handed over to the city. She was wearing a necklace with a ruby.” Chloe pulled her hair back and secured it again with the rubber band. “I wasn’t sure how she could have afforded it. It looked like she stole it so I slipped it off of her and wore it out that night.”

The tour guide had said it wasn’t just the priests who had stolen from the pharaohs with their organized raid. Little by little, the common people, the ones who supported the afterlife preparation industry, took from the tombs in order to make enough money to support their families. They worked themselves to the bone and often were paid an insulting amount. Resentment had built up given the disparity.

Rene observed her young friend. She seriously doubted she was committing Hansel and Gretel’s evening prayer to memory if she ever listened to the record at all. What was death to her. What was life. What was dignity. She wasn’t quite sure. She had always wondered what it would have been like for Chloe to deal with death so much having lost her own parents but her mentors said she always handled the loved ones of the deceased with such poise and grace. And yet, the coldness of an act like this, although on the other hand it had a strange logic too, like that of a child.

As the car bumped along, Rene ran her fingers through Chloe’s long ponytail, something the young woman still allowed her to do. She was not her child, and yet, in some strange way Rene had been a kind of mother. She was not sure she had guided her or made any contribution. Then again she thought, what are we  but masses of colliding particles, even to our own offspring.

That night she closed her eyes and imagined the faith of the Egyptians and their ceremonies.

She heard the crinkling of a chocolate bar wrapper. Chloe, getting into the candy they had collected at the market. “Would you like a piece of chocolate, Rene?”

 

Flashnano Day 6: Write a story in the form of a folktale. “A Tale of Two Men”

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photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy, flickr

1.

There once was a man who lived in a pine forest. Every evening, he laid a woman’s nightgown beside him in his big iron bed. Every evening, he set two extra places at his broad table. Every week, he bought food and clothing for the family he did not yet have. He bought toys for the child, jewelry for his wife.

Every night he prayed to his god fervently: “God, please give me a wife I can love and cherish, please give me a child. I am prepared to be your humble servant in all things related to these matters. I am a man, full of love. I will love my wife as my own flesh, my child as the flesh from my wife’s womb.”

One morning, the man woke to two tiny feet pressing against his shoulder. A baby! The man praised his god. He clothed the baby in the garments already bought for the child and gave him the milk stored in his home.

But he was puzzled how to present the child to the town since he was unmarried. He knew he should trust god and bravely and simply said, when anyone asked: “This is my new baby, praise god! I was alone in the world and god has seen fit to grant me a son.”

Adoption laws being what they were, everyone shrugged, congratulated the man, and went on about their own hectic lives. The man would know soon enough how hard it was to be a father and if he had strength enough for it he deserved the fulfillment of his prayers, for good or ill.

One night after the child had gone to sleep, the man sat on his porch. The pines creaked and the sound of the wind soughing in the bows amplified his loneliness and he prayed: “God, you brought me a miracle. You see how I have handled what you have seen fit to give me. If a bad father gives a stone to the son who asks for bread, how much more will you give?”

Carried along on the wind was a sound barely distinguishable from the soughing of the pines. It was a woman crying. The man searched his porch, but he could not find the source. He went out into the woods and there among the shadows was a woman, dressed in a white gown, shivering.

“Where have you come from?” said the man, putting his heavy wool coat around her shoulders and lifting her from the forest floor so she would not further damage her tender feet.

“I have given you a child,” said the woman, “a child I had no means of supporting. And now please sir, I wish to hold my son.”

The man’s heart filled with pity and with something else besides for the woman was very beautiful and young.

“You may hold your son for as long as you wish. I will make it possible for you. I will give to you whatever you require.”

And seeing there was no ring on the young woman’s finger, he made her the bride of his heart and did not question anything, only praised his god for his good fortune. When the woman slept in his bed, holding her son, the two the image of peace and warmth, he knelt all night in the wood in wonder.

2.

There once was a man who was tired of his wife. It was well known how many errors she had committed, and the number of errors was well past her ability to make up for them, even if she began engaging in acts of contrition the first moment he expressed his discontent and worked continuously, around the clock.

