Category Archives: Woman
The door creaked open. The bald florist on the other side offered K the same expression he offers him every year on the thirtieth of December – looking somewhat like a vet explaining to a crying child the fate of her shar-pei.
“Happy anniversary, K,” said the florist, presenting the same maudlin bouquet of half-dead flowers he presents every thirtieth of December.
“Thanks,” replied K heavily, reaching one arm through the gap in the door. “No card, I suppose?”
The florist shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He looked at K with no expression: “Why do you keep putting yourself through this?”
K propped the rotting flowers on his hip. “I don’t know. I keep hoping that maybe this year it will be her knocking instead of” – he paused – “well, you. Not that I don’t like you.”
“It won’t, K. It’s been five years. She’s not coming back. At least she remembers your wedding day, I guess.” The florist shrugged and took his leave.
K closed the door and set the dying flowers – her favorites – on the kitchen table.
He then marked in his calendar exactly 51 weeks into the future, when he would place his next order with the bald florist.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bouquet, break up, calendar, flash fiction, florist, flowers, heart break, marriage, relationships, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
I was walking home that night, paying little attention to my surroundings, when a woman – slight, fashionably dressed, dark eyes – approached me.
“Are you K?”
I said that I was, trying to ignore the incredulity of the moment. It was dark, but I knew her voice.
She looked at me, then punched me in the face, sending me backward. Her punch had knocked her off balance, so the force of the blow was relatively tame. Still, my right eye began to swell.
“Stay the fuck away from me!” she shouted.
Too stunned to reply, I grimaced at her. She took a knife from her back pocket. “And give me your fucking watch.”
I did. Then she flipped me off before tottering off into the shadows.
In a daze, I tripped and had to limp home in the dark.
I woke the next morning on the couch, and you were sitting next to me. “Sorry,” you said with resignation, handing me my watch. “I’ve always kind of liked it, I guess. We met the day you bought it.”
You were leaving for work.
“At least you didn’t try to run me over this time,” I said, watching the front door close.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, assault, couch, fashion, fiction, flash fiction, love, punch, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, time piece, violence, watch | posted in Me, Woman
I refused to finish the bottle of sake she brought over.
I didn’t like her much, and neither did she care for me. We were bored, worn out by too much solitude. So I cooked her dinner, touched her elbow. She left before dark and before I could touch her in better places.
“Keep the sake,” she said with false candor.
“Gladly,” I replied, flatly.
Alone in my apartment, I snatched up the glimmering green bottle of alcohol, held it close. My distorted reflection mocked my equally distorted existence.
Then, following protocol, I wrote her name on the bottle before putting it in the refrigerator with the other unfinished bottles of refrigerated alcohol other women had brought over and left behind. Countless kinds of cheap white wine, expensive vermouth, decently sophisticated beer, pretentious red wine. Now fancy sake.
I examined each bottle, touched carefully and purposefully each bottle, as though handling the delicate women whose feminine names adorned each bottle.
Satisfied that my record of romantic failures was still in tact, and indeed growing, I closed the refrigerator and spent the night – just like every night – curled up next to it, lulled to sleep by its gentle and accusatory hum.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, date, dating, failure, flash fiction, red wine, refrigerator, relationships, sake, Short Fiction, short story, vermouth, white wine, women | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“Would anyone like a vanilla latte,” said the woman to a mass of early-evening cafe customers who were only partially listening. “They made two by mistake.”
“I’ll take it.” I met her gaze.
She smiled. “Have a nice day.” She handed me a white paper cup, brushing my fingers as she did so. Then she walked off, her towering boyfriend matching her stride.
I hate vanilla lattes. But having just purchased a new luxury car, my finances weighed heavily on my mind.
I took a seat in a dark corner of the cafe and pressed the paper cup to my lips. Her name was written on the side of the cup. In that instant, I felt an intimate, indeed too intimate, connection to this generous stranger.
I sat for hours with my vanilla latte, refused to drink it. Even after the last customers trickled out the door, I remained in my wooden chair cradling my latte like an injured animal and staring at the empty space across my table.
“Excuse me.”
Her languid voice roused me. I smiled.
“I’m glad you’re still here.”
I smiled again. “I’m glad you came back.”
She settled into the vacant chair across from me.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, capitalism, coffe, fiction, flash fiction, latte, love, relationships, romance, Short Fiction, short story, stranger, women | posted in Her, Me, Woman
“My father left us to build corn mazes in Japan,” the woman said, letting her knobby knees brush against my torn denim. Lost, as I was, in the smoothness of her legs, I was only half listening to her story, which I figured she had made up anyway.
