The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: 1000 words

  • Lyla (Flash Fiction)

    Click here to see the photo that inspired this story. The owner disabled sharing. It’s worth going to look at, folks.

    Lyla was always the first one to get cold. She wouldn’t run the ceiling fan if the air conditioner was on. She would give in come July and August when temperatures outside peaked in the high 90s or 100s and just put on a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans so I could be comfortable. Lyla never broke a sweat.

    We never went to the lake with our friends, either, because she didn’t want to swim. She would tell me that without clothes, meaning wearing a swimsuit, she would be too cold and she wouldn’t enjoy herself.

    “What do you mean? How could you be cold with it almost a hundred degrees out there and the sun right on your skin?”

    “You don’t understand.”

    “You’re right,” I said, raising my voice. “I don’t. Help me understand. Are you ashamed of something?”

    That started an argument.

    Our fights were epic: near-hysterics, shouted words, slapped faces (mine, anyway; I never hit her), thrown glasses shattered on the kitchen tiles, slammed doors and tires squealed in anger down the driveway. Sooner or later Lyla would text me and tell me to come home. I refused only once in the seven years we’d been together. I was so angry that I stayed at a hotel overnight and the next morning there were forty texts and a dozen voicemails begging me to come home.

    The house was 85 degrees when I got there.

    Lyla was wrapped in a comforter, shivering. I thought it was because she was cold.

    “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” she said. “I was afraid I’d lost you forever.”

    I put my arms around her, over the comforter and I made soothing noises. It took a while, but she finally let me under the comforter with her and I held her a long, long time while she cried. I sweated like a pig, but she didn’t mind.

    I didn’t understand anything about why she was cold.

    Neither did her doctors.

    It was explained that her core temperature was a hundred and two point nine, four plus degrees hotter than the rest of the human population. “But she’s not feverish,” the doctor would say. “I don’t know why. Her hypothalamus is functioning normally and her blood pressure is fine. Everything is fine.” He would scratch the back of his head or adjust his tie or lean back in his chair, then exhale a long time. “I can’t explain it. For all of me, it looks like you just run hotter than everyone else.”

    Which is why she had a passionate hatred of winter, especially ice and snow. “Why can’t we move to a nice tropical island?”

    I was pulling up the knot on my tie and checking it in the mirror.

    “Because my business doesn’t have an office in Barbados, dear.”

    “Couldn’t you telecommute? How hard is it to be a mid-level government functionary from an island?”

    I shook my head and closed my eyes. This wasn’t the first time she’d diminished my work. “I’m not a government functionary,” I said. “I’m a recruiter. I develop talent. You know that.”

    “Well, they could fly the talent to you,” Lyla said. “I mean, couldn’t they?”

    She was serious. I went to her and rubbed my hands slowly up her arms. She was beautiful. The gown was perfect for her figure and she had a faux mink stole to wrap herself in. The white rose in her hair was a perfect accent to the silvery dress. She looked like a movie star on the red carpet. “My darling,” I said in my best Cary Grant voice, “I know you hate these things. I have to be there. My bosses and my team are expecting me and it’s important. It’s important you come, too.”

    Lyla acquiesced with a small nod, defeated.

    The party was a subdued affair with everyone in their best suits and spectacular gowns. The liquor flowed and the food was delicious. The government knows how to throw a Christmas party. Lyla met everyone she was supposed to, was gracious in the face of compliments and hung on my arm all evening. The hotel had rooms for those too drunk to drive. Lyla insisted we go home. I was tipsy but I could drive. “Take the long way,” she said. “Do you mind?”

    I didn’t. The bypass would drop us off on the far west side of town and we could take a country road or two and come back in on the south side. I’d be less likely to run into a saturation checkpoint that way, too.

    The sound of gravel bashing the pans and axles was kind of calming and the low hum of the tires on loose rock was something we both liked. Lyla took my hand and her smile was soothing, too. She had that look that said we were going to have sex when we got home and I squeezed her hand and brought it up to kiss it.

    All I remember is the whitest light I’ve ever seen. There was no sound, no flash. It was just white light and heat and then darkness.