His wrath had built up. Number of laundry baskets not completed per day. Number of times the dishes were stacked in the sink. Number of times she was with her foolish friends rather than at the market. Number of times she was late getting the children to school. Number of pounds she had gained since their marriage. Number of times she did not attend worship services. Number of times he had come home from work to see her face and hair in their natural state. Number of times she had indulged in her projects and made cold meals rather than cook. Number of times she expected him to help her while she pursued her education. Number of times she disappointed his extended family.

And so, she became a terrible wife among those who worshiped his god, became an outcast and despised.

He prayed: “Oh god, why have you given me such a terrible wife? As a young man growing up, I tried to do the right thing, and yet you did not see that I was worthy of your favor?”

He prayed this at night, on his knees, in the living room, so that his wife heard, though their children slept the sleep of the innocent. It frustrated him how much they forgave her.

Being a man of ambition and righteousness, he knew the ways of the unrighteous and what would eventually befall her. Here is what he knew: The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.

Frustrated with his god, he existed in the house with his wife, neither praising nor belittling her, pouring his love and attention onto his children so that even if she became an angel to them, he would be even more perfect.

As it happened, she became wayward and ruined and he was enabled to be rid of her in all good conscience in the sight of his community.

“Thank you, God,” he said, “for this opportunity to start again.” And all the man’s wishes were granted, according to the dictates of his god.

Flash Nano Day 5: A story that takes place on a Monday

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Art Gallery by Richard Potts, flickr

It was Monday night at the art gallery downtown. Mel Jenkins, fat, manic depressive, weird fiction writer, had brought Lollie Kyle to be her friend at the event.

Rarely did anyone accompany her to her own readings, neither her former husband or current nonwriting friends or dates, though she had made some friends in the arts community whom she greeted when she was out.

Sometimes she was jealous of husband and wife teams who sat together and sold books, usually the husband’s, and as much as she had wanted something like this when she was married, it was simply beyond the parameters of the marriage. Her ex hated her writing for one, and well, that was a problem. And her psychiatrist blamed her fat on their divorce. Luckily someone else was now dispensing her med scripts.

It was highly unlikely someone like Lollie would hang around Mel voluntarily. Lollie was skinny, tiny, social, wore gorgeous clothes, had long, straight dark hair, bright eyes, an infectious laugh.

At the art gallery when Mel introduced the sprite of a woman to her friends, she was grateful to Lollie for not saying the real reason they were hanging out together: Mel had hired Lollie to take her to an outpatient procedure, had hired her off of a caregiver website. Mel had to hire her because she had no one to take her – friend or family – to the embarrassing procedure, a colonoscopy, something she had to take care of earlier than usual having survived breast cancer a few years before.

She knew her friends and contacts at the gallery were surprised she was with someone so apparently beautiful and together like Lollie. Mel experienced a certain power, like the kind she had when she was younger and more beautiful and skinnier, married to a doctor, before she had been diagnosed and put on drugs that made her fat. She had thought herself beyond such artificialities. But maybe not. People seemed to notice her more and she glowed a bit in the attention.

As it turns out, Lollie lived in her neighborhood, so all all Mel needed to do to pick Lollie up for their night out together was drive around the block to her door. Lollie was drinking, had put something strong in her thermos, the smell of it filled the car. Lollie was giddy and laughing. She was wearing the same ballet shoes she had worn at the outpatient clinic the day they met, the ones with wide ribbons crisscrossing on her delicate feet and ankles, displayed with jeans rolled up and cuffed. The doctor had noticed the shoes and stared at Lollie in the pre-procedure interview when Lollie was sitting with her in the prep area and not letting on she was hired, pretending she was Mel’s friend.

Mel had thought the doctor cute. Oh well, she also thought. So much for that. It was the downside of having a beautiful caregiver.

Mel had made some unfortunate choices in what to read that evening at the gallery. It happened sometimes. It was the moodiness and lack of judgement. She sometimes wondered if she didn’t have other things wrong with her, something that affected social abilities, the abilities to read others. Though often as a writer and a writer of weird fiction she almost always told others she didn’t care what anyone thought of her work. She had been tired of defending it to such people like her conservative ex and her family.

But then, that Monday night, having read her one piece about an alien who seduces a man – a piece that actually reads as a disturbing, serious story about mental illness – she wondered: Had she gone too far? Most definitely, yes. Her reading was met with a strange kind of complete, withdrawn silence.

