Tag: flash fiction

Spoken words

Posted on by Steven Baird

My tongue felt bruised from too much talk, though I couldn’t recall the last time I spoke. I wasn’t sure I remembered how. From outside my door, I heard a can roll down the throat of the Coke machine. If there were a language in me, that was probably it: the awful speech of a soda can, clunky and agitated.

That was some especially  lonesome thinking, I thought. I’m sorry to say that all my words felt lonesome to me, especially the out-loud and dressed-for-dinner words, like ‘hello’ or ‘my name is–‘.

I tried on a couple of those words, and they felt tight around my chest: “Good morning,” I said to the bathroom mirror, which was greasy and unflattering. The glass saw my lips move, and my ears felt the vibration of those words, but it seemed pretend, like I hadn’t spoken at all. My throat was dry, and I wanted a glass of whiskey or a cup of coffee. Or maybe a can of Coca-Cola. But mostly just the whiskey.

I didn’t expect to see the sunshine again, but there it was, hanging from the edge of the curtain. I let it fall onto my fingers and across my palms like wash water. I waited for the outside voices to move along so I could go outside and see the sun in person, but I waited until it was almost gone.

***

My published works are available here. Thank you for reading. 🙂

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The man on the other side of the door

Posted on by Steven Baird

This is a place of unremarkable geometry, of hand hewn beams and reclaimed cabinets, of cotton curtains and poplin tablecloths.There are stout lines built around her silly feminine froth. You might savvy her girlish moods: the bright New Orleans yellow in the hallway, or maybe the baby doll figurines on the bookcase. But don’t forget, this is my home, and it is a place of unremarkable cruelties. 

There are stains in my study that look like ketchup, but are not. There are sudden movements that turn on all the security lights.There is a smell that is barely masked by the nine dollar dirt that feeds her windowsill herbs.

I’ve heard all these sounds before, but this one is closer, and I know why. There is a man on the other side of the door, limping, wet from the chase. He beats on the glass with the heel of his hand. I turn on the porch light because I know. I’ve been expecting him for twenty years, back from a time when my life was fraying. He took the left road and I took the right. I don’t want to see him now — for us to see each other, really — but his t-shirt is torn from armpit to belly, and I swore to him. He is older now, of course he is, but his eyes still show his fury, and mine have turned soft and careless. 

“Richard,” was the only word he had to say, and I knew it was time.

Birthday boys

Posted on by Steven Baird

Can you imagine the doubt on their faces when I tell them?

Happy birthday, you old bastards, I’ll sing, and it’ll knock the bejesus out of them. They’re brothers of long-dead other mothers. That’s their in-joke, their hashtag, their pathetic frame of reference.

Oh, I’ll sing, but they’ll barely hear me. They’ll be waiting for the echos to catch up. They’ll be thinking about their measured ex-wives, or that deliciously wounded every-second-Tuesday lover, and all those wonderfully generic gals who sang said-song in an oven-warmed kitchen, or around a Comfort Inn pressboard desk. Oh, and there was cake and ice cream and I.W. Harper bourbon for later, and maybe, just maybe, a few more years left in the tank.

Oh, these boys will laugh about it in the daylight, sure, but at night, when the lamps are dimmed, all those doubts will prop their eyes open for a helluva long evening.

They are old men, and they look to me for reassurance. Do they think I can free them of age? As long as their boyhood faces are still reflected back at them, yeah; yeah, I’m sure they do. They’ll act wounded, but they’re still – still! – suspicious of their mortality.

What do they see in the mirror? The messy drift of eyebrows, the musty, uneven stubble on their cheeks, the dark scars under their throats? Ha! I think they see their boyhood. Boyhoods that are unfairly hidden by low-watt bulbs, indignant shadows, jaded sleep, cataracts, horror.

Happy Birthday, I’ll sing. I always wonder if I’m being too cruel. But you know, deep down, I think they know. And they know who I am. That’s my in-joke, and it’s one they’ll never get. 