“The Japanese do like corn,” I finally offered, willing my eyes toward her face. “They put it on everything. Pizza, salad, whatever.”
She smiled, looked away, unamused by my joke.
“I mean,” I struggled to ward off the encroaching silence, “who doesn’t like corn?” I felt like a bad stand-up comedian.
“Thanks for the drink,” she said, sliding her glass toward me. “Let’s do this again.”
She didn’t mean it.
I drove to the store and bought all 160 cans of corn that were in stock.
“Looks like someone really likes corn,” cooed the cashier with a sly grin. I smiled and invited her over.
“After my shift. It’ll be late. I hope that’s okay.”
She knocked on my door at 11 pm and the two of us worked till morning building an impressive, winding maze out of my cans of corn.
“I have to go,” she said, suddenly aware.
“Good luck,” I replied.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bar, corn, divorce, fiction, flash fiction, Japan, love, maze, relationships, romance, sex, Short Fiction, short story, super market, women | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
K sold the ring his fiancee had given him. Some guy in the parking lot of a sandwich shop gave him $400, claiming that it was identical to the one he lost, a gift from his own fiancee.
K spent the first $100 at a strip club, folding his stack of dollars into paper airplanes and cascading them into the air, like a little squadron of warplanes, toward the pretty but malnourished stripper.
K spent the remaining $300 on a fat prostitute. He had no desire to sleep with the fat prostitute. Instead, he wanted to ride her, like she was a horse.
K used to be a skilled equestrian and won many awards. K fell in love with a pretty lady, also an equestrian, skilled. They were to marry, but things fell apart; K never rode again. K moved away and decorated his meager apartment with his awards. The urge to ride was strong, but he refused to return to horses.
K demanded the fat prostitute remove her clothes. Then he climbed atop her. He rode her vociferously, until they both collapsed into a heap of flesh.
K slept heavily. When he woke, the prostitute was gone, and so were his awards.
Leave a comment | tags: addiction, affect, awards, body, capitalism, fat, fiction, flash fiction, horses, love, marriage, money, relationships, romance, sex, Short Fiction, short story, women | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
To exorcise your anxieties, you invent a woman, draw her portrait, and then dream about her. You’re supposed to ask her questions, in your dream, and, after you wake, write her responses in your “dream journal.”
But when I present her portrait to K, he becomes enraged. “This is your woman? This is your animus?” He balls her up in his left hand and drops her to the floor. “Try again.”
I again draw the woman, the locus of my anxieties and erotic fantasies. She is my life’s work, the climax of my existence. I don’t ask K for his approval before I begin dreaming about her.
K is jealous of my animus, I feel. He wants to dream about her, ask her questions, and write about her in his own “dream journal.”
I dream of K instead of my animus. I ask him where she is. He says that she has left me because I’m “too unstable.” I tell him that’s why I drew an animus, to stabilize. He says that it’s too late and that she’d rather be with a rich guy besides. I can’t disagree.
I wake up but don’t bother to write any of that down.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, animus, drawing, dream, dreams, flash fiction, journal, Jung, love, psychoanalysis, relationships, romance, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me, Woman, You
“What are you reading,” I inquired in my best disinterested voice.
Silently, she held her book to her face to reveal its title: An Exegesis on Repressed Masculinity.
I suppressed an eye roll. “Is it interesting?”
“Interesting enough,” she shrugged. “It’s probably the story of your life: sex and anguish, sex and decay, sex and self.”
“That sums it up.”
She smiled.
“May I?” I extended a hand across the bar top.
My name, in elegant font, was printed along the book’s spine. And my photo – an old one, taken with my now dead dog – was on the back.
“Where did you get this?”
“That guy over there. He’s the author. And” – she raised her ring finger – “my husband.”
He kissed her on the cheek and drank the rest of her martini. “Ready,” he asked in my voice.
She nodded, and then addressed me: “Keep it. I’ve read it eighteen times.” She had written her number on the first page.
We had sex two days later.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she breathed heavily afterward, “but my husband would like to join us now. Come on out, K.”
I watched in terror as I stepped out of her bedroom closet.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, book, dog, flash fiction, martini, masculinity, picture, relationships, sex, Short Fiction | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“We don’t know what happened to the dinosaurs,” she said. She was too attractive to be a paleontologist. I nevertheless listened to her lecture. But I didn’t believe her.
I whispered to K: “Bullshit. She knows exactly what happened to them.”