Afterwards, when the crowd was mingling and talking, Mel returned to a table where Lollie was sitting with an organizer of literary readings. Lollie was flirting with him and they were laughing. Lollie laughed at her, said she hated the story, that it definitely was not the kind of thing she read. “Aliens!” she said. The event organizer laughed.

Mel and Lollie walked to the Irish bar next door to the gallery. Lollie kept drinking til she got pretty stone drunk. They sat in chairs outside the bar. Lollie hit on a much younger guy standing outside smoking and she bummed cigarettes off of him. One drink was enough for Mel. She was driving and hadn’t eaten all evening and her stomach was sour from nerves from the reading.

The young man eventually went away and Mel managed to talk Lollie out of yet another round. In the parking lot, Lollie smoked and pulled down the front of her jeans to shoe Mel a tattoo on her belly. Lollie may have well been the alien. Mel had not seen a body so small like that since she was in grade school.

She managed to get Lollie home. When she pulled up to the curb of Lollie’s townhome, Lollie said: “Do you have any oxy?” Mel managed a shocked response: “I don’t know,” she said. “Good night.” And luckily Lollie got out and got inside without involving Mel’s assistance.

Mel had time to think of this the next day. Had this been a kind of unspoken pact between them? The reason why Lollie hadn’t blown the cover of the real nature of the relationship?

It occurred to Mel that there was kind of an unspoken quid pro quo Lollie had orchestrated: She knew Mel’s desperation and she knew the flattery necessary to score free oxycontin. She knew Mel would perhaps have leftovers from cancer treatments and surgeries. Lollie probably did this kind of thing all the time as a caregiver.

Mel put one bottle of expired oxy in a bag and included a note: “This is it. I will not give you more, so don’t ask again. Don’t tell anyone I gave you this.” She hung it on Lollie’s front door

A couple of days later she received a text from Lollie complaining the strength of it wasn’t high enough. She ignored it and hoped she never saw Lollie again.

One afternoon when Mel was taking her dog outside her townhome, an hour which saw her unkempt, unshowered, her hair pulled up on her head and wild as an over-risen round loaf of mountain bread, Lollie pulled up next to her in her red SUV, smoking, calling her name.

Mel almost didn’t know who it was the inside of the truck was so dark and the day so bright. “Mel! Melanie Jenkins!” Lollie called out from behind the wheel. “I’m moving today, Mel! Going to Texas, wish me luck!”

Mel acquiesced and wished her well.

“I need you to review my caregiving on the site, so I can get more jobs,” said Lollie.

“Ok,” said Mel, though the thought of having to be so dishonest sickened her. She wasn’t sure if she would really do it.

And then Lollie was off, barreling down the narrow road between the houses and the woods.

It was perceptively quiet without Lollie and with the new thought that she was leaving. Lollie didn’t seem to be happy in Mel’s hometown anyway.

Mel’s little white dog sat down on the warm pavement, stretching her neck and sniffing. The trees seemed to move a little, as if taking a breath.

Flashnano day 4: A story that takes place in a hot room

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kennan street parlor by Bradley Fulton, flickr

It was hot in Grandmama’s apartment where we gathered for the family tradition of testing the corpse. Grandmama always liked it hot and never wanted any of us to act on her behalf to ensure there was a fix to the heat level in her particular suite of rooms. She always said, it is good for my circulation and supports my tropical sensibilities. She had the complexion of Martha Washington, a regal American bearing that suggested nothing of anything having to do with tropical climes or a constitution able to endure such. And there she was dead in the dining room, laid on the table, in the manner of our long line of southern ancestors.

“Horrible, just horrible,” said Mama beneath her breath while she poured a drink from the sideboard. My sister and I had been pressed into hopping on a same day flight from our respective colleges because of the body lying in an airless room, having been assisted to another realm of existence by a death doula. My ministering daddy was there of course, to press the holy oil onto her forehead and heart, to lay the family coins on her eyes. He was Grandmama’s only son.

Mama wasn’t amenable to such barbaric customs she called them. “Cremate me, right away,” she said while for once she offered each of us a whiskey though we were beneath the legal age.

