Tag Archives: death
“Another one is dead,” she said flatly. I rolled my eyes: “Well, go get a new one.”
“If you neglect them, they’ll die.”
I wasn’t listening. Her engagement ring caught the light and cast her every word in doubt. Despite my harsh tone, she grabbed her Burberry and left for the pet store.
I approached the birdcage. The remaining birds had pecked the third one to death. It was new, a replacement for my first bird, which died of old age. The birds were huddled together keeping warm in the winter air. I nudged the birdcage with my hip and made my way to the coffee table.
She came home empty handed. “Sorry, K. They’re out of birds.” She wasn’t sorry. She didn’t understand my affection for things that die easily. “It’s fine,” I murmured, pressing my chai to my lips. “Get in the cage.”
She went to the closet and fished out last year’s Halloween costume.
I reminisced fondly of ripping the parrot head off in lusty urgency, pulling the zipper the length of her body. She opened the birdcage and crawled in.
She and I used to be like those birds. I closed the cage and locked it.
Leave a comment | tags: affair, affect, bird, birdcage, death, flash fiction, parrot, pet, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
The problem was this word “anti-venom.” It sounded made up, like it was from a comic book.
“I’m sorry, but we just don’t have anti-venom,” the doctor said mockingly. “We would have to order some.”
“I’m going to die,” I groaned, but she was unforgiving. I removed my scarf to reveal a collection of impressive lacerations, bruises, and bites.
The doctor’s face clouded. She crossed her arms. “Whatever kind of snake did that—you’re lucky to be alive. And to not be in jail. It’s illegal to keep snakes like that.”
I put my scarf back on and sighed. “My girlfriend did it.”
The doctor misunderstood. “When she gets mad she turns into a cobra,” I clarified. In gruesome detail, I told the doctor about her metamorphosis: how her soft skin turns to icy scales, the dead gaze in her otherwise expressive eyes, the expansive hood that frames her face when she is particularly agitated, the disgusting hiss and forked tongue leaking from her mouth, the sinister way she slithers and thrashes about.
The doctor uncrossed her arms and leaned toward my ear. “You’re already dead,” she whispered, a subtle rattle emanating from somewhere deep inside her white lab coat.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, change, cobra snake, comic book, death, doctor, metamorphosis, rattle snake, relationships, snakes, venom | posted in Her, Me
She was certain that we would either get caught and arrested or piss off the spirits of all the people in the ground.
“Look,” I implored, arms spread wide, “this place is so big nobody will ever find us if we choose the right spot.”
“And the ghosts?”
“The spirits aren’t going to be here—unless all these people were buried alive.”
She offered a strained smile of defeat. I took her hand, leading her away from the sunlight, tour busses, and plots of important people.
“Over there.” I gestured toward a gloomy stone that had the rejected air of being cast off by the other stones.
She bent over and gripped the top with both hands while I yanked her pants down.
“Um, wait.”
“Why?”
“This stone has your name on it.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. Look.”
I leaned over her, my now flaccid penis brushing against her bare ass. I rolled my eyes and scoffed.
“That doesn’t concern you?”
“Why would it?”
“It says you die today.”
Just before my gruesome death, I felt a figure lurch in my periphery and heard her scream—“K! Stop it!”—as the jealous knife of her husband sank repeatedly into my flesh.
Leave a comment | tags: affair, affect, cemetery, death, flash fiction, ghosts, grave yard, graves, husband, jealousy, knife, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, spirits | posted in Her, Me
K, though dying, was in the best shape of his life. “The TSA agent asked if I was a gymnast,” he boasted the other day. “I told him I was just a narcissist.”
K wasn’t just a narcissist. I don’t remember the name of his illness, but it was fatal. Still full of vigor, he paraded around in his Under Armour, revealing every crevice and striation in his torso, like an aspiring Mister Universe. In another several months, he would become hollow, like a drug addict. What would the TSA agent say then?
When he took too much medication, K would rant about “beauty in decay.” Then he would hit the gym extra hard. K read too much philosophy—chubby men expounding on a reality they know nothing about. Have you ever watched somebody die, I hissed once, angrily. We disagreed a lot these days.
But K was right. He had more girlfriends than I could count. “Do they know you’ll be dead soon,” I asked after he regaled me with a story of a hefty blonde.
“Of course. They wouldn’t be interested in me otherwise.”
For the first time in a long while, I found myself agreeing with him.
Leave a comment | tags: addict, addiction, affect, death, drugs, flash fiction, gymnast, illness, Mister Universe, narcissism, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, TSA, women | posted in Him, Me, Short Fiction
“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
When K told me that he was going to kill himself if I stole his girlfriend, I didn’t believe him. I didn’t think that I could steal his girlfriend.
