Category Archives: Short Fiction
“That’s her,” I gestured with my chin toward a woman sitting at the end of the bar. I watched her order a martini. If she noticed me, her neighbor, she pretended otherwise.
I turned back toward K. “She brings me a cucumber every so often–she has ever since I moved in. Winter, spring, summer–whatever. And never anything else. And always just one cucumber. She leaves them in front of my door with a note attached: FOR YOUR HEALTH.”
I could tell by the way K was eyeing her that he was interested. “Don’t,” I said. “Every man she gets involved with goes missing.”
K scoffed.
“That’s the gossip, anyway,” I clarified.
K waved away my warning and marched over to her. K was good with women. She smiled at him. I finished my drink and left. I never saw him again.
……….
A few months later an article appeared in the newspaper. K’s body had been found in a shallow grave along with the remains of ten other men. Their penises had all been severed.
What a shame, I thought, still pissed at K for ignoring my advice, as I bit into my freshly delivered cucumber.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bar, cucumber, death, drink, flash fiction, food, gossip, health, love, martini, murder, newspaper, relationships, sex, vegetables | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction
“My name is K. And I’m an addict.”
He didn’t elaborate on the nature of his addiction and nobody bothered to ask. The people in the room probably presumed that his addiction was some permutation of theirs: drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever. K had been attending these meetings for several weeks now, hoping that being part of a community of junkies would somehow cure his junkiness. Today was the first day he bothered to speak.
“Hello, K,” said a mass of voices. K sunk into his chair, knowing that his addiction was his alone, and that all the other addicts could never understand. Vulnerability suddenly exposed, K needed a fix. Fuck this place, he muttered to himself, as he snuck out during a coffee break.
……….
“It’s been a while,” said the voice on the other end of the phone, as though it knew K was on the brink of relapse.
K apologized and then pleaded for a fix up. “Pretty ones this time, please,” he added. As K reveled in the remorse and worthlessness of relapse, he envisioned the drug taking its effect: countless microscopic women riding his veins, soothing his pain with their kisses.
A knock at the door.
Leave a comment | tags: addiction, affect, drugs, flash fiction, pain, rehab, relapse, relationships, short story, syringe, women | posted in Him, Man, Short Fiction
Ever since K woke up dead, or so he was convinced, he had turned into a bit of a jerk.
That won’t do at all, he said in a huff. That’s how you choose to remember me? He snatched up his eulogy and tossed it in the garbage. I tried to feel sorry for him, because whatever mental affliction he was suffering from seemed to be rather burdensome. Then I began writing a new one.
Help me, he pleaded several weeks ago. I’m dead. I could see the fear in his eyes, and though I didn’t believe him, I was sure that he at least believed he was dead. I made a joke about zombies. But that only irritated him.
As the weeks went by he lost interest in everything that used to be meaningful. The only thing that seemed to jolt him to life–so to speak–was discussing how the life that was now, according to him, over would be remembered.
But the novelty of having a dead friend was eroding quickly.
Are you done yet, he barked? I lunged from my desk and sunk my pen into his neck.
Thank you, he said, as he died a second time.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, eulogy, fear, friendship, irritation, life, murder, pen, zombie | posted in Man, Me, Short Fiction
I grimaced at my reflection, fixated on the red streaks creeping down my jaw.
“Why don’t you go to the doctor,” she said, worriedly, from behind the bathroom door. “It’s too late for that,” I hissed.
She thought I blamed her for the infection. Before our relationship became serious, and even in the weeks following its serious turn, she begged me to get a tetanus shot. I refused. There was something romantic in the risk.
The first time she kissed me, she held back. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. But one night she kissed me without thinking. I remember the sound of the nails in her mouth grinding against my teeth. I remember the taste of blood running down the back of my throat and down the sides of my mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “Don’t be,” I replied, still believing in romance. She urged me to go to the hospital. “What if it gets infected,” she asked. I muttered something about fate, trying to smile with my mangled orifice.
I continued staring at myself in the mirror, convinced the red streaks were getting longer by the second, making their way to someplace vital. Probably to my heart.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, flash fiction, heart, hospital, infection, kissing, love, mirror, mouth, nails, pain, relationships, romance | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“Seeking new husband. Must meet the following criteria:…”
K wanted to apply for the position. But he knew he wouldn’t make the cut. While he had loved her for years, he was not as robust or as rich as the new man he needed to be.