“When I die they will carry me out feet first,” said Grandmama when she and I were making sugar cookies in her tiny kitchen, her blue veined arms and hands, delicate as china, working over the dough and helping me shape it into little balls. “You want to know why?” I could always count on Grandmama to tell me the truth. “So I don’t look back and take you with me, so I don’t drag you down to the grave.” And she wiped off the residue of dough on her hands and took a long sip of her now cool oolang tea.

Grandmama would have thought it rebellious that Mama wore bright orange to a deceased’s household, foolhardy even given the dead’s propensity to call people who did not present themselves in shadow in the traditional black. But no, Mama not only wore her favorite billowy bright orange chiffon dress, but the flashy burst of flower earrings with the rhinestone tendrils trailing down and her slingbacks. Devil shoes, Grandmama had said.

My sister and I tended the kitchen, distributing cups of punch and plates of little sandwiches Grandmama’s maid Effie had made that morning. When it came time for the traditional mirror ceremony, all of us – cousins, aunts, uncles – gathered round, though it meant nothing now that a death doula was qualified to declare the end of life. But Daddy insisted. It is what Grandmama would have wanted, he said while everyone looked on, Grandmama laid out so beautifully on the table, her silver hair swept back, her face as serene and lovely as I’d ever seen it. Mama rolled her eyes. I could see her across the room from where I stood beside Grandmama’s body.

Daddy held the small mirror in his hands, the oval one surrounded by little gold filigreed loops. He had instructed my sister and I and the cousins to gather on either side. When I hold this mirror up to her mouth, he said, you are to tell me if you see any breath on the mirror. We cannot bury your Grandmama while she is still alive.

My cousins were all younger than my sister and I and my aunts were extremely concerned that my father was creating nightmares with his insistence on this antiquated tradition. Daddy was pretty intense however, though unlike grandmother he took things less seriously. He was just trying to show a younger generation old Southern customs. And he thought kids were too sheltered for their own good. In our family, ghost stories at Christmas were as important as gifts themselves, and from the time you learned to speak, you were expected to speak of the dead in story form, however rudimentary. Mama would tip a little extra bourbon into her eggnog on those nights.

Daddy ceremoniously lowered the mirror to Grandmama’s mouth while the kids kneeled keeping their eyes level to the table top so they may spot any errant breath upon the reflected surface. We all froze that way for some moments, the heat ticking through the radiator pipes. From the corner of my eye I could see Mama slip out onto the balcony overlooking oaks draped with Spanish moss, the cicadas singing into the dying pink light. She lit a cigarette and let a plume drift around her magnificent head of short golden hair.

Soon it would be time for me to sit in airless rooms at the college far away, the weather there stricken through with winter’s frost, listening to concepts just beyond my grasp. How I wish for the simpler times when Grandmama and I had tea, when she told me of her times of adventuring in Alaska, and saying the Lord’s Prayer when an intruder invaded her home. She bit his arm when he lunged at her and he jumped from her third story apartment.

By a vote of silence all cousins had apparently decided Grandmama was truly dead.

I couldn’t be sure but when we left Grandmama to be alone with the doula I felt a faint pressure on my arm. Was that Grandmama’s hand? I doubt if it were she would pull me to the grave. Knowing her though, she was surely yanking my chain.

I love you Grandmama I said softly, smiling at her antics, and stepped safely across the threshold. I looked back at her body on the table, regal as a queen. She ruled her household with iron but there was a softness too.

When I started writing fiction a few years later, I would never write of a living person without writing of a dead one too, or at least the shadow of the dead. My creative writing professors had no truck with stories outside of strict realism.  By now, Daddy had gone to be with Grandmama and I had a baby at home and a husband too. I lit a candle and incense for them both every day and let the fragrance waft into our humble apartment while I conjured up the dead just like Daddy had taught me to do and my baby dreamt a peaceful sleep of the living and the innocent.

Be damned with them I can only imagine my Grandmama saying of my professors. I risked low grades, but somehow it didn’t matter. I wrote of the dead lying on door frames between chairs, families waiting for bodies to rot to ensure death, ghosts haunting southern estates reminding my ancestors of war and injustices, petty grievances and sorrow, ghosts who loved still and wanted to be of comfort to those they left behind.

