fleeting fictions

kerria gray

[fleeting-fictions]

KABOOM

Henry had closed the shop several days earlier, boarding up the windows and doors, probably until Halloween, sighing heavily. Business was slow. Just up the road, Judas (that bastard) had planted an enormous Trump sign (Make America Great Again? Good God! When had America ever been anything but Great?!) right in front of his own hand-painted sign, and now one could only make out “BIGF”; the remaining orange letters (an orange whose hue and glow had much in common with Donald’s spray-tanned face - the irony!) now hidden behind that monstrosity. Judas unnerved Henry, perhaps most of all because Henry could not understand him. Judas was a small man but also a big man. Judas was generous but gave nothing away, really. He did things that made you wonder what was what: Was Judas a Good man or a Bad man? What did Judas stand for, when it came down to it? Was he a True and Abiding Christian, or did he merely come to church each Sunday to watch Sarah Palmer wiggle and shake her way down the narrow aisle (admittedly a sight to behold)? Did Judas love Trump and all that he stood for, truly, or did he just love pestering Henry with his antics? As Henry considered what to do about Jude: an explosion.

[fleeting-fictions]

OLD THING

They pulled up to the house. There it stood, barely, the evening light lending it a sort of romanticism, that romanticism of an old falling down dying thing in a picturesque setting with evening light to make it glow. An old-thing under a big tree, a tree that used to be quite small, if she remembered correctly? How often did she remember correctly these days? Sometimes she was the old thing in the picturesque place. She liked to make sure her outfits made her look picturesque too, if not fashionable, so that maybe someone walking by would take a photo of her in her flowered robe walking over a hill and then maybe she’d appear in a book about the area. The tree now stood above the house. Damn that tree. She wanted very much to climb that tree, to conquer it. To kick off her thick old-lady sandals, (ugly and oversized, shoes a younger self would disapprove of, but doctor’s orders!) and hike up her muumuu (no doctor had ordered this one, but she got so hot in the summers and it was like a cool un-touching tent around her loosest parts, letting in the breeze where she most needed it) and up, up until she was above the old house that was, thank god, in ruins. And there she’d sit, picturesque old thing above another old thing, and plus there’d be the element of surprise. Nobody expects an old thing up in a tree, above the newer thing and the other old thing, conquering the new thing and proving that old things sometimes still could… What had she been trying to think about? She looked down, wondering why she was barefoot. A small green snake slipped over her toes.

[fleeting-fictions]

RATS

L held the squirming piglet in her two small hands. She thought about the book she’d just finished, the first chapter book she’d ever read all by herself. The little pig, the spider, the farm. She would be just like Fern: this little pig would be her friend and she wouldn’t even care that M rarely came over to play anymore because he had a new best friend who had a train set with batteries. She wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if M never came over again quite frankly! She repeated that again, louder, with gusto. She liked that saying a lot. In fact, it was her new-favourite-saying. When her mom had said it on the phone yesterday it had sounded perfect but when L had told her mom about its new-fave status it hadn't sound quite as good, and she could tell that her mom didn’t think so either. She supposed that that was why she’d told L to watch her language, but her mom had smiled a little bit as she said it so L knew that she wasn’t in big trouble. Her mom had looked sheepish, even. L liked that saying too. Sheepish. She pictured her mom’s face on a fluffy sheep. She pictured her mom in bed at night trying to turn the pages of her book with hooves. L also liked to watch her language: she pictured all of her words coming out of her head in comic book thought-bubbles as she watched each one carefully, checking for spelling mistakes. In the book the rat’s name was Templeton and she tried saying I DON’T GIVE A TEMPLETON’S ASS QUITE FRANKLY a couple of times. It didn’t sound quite as clever out loud. It sounded pretty dumb, actually. As she absentmindedly pet the little pig, thinking about words, she almost forgot about M and his stupid new friend with her stupid battery-powered trains. FUCK YOU FUCKFACE - last week’s new-favourite-saying - seemed relevant here. She had known better than to tell her mom about that one.

