Flash Fiction: Rocky Embankment Stream of Consciousness

     

     There's a rocky embankment that you're probably not supposed to walk on because it's filled with old age and danger. And of course, I fall flat on my face, and as I'm falling and thinking, “Oh, fudge!” When in danger, time goes in slow motion. I feel my knee pressed against the ground. It’s purple, bruised and I scratch my forearm. It’s nighttime, and I don't know how I’ll be able to climb out of this embankment. I have shorts that I wear in Summer. No pockets - so I had my wallet stuck into my shorts like a silly boy, and I had keys tucked into my shorts, and I had my phone, and everything stuck into my shorts - you know - in the lapel part of your shorts where your M matches the seam, and everything just falls into place. I don't know how I’ll be able to save my sandwich from falling into the rocks, and I had my keys, and I am like “this hurts,” and I’m stuck to the rock, and I don't know how I’ll get out. If I were injured more ... I ‘m lucky, but I'm like, “where's my phone?” I couldn't find my phone, so my phone at this moment is still lodged in the rocks of Lake Champlain. I wait till tomorrow morning to get it, but it's a big long story - the short version is I basically follow my tracks back to the rocky shores of Lake Champlain - and that's been my day so far. Now I'm back in my hotel room telling you the story on my iPad, and hopefully tomorrow morning I will wake up and locate my phone from the rocks so also what's wrong with me because there it is - I found it - inches away from where I fell. I could've walked a few meters more, and there was a path that takes you down into a depthless semigloss lake - that's safe, but “Yeah” - I don't know what’s wrong with me. 

~ transcribed at the scene.

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Flash Fiction: Laundry

When you appeared to me one night as a heap of laundry ...

Looking up from underwater . . . 

---

Once, I woke up in the middle of the night, warm beneath the covering, and I thought you were there, on my bedroom floor, your face resting on my naked foot. So, I called out your name but you didn’t reply. "Hey," I said again. But, nothing. Remained. And then I realized, after a moment, no one was in the room. I was alone. You were only an apparition. Like when I visited Georgette in her calloused age, I washed her tired calloused feet with hard, soapy water and she thought I was George, her son. The pain for me is more acute, because I know I am alone. More alive. But alone. I drift back to sleep. In the morning I see the laundry haphazardly arranged at the edge of my bed. And I realize it was the heap of clothes that I thought was you, come to comfort me.

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image source: ohaytv

"The Dispute": Flash Fiction

Two dudes fight about what's better, bikes or boards.

BMXers are better for sure.

Nah.

I say, skaters.

BMX is an art.

Skateboarders just have that one board.

Bikes are intricate. Gears. Pedals. It's a craft.

More technical and you have to work 'em out.

But skating is like negative space. It is about the nothing between you and the board.

What?

You know what I mean.

No, really, I don't.

It's like - I don't know. Fuck.  

The skate park is empty except for Neil and Bryce. Neil kicks at the open gravel with his worn out tennis shoes. Bryce pumps air into his tire. The day is harsh. The air smells like turkey sandwiches and mace. The old garage-turned-park is grungy. A huge peace sign adorns the back wall. Metal siding decorates the corridors. The skate shop is closed. The place is closing down.

Hey guys, we're closing the place down. Time to get out.

One last go?

Hurry it up.

Bryce props his bike on the descending floorboard. The ground is uneven and raw. The place used to be a boat building company. Recently constructed by a Ph.D. student in urban planning to ostensibly curb violence and drug dealing, kids come to hang out mostly on weekends. Bryce walks his bike up the ramp. Saddles his bike as if it were a well-trusted friend. It is the force of gravity that propels him. The downward swoosh. His body does nothing. The bike moves with the flow of the earth's downward pull. Braced to the bike like a friend, he kicks off the ledge. The ramp takes a novice biker to the ground fast. After a few tries, you learn the ramp. You learn, like a Zen koan, the simplicity of the curves. The ramp is like a parabola. Arriving, at the other end the rider gives himself the needed push to make the trick. It is at this point the rider must fight gravity's pull and not let it take him. Bryce leverages the bike a bit to give it the control he needs, kicks it up and he is flying through the air as if he were to stay afloat forever. Nothing enters. His mind is a blank slate. As if he does not exist. That's the nice thing. The erasing of thought, he thinks. You don't have to think. Bryce hits the rough edge of the board's terminus. He spins the bike around on one wheel, bringing himself to a stop; adrenaline, like a rush from inside of him escalates and he wants to go again.  

Dusk is like charcoal. Both friends depart. Neil does an ollie in front of the ice cream van, as if to say, "Fuck you." And we get it then. What Neil said. It is the empty spaces. It is the nothing that exists between me and the board; the ramp and the air; my bike and everything else. Maybe I get it maybe I don't. The dude who owns the van is yelling at Neil. Neil laughs. We all laugh and joke on our way home about Bryce's stunt.