Mama might even like some of these stories I thought sometimes, perhaps foolishly. Still, I hoped so. I brought her bright sweaters when I visited her at the home. One day I might even give her a bound copy of what I had made or better yet, read to her my gift if she was willing to hear.

Or we could simply drink whiskey in her cozy apartment and look out on the green of the woods beyond her window, deep and silent, and watch the light fade.

 

 

Flashnano day 3: Write a story involving mud

I am entering rougher terrain in order to try to finish the writing prompts for flashnano, almost a month after the event. The quality of stories will vary, some being more cohesive than others, some more developed in terms of concept and voice than others, some more exciting and gripping than others. I am thinking of some of these as being sketches for later characters and stories or even nonfiction pieces I’d like to develop. Some may never see the light of day again. Thank you for reading.

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end of by Eddi van W., flickr

I had never seen a woman use a mud mask until my sister and I slept over at a friend’s house. That was when we lived in Arkansas where our father was a minister. My mother didn’t use masks, or at least not around me and my sister and brother.

My friend’s mother was a kind woman, civic minded, political, intense. She was married to a wealthy successful man though there was often something silent and dark about him. He hunted and my father didn’t like to hunt. He drank, my preacher father did not.

I wish I could remember more about why my friend’s mother came into the room where all the girls were sleeping. Were we being loud? I don’t remember. Was she upset about something? I don’t recall. I only remember the shock of seeing her transformed, standing in the doorway the light behind her, her face obscured behind the mud mask, her gaze now alien and removed.

She was always kind to me when I was young and in the years after, even after my family moved from Arkansas and lived in another state, even through my college and married years. For birthdays and holidays, I always received a card scribbled in her tiny, almost indecipherable script.

She was nice to me too when she came to eat lunch with my family when we lived in Florida. I can’t remember the infraction I had committed as an adult child to inspire my parent’s silence toward me at that table on that day, but my friend’s mother was most visibly distressed over the disparity of attention lavished on the adult children. I felt it in her darting eyes and the shifting in her seat. For her it had been an experience of unnaturalism.

I think of her as a little darting bird like the kind you find who distracts you mercifully when you look out into the trees seeking solace or praying for relief.

I don’t know how a mud mask fits into this little story other than to perhaps point to the reality that she was always only ever herself.

But maybe the compulsion to make neat and tidy those elements of a story which rightfully exist randomly is undertaken by the same type who seek a too ready oneness with romantic partners and peers, those who are the pleasers and the insecurely attached.

No matter, what my friend’s mother shows is that there are people who exist for you even if you have not asked for them and even if you think you scarcely deserve them but there they are, seeing you. And sometimes that is all you want: a witness.

 

Flash Nano, day 2: A story that takes place in a bathroom

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Photo by Emily Austin, unsplash

Misha had thought to kill herself only hours before, lying in the deep bath of what a wealthy friend derisively called a “tract home.” She had been preparing for the well heeled even, a cocktail party with her husband’s colleagues, partners in the medical practice. Every year, around the time of her birthday, she felt herself slipping below the rim of reality as if she had slipped beneath the skin of the surface of a warm bath and was looking up at the world and its players, distorted and menacing. She thought she was screaming, but no one could hear anything. In a moment she would have to relinquish her soaking when the water turned cold. Then there would be the fixing of her hair, then the straightening of her dress, the application of makeup, and the selection of jewelry.

What would she talk to these people about? And the women were all so stark and regal, proper doctor’s wives. She never lost the baby weight. That feeling of her self consciousness oppressed her. Planning on ways to kill herself did not help either, as if she were her own judge and jury, and sided with the sophisticated medical crowd regarding her value as a human.

At the party, things were as anticipated. But she found her solace only in the locked bathroom where she let the water run from the faucet long and in a soothing little torrent. She used the brass stopper to close the drain and watched as the sink filled and the excess water spilled into the overflow holes. When she turned off the sink, she played with the water with little twirls of her hands. Maybe she should die in the bathtub, slashes deep and long in her flesh, the blood red and warming her as her body cooled. What if her child found her though. No, maybe there was something not so jarring in appearance.

What she didn’t realize was that there was someone in the toilet stall. A young yellow haired woman emerged, thin, a before pregnancy body, a black spaghetti strap halter dress hanging off of her like a dress hanging on a hangar. Her eyes were blotched with errant mascara and her hair mussed a bit as if she had been sitting on the toilet holding her head in her hands.