K was wealthy and educated, and what girl would refuse such a man? I was the opposite in every respect; had I found myself on the Titanic or an equal vessel I would have had to steal my way aboard. I began flirting with her simply out of spite, as if to insinuate to K that although he could have whatever he wanted, I could take it from him with ease (rich men have large egos, which is a huge turnoff).
I didn’t enjoy fucking her. Indeed, I courted her out of spite. And she, the caged bird of a wealthy birdist, allowed me to court her for the same reason.
She and I were upstairs when K’s telegram arrived, announcing his imminent demise—“…by the time you read this I will be dead.”
“Shit. K’s dead,” I said after reading the telegram. She, still in my bed, feigned sadness.
“I guess you’ll have to marry me now.” She coiled my blanket snuggly around her.
K, from somewhere safe, probably smiled.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, ego, flash fiction, marriage, money, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, short story, spite, telegram, wealth | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
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
“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
For my birthday, she took me to a fancy restaurant. “Here,” she said, sliding a package across the table during the intermezzo course. The rectangular shape of the package betrayed its contents.
She knew I knew.
“So you can carry it with you,” she continued without invitation. “And so you can stop writing on bar napkins.”
Later, she let me fuck her in the ass (my “third gift”) and then went home (my fourth gift?), complaining about the pain she would be in tomorrow.
I shook myself a martini and opened the package–a pocket-sized journal, as I had more or less expected. I grabbed a handful of pages at their lower right corners and flipped back to front. Then I noticed writing–black ink, feminine–her writing. I looked closely. Each page was full of details from my life.
I began reading about things she had no business authoring: drugs, prostitution, suicide attempts. I read further: my birthday, anal sex, a journal with its curious contents. On the last page I read about my death–prolonged and messy. I didn’t get it. “I don’t have AIDS,” I said to myself.
My cell buzzed. “Um,” she sighed, “there’s something I should have told you.”
2 Comments | tags: affect, AIDS, anal sex, birthday, death, fiction, flash fiction, journal, present, relationships, sex, Short Fiction, writing | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I stole my neighbor’s luxury hatbox.
Repair men were in her apartment replacing the floor. They left the door open and when I walked past I saw the hatbox resting on an ugly sofa.
I walked past again. And again. The repair men were probably taking a break. I ran in and snatched the hatbox. After reaching my apartment, I took in my new acquisition. I didn’t know why I decided to steal her hatbox. Perhaps I wanted to sell it. Perhaps I just wanted something nice.
I inhaled and opened it, not really expecting to find anything inside. (Who keeps a hat in a hatbox?)
There was a note inside–something scribbled on the back of a receipt in an oval, feminine hand. It was the beginning of a love letter to me. “Dear K,” it began. She had written nice things about me, but entirely in past tense as though I were dead: “You were this, you were that.”
I had the sudden urge to return the hatbox. Then I turned her love letter over and inspected the receipt.
Rope, tape, saw, shovel, bleach, trash bags.
I decided not to return the hatbox after all. I locked the door.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, fashion, flash fiction, hat, letter, love, murder, neighbor, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, sofa, theft | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I realized halfway down that the structure from which I had jumped wasn’t tall enough.
I was going to survive. So I stopped falling–somewhere around the fifth floor–and decided not to kill myself, or rather, to kill myself a different day.
I went home and climbed into bed with my girlfriend. In her sleep she never realized I was gone. I started stroking her arm which, thanks to a devoted interest in luxurious skin products, was unnaturally soft. I’d totally skin her alive and stitch myself a blanket.
She stirred. “Where were you?”
“In the living room. I was reading.”
“When are you going to start writing your novel?” Her eyes were closed. I hated when she asked me that. It was embarrassing. Everyone is writing a “novel.”
“Just as soon as I have something interesting to write about.”
“Why don’t you write about how you like to sneak away at night and throw yourself from tall places but always change your mind before hitting the ground?”
“Maybe,” I sighed. “But that’s just so depressing.”
“Or, how you want to skin your girlfriend alive?”
Silence filled the bedroom.
Her eyes were open now: “You talk in your sleep, K.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bed, body, death, novel, relationships, skin, suicide, writer | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“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 came back from her trip to the coast with tan legs and a long scar across her face.
We drank cocktails at midday, avoiding the obvious topic: the scar on her face. “Thank you for not getting fat,” I said in all seriousness. “You’re welcome,” she replied.
The scar told a violent story I only partially understood. I had never seen her drink more than two cocktails at a time. She finished her third–orange and pink, too much ice–and yanked her skirt down an inch. She must have caught me looking for tan lines.
“I was attacked by a shark,” she said. She had been too far out. She waved off the Coast Guard when they tried to retrieve her. She swam further. Then the attack.
“I think a bull shark attacked me,” she explained. I said nothing.