One morning K, her neighbor and life-long “friend,” watched as a line of men began materializing in front of her house. Soon the line of men stretched the length of the street.
At 2 pm, she opened her front door. For the next 10 hours, men entered the house, men left the house. By 1 AM the line had dwindled. Having nothing to lose, K got in line—the last candidate.
“K, what are you doing? You know you can’t apply. Plus, [Redacted] wore J Crew exclusively.”
K frowned. He marched into the bedroom and examined the deceased’s wardrobe.
“The new one has to wear J Crew too.” She was behind him.
“Was that in your ad?”
“Toward the bottom.”
“ I hate J Crew.”
“I know.”
K put his hand to her cheek and she pressed back into it. Then he left, but not before stealing a pair of the deceased’s J Crew socks—which he kinda liked.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, clothes, death, fashion, flash fiction, friendship, husband, interview, J. Crew, love, marriage, relationships, socks, stealing, wife | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
K danced with the woman with the metal hook hand who lost her original hand while defecting from an impoverished nation K knew nothing about. She placed it, her metal hook hand, gingerly on his shoulder. He held firmly to her other fleshy hand, and, with an equally firm grip around her waist, paraded her through a room of riff-raff who were focusing their attentions on K and the woman with the metal hook hand and had stopped their own dance floor rituals almost entirely.
“Why are they watching us,” K asked.
“Because you’re not from around here. And they don’t like strangers, especially when strangers touch the local women.” K hardly considered the ways in which he was touching the woman with the metal hook hand to be “touching” in the sense that she meant.
He felt the riff-raff tighten their grip. Pressing his mouth to her ear, he whispered:
“I like your metal hook hand.”
She whispered back, “They don’t like it when strangers whisper things into the ears of the local women.”
……….
K woke up in a hospital bed a day later with two metal hook hands of his own. He didn’t like them so much.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, dance, flash fiction, metal, relationships, riff-raff, stranger, violence | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
“Merry Christmas,” said the white haired lady, thrusting a jar of honey in your hands. “It comes straight from her hive,” she continued, gesturing to another white haired lady near the tree who, evidently, was an apiarist.
The lady’s words sounded oddly perverse, to you, and you laughed. Your girlfriend, along for the ride since it’s the holidays, gave you a proper slap on the shoulder. The white haired lady looked crookedly at the two of you before going elsewhere to, probably, deliver more honey “straight from [the] hive.”
You had no interest in this particular jar of honey, having plenty of honey at home and very little room in your suitcase. Nevertheless, the next day you gently wrapped the jar of honey in an old necktie and buried it in your carry-on. Maybe she’ll let me do something sexual with it: you pictured your girlfriend covered in bees.
You hear a few days later that the white haired apiarist is dying of cancer. You don’t really know her, but you’re still sad a little.
You decide to watch a documentary about bees. They’re dying in large numbers throughout the word, you learn. But they probably aren’t dying of cancer.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, cancer, Christmas, death, flash fiction, gift, holidays, honey, neck tie, relationships, sex, travel | posted in Short Fiction, Woman, You
“Tell me a story or I’ll shoot her.” He raised his gun. The pretty brunette made indistinct noises from behind the bandana in her mouth.
So I did. I told him about this aspiring writer who decides to do something crazy because he only knows how to write about “what actually happens.” He decides to rob a bank but falls for the bank teller. While he intended to write a note demanding all the money, he ends up writing her a poem. They go on a date a few days later. They go back to his place for a nightcap. There’s a knock on the door. The aspiring writer opens it and finds a man holding a gun. The man barges in and, for reasons unknown, ties up the aspiring writer and the bank teller.
“What happens then?” The man with the gun asked.
I told him how, in the story, the man with the gun forces the aspiring writer tell him a story.
“And then?” The man with the gun asked.
I told him how the aspiring writer doesn’t know how to finish the story and how the brunette begins to fear, more than ever before, for her life.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bank, date, fiction, flash fiction, gun, hostage, relationships, robber, story, thief, writer | posted in Her, Man, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“She likes you,” her little dog said. “But here’s what’s going to happen: sometime soon she’s going to offer to make you soup. She’ll ask your favorite kind. You’ll tell her. Then she’ll show up with groceries and wine and you guys will cook your favorite soup and drink nice wine. You’ll sit down to eat but you’ll die. I’ve seen her do it countless times.”
“Why? You said she likes me.”