Misha remembered the night of her marriage. It had not been quite what she had anticipated. All the build up, the move from Minsk, the ceremony arranged by Rob’s parents in the United States. Misha so concerned to be beautiful, according to her advertisement on the site, her parents and brothers and sisters and whole family crying before her trip overseas but wishing her well. The vodka, wine, cranberry juice, black bread, the gift of salt, the old sad songs for the loss of a daughter to her groom. After the ceremony in an empty white church devoid of the embellishments of her country’s faith, she remembered the lightweight veil on her head and realized what she had always wanted as a girl: To feel the orthodox bridal crown. She sat in the hotel bathroom, the first night of her married life and felt the sting of tears. What was wrong with her? She chastised herself.  She thought of her parents, how happy they were, she tried to be happy too.

“How can I help you?” Misha said to the sniffling young woman, but the girl ignored her and dabbed at her eyes with a linen napkin from the stack provided by the sink. “Here, dear one, let me give you a hug.” The girl acquiesced and Misha felt the racking of her sniffles against her chest and her birdlike shoulders in the folds of her motherly arms. Where had she come from? She hadn’t even noticed anyone slightly under the age of thirty. The youngest couples were not that young, all of them having survived medical school and residencies and made it into partnership.

“I have to go,” said the girl, and twisted out of her grasp and slipped through the door.

Misha, who herself had only, hours before, been crying silently as she lay in the deep water of the tub, could not find the child among the mix of people when she emerged from the bathroom. At least she had been given the chance to be of comfort and she did feel a little lighter.

That night, she slipped out of her dress, took off her jewelry and lit candles around her tub.

Rob kidded her she would turn into a prune. She kissed him on the mouth. His eyes registered surprise. She had been withdrawn from him some weeks.

She slipped into the warm water all encompassing and primordial. How beautiful to hold herself in this way, suspended, and know she would come up for air.

Ms. Myska tries for love

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Mme E. by Emmanuel25, flickr

It had become Ms. Myska’s tradition to allow herself one month of the year to date through the interwebs. Signing up on a dating site involved a creating of a profile which she completed with relish and a certain glee, hoping her prospects would catch her tongue in cheek style, her humor, her joie de vivre. She spoke of her love for art, for the beauty of nature, the necessity of good stand up comedy, her passion for the eating of chocolate hazelnut spread, the patting of her soft dog while enjoying the breeze on her porch. Her initial offering netted an overall positive response and she was off to the races.

This particular month, in the month between Halloween and Thanksgiving, her first date was a military man who had exciting, interesting things to tell her over their salmon and broccoli: his work in search and rescue, his knowledge of Chinese and Russian intelligence, his concern for a wave of immigrants about to cross the border. But he also told her how easy it was for him to pick up women, how he could sit at the bar and they would just flock to him. There was no one at this restaurant bar. Eighties rock music reverberated throughout the empty chain restaurant dining room and the salmon was a little bit dry though she discretely slathered it with butter sauce. The barkeep was drying glasses and putting them away for the night. Ms. Myska’s date had lied about his age. He was actually more than a few years older than she. She could see it in his hair and frame and hands.

The military man convinced her before their second date to take down her profile and date him exclusively, that he was a great catch and well worth it. Another man she had been messaging on the site, a man slightly unhinged but who had been entertaining her nonetheless, got angry with her when she told him she was deleting her account for someone else. He flung a tirade of angry texts at her, telling her she had betrayed him though they had never gone out. He predicted that by the third date, she would be moving her stuff in with this person and making wedding plans. Ms. Myska’s heart began to race. She had no intention of moving in with anyone. And here’s the other thing: She was no good with a stranger’s anger, not this explosive and intense kind of anger, and seemingly without much foundation.

Because of dealing with this other man’s angry texts and the doubts it raised in her, she was late to her second date at another chain restaurant/bar and almost didn’t go. But she made it with apologies. Almost as if the dating gods had turned against her for this, the charm had drained from the military man altogether. His face appeared weary and drawn. His age was more revealing in the light. And she listened to a one hour tale about his lucky numbers and how he intuits them and uses them to bet and play the lottery, how lucky he is as if he were pretty much invincible. She supposed in a certain light on other dates this show of bravado sealed it for the uncertain as if he were a magic lucky teapot. The determinism of the numbers crushed her as did his seeming unwavering faith in himself. The fried chicken pieces at this second restaurant, a different restaurant than the first but almost interchangeable in a way inspired in her the following image: A very long tunnel with small round doors in the walls, each containing a lecture, a bland restaurant item, an angry political person, a disappointed man.

