It’s been a while since I posted any fiction.  Here’s a very short story I wrote this morning…

The guards stepped in to restore order after the unspoken order had already been restored.  Hmongs and Laotians presided over cell block B and over prisoner 4287554.  Joey DiMarco had been inside long enough to know the unspoken operations.  The schedule was always the same in minimum security: breakfast, work, lunch, work, exercise, dinner and lockdown.  Minor uprisings screwed with the order of things.  A new inmate challenged the unspoken order; everyone was penalized.

“It’s always the Italians,” Joey said quietly to the block wall.  Prisoner 4287554 had taken a vow of semi-silence, speaking only when spoken to; his vow did not keep him from talking to himself.  During times of unrest, especially now, when the commotion was caused by a fellow-Italian, Joey worried in whispers.  118 days until

She moved to town in the middle of the school year.  I don’t know why.  You always invent stories to fill in the blanks.  Her mom had probably just left her dad, forcing her to move in with her grandparents.  Maybe her dad had just gotten a job in the iron mines.  One of the two I suppose, but I never asked.  It was October or early November, about the worst time you could go to a new school.  All of the other new kids had enough time to make friends and become regular kids.  If you go to a new school in the middle of the year, you’ll never, ever really have any friends.  She left the school with as many friends as she had when she entered it.

Mr. Carlson introduced her in my fourth hour science class.  You know how this is done.  Everyone has to say their name and one thing interesting about themselves.  “My name is Pete and I have a three-wheeler.”  It was the best I could do on short notice.  Owning a three-wheeler is not interesting, but in eight grade it was all I had.  She said her name was Sharon.  I suspect most fourteen year-old Sharons wish their names were frillier and more exciting, something with a curly-que on the end or an “i” you could dot with a potential heart.

“I am a dancer.  I’ve been studying dance for ten years.”  She spoke properly, something the rest of us only did in English class, sixth period.  I pegged her for a liar right there.  I don’t know much about dancing or dancers, but I know that they are supposed to be prettier than Sharon Schwartz, and they’re not supposed to have fat bellies.  And everyone knows that liars speak proper English especially when they’re lying.  I wanted to stand on my chair and ask her about 4-H.  “You might raise lop-eared bunnies, but don’t expect me to believe you’re a dancer!” was the line I managed to swallow.

Sharon always tried to talk to me in the halls.  I guess she didn’t realize that I was quite advanced in the junior high social scene.  “Hi, Pete.”  I ignored her when I was with my friends.  I gave her head nods and then looked away.  I am not rude; I’m Minnesotan.  She was not deterred, so I despised her all the more.

“Did you get your science homework done, Pete?” she asked as she examined my pimpled face.

“Course,” then I resumed my silence while she continued to stare at me.  This is something else liars do; they stare at you.  Liars know that other liars don’t make eye contact.  So the good ones stare into your eyes to make you believe that they’re telling the truth.  They stare at you with their gray eyes that sit underneath their straight brown, lifeless bangs.  And they just go on lying.

She talked to me so persistently I really couldn’t continue to ignore her.  So I said, “You’re probably the only dancer on the iron range.  You in classes or something?”

“I used to study in Minneapolis,” I hated that she always talked about dancing as “studying,” but the idea of her “studying dance” did seem more believable to me, with her huge butt and all.  “There aren’t any dance schools in town, yet,” she told me as if I were a person of empathy.  I nodded again.  “I’m going to dance at the eighth grade talent show before Christmas break.”

“Bet you don’t.”

I don’t know why I said that.  It was the beginning of my escalating stupidity.  I tried to backpedal but instead I called her a liar.  I’ve said so-and-so is a liar behind so-and-so’s back, but I’ve never called someone a liar to their face.  Only Sharon Schwartz, and just the one time.  I didn’t realize it when I called her a liar, but I had just committed to a whole month of conversation about Sharon’s dance; a whole month of attempting to ignore the details she spewed out as she latched onto me on the way to class.  Classes we didn’t even share.  I issued the bet, and in so doing, I automatically lost.

“I got new toe shoes.  I found a new piece of music.  It goes like this: dum de de dedumdum.  Have you ever heard any Russian composers?”  You see, I lost!  Blah, blah!  “Shut up, Sharon Schwartz, you liar,” I thought, but could never bring myself to speak in such a manner.

So the day before Christmas break arrives, and sure enough, her name is on the list: Sharon Schwartz – dance.  I’m thinking about how much BS this whole thing is, and kind of wishing I had some talent to perform.  I decide to pacify myself thinking about how much everyone else sucks at their talent anyways.  A pianist was supposed to accompany Jason, a tuba player, but the pianist bailed.  Jason plays anyways.  And he sucks.  There’s a low E whole note.  Rest.  Rest.  Two quarter notes.  A whole rest punctuated by Jason tapping his foot. This might go on forever, I thought.

Then she came out and stood in the center of the stage, an upside-down pink, kettle stove.  The music began and the kettle stove glided across the stage.  She twirled on her toes.  She leaped into the air, much higher than I expected she could.  She landed about how I imagined.  For two straight minutes she flittered between beauty and ugly.  She spun softly upon a wooded trail but managed to stomp on all the bugs.  It was an unusual ongoing metamorphosis: kettle stove into flamingo, into buffalo, into dove; all in pastel pink.  Then it was finished, and she curtsied.  The eighth grade was silent while Sharon bowed for about thirty-seven minutes until we remembered we were supposed to clap.  So we did.  No one understood what happened.  Sharon Schwartz was a dancer; a heavy, alternately graceful and terrible, but smiling, bowing dancer.

I said, “Nice job,” to her as we passed in the hallway, though I still wasn’t sure if it was or not.  She started to try to talk to me, but I turned to talk to my friends.  I pretended not to hear, “Did you really like it, Pete?” but I nodded in affirmation as I kept walking. Then a bell rang and it was Christmas break.