[fleeting-fictions]

BEN AFFLECK

The glen was so still; no birds, no wind, no people. It was cold here, and damp.  He remembered this place clearly, but didn’t know from where. His face felt wet and he supposed he was crying - or was it just rain? He looked down at the mossed and boggy ground. It shifted as he watched, altered in some way that he couldn’t quite explain into something warm and welcoming but without changing from the same green wet thing it had been just a minute before. Up on a hill far off in the distance he saw a stag that stood unmoving, regal, coated in pink. He wiped his face once, twice. Smiled. Sat down. Curled onto his side. And then - finally, joyfully, enthusiastically - he unfurled on the ground into an invincible pink starfish. The boggy wetness had arms: thick, saggy, winged arms like his mother’s. The saggy soggy boggy mossy arms hugged him tight and he hugged back with his stiff starfish arms. He was still crying but oh well! He was just a little pink starfish in a big green universe and everything was fine. He stared up at the sky that seemed not at all out of the ordinary, and then he closed his eyes.

[fleeting-fictions]

HAHAHA

It was funny, she supposed. Something about this was funny, but she couldn’t point to the humour’s exact location. As though she were blindfolded and playing pin the tail on the donkey, or trying to beat the shit out of a piñata but slicing foolishly through the air instead: nothing was out of reach but nothing was quite where she thought it should be either. 

Ha ha. She tried it out, but her voice sounded (comically? tragically?) robotic, tinny. She’d never been much of an actor. It made her laugh to hear the artifice (but was this laughter real?). HA! HA! HA! HA! (She tried shouting it loud enough for her neighbours to hear) HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (She tried screaming it until her face turned red) haa… haa…haa… (She tried whispering it). She sat down and placed her forehead against the wall. Maybe it just wasn’t that funny. Not quite yet.

[fleeting-fictions]

LOST

She’d been wandering in circles for hours. In all likelihood she’d been here earlier, perhaps more than once. She was lost in this tiny place. Her thoughts circled too, tracing the geography of her body as it moved through this depressingly picturesque village that seemed populated only by tourists and salespeople. She wondered whether he could sense this heaviness from across the water. Whether he felt it too - this sense that life is actually a practical joke, a series of bad timings and misunderstandings and miscommunications and mistakes that never resolve themselves. Nothing ever becomes legible the way she had come to believe things would. There is no moment of perfect understanding, no narrative, only circular walks through unfamiliar places that are in fact places she’s been before.

[fleeting-fictions]

RING

Out in the green of all of this lie two small lakes. M once swam in one - she couldn’t tell from here which one it had been, which was disconcerting because she thought so often of that lake and felt she should be able to pick it out from anywhere, like the perpetrator in a police line-up of otherwise unremarkable faces - its details, its shape and size and colour should have been so known to her. It had been a rare day of sunshine, and though it hadn’t been warm exactly, the sun had given her a kind of bravery. Usually she was the one standing on the rocks feeling a tiny bit lonely while T and L jumped in, screaming. But on this day she was the first one in. They approached the lake and, drawn in by the green of it all, she could not take her clothes off fast enough; they seemed to shed from her body without any effort whatsoever, her pants and t-shirt like fur, like snakeskin, like a shell she had outgrown. Naked, she stood on the edge only for a moment before slipping under the cold thick skin of the lake and moving into the slippery light underneath it all. When she looked down, still under the water, she had watched as her ring danced down below the line of light and into a darkness that hurt to look at.

[fleeting-fictions]

AJAR

The door was ajar. He thought about that word. “Ajar”. He said it out loud. He thought about jars. Perhaps in the olden days people used to prop their doors open with jars? Or maybe an open door reminded the language-making people of an open jar, letting the insides breathe a little? He took a deep breath, his mouth ajar. His mouth like an open jar. He wondered what the language-making people looked like. What did they wear to their language-making meetings? Where did they meet? He pictured them in suits, sitting in a boardroom arguing about “ajar”. Then he thought maybe it would be more like one of his mom’s book club meetings: a bunch of adults lounging on couches drinking bourbon with ice and talking very little about words. Maybe “ajar” was invented by a drunk lady telling a story about her husband eating all the jam. He went inside, hungry for something.