    I came to in the ditch. The car was still on the road, its lights on and the radio playing but the engine was off. I called out for Lyla. No answer. An hour later, I finally gave up and called 911. All I ever found was the white rose that had been in her hair.

    It’s been a year. The police and the psych people agree that I had some kind of outre experience but they won’t say UFOs out loud or anything like that. I’ve finally been cleared to work and everyone’s offered their sympathies.

    I wish I knew what happened. I wish I knew where Lyla went or if she’s coming back.

    The rose sits in a vase on my desk at home, perfect as the night she wore it. It still smells like her.

  • Cardboard People (Flash Fiction)

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/paco_calvino/3105322521/

    Elise was a dancer, a twirler, a self-motivated mover.  Even as a baby she never sat still, and her mom fondly recalls how her feet fascinated her.  The possibilities of human movement excited her.  She hated all of science until Anatomy and Physiology, which taught her to think of every new way she could orchestrate her muscles and orient her bones.

    Fortunately, her fascination received benign neglect from the Masters, who decide which children are trouble makers and which must be left to blossom.  The troublemakers have their motions severely restricted, via a combination of surgical and chemical nerve overrides.  Elise thought that to be one of the Restricted would be horrible, that she would die if she couldn’t dance as she wanted.  Her friend  Hector said it’s not so  bad, he can still think whatever he wants and write whatever he wants so he has his free speech rights.  Just can’t punch things, can’t pull triggers, that sort of thing.  She felt bad for Hector but didn’t want him to feel her pity, so she didn’t talk about it with him

    But she was nearing the end of high school, and she needed to do a senior project.  What better to do than to override the possibilities of the Restricted?  Her brother James pointed out, rightly, that those she wanted to reach would never attend a recital in the fancy hall where she took lessons.  No, her project must be in the street.

    She elected to stage a morning happening, on the sidewalk where she turned to go to school.  She also elected a schoolgirl costume, a plaid skirt, a white collared shirt, to emphasize her audience.  James warned her that she might have no audience as a school girl where school girls usually walked.  She frowned, then agreed.   “Let’s make an audience, then, you and me.  We’ll print some people out on cardboard posters and stand them around.  Cardboard People!  That’s the name of the program.”

    It stuck.  They created seven or eight life-size cutouts of a fake audience, both to emphasize the theme of the show, and also to draw attention to the fact of the performance.

    She asked Hector to come to the show, and to bring his friends.  Her faculty sponsor and family invited, all that remained was to design her dance.

    The morning of her show dawned.  She and James carted the beginning audience to the chosen site quite early, before the main traffic began; still, they attracted a lot of attention, and with the help of the simulated audience she drew quite a large group.  A discreet music player hid between the cutouts, and suddenly blasted hip-hop into the morning air.

    The dance began with trigger pulls and punches, with violence, with Elise miming every way a human figure could enact violence. Her actions split the air but managed to communicate vivacity and passion.  People in the audience unconsciously began to move along with her, and James noticed many who tried but could not follow her.

    But the music changed, and so did her dance.  And the results of Elise’s careful preparation became clear:  she danced in ways that all could do, stopping meticulously to mime a nervous boundary, to skirt around the edges of the Restricted capabilities.  And all the people saw, and all the people could move along with her, Restricted and free alike, and there was a dancing mob that morning on the corner of 9th and Locust, before the Masters could shut it down.

    When the sirens began, Elise realized she had provoked more of a reaction than she expected, and she was about to join the ranks of Restriction.  But she realized as well that no matter what they did to her, no matter which pathways they blocked, she would find a way around it, she would scuttle over barricades and burrow under walls.  They could not stop her dance, and she did not fear the punishment that was to come.

  • Gibson (Flash Fiction)

    The guitar was a gift on my fifteenth birthday. It was my only gift. Mother, a proper Parisian matron, didn’t approve. A frivolous request, she called it. Her view was justified—I could barely play guitar, and my historical commitment to investing in any singular hobby had proven ephemeral, at best. But my mother’s dismissiveness only served to further encourage my desire to possess the guitar, and with stubbornness only an adolescent can possess, I insisted that no other gift would suffice. So I devised a plan.