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Flash Fiction: In the Pitcher's Box

"So, I turned to her and said, "Lawd. You got them cockroaches out of the kitchen zink? Them roaches be as old as a dinosaur; I ain't your momma. Clean that shit up before I go all stegosaurus on your ass."

image credit: © Greig Roselli

Ginny was acting like an overblown blow-up doll. She had strapped over her shoulder a Ziploc bag of ice. She was so animated she was cartoonish. Her shoulder had been in pain since she'd pulled a muscle at last week's game. She squinted her face like one of those black and white Laurel and Hardy pictures. She was imitating a character on a television commercial. "Yeah, baby. We love you hard, hard, swear to God." She had pulled up her boxer shorts out to show the rest of the girls her Bugs Bunny drawers. "She was standing next to the macaroni. I'm not your momma. But, at this diner, we fill up your coffee cup without draining your wallet." The boys were all dressed in white tees and nylon running pants. The girls wore helmets. "But, I could give a rat's ass to what she thought. I told her to get away from the macaroni and cleaning the fucking zink." Zack got up to bat next. At the end of the box was a digital rendition of a pitcher. He would virtually throw the ball over his shoulder which would cue one of the boys to throw a hard, unofficial baseball into the throwing machine. "Swing. Bat. Bunt. Cunts." They would say.

Sacrevoir, Untitled

    Stopher was acting like a gentleman. He crossed his legs like Abraham Lincoln. "Now, you see, the problem with our team is one of emotion." Coach Liniski paid Taylor no mind. He felt for his chest, passed his hand through the unbuttoned part of his lapel. "Where is your tie, Coach Lineski?" He pulled it out of his coat pocket. He was making a dozen of the softball players laugh their asses off. "So, you see, here, this is what I don't understand girls. Why do the girls? See them over there? Why do they use softballs, but the boys use hardballs? I don't get it." Nora laughed. "He said, 'hard balls.' Oh my god. He said 'hard'." Nora was on the turf. She clutched her tummy as if she were in pain. Her laughter was unnoticed by the boys, who batted in the box without helmets. The girls were dutiful. They wore plastic helmets; they never argued about whose turn was next. The boys were quieter, only talking if conversation necessitated speech. Jackson was the leader of the boys. He had a suave gentleness that calmed the kids, unlike Ginny's rude brouhaha. "We don't talk to Freshman. They practice with us, but we don't talk to them. That's Jackson going to bat. He hits pretty good." The ball would have been a home run, for sure. Jackson was cool about accomplishment. He didn't demand adulation. He seemed to attract it like Michelangelo's David attracts admirers of beauty. The swerve of the body. Crack. Ginny laughed; she basically chortled. "Pull your pants up Ginny. There are boys in the batter's box." "Yeah, I'm showing them my bruise. Looks like the Milky Way." Houston incredulously stooped to look at Ginny's bruise. The other boys froze. Coach Lineski stopped chewing his dip. We thought he would swallow it. Houston brought his finger closer to touch Ginny's darkened bruise. It was easy to tell a ball had hit her over the weekend. The otherwise dark markings had begun to soften and lighten. Houston's touch hadn't hurt like the initial punch to the gut. Nora still laughed. The quiet baseball drone droned. Mr. Lineski pulled Houston away. The girls were engaged in a maniacal giggle. The boys seemed scandalized. One young boy without a name, short, lithe, stood up with his "pimp stick" and swung the bat, blissfully unaware, almost hitting little Le Roy. Mr. Lineski spun around, conflicted at the chaos that had ensued. The unnamed boy swung again; not intending to hit anyone, the polychrome bat stunned Coach Lineski. Blood poured relentlessly. Coach Lineski lunged for the unnamed boy but the pain of the hit pummeled him and he fled to the hard astroturf. Blood stained the ground. Someone called 911. Nora was to the left of the crowd; she tugged Jackson close to her body. He had tears in his eyes. The head baseball coach barged in the doors. "Everyone outside now." The boy with no name did not show emotion. He had dropped his bat to the ground and dutifully waited outside for Coach Lineski to be born again.

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Flash Fiction: Tchefuncte River, Summer 2005

One summer a boy dove into the Tchefuncte river and hit something at the bottom. When he came back up he hurriedly free-styled to the flood wall, clambered up the algal steps, frightened. We all looked and saw the corpse of a calf float to the top of the water. It had risen up from the depths. Bloated. Passed along by a farmer from downriver to here, near the mouth. Thrown in for the alligators. And a few days before that, a kid caught a nurse shark in the same river, near the same spot. Adam told me he used to swim in it, but not anymore. -- Rivers aren’t supposed to have cows and sharks swimming around in ‘em, he said. Besides, the water’s been getting muckier, disgusting. It’s not just the boats, either.

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Image Credit: "Bogue Falaya River Bank" © 2005