K brushed me aside and marched toward the paleontologist, much swagger in his step. “She wants to have sex with the two of us,” he reported back, smiling as though he were staring in his own porn. I would have fucked her, but the idea of three bodies heaving and groaning together was off-putting.
K left the museum with the paleontologist. “I’ll find out what happened to them,” he said in my ear on his way out.
I visited K in prison six months later. He was wan and sickly. “What the fuck,” I said.
“I cut her head off.”
“Why?”
“She would’t tell me what happened to the dinosaurs, so I killed her.”
I couldn’t say anything, so he kept talking.
“But the weird thing was,” he said with piercing eyes from behind plexiglass, “I looked down her neck after I cut her head off. I saw a bunch of dinosaurs grazing.”
“On what,” I asked, genuinely curious.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, dinosaurs, eating, flash fiction, museum, orgy, paleontologist, prison, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“Nervous much? Or do you always never look a girl in the eye?”
Her grammar—not necessarily incorrect—bugged me. It reminded me of the way a graduate student would address some pressing social concern.
“Sorry, habit I guess.” I attempted to elaborate on a study some sociologist conducted that proves men are poor at maintaining eye contact.
She rolled her eyes. “Here,” she said, grabbing the expensive vodka from my bar cart without asking. I had upset her. Moments earlier she had gone on a rant about how women shouldn’t wear underwear when they wear tight dresses. I, naturally, hadn’t minded the conversation, though I did wonder about sanitation.
But now she sat before me with her head cocked way back like you do when you catch the rain in your mouth. She filled her mouth with vodka and waited for me to drink from it.
I didn’t want to, having the day prior watch a documentary about birds feeding their young. I made a joke about liking “my martinis dirty.”
She displayed two fingers, reached under her dress, and then used them to stir the vodka in her mouth.
She tried to meet my gaze. I looked away.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, dress, eye contact, flash fiction, gaze, gin, martini, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, underwear | posted in Her, Me, Woman
As she choked me, I wondered if she had murdered anyone before. Her grip was confident. She showed no concern that she might take things too far–as though she knew the right moment to stop.
Had she not been so attractive, I may not have followed her home that night–out of curiosity, I assure you. She may not have approached me: “Why are you following me?” She may not have invited me to her home to debase and fuck me. But the intensity of her presence was hypnotic. I was truly under her spell.
Get the fuck out of here. I was used to the way she spoke to me. It chilled me but kept me alive. I balled up my clothes and headed toward the door. Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflection of her glass liquor cabinet, I rubbed at the red striations on my throat. Anybody would be able to guess what happened.
Use that. She nodded to a purple Armani draped across the sofa.
“Madam, have you ever killed anyone?”
All the men who come here. And with that scarf, in fact. Now, come here and let me tie it for you before you go.
1 Comment | tags: affect, Armani, death, fashion, flash fiction, masochism, relationships, sadomasochism, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
K couldn’t stop talking about his new painting. “She does whatever I ask,” he boasted, tracing the cut on his cheek.
When he showed me the painting, I was greatly underwhelmed. The way he spoke of her, I was expecting a hot woman in leather or something. Instead, I saw a lumpy pale creature gazing into the distance. She belonged in the boring wing of a museum.
K greeted her graciously, introduced me, and then scuttled us away, claiming that he was extra demanding last night and she needed rest. He was genuinely concerned.
“Where can I get one,” I teased.
“What do you have in mind?”
“Prettier and skinnier than yours. Maybe a little bitchy.” K eyed me suspiciously.
……….
She was delivered on a Monday. I removed the packaging and found a beautiful women, nearly naked, hip bones protruding confidently. She glared defiantly at me from behind her glass. “I am your master,” I demanded. I unzipped my pants.
……….
“She’s defective, K. She just stands there. Won’t do a damn thing I say.”
“Did you really expect otherwise?” He paused: “So that mark on your face…”
“She tried to kill me. I’m not into that weird shit you like.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, master, museum, painting, relationships, sadomasochism, sex, slave | posted in Her, Him, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
“Here, give this woman a call. She seems to have your”–she paused–“aesthetic sensibilities.”
Spinning her interior design book toward me, she pointed at a woman cradling a bronzed human skull the way you might show off your newborn. Below the photo, a caption:
I just like body parts. I use them all the time. People ask why. I don’t know why. I just like body parts.
I looked her up and sent an email detailing my own fondness for body parts: disembodied limbs, torsos of in-shape women, etc. I moved into a new apartment, my email continued, and would she be available for consultation?
……….
The woman had on the same brand of perfume my girlfriend wears, which I found off-putting. She padded across the floor (I have a no shoes rule) and my girlfriend’s scent followed, like a pet.