Mood and sin

Posted on by Steven Baird

call me old-fashioned

Too much, you say, all this harsh color and fabric on your skin, how it coils around you, dry and sour. You’ll adjust, that’s always your fall-down position, your liquid alibi. I know how much cold blood runs through you, all vodka and mood and sin. You say your hands touch only corruption and apathy, but I will hold you, and I will pardon your raging howls. You know I always do. But you must also know this: soon and finally, I will howl back.

A paragraph without the letter E 

Chicken scratch

Posted on by Steven Baird

enclosed-space1

It’s the same, every night. I reach for the dream, and I’m grabby-fingered, grievous.

The dream– no, she — is my beautiful. The woman, alone, in front of a barn, tossing scratch to the chickens. She wears a faded bluey sundress, and it is judiciously short, judicious sassy, cut just above the knees, threadbare and very old. It is 1960’s Flower-Power aphrodisia. She doesn’t care. She loves who she is, and I’m a bystander. I see her from profile: the tilt of her hips, the slow current of her arms, the equid arch of neck. Her hair is long, and it flows like a fire beside a curved river. This is her, and this is her’s.

The light captures every grain of the chicken scratch, effervescent dust, as it drifts to the dirt. Even in dreams, everything is bound by gravity. The sun falls below the hills, bloody and huge, and she is cast in it, a form too pure to be possessed. Her dress becomes invisible and she is a body radiant.

She turns to me and turns from me, and I understand. And I grieve.

Chandeliers

Posted on by Steven Baird

I dreamed of that ballroom we saw in that movie, you know the one, with the old-timey music that flooded the air, Glenn Miller I think, or maybe Jimmy Dorsey, and those tiny tables that could only fit napkins and two martini glasses (at least our TV trays can fit a Hungry Man Dinner and a biscuit). The couples danced in rhythmic seizures, the war was over or maybe not begun, bright colors and balloons, sweaty but not in a smelly way, and everyone was crazy alive, and they looked like Blondie and Dagwood. Yeah, I dreamed we were dancing, really moving, and we danced the Charleston, hands and grins all over the place, and people watched and they envied our sway, and I looked up and saw elegant chandeliers, and I remember you said we should get one of those for the cabin, and I promised you I would look. And now it’s 4 a.m., I’m online, and honey, I don’t think it would fit in the living room. But I did find a nice set of candles and a Big Band CD collection, and we can dance like stink in the backyard if we want, and maybe drink wine coolers from our much bigger TV trays.

His face

Posted on by Steven Baird

I don’t remember his face. It should be easy, being married for almost 45 years. When we were younger, he was a good looking man; good enough for this stray-dog town. He teased me that he had a string of women hanging from his suit pocket. I guess I never cared for that. He was never that good looking. But he could tell a joke, and he could take one, so I expect I should too.

I don’t remember his face. I recall certain features of it. The arch of his mouth when he smiled. His nose, twice broken, from when he worked over at the granary. His ears, the way they peaked out from behind that mop of hair. I swear, you’d never know he was leaning into his seventies. It was always so bushy, no matter how much he wet it back. He was vain about his hair, but never mind. Everyone has a vanity, and that was his.

I don’t remember his face. I remember his eyes, that solemn shade of green. Something sad about that color, melancholy, though I couldn’t tell you why. That particular green, like summer ready to turn. I can still see him working the garden, harvesting the last of the tomatoes, wearing that damned floppy straw hat of his. He knew – we both knew – he looked ridiculous, but that was our private joke. And when he turned around to face me, those eyes always caught me off guard. “Golly, Mary, you startled me,” he’d say, no matter how loud I approached. And we would laugh.

I don’t remember his face. I recall the scar on his chin, and the wrinkles on his forehead when he worried about things he wouldn’t confess. And oh, how his cheeks felt, so soft and whiskery as my hands tried to smooth them.

I don’t remember his face, but I remember his hands around my throat. The strength of his fingers. Choking and choking until I could taste the darkness in my throat.

I don’t remember his face, but I will. And when he says, “Golly, Mary, you startled me,” he’ll mean it. And I will laugh alone.