The next day she broke up with him over text. They had only seen each other twice. He called her a child for not breaking up with him face to face and he implied she was one of these “crazy ass women” he’d been seeing as of late. She asked him how insults fit into his self-presentation as a gentlemen. Then the doors to that particular slammed shut. Wham.

Her next prospect was an elementary school cafeteria manager who after one date convinced her to take her dating profile off the website, the profile she created after the military man dressed her down like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. She and the cafeteria manager went out for tapas at a Brazilian restaurant. She liked the way they spoke fluidly of food and recipes and restaurants and ingredients. She liked his hands, nice, big, warm looking, and his height. They laughed and talked and went for ice cream. They hugged when the date was over. They hit it off so they both took down their profile.

Then he didn’t call her. Confused and puzzled, she confronted him. He responded he was following some sort of “rule” for not calling her. He was angry she was upset. And he seemed angry by the second date over delicious blackened fish sandwiches. She was trying to be cheerful and funny but she felt his scowl and withdrawal and later that night it depressed her and she broke up with him. She kept remembering the way he walked to his car after their meal like he was leaving a house on fire when really nothing was burning. She was only standing beside him waiting for a reassuring hug or something to clear away their early days of trouble. Down this corridor there would be the mournful tears of someone crying for the love she could have given but it was unwanted. She broke up with him in the middle of the night when she knew he would be asleep.

She met a man on a motorcycle. They met out for oysters. He had a heavy silver skull ring for each finger and a salt and pepper goatee. He smiled at her and they sat at the bar chatting comfortably. She hadn’t planned on it but she asked him to take her around town on the back of his Harley. She didn’t even have a helmet which is as bold as Ms. Myska had ever become with her own safety.

It was an inky, starry night. She knew instantly she loved him or could love him.

A few days later his mother died after a long and painful illness. Ms. Myska felt him slip away into things he must handle, though she tried to help him best she could and she tried to be supportive. She went to the funeral home, leant an ear and what she believed was her sympathy. She liked the way he included her right away. She liked the way he took her out and seemed to want to know some things from previous experiences in her relationships. Knowing him and the people he rode with was like knowing a larger family.

But there was another side that snuck in too, a sadism that caught her mouse heart off guard though she tried to chalk it up to his grief. In the short amount of time a bond formed, maybe it was she in her sympathy, a chance to be useful in a way she wanted to be, useful and helpful and good. She had given a lot of herself, her feelings, her care. She was, she thinks now, a bit of an idiot but in the moment that this happens, this bonding, her dedication always seems to be for some cause, as if love were a god to be served exclusively and everything and everyone is sacrificed on the altar. With the last and final man for the year, it had something to do with the rumbling of the motorcycle, her body pressed up against him, her arms around his waist, his little hat, the rock music, Tom Petty, the air.

But eventually after she had done what she could and what she thought she should do out of respect for his grief, he hated her too.

Ms. Myska deleted her account.

The deeper truths are in the green dark mystery of the woods across the street. You cannot give up pursuing this mystery, not even for a moment, she thought, in the quiet, no military histories on tv, no man banging around making something in the kitchen, no full set of skull rings falling on her black iron Neiman Marcus side table she bought from ebay. How the woods have missed her, the sky. Her dog’s small dark and bright eyes, watch her and wait for the moment she will tear her eyes from the lonely and dissatisfied and take her for a walk.

flashnano 2018: day one, “father”

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marty hadding, flickr

Put the tiny cup to my lips, father, and I will drink the grape juice, the blood of our Lord. I am too weak to grasp it myself and cannot lift my head from the pillow.

Your kindly, knobby fingers I know so well, and the freckle by your ring finger. The bells of your church in Arkansas years ago when I was a child, the bright green lawn, the white of the walls beyond the gold cross suspended from the ceiling with taut wire. At the front of the church I sing with my friends “So My Sheep May Safely Graze,” our voices reverberating, mother on the second row where she always sits. You in your red velvet chair behind the pulpit. I know where you keep a glass of water, on a shelf just below the Bible, a secret shelf.