    Normally, I would have expected my father’s response to my birthday request to have been a flat no, his lack of emotional involvement providing none the same traction as my mother’s disgusted denial. Lately, however, my father was willing to adopt contrarian positions with my mother for no other reason than the power play that would inevitably ensue. I knew this, and I used it. I played up the universal need of men to possess beautiful tools and machines. And I emphasized how mother couldn’t possibly sympathize with our shared primal instincts. My father, unable to resist the opportunity to exert his parochial control, convinced my mother to let him purchase the guitar for me, despite her strenuous objections.

    It was the best birthday gift I ever received.

    Two weeks later, my parents announced their divorce.

    I wasn’t surprised by their separation. But I felt responsible for accelerating their inescapable end. I was incapable of admitting my guilt to either of them. Instead, I radiated palpable waves of anger and resentment, and walled myself off from the world with music. I plugged in my headphones into my guitar amp and plucked my new Les Paul from dusk to dawn, letting my blossoming ability as a guitarist ease my guilt and pain.

    My father left without ever speaking another word to me. His silence wasn’t a measure of blame, necessarily, but that’s how I took it. It took me years to forgive him. By then, it was too late to reconcile. He’d passed away.

    My mother never let me forget my part in their end. And the guitar I clung to with increasing desperation was a clear, physical symbol of my selfish, manipulative nature. Like a dowsing rod, the instrument kept tugging me towards the door, away from the relentless blame. Just weeks after my father left, I’d had enough as well. In the middle of the night I packed a bag with my tiny amp and a few changes of clothes. I slung the bag over one shoulder and my guitar across the other, and I left.

    Those first years on the roads of the French countryside were hard, but simple. I traveled lightly, begging for whatever food, shelter, and company I could find. The guitar strapped to my back served as a badge of sorts, automatically affording me entry to a cabal of like-minded bohemian musicians spending their time on the road. Visiting with these folks, my ability with my guitar quickly grew, and I began to use my music as a means to earn a living. There were still many long winter nights spent strumming power chords through my tiny amp, waiting for enough money to be tossed into my case so I could afford a baguette and a train ticket to the next town. But sometimes my skills earned me a spot playing backup for a local band or playing at a neighborhood coffee shop. Those days I could afford a bed at a hostel and a warm meal.

    I met Marie during one of my jaunts across the Channel into London. I heard her reciting poetry at an open mic night at a bookstore, and afterwards waited outside for her to leave. She didn’t. Turned out she owned the shop and lived upstairs. She found me asleep on the stoop the next morning and took pity on me. Two cups of coffee later, I was in love. Marie seemed intrigued by the idea of rescuing me, much like a stray alley cat.

    I spent three years in London. Marie and I had a beautiful baby girl, Josephine. I retired from my guitar-slinging days and tried my hand at settling down, working in the bookstore with Marie and taking care of our daughter. It was a good time in my life. But eventually the restlessness that had begun with my flight from home began tugging at me once more. I found myself drawn once more to the Gibson I’d stored in the closet. I’d sneak down the hallway at night to take out the Gibson, and I’d strum it softly for Josephine while she slept. But I always made sure to put it away before the night was through.

    Until one night I didn’t. Marie woke up to find me sitting at the kitchen table, the guitar and its case propped up in the seat next to me.

    “Go,” was all Marie said. She might’ve smiled. I’ve never been sure.

    It’s been many long years since my fifteenth birthday. Mama’s still alive. She frets away her final days in a tiny apartment just outside Paris. I stop in on her sometimes when I’m playing in the city or I’m in between jobs, but my visits seem to confuse and upset her. I don’t know if she always recognizes me. She may think I’m a scam artist there to steal from her.

    Not much has changed since my first days on the road. I’ve got a few more wrinkles, but no more wisdom.

    Sometimes, late at night, I peer along the frets and headstock of the guitar, as if looking across the bow of a great ship, and wonder where it will lead me. But I know better. It’s merely a musical instrument. There is no rudder of fate to guide my travels. I point myself in any direction, and off I go, my instrument slung carelessly across my back.

    Just an instrument. A vessel. Nothing more.

  • The Artist (Flash Fiction)

    So yeah, I’m working this fundraiser tonight at the museum. It’s in this room with ancient stone carvings from Egypt.  A bunch of rich people and artists from all over rubbing elbows. Used to come in here with my boys from time to time, that’s how I knew about it and now I work here, busing on nights like this, cleaning up during the day.