“She does. But like will turn to love which will eventually turn to hate. Kind of makes sense if you think about it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I like you too…. She’ll be back soon. So just act normal.”
I did.
“Know what,” her voice was sincere. “Let’s make dinner tomorrow. Why not soup?”
I glanced down at her little dog, which was avoiding eye contact.
“What’s your favorite kind?”
“Clam chowder,” I said confidently, knowing that clam chowder takes all day.
“Great. I’ll take the day off. Clam chowder takes all day, you know?”
I was somehow okay with such an extended death ritual. Her previous boyfriends probably hadn’t received such preferential treatment.
We smiled at each other. Her little dog probably rolled its eyes.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, boyfriends, chef, cooking, death, dinner, dog, flash fiction, girlfriends, hate, love, murder, relationships, soup | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“You’re an idiot.” Sometimes she wakes up with FUCK YOU emblazoned across her forehead. I’m not sure why. Perhaps in my sleep I set her car on fire. Accusations of stupidity (etc.) fly from her mouth with ease. Such was the case yesterday. We haven’t spoken sense.
—
This morning I ate a young man’s brain. He came to my office, in the basement of X University where I am a professor of Y. “Professor,” he inquired through the wooden door, “are you in?” I beckoned him inside. An extremely intelligent young man who is probably also wealthy (X University caters to smart and wealthy students and, as any reasonably smart person will tell you, the two traits are often mutually exclusive), he was fidgety like an old man but dressed like a young hip person.
“Could I ask you about our next assignment?” The young man spoke in a quivering voice. I nodded. He sat down. Then I struck him hard across the face. He went limp almost instantly and I set to eating his brain.
What are you doing, I asked myself in a moment of hesitation.
Becoming smart, I replied, as I took another bite of his brain.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, brain, cannibalism, food, intelligence, professor, relationships, student, university, wealth | posted in Me, Short Fiction
I hate discount retailers. But I go begrudgingly to the discount retailer because I do things for the pretty girl I love who always loves a bargain.
The discount retailer offers nothing of value for anybody. The girl I love marches off to the women’s things and I find myself in the men’s section, dodging lower-class people as they clamor for cheap stuff. Two men argue over a leather jacket.
I make my way to the men’s shoes. I fantasize about seeing the girl I love naked as my eyes gloss over countless pairs of misfit footwear that seem like death row inmates awaiting imminent execution.
But I spot, accidentally, in an unmarked shoebox, a single Ferragamo loafer that, presumably, even I can afford. My X-rated fantasy vanishes and I excitedly snatch up the loafer. I search for its mate. I search everywhere. I ask an unhelpful sales associate to find its mate. He rolls his eyes: “Sorry, I guess it’s lost.”
I attack the sales associate. The police arrive and I’m arrested. I don’t know where she is–the girl I love.
I’m issued prison garb–shirt, pants, loafers. The shirt and pants are awful, but the loafers aren’t so bad.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, Black Friday, clothes, discount, Ferragamo, leather, loafer, love, police, prison, relationships, shoes, shopping | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I had been hit by a train so went to Q Resort to convalesce for a week. The doctor said the damage wasn’t bad, but had urged me to take time for myself. So I made the journey to Q Resort.
I spent most of my time at Q Resort sitting out on my veranda and staring absently at the world beyond. There were mountains covered in snow. There was a stream, partially frozen. Etc. I reflected on my brush with death.
One day I found a dead cockroach in my room at Q Resort. I didn’t tell the Hispanic maid; I left the cockroach where it died because it seemed peaceful. The Hispanic maid must have found it because two days later it was gone. I was bereft, a little, but made due, and used the experience to reflect further on the nature of living and dying.
Convincing myself that all life culminates majestically in death, I jumped from the edge of my veranda one night.
Because my room at Q Resort was on the second floor, however, I ended up only with a badly sprained ankle. Unable to walk, I extended my stay at Q Resort another week.
Leave a comment | tags: accident, affect, cockroack, death, hotel, life, resort, shiga naoya, train | posted in Me, Short Fiction
I love you but I’ve chosen darkness he said to the tree as he chopped it down. He held back tears.