Do you remember when I went with you to give a last communion to an invalid lady? You served her from a velvet lined burgundy kit containing the juice and wafer’s, Jesus’ body. When we were sitting in the car later in front of her house, I stared hard out of the window, afraid to look at your face because you said I was strong. Tears stung my eyes. When you asked me what was wrong I said will that lady be alright? You said nothing. Our experience became a sermon illustration.

I try to speak to you but my words cannot make it into my mouth my body has become slowed and lazy with the sedatives, the morphine.

I love you, father.

You hold my hand, you tell me where to go, you tell me where I will meet you. You ask me to reserve a place.

FlashNano 2018: On Your Mark… FAQ

Nancy Stohlman

It’s that time a year again, folks: FlashNano! And if you’ve never heard of FlashNano before now, it’s the annual challenge to write 30 flash fiction stories in 30 days during the month of November, now in its 7th year!

The idea originated in 2012 as a spin-off from National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWRiMo): the challenge to write a 50,000 novel in a month. That challenge is fantastic and you can find out more here.

But FlashNano is the flash fiction lover’s answer to NaNoWriMo—the thrill of generating lots of material and the solidarity and the contagious energy of mad creation: sprinting, crawling, agonizing and celebrating throughout November with our novel-writing friends.

Join us!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do we join?

Declare it so.

Go buy some new pens and notebooks.

Join the mailing list (if you haven’t already) if you would like prompts emailed to…

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lips

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woman wearing eye covers by Amadeo Muslimovic, unsplash

She had a date, Ms. Myska. A miracle, really, considering it had only been a month ago that she lay on the operating table awaiting anesthesia, uncertain if cancer would take her down with her uterus.

And here she was, healthy as a new chick, sitting across the table from a smiling man with retro looking glasses, a man who knew how to choose a restaurant, to order, to talk. It hardly felt deserved, actually, Ms. Myska being somewhat shy, somewhat of a scurrying mouse, somewhat worried about her problems though she put on her best face.

Still, her face was betraying her. Sangria was the culprit. Sulfites, likely, in the wine. She began to feel her bottom lip plump out into a perfect rectangle and she wondered if the man saw, though thankfully the lights were dim.

She hoped she didn’t seem awkward talking to him because she was trying to talk while worrying. But to Ms. Myska worrying and doing something else at the same time was like walking and chewing gum.

The hysterectomy, the next phase in her fight against cancer, a fight to stay one step ahead of the reaper, saw her experience with a new drug. And it plumped out her lips and caused them to be red and chapped. This had been an unexpected. Though the swelling seemed to come and go – some days she felt she was over it, and some days her lips seemed to be stretching the boundaries of her skin – she was resigned to the permanence of the situation and sometimes observed the phenomenon with curiosity, like a scientist, or sometimes with horror, like a Japanese citizen in a monster flick, shaken to the core by a walking lizard exploded beyond all reason in size and ferocity.

As she watched her date order their tapas she hoped her lips did not cause her to blurt out any of her presently closely guarded feelings and thoughts. Here were a few: “Hey, you are even cuter than I imagined.” Or: “What would it be like to kiss you?” Or: “I think it’s really sexy when a guy knows how to order. Total hotness.”

Her lips had a serious side too. They wanted to say things like: “How come your other relationships didn’t work out?” Or: “Tell me how you feel about being a widower.” Or: “Do you snore loudly? Do you have flatulence? Would you mind if I did on occasion? Or minded if I enjoyed burping very loudly? Would you mind if I occasionally struggle with insomnia? I talk to my dog constantly, is that a problem? I sometimes cry, unprovoked, is that a big deal? Messy house? Financial messes?”

Instead she said: “I love making coconut shrimp. Yum.” He was a cook too and they compared notes.

When they were off to their cars at the top of the garage under the inky sky, they hugged goodnight.

It was only later, in her car, driving home, that she realized he had turned his head sideways to kiss her.

She was glad her lips had not picked up on this. Her lips only realized it later, with her brain.

She liked him.

But she was glad.