    It’s hard to get away from things, you know, like in Egypt, back when, where these old carvings were made: you were born to it, died in it. Pretty much like here, really. It’s all a bunch of shit. ‘Bootstraps’? Please. But I do some art, some things, you know. I get things out of the trash and try to make them into other things. There’s not a lot of room for anything at our place, so it’s all real real small. I look up at this stone wall, the hieroglyphics, I read they’re called, and the guys with the skirts and long hair. No faces though. That’s weird. Spooky. They say people that didn’t like this tribe back then hacked the faces off with something, ancient hammers I guess. Anyway, one of my pieces is small enough to fit inside one of those little carved spaces with the hieroglyphics. I’d like to try something big though, just don’t have any room for it. And anyways, who’s got time for all that, you know?

    I see the ice is about out, so I excuse myself to get behind the bar to refill the tub. I take away the bucket of empty bottles and ask do they need anything restocked. I’m thirsty myself, and that liquor looks good, but I try not to drink anymore. It just takes too much time away from other things. The real thing is though, the real reason is, I try not to because I have a problem with it. I like it too much and I’m trying really hard to stay clean. It’s hard though. Everyone I know pretty much has something they doing to take the edge off. Or make money. Or both. And it’s weird that I don’t, you know? When the story for most is that their brother on crack and/or dealing. They don’t trust me. They don’t want to act like that but I can see they don’t. So, I don’t fit in. It’s hard, like I said. I don’t really have any friends, and my family is pretty fucked up, whatever. So, when I’m not working I spend a lot of time walking, finding things to make art with. I keep out of the way of almost everyone. And pretty soon, you’re invisible, no face, like those boys up on the wall here.

    I bring the ice back and fill the tub. As I go, I pull one of my little art pieces out of my pocket and set it up on the bar, quick so no one will notice. I’m supposed to stay out of sight as much as possible. But I do that. I set my things up in little spots around the museum. I could get in big trouble for it, but I do it anyway. I see that one of the guests at the bar is looking at it, and my heart speeds up. I wonder if he saw me put it there and I’m going to get in trouble. Part of me doesn’t care, but the other side needs the money. And I like working here. I like being with the art. The guy is talking to the bartender and the bartender’s looking around to see who might have put it there, shrugging his shoulders. I look up at the wall, the stone carvings old as hell, and I think about the all the times I wanted to touch them, but I never did because the guards and people get upset when you do that. I close my eyes and feel my heart in my chest and my palms sweaty on the plastic edge of the bus tub. I open my eyes. The guy is still there holding my piece, smiling. I set down the tub. And I walk up and put out my hand.

    Later, I walk home, down the streets, the stores all shut, metal doors over the windows. People on the corners, waiting for something. I see one of my friends from when we were kids, but I don’t make eye contact, and he wouldn’t talk to me now anyway. I slip into our place, three stories up from the street. The TV is on, my mom asleep on the couch, no one else is here. I go into my room and sit on my bed, set my share of the tips on the window sill. The money won’t stay folded. It was a good night. I pull out the business card from my other pocket and turn it over and over in my hands, trace the raised phone number with my finger. I close my eyes. I think about taking that money, going back down stairs, hooking up with my old friends. I open my eyes and see the shelves I made, my art on it. I think about those boys with the hammers, right before they smashed those faces. How the grip felt in their hands before they raised them up, what they were thinking. I lay the card on top of the money, lie back and look at the ceiling. It takes a long time to fall asleep.

     

  • Breathtaking (Flash Fiction)

    For the photo that inspired this flash fiction story, please visit Flickr: L’Albufera: Momentos #16.

    Nothing is quite as beautiful or breathtaking as a sunrise.  Well, nothing quite as beautiful, anyway. Lots of things can take your breath away. Like an unexpected dip in the road, or a punch to the gut, or really bad news.

    But mostly being plunged face first into cold water.

    It was an hour before dawn. Father had set the fishing nets out overnight, and it was my job to rise before the sun and pull in the catch.

    Half asleep, I yanked on the lines to cinch the nets. I stubbed my toe on a rock and muttered a curse.