“I can do a lot with this space,” she said to my ceiling. “In fact,” she turned toward me, “I brought you a housewarming gift.” She pulled a lacquered head from her oversized shoulder bag. She held it toward me, gripping it by its long, brown hair.
“Is it real,” I asked?
She smiled and the scent of perfume overtook me.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, artist, body, body parts, book, death, decoration, designer, interior design, murder, perfume, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, skull | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
She said she wanted only to swim with the jellyfish. “It’ll hurt,” I said, “a lot.”
We gazed out at the ocean.
“I know,” she replied, sharply.
She had this thing about being hurt during sex–they always do at first–and was ready to make the jump to daily life.
“I’m a masochist,” she had said the first time we had sex. She didn’t understand that masochism is a complex theory of living. And I didn’t feel like explaining it to her. So I did as she asked and broke her fingers with a hammer before fucking her.
But as she eyed the ocean I became concerned. “Masochism is contractual,” I pleaded, suddenly feeling as though I were discouraging her from having an orgy with numerous men who weren’t me. “I know when to stop. Those creatures don’t.”
She sighed. “Jesus, K. Give it a rest. I know what I’m doing.” She stood and untied her bathing suit. Without looking back, she ran toward the ocean and dived in. I haven’t seen her since.
I wonder about her from time to time: did she drown, did she find her jellyfish?
I ignore rumors of a jellyfish woman with mangled fingers.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, fingers, hammer, jellyfish, love, masochism, ocean, orgy, pain, relationships, sadism, sea, sex | posted in I, Short Fiction, Woman
“I’ll have that ‘up’ please,” I said, shooting my thumb into the air as though I were a hitchhiker. The bartender smiled. I watched her limbs labor over my cocktail.
“Would you like a garnish,” she asked, transferring my cocktail from shaker to glass.
“A woman. Blonde. Green eyes. Thin.”
Without a word, the bartender snatched my cocktail and disappeared somewhere behind the bar, leaving me with a muted TV broadcasting the finance channel and a juke box that played only Soundgarden songs.
She returned a moment later. “Here you are sir,” she said through grated teeth, slamming my glass on the bar top.
I felt her eyes on me.
I grabbed the stem of the glass and readied to swirl the liquid inside.
“Careful sir,” the bartender said. “She might drown if you do that.”
Bringing my cocktail to my face, I looked closely at the woman inside: blonde, light eyes. She was treading water and growing tired. I looked at the bartender.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” She forced the words.
I scrutinized the woman swimming in my cocktail. “Actually,” I began, “she looks a little fat. I hate to be difficult, but would you remake this?”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, bar, bartender, body, cocktail, death, drink, flash fiction, Short Fiction, short story, Soundgarden | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
She was gone, leaving only a photo of her chubby adolescent daughter wearing a Batman mask and her collection of gilded objects. A cherub, a horse head–“found objects” is what she called them even though she bought each one at the mall.
Due to her interest in “DIY” there had been a permant cloud of spray paint in our apartment and empty cans of gold spray paint next to the trashcan. After she left I opened all the windows.
I put the photo of her child on my desk and moved her “found objects” into a pile by the door. It started to rain. I closed the windows. That night I dreamed she cut my torso open and gilded my insides.
I woke to a thick haze of spray paint.
I opened the windows. Once the haze lifted I found that everything in my apartment had been gilded: chairs, desk, mirror, toothbrush. Her “found objects” were gone.
The venomous scent of spray paint assaulted me. I clutched my stomach and fell to the floor.
“Don’t be such a jerk next time.”
I looked up. Her chubby daughter was standing above me, a disapproving look peeking from behind her Batman mask.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, Batman, daughter, DIY, gold, love, relationship, sleep, spray paint | posted in Her, Man, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
K had heard it before, from other women less attractive than the one whose tongue was slowly constricting his neck:
“I just love your eyes. They’re so dark–I can’t even see your pupils.”
She flexed her tongue and K’s eyes bulged a little further from his face. She brought her face–eyes green, I think, but maybe they were blue–to meet his. “Amazing. Your eyes are just these black puddles.” She brought a well-manicured fingernail to his face. Then she tapped it on his left eye, creating mild undulations.
He had heard that last line before, too. As K lost consciousness he envisioned all of the women who got lost in his eyes. He thought of the woman who climbed in his left eye and drowned in the darkness. Her name was in the paper for a while and on TV. He thought of the woman who ran screaming from his apartment–underwear balled up in her fist–because she was convinced K’s eyes betrayed a darkness of a different sort.