He used to play in the tree as a child. He used to run around it and kiss girls under it. He used to climb it and fall off of it. He used to cry under it when his parents fought. Or cry for it during thunderstorms. He lost a basketball under it. And found a human skull buried near it. He once got stuck in it. Bees built hives in it. He never got stung but his Vietnamese friends did. Birds lived in it and nursed their young in it. The neighbors were always afraid the tree would fall on their homes and expensive cars, temporarily upsetting their upper-middle class suburban dreams until their insurance agents showed up. There had even been a petition signed by half of the members of the neighborhood association demanding its immediate removal. (Two-thirds of the members were required to sign.) He carved haiku into its bark and never read them to anyone. He read them to the tree. He loved the tree. It loved him.
But the lumberjack’s daughter was irresistible.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bark, bee, dream, haiku, love, lumberjack, relationships, suburbs, thunderstorm, tree, Vietnam | posted in Man, Short Fiction
He had heard the rumors since childhood-the ones that circulated among day laborers and the working poor: during the blood moon at such and such landfill a womanish creature could be seen swimming in the vast reservoir of refuse, junk, and discard. There was no evidence to validate the rumor, but to a child that hardly matters.
As K got older, he constructed an elaborate fantasy around the stories he had heard as a child. He imagined falling in love with the landfill mermaid. He imagined growing fish parts of his own and swimming off somewhere with her.
During the most recent blood moon he broke into the landfill. Standing on the edge of the abyss, he waited. Soon enough he saw her.
K called to her. He shouted his undying love to her. She swam to him. She was beautiful. Join me, she said.
K shed his clothes and jumped into the landfill.
He was later pulled from the landfill, his body plagued by cuts and blood-borne diseases. I’ve seen love, he whispered to someone who cared about him. Then he died. Then things slowly went back to normal, no one ever really figuring out what he meant by that.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, disease, garbage, gossip, landfill, love, mermaid, relationships, rumor, trash | posted in Her, Him, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
K’s father was becoming annoyed with his adolescent son’s word choices. First “duvet,” then “loofah.” Until recently K’s father enjoyed their weekly Scrabble games, even though K’s vocabulary far surpassed his own. But the words that had begun to enter the young boy’s Scrabble lexicon were unsettling. K’s father thought back to K’s winning word last week: “exfoliate.”
K’s father imagined letters swirling in K’s head; he further imagined letters bumping into other letters to create effeminate words. After K’s father offered a word hardly worth mentioning, K played his next word: “chanteuse.” K’s father didn’t know what that word means.
K’s father stared at his remaining letters, feeling betrayed by the father-son time he so desperately wanted. K’s father scanned the board. If he were more of an “intellectual,” K’s father could have countered his son’s suspicious vocabulary with his own manly version: bolts, beard, fortress, chainsaw, dirt. While those words hardly count for anything in Scrabble, at least compared to “chanteuse” or “exfoliate,” they would have at least meant something to K’s father. But K’s father’s intelligence aside, it was too late for that. K’s father was going to lose.
It was just as well: he preferred Battleship.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, Battleship, bolts, chainsaw, chanteuse, dirt, exfoliate, family, father, femininity, fortress, masculinity, Scrabble, vocabulary | posted in Man, Short Fiction
We drink wine as the world ends around us.
“And to all the destruction in men,” she says, raising her glass. “And to all the corruption in my head,” I rejoin, touching my glass to hers.
Another explosion. Another scream in the distance. It’s only a matter of time before those screams ostensibly become ours, which is why tonight we drink the good wine, the wine she is supposed to be saving for a special occasion–a promotion, accolade.
As rock falls from the sky I think back to when I first met her.
———-
She had been smoking on her veranda and talking to the night sky. She had been doing it every night for months. Every night I would watch her from the darkness of my own veranda, imagining a conversation with a dead lover or maybe a confrontation with God.
“What are you doing,” I asked once, emerging from the darkness.
“I’m talking to Orion.” She remained focused on the stars. “I’m trying to convince him to take off his belt.”
She started sweet talking him when she was a teenager, she said. And men can only resist for so long.
———-
“I guess you were right,” I say.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, apocalypse, death, God, meteor, Orion, relationships, romance, sky, smoke, space, stars, wine | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
For my birthday, my girlfriend gave me something she made. Last year it was something she constructed from forks and spoons.
This year it was a flower pot, out of which a hand was growing. I recognized the hand; I had bought it for her to hang jewelry from.
“You don’t have to water this kind of plant.” She laughed.
I watered it everyday after she left for work. It didn’t take long before the hand grew a wrist.
Under some pretense, I took my potted hand from her apartment, claiming it would look good in my house, which I hardly called home at all these days.