    The water cursed back. (more…)

  • Head of a Pin (Flash Fiction)

    Colin Powell, George W. Bush, and Condoleezza Rice
    Photo by Tina Hager, Courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Via flickr.com/commons

    “So, how small is the lens? Could it fit on the head of a pin?”

    Roger looked excited, in a conspiratorial kind of way. He loved it when new tech was small enough to fit on the head of a pin.

    “Smaller,” I told him. “The entire camera could fit comfortably on a fly.”

    Roger let out a sound that – though he was far from being a 12-year-old girl – sounded something like, “Squee!” He clapped his hands together and turned the laptop to get a better look.

    I let him enjoy the image of the sorority bathroom. It was harmless, mostly. And it wasn’t like anyone was going to catch us. Even if someone discovered the camera, no one could trace it back to us.

    The entire camera had been built – atom by atom – as part of an exercise in nano-manufacturing. I had designed the lenses myself. It had taken a team of graduate students to do the rest. The best and brightest in Georgetown’s engineering program had spent several thousand hours creating the world’s smallest wireless video camera.

    (more…)

  • Chief Complaint (Flash Fiction)

    Repository: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive

    Here’s the best advice I can give you.  Don’t die wearing a headdress.

    Of all the things that suck about kicking it, and believe me there is an exhaustive list, the one that seriously chaps my incorporeal ass is that bullshit death mask rule.

    I can understand looking like you did when your expiration date finally hit.  I’m not one of those vain creeps who think every spirit walking around should look like George Clooney.  (Although if there were sex in heaven, can you imagine the kind of play you’d get with a face like that?  Sweet Valhalla!)  However, I do think the powers that be get a little picky when it comes to dress code.  I see no reason why I should spend the rest of eternity looking like Tonto.

    I really hope my best friend is in hell.

    (more…)

  • C Is For Cat (Flash Fiction)

     

    "C is for Cats" by Lindsay Carmichael, as seen on Flickr.com

    C was for Cat, as it always had been. The cats would not stop dancing. They pirouetted, paired off and salsa danced the night away. The rumba was a never-ending mosaic of fur and flash.

    A has been for Apple ever since Adam and Eve feasted on the forbidden. B is for Boy. One American boy, abandoned by his Vietnamese captors. Maybe B was for Bamboo, the strange wood surrounding him. But C was for Cat, and still they danced.

    When you leave a man in starving solitude, there is no telling the directions his mind will flow. In isolation, there isn’t an anchor. Instead, memory and fantasy ebb and flow, a Vonnegut Slaughterhouse mince of time. Bobby, now known as Sergeant Robert Parker, found himself in 1st grade. Ground zero. Day one.

    So many paths lay open to a first grader. You can be anything. Astronaut, President of the United States, a British rock invader…well, maybe not British. Sgt. Parker lay on the hot, dry, dirt floor jealous of Bobby.

    D was for Dog, and Bingo had been his name-o.  Bingo, had only been a puppy then. They grew up together. D was also for Draft, which would turn Bobby into Private Robert Parker, and ultimately kill Bingo. Bobby got the letter in boot camp. An old dog by that time, Bingo sat at the corner of the driveway, next to the mailbox, waiting for Bobby to come home from the war, refusing to eat. That is where they found him, asleep forever. Without Bingo to chase them away, the cats would dance on. (more…)

  • Flash Fiction Week

    We’re all pretty excited this week about the challenge we’ve given ourselves. We went to Flickr/Commons and were directed to choose a picture based on an algorithm including letters from our names. The picture thus chosen for us would be the inspiration for a piece of flash fiction of one thousand words or less. (Or maybe a little more if one needed more.)

    Where we could, the picture was included in the post and should be properly attributed to the owner. We’re storytellers and we were trying to prove that a picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words. In every case, we’ve been successful, though the degree of that success is up to you, our dear readers, to decide. If you’ve never commented on a post here, please consider doing so. We writers are fragile and your kind attention is very much appreciated.

    The pictures, of course, are the property of the people at the other end of the link, not ours and we make no claim. The stories, though, are copyrighted 2012 by the individual authors. It’s up to each author what might be further done with them.

    We hope you enjoy our experiment this week. Let us know what you think.