***

Note: Just a simple flash fiction piece I thought up on my way home from work tonight. My wife and I been watching episodes of the original Twilight Zone every weekend since Christmas, so I suppose there’s a bit of influence there. Or maybe it’s just me.  This was fun to write — grim, of course — but fun. 🙂

Aim and velocity

Posted on by Steven Baird

You and me, we threw stones at each other. We always have, right? We put enough space between us so we didn’t hurt each other too bad, but, you know, we’ve both developed a pretty good aim. And velocity.

We started, what, when we were kids? Christ, I don’t remember how old we were. Ten? Thirteen? That sounds too old, but ‘kids’ is such a damned dense demographic. You remember that one kid, what was his name, Toby Adamson? Guy with the blunt hair, always wore turtlenecks and pressed slacks? Thought he was a big deal because he carried a wallet and comb in his back pocket? Yeah, you know who I mean. You had a crush on him, don’t tell me you didn’t. ‘Jenny Adamson’ scribbled inside your notebooks, ‘Jenny + Toby 4Evr.’ He didn’t like it too much when I threw stones at him, did he? Curled up like a little girl. Transferred a year later, got the fuck out of Dodge because he was too soft. Probably a cokehead now, or an assemblyman, who cares? I remember you laughed at him after that, right in his face, just before he left. He asked you to that ‘Surf and Sun’ dance in the gym? You called him a pussy, right in front of everyone. He rolled away like a Slinky. And we went back to throwing stones at each other, opposite sides of Breeman Street, laughing the whole time.

And then things got serious. We’d go inside our houses and put iodine on our cuts, then go back outside and hold hands downtown and maybe neck in the theater. No, no ‘maybe’ about it. We were all over each other. Remember that? We were hot stuff back then, weren’t we?

Then we grew up. Childhood sweeties. Dangerous sweeties. But we were careful. Gotta hand it to us, we never got caught. Drinking behind the Odeon Theater, or in that alley behind Kresges, fumbling with zippers, sliding out of our jeans, smashing Coke bottles on bricks. We were running with scissors and no one ever figured it out. When we were old enough, we got married on the sly, shocked the hell out of everyone. And no one. We were too young, that was the bitch, wasn’t it? It wasn’t that we shouldn’t get married, but not at eighteen. Hell, we were in a hurry. Always in a hurry. Because it might not last. There was too much fuel to burn, and we burned hot.

Forty-two years. Damn. Did you ever think time could be so slippery, that the flames could be smothered so easily? And angry. Why were we always so goddamn angry all the time? We always threw stones at each other, but sometimes they weren’t stones. Sometimes they were words, sometimes open-faced slaps. And we weren’t always careful how hard we threw them. Sometimes they were deliberate and dangerous, because, you know, we learned how to aim, we learned velocity.

And now you’re laying there and it’s quiet. I guess there’s background music coming from one of the other rooms, some dignified noise, but I don’t hear it. I don’t really see the people coming in the door to shake my hand or shovel some meaningless words into my ears. I just see you and me, throwing stones at each other. For so many years. And I’m so sorry that the last stone was the last stone for you. I thought we were both tough enough, but I guess toughness fades over 40-plus years. We would have laughed about that when we were kids, wouldn’t we? If we knew that that kind of aim and velocity could be so dangerous. We should have been more careful. I don’t think anybody really knows how vicious it can get.

Twenty-two crayons

Posted on by Steven Baird

nightfall
You line up your crayons according to the shades of the sky. Red and orange, of course, but before them, black and gray. You’ve worn those colors down to smudges of wax on the tablecloth. Is that what you see, more darkness than light? You won’t say. There are others, of course, but the paper peeling is less with the bright colors. There is harlequin green and cornflower blue, and those gaudy pinks I used to tease you about, the ones that matched your old summer blouses. You never use the quiet colors, not to blend, not to soften those coarse, bleeding shades. Should I worry? Every morning you line up the same twenty-two crayons, so do you expect to use them all sometime? You haven’t yet, not even frivolously. Am I to blame for replacing them when you’re finished? You won’t say.