She pulled a pen from her purse and began sketching on the back of our bill.
“This is what a bull shark looks like.”
I examined the figure. “That’s my friend K,” I said.
“Well he’s dead now. The Coast Guard killed him.” She stood, yanked her skirt down again and left.
I grabbed my cellphone and punched his number in.
Voicemail.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, alcohol, death, phone, scar, shark, vacation | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I glared at her from the other side of my martini.
Having wanted to break up with her for the past three weeks but not really knowing how, I convinced myself that she did something very malicious and harmful. That she deserved to be dumped. Bitch.
I took another drink and waited for the right moment. She prattled on about this and that. Her career. Her new tattoo. Her near death experience.
“A man threw me out of his living room window once. I fell thirteen stories.” I was suddenly intrigued. I reached across the table and took her hand. I married her two weeks later.
She tried to kill me a week after that. I pushed her in front of a bus shortly after. I dropped my wedding ring in the gutter and moved away.
Yesterday I overheard a man in a bar talking about his new girlfriend. “It dragged her for at least fifty feet. Can you believe it?”
“Sorry to interrupt, ” I said. “She’s wicked.” I offered a knife. “You’ll need this.”
There was a news report today about a man killing his girlfriend with a knife. Her picture flashed on the screen. I didn’t recognize her.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, break up, death, knife, love, marriage, news, relationships, ring | posted in Her, Me
I spoke in a paranoid manner, like someone dealing coke on a playground.
“She always wears the same pants–high-waisted, the color of mustard,” I explained.
K furrowed his forehead. “So what?”
He didn’t get it. She and I had been out six times, and while she was attractive, her sartorial choices revolved around that high-waisted, mustard-colored pair of pants.
K continued after an uncomfortable pause: “When are you seeing her next?”
“Tonight. She’s coming over for dinner.”
……….
I made her pasta and got her drunk. We groped at each other–unhooking, unzipping.
I reached for the button on her pants.
“Wait,” she gasped, clutching my hand, “we should stop.”
……….
“I’m ready” read the email. Twenty years had passed. But I knew what it meant.
She still lived at the same place. She seemed too old–a disease, she would explain later in the bedroom. She still had on the same pants. They were faded and badly worn in the knees.
“Fuck me,” she hissed. I grabbed her by the waist and yanked her pants to the ground. Her torso toppled from her hips with a thud. “Thank you,” she said before dying.
“For what,” I wondered. I hadn’t fucked her yet.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, clothes, dating, death, disease, fashion, mustard, pants, pasta, relationships, sex, wine | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
She yanked at her roots, both fists tangled in brownish/blonde hair. She had been doing it for weeks, eyes locked on herself in the bathroom mirror–tugging and pulling with all her might, until her eyes swelled with tears and her face twisted into a grimace.
“It’s not going to grow any faster,” I said in the most sympathetic way I could.
“You just don’t get it, “she spat, glaring at me in the mirror.
Everything changed the evening she came home with her new hair cut, the recommendation of an inept stylist whose theories of hair design have no place in reality. She hated me now. Not because I did anything wrong, but rather because I was part of the world in which she, now seven inches shorter, so to speak, had to live.
“Just go away.” She pulled on her hair again and slammed the bathroom door.
“You were wrong, K.” I woke in the morning to find myself floating in a sea of her hair. Her voice continued to utter ominous things, but, because of the mass of hair, I couldn’t locate the source.
I felt myself being dragged under. It was either the undertow or something else.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, bathroom, death, hair, hair cut, mirror, relationships, sea, style, swimming, undertow | posted in Her, I, Me, Short Fiction
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
“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
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’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
“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 started smoking, apparently, though given the way he coughed and convulsed after each drag, his starting was not, also apparently, that long ago.
“Put her crab rangoon on my bill,” he told the waiter, stubbing out his cigarette just the way he practiced at home. The girl should have sat somewhere else while she waited for her takeout. But it was too late for all that.
“Thanks,” she said, awkwardly.
“Do you smoke,” he asked, flashing his pack of cigarettes like a P.I. flashing his badge.
“I don’t.” She was going to be mean. But he did, after all, buy her crab rangoon. “You don’t really see too many people who smoke,” she offered, feeling bad about the crab rangoon.
He was going to tell her that when he smokes, the fumes become people he used to care about, and that, in smoking, he was trying to re-establish bonds long severed. The first time he took a drag, the air around him took on the form of that girl he liked in 5th grade who died in a car accident.
He had sadness in his eyes.
“Wanna take me home?” she asked, feeling bad, still, about the crab rangoon.
Leave a comment | tags: accident, affect, bar, car, Chinese food, crab rangoon, death, eyes, relationships, sadness, sex, smoke, smoking | posted in Uncategorized
“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
“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
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