There I watered it dutifully, spoke to it, played it pleasant music. The wrist grew a slender arm, which grew a graceful shoulder.
A woman! I grew excited and pulled on the arm. A beautiful woman emerged from the soil. Our eyes met. We embraced. Then she pulled me back into the soil.
Later that day my girlfriend came by. She didn’t find me. But she found a flower pot with two hands in it. Presuming I had made it for her, she took it back to her apartment. Her birthday is tomorrow.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, birthday, gardening, gift, hand-made, jewelry, plant, relationships | posted in Me, Short Fiction, Woman
At the end of the famed Savile Row there’s a small men’s clothier called K’s. Although it claims to specialize in men’s bespoke clothing (as every men’s clothier on the famed Savile Row does), those in the know know K’s true specialization to be things made of silk. They know, too, of the proprietor’s prominent role in the black-market silkworm trade. But they don’t care. People much more important than you visit K’s from far away places.
K used to have an apprentice: a former leftist intellectual who turned his back on a career in “the academy” because of a profound distaste for its increasing corporatization and residual and unwarranted snobbiness. And because he was totally into fashion. Rumors suggest that K’s apprentice fell in love with a woman who worked someplace nearby, a former cocaine addict who was not very pretty but nevertheless attractive for indiscernible reasons.
Some say K was jealous of the couple. They also say that he fed them to his silkworms and that he subsequently offered an exclusive collection of extra fine silk handkerchiefs called “LoveLost.” An edgy enough name for a collection of handkerchiefs, but they weren’t worth what they cost.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, capitalism, fashion, handkerchief, intellectual, love, Savile Row, silk, silkworm | posted in Man, Short Fiction
Thus he decided to put himself in the freezer.
Wanting to stop time, but not knowing how, he reasoned that freezing himself would almost be the equivalent of freezing time.
He wanted to stop time because things were finally good in the usual ways that people mean when they say that. But he knew life to be a constant negotiation between the good life and the opposite of the good life. The trick was to stop time when life was good so it would always be good.
He had envisioned casting a spell or whispering magic words or waving a magic wand to bring time to a stop. But that’s impossible. Which is why he decided to put himself in the freezer.
Before doing so, he went shopping. I want to look nice forever, he told himself. He bought a nice suit and a really expensive watch. He charged the shit out of his middle class credit card–since time was coming to an end it didn’t really matter.
He got in and closed the door.
He wasn’t dead when somebody opened the freezer a day later. But his watched stopped. So his plan kinda worked.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, credit card, debt, freezer, shopping, suit, time, watch, wrist watch | posted in Man, Short Fiction
The cabin was perfect–miles beyond the reach of the last dirt road. It was well-tended; spaghetti sauce and crackers in the cupboard and an old but functioning television set in a makeshift upstairs bedroom with a cute little window.
He unloaded his provisions: barbed wire, nails, an axe, a gun, bullets.
He ate a meager meal. Then he set the barbed wire and secured the front door. Then he waited, crouched against the refrigerator, gun in hand. He waited more.
A knock at the door. He aimed and fired two bullets. Another knock. He backed away, aware that his little war was coming to an end, aware that he was going to lose. He ran upstairs to look out the window.
More assailants arrived. He fired from the window. His defiance only agitated them.
“You can’t win,” Opportunity called from behind the door. “You might as well give up,” Success shouted from somewhere in the darkness.
He listened to the noise of the front door being kicked in. He listened to footsteps ascend to the second floor.
He looked Happiness in the face. He surrendered, and he smiled a smile he had been running from for far too long.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, axe, barbed wire, cabin, camping, escape, gun, happiness, opportunity, spaghetti, success | posted in Him, Short Fiction
The clerk leaned across his counter and whispered: “Did you know that if you send the US Treasury a $2 bill, they’ll send you back $2.15?” He went on to whisper related information, but I stopped paying attention.
……….
When I was a kid my father stockpiled $2 bills in the basement of our house, sure that one day $2 bills would be the only viable currency. After he disappeared, I took his cache of $2 bills and folded things out of them.
I folded boyhood things: submarines, rocket ships, best friends. After boyhood, I folded my father’s $2 bills into weapons and electric guitars. Most recently I folded a woman and fell in love with her.
I promised to provide for my origami woman. She dismissed my masculine posturing, however, and asked only that I never unfold her, echoing a promise I had already made to myself.