When school resumed in January Sharon missed the first day.  Then the second and so on.  She didn’t return to school.  I don’t know why.  I think her parents split up, or her dad got a job at a factory in Pittsburgh.  I don’t know.  All I know is this: for one afternoon there was a dancer on the iron range.  She wasn’t very good, but she was about what we deserved.  I clapped for her.  I’ve always wished I had clapped louder.

(the above story is fiction.  the only elements that are true are listed as follows: i once witnessed a tuba solo. i am a minnesotan who did once own a three-wheeler.)

Flash Fiction: short stories under a thousand words.  I woke up grumpy and pounded this out before I had to do some real work.  I don’t have a title.  You can give it one in the comment section, if you’d like.  Its not really spiritual, but then again it kind of is, I don’t know.  So, here’s the story.  I hope you laugh at it…

The Daily Sun showed up just before the daily sun.  It always happened this way.  A roll of newspaper slaps the door and then daybreak.  I laid my slippers at the front door to step outside onto the doormat to retrieve the paper in my bare feet.  It is a bristly bathmat in the mornings, soaked in the night’s showers.  I have hot feet.  This is so soothing.  Fortunately I have not yet invested in one of those mattresses whose foam adjusts according to heat; there’d be two sweaty craters at the end of my bed.  On the days I wear black socks into the office, I can sometimes smell my feet wafting up from under my desk.

I bet the neighbor’s feet smell too.  He’s a fat guy with a desk job who doesn’t even push his own lawn mower.  So lazy.  “Probably doesn’t even own a lawnmower,”  I say to myself, one-upping him.  Until his wife pulls out of the driveway in an opulent new Toyota, the boxy SUV that belongs on a florescent yellow African safari.  It’s very yellow.  I still maintain that I have a better lawn mower, and I bet his feet are probably sweatier than mine.  I wave at his wife as she leaves for her AM workout.  She shakes a bottle of water at me in return.  The water bottle is a mutated human appendage.  We smile at each other through the smoky car-window glass and across a comfortable span of distance too great for telepathy.

I have a garage for my toaster in case it rains in the kitchen.  My wife likes the toaster to be out of sight.  She finds toasters particularly offensive.  Every morning I waltz the toaster around the kitchen, squeezing her body into mine while I confidently extend her cord in my right hand.  My hands aren’t hot like my feet.

The paper is all adverts and opinions.  I saw a commercial last night that you can buy a LandRover for $800 a month.  I better leave a little early for work.  I’m sure there are thousands of people clogging up the interstate near the LandRover exit.  Peculiarly the Sports Page is filled with ads for Japanese massage.  I attribute this to the increase in Asian players in Major League Baseball.  Sushi would be a nice breakfast today.  Bet my mowerless neighbor with the expedition vehicle – that plebe -  is having oatmeal.  “Dragon roll for me, please.  With toast.”

Jets surround my bath tub.  Somehow they got broken, but we didn’t use them anyways.  The wife tells me to get them fixed once a week.  I offer to build a garage for the tub instead.  I am offended by bathtubs.  My feet are sufficiently scrubbed.  This takes some time.  I hate it when you bend over in the shower and the water fills up your nostrils.  I’m going to buy a set of nose plugs the next time I drive past the scuba diving store.

Women invented the half-Windsor knot.  While cinching up my $70 noose, I wish I could meet this Windsor and his missus for a little set-to, a tete-a-tete or a cage fight.  Once I tried to count the layers of fabric I tightened around my neck to intentionally stop the flow of blood to my brain.  I gave up.  “More than most,” was my conclusion.  The shoes are loafers, real masculine.  Nothing deserves to have my sweaty feet in them more than these embarrassing foot-skirts.  They have tassels and a fringe, and were made by someone named Cole, first name Ken.  The neighbor has a similar pair.  Dummy.  Not a suit today, its sport-coat day.  They call pants and coats made of different fabric “separates.”  Jones made my coat.  Jones is a pimp in New York.  $350.  Ellis made the slacks.  Ellis is an island in New York, so the whole ensemble kind of works.  $98 for the pants.

I look credible as I walk through the door of my office in Acquisitions.  The neighbor works down the street 2 blocks  a few floors higher than me in Marketing.  We each drive the same 22 miles separately, taking turns following one another into the city.  When he gets to work he approves the final color swatches for fast food restaurants and retail stores.  Me, I’m a well-dressed pirate.  The board of my company believes we need more things and the shareholders agree.  I rob from the rich and give to the also rich.  Who is better, me or him?  Color guru or Robinhood.  Got to go with Robinhood, right?

Text message in the middle of the day said my kid needs an Earth Day t-shirt for school.  I’ll buy one made in Malaysia by someone his own age.  $3.  You can ship a t-shirt from Malaysia for three bucks?  Costs me $4.95 to mail paperwork to the other side of town.  Who cares.

Commuting home, I am reminded that NPR is an ad for the government.  Talk radio is an ad for the militia.  Country music is written by high-school kids with pimples.  Pop music is an ad for itself, and it just sucks.  The rock station makes me angry.  Nothing feeds my obvious superiority so I settle for making fun of Country music.  Clips of a comedian with a mustache break up the songs and commercials.  Real funny.

The kid is at soccer when I get home.  The wife is driving around.  The picture of us, all of us shining, is hung above my fake fireplace.  The neighbor has the same picture above his fake fireplace, though his photo is of his own family.  Mine is better.  Mine is better.  Mine is… the leather of my sofa is warming around my fancy slacks, around my hot feet.  My eyelids close… better.  I dream about the movie, The Ten Commandments.  I’m pretty sure if it was updated it would be a lot better.  My feet smell terrible.