From the depths of asphyxiation, he heard her jaw unhinge. Then he heard him being swallowed hole. “I guess I’m finally inside her,” K muttered as her digestive system pulled him down.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, asphyxiation, cannibalism, darkness, eating, eyes, food, jaw, love, murder, pupils, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, snake, tongue, TV, underwear | posted in Her, Him, I, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
K always said goodbye in the same way: detached yet sympathetic, like a vet telling a child that her dog has died.
Some cried. Others seemed relieved. The woman sitting on the edge of his new gray couch was somewhere in the middle. She muttered something obligatory about “stay[ing] friends” but she snatched up her things and left in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
K was finally convinced: No woman, regardless of beauty, charm, or material wealth, could measure up to the stunning creature that was engraved on his forearm in bold lines and colors. She understood him. She would never hurt him.
He ran his fingers across her face.
……….
K had gone to the tattoo parlor on a whim one day, taking with him an editorial spread from a men’s magazine featuring some exotic model from South America. K watched her take shape, grimacing with each thrust of the tattoo artist’s needles yet anticipating the end result. When the woman was finally complete, K just knew his lovelife would never be the same.
……….
K glanced at the woman on his arm. Then he climbed into his skin next to her. Taking her hand, “We can finally be together,” he whispered.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, art, beauty, body, body modification, dog, flash fiction, love, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, tattoo, tattoo parlor, tears | posted in Her, Him, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
The woman, whose heavy foreign eyes and striking hair/eye composition give her the air of a sleepy Scarlett Johansson or a strung out Courtney Love, will kill him.
Here is how:
She will go home with him.
He will tear her gown from her body. Then he will realize that she has wooden legs.
He will not know how to proceed but he will notice that she has grown uncomfortable. He will know immediately that she has become self-conscious.
He will think back to their “dates” and her countless long dresses.
He will recall the way she hobbles about.
Briefly, he will get mad at her (“You could have told me!”).
Then he will compose himself and gaze into her eyes, uttering romantic things. They will have sex. She will stay over but vanish by dawn.
In the morning he will find a splinter in his hand. Rubbing it, he will think fondly of her until his hand becomes infected.
As the infection spreads, he will not wonder if she planned the whole thing; but he should. Then he will die.
But he will not mind. For he will have fallen in love with the woman and her wooden legs.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, dating, death, hands, infection, legs, love, murder, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, wood | posted in Her, Him, Man, Short Fiction, Woman
Holding my chocolate peanut butter cups in a gingerly fashion–the way you might handle an injured pigeon–, I waited patiently at the register. I was the only customer, and the cashier was nowhere in sight. Having no urgent business to tend to (except, of course, my chocolate), I felt no real need to shout for attention. I had never been in before today. But K, who already calls himself a “regular,” told me that the cashier was pretty.
I thought about just stealing my peanut butter cups; who would know? My devious train of thought was interrupted, however, by a quiet sobbing coming from somewhere toward the back of the shop, from behind a curtain that was ostensibly where employees sought refuge from their customers.
I pulled the curtain back. It was the cashier, her back toward me, her shoulders heaving. Her cellphone, still illuminated, was in her hand. Not wanting to startle her, I dutifully scurried back to my spot at the register. Moments later she emerged. Her eyes were red and vulnerable. I wanted to say something bold and heroic. I wanted to buy her a drink or offer a tissue.
Instead: “Just these peanut butter cups, please.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, candy, cashier, cell phone, chocolate, desire, love, relationships, retail, sadness, tears, thief, tissue | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
I’m sorry, she said. I can’t help it.
I rolled off of her and looked at her in a soft way, pleading silently for a logical explanation. She looked away. Don’t be mad.
K warned me to stay away. But that only encouraged me. You know how guys are: they think they’re the exception to the rule.
She was nice enough to let me try, but it was obvious that I was too alive.
She spoke calmly, knowing I needed to be told something grand: I went to a party once and my boyfriend at the time told me to meet him in the bathroom. It was completely dark in there when I pushed the door open. I couldn’t find the light switch. I groped around until my hands landed on what I thought was his erect penis. So I got on top, fucked him, and snuck out. Very erotic. I found out later that it was actually a dead man with rigor mortis in all the right places. My boyfriend broke up with me and I haven’t been interested in the living since.
After a moment, I said: I’m going to hang myself in the bathroom.
She only smiled.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bathroom, death, life, love, party, relationships, rigor-mortis, sex | posted in Her, Man, Me, Woman
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