………
I unfolded her that night, the clerk’s whispers of “profit” ringing in my ears. But not before taking her out to an extravagant dinner–like, candlelight and oysters flown in from faraway. It was out of my price range, but, envisioning the money I would get for my origami woman, I wasn’t too concerned.
I ordered us another round of martinis.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, candlelight, capitalism, family, martini, money, origami, oysters, relationships, shopping | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
K enjoyed the night shift because it was quiet. You’d think suicidals (as they called them) would be most active at night when you’re alone with your thoughts. You’d be wrong, though. The serious suicidals do it during the day when everyone else is busy.
K enjoyed the nightshift because at 11:45 PM every night a woman would call. The first time she called, she was patched through at random. “Hello, my name is K.” etc.
Every night thereafter, she would ask for K, telling whoever might answer her call that she felt most comfortable talking to K and, do you really want to risk not letting her talk to him?
K anticipated her call even if he was otherwise preoccupied. Her life being at stake and all, he looked forward to talking her down from the ledge every night.
One night, she didn’t call. K should have presumed the worst. Instead, he presumed that she was mad at him or that she didn’t “need” him in that way anymore. He tracked down her phone number and called her, not finding anything ironic.
She answered after one ring, an unfamiliar cheer in her voice. K hung up immediately, his worst fears confirmed.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, emotions, fear, intimacy, phone, suicide | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
The woman got stranded in Iceland once, after following a guy she “loved” onto a raft.
She went to a casino in the capital and shoved what little money she had down the throat of a slot machine. Finding that she had a knack for that kind of thing, she won big: she bought a ticket back to the US and even had enough money left over to try and get her life back together after love fucked everything up for her. She moved to Las Vegas.
She had this favorite slot machine in the corner of her favorite casino. It was always good to her. They first met on a whim; she had a feeling about it, that’s all. They liked each other immediately and spent evenings and weekends together. She told the slot machine about being stranded in Iceland. She told the slot machine about other bad stuff, too. The slot machine was extra generous at times like those.
One day she told the slot machine about this friend that was worried about “[her] gambling addiction or whatever.” The slot machine was silent for a moment. Then it smiled a big smile and offered her more money than usual.
2 Comments | tags: addiction, affect, casino, desire, gambling, Iceland, Las Vegas, money, relationships, slot machine | posted in Short Fiction, Woman
He stopped, about halfway between here and there, at a country gas station. A pretty(ish) girl was working behind the counter. He asked for directions even though he knew were he was going. Her voice was kind of cute if handled in short bursts.
He stopped again, the next year, at the same country gas station. An awful fast food restaurant had been tacked onto the outside, bringing in a fair number of travels on their way from here to there. The pretty(ish) girl was working again. She had highlights in her hair and paint on her fingernails. He asked for directions again just to see. She didn’t remember him. Besides, thanks to the fast food restaurant she had more menial duties than last year and didn’t have time for guys doing guy things.
He stops again a few years later. The country gas station is now flanked by a motel and a 24 hr. breakfast place. It is busy and he gets kind of sad. He decides not to go in to ask for directions because he feels left behind, somehow, even though he probably shouldn’t.
He pays for his gas outside (something he had been unable to do previously).
Leave a comment | tags: affect, change, gas station, progress, relationships, time, traveling | posted in Her, Him, Short Fiction
“Why did you bring that thing back,” she asked, knowing the answer. “What would you have done,” K replied, reminding her that she had been present that evening at the fat man’s house; reminding her that she had been present when the fat man forced the painting on them, exclaiming, “This one is my favorite and I want you to have it.”
How the fat man could tell “this one” apart from the others was anyone’s guess: countless framed images of Nordic women in various states of ecstasy–heads cocked, hair tousled, etc.–and undress adorned the walls of his modest middle-class home.
(Although she pretended not to overhear, she had heard the fat man whisper something like, “This one reminds me of your girlfriend,” before handing K the painting that now occupied a prominent space in their alcove.)
“It’s creepy,” she huffed before marching into the bedroom.
“I’ll throw it out tomorrow,” K said meagerly.
When K woke up in the morning his girlfriend was gone from their bed. He found her in the painting next to the Nordic, face in a frozen, forced smile, eyes pleading but also seductive, body contorted erotically and unnaturally.
He decided to keep the painting.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, domesticity, erotic, fat, Man, Nordic, painting | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
