Stories

Flash Fiction, Short Stories, Script Excerpts, Etc.

The Charred Man (First Published in The Great Lake Review, Spring 2018)

Skin cream was a luxury to him. It was something he never even considered buying before, but now he found himself visiting the drug store on a daily basis just to get his fix. It was a nicety he could scarcely afford, but goddamn he needed it.

The pain was always there. Shooting pulses that danced along his nervous system, rendering him incapable of speech or mobility for hours on end. Why had the fire taken everything but left the nerves perfectly intact? Were they so far buried beneath his skin that the flames wouldn’t even touch them? 

He saw the looks they gave him. People trying to mask their disgust with a faint layer of sympathy. The layers of clothing could only mask so much, and they always seemed to know just where to look in order to catch a peek at his charred skin. It didn’t matter what his story was or how he got there, a first impression is sometimes the only impression. 

The story of it never factors in. There isn’t a line of questioning for him to answer, to describe how it happened. Even if there was, he’s not sure he would respond. How do you describe to someone the choice made in an instant, the decision to run into a fire as opposed to away from it? The simple answer: you don’t. 

The pig skin grafts never matched up just right. Jagged pieces of flesh haplessly clinging to the contours of his face, leaving him resembling a poor man’s Humpty Dumpty. Every visit to the doctors’ bringing more and more rejection. This donor wasn’t a match, this skin tone was a tad off, more pig skin it is.  

He was the hero of 42nd Street. When he was in the hospital, cards and flowers filled the room, from thankful parents to local businesses proud to call him a customer. He had run into that fire with little regard for his own well-being, not as a hero, but as a citizen.

The fame was brief, less than 15 minutes. The medical bills piled and continued to pile until they had a suffocating effect. He couldn’t afford the mortgage, barely afford to eat. Sometimes he wished that he hadn’t run into the fire, maybe avoid his mutilation, or at the very least prolong it. The cream soaked into his skin, offering a reprieve, just for a few moments. 

Dad’s Jeans (First Published in Gemstone Piano Review, 2018. Great Lake Review 2018)

My dad was the type of man to push away problems until they bit him on the nose, and when he went over to my grandma’s house one day to see her sprawled out on the couch in his favorite “relaxin’” jeans, it was the equivalent of a nibble.

He let her keep the jeans. She didn’t remember absconding with them, but was adamant that they were my recently deceased grandfather’s. Why not let her stay in dreamland? The next pair didn’t stay long before they went MIA. Rinse and repeat. Each time Dad bought a fresh pair, within days they would vanish from the house.

Grandma was a geriatric Robin Hood. We tried locks and chains, but the old lassie was far too clever for that, even in her current state. She either had a vendetta against my father that involved swiping his denim or thought Grandpa was alive and storing his jeans at our home. 

Dad was really bad at confrontation. You could call what he did giving into a delusion, but that didn’t matter. When he went to Costco and bought 100 pairs of their finest jeans, the only thing running through his head was the woman who raised him and the comfort she might find. 

I didn’t think Grandma was lucid enough to appreciate the gesture, but Dad kept it up, even played along sometimes, making the locks less difficult as she got worse.

The Wallet (First Published in Great Lake Review, Fall 2018)

Jo loathed the way in which the scrubs clung to her skin. Desperate swaths of fabric that stuck to her body at the first sign of perspiration. She had asked the administrator as many times as she could stomach for roomier scrubs, a size up was all she needed.

She didn’t have much time to dwell on the thought as the EMTs pushed in another homeless John Doe off the street. It wasn’t unheard of to have the homeless camp outside, the city had a problem, too many people and not enough homes. Sometimes they would stream into the hospital, filling up beds with imaginary stomach aches as an excuse for a hot meal and a warm bed. Jo knew it was irrational to dislike them, but she couldn’t help but think those same beds could go to a father of three suffering from a heart attack and not some homeless “vet” recovering from gut rot. 

Peter, a twenty-something EMT with a troublemaker smile that would break a lot of hearts, asked Jo where she wanted him. She had to stop herself from saying back outside. 

Jo adjusted her scrubs as she followed into the room, wondering if Peter had noticed how tight her scrubs were today. She hoped he didn’t. She sent him away. He had better things to do than watch her strip down some unwashed bum. She delivered the typical boilerplate. What is wrong? Where does it hurt? John Doe didn’t answer, only recoiled and held his stomach. Oh, great. Another thespian, she thought. Jo tried to remove his clothes but found her hands swatted away. 

“Sir, I’ve got to remove your clothes to perform an evaluation.” 

She tried to remove his shirt, this time content to rip it to shreds if she needed to, but found the homeless man was deceptively strong, even in his current state. She tugged again, grasping onto the brittle fabric and pulling as hard she could. Jo had lost her patience with this man. She had better things she could be doing.

The cloth ripped away, revealing the man’s torso. At first glance, everything appeared normal for a man of his age. Everything right where it should be, but something was off. Near John Doe’s stomach where his belly button should be was instead a gaping black puncture. A hole the size of a child’s fist and the color of burnt moldy bread. The smell was abhorrent. It singed the hairs of her nostrils. 

In a frenzy, Jo moved to the telephone hanging off the wall, her fingers pressed to the buttons, prepared to dial a specialist. Before she could press page, a hand reached out from the bed, holding her back. 

Jo looked down incredulously. How was this man even alive, further yet how was he refusing medical help?

“They’ll take it if you tell them,” he stated. 

Jo was confused. By the old man’s thought process, she naturally assumed he was delirious. The myriad of infections that must be coursing through his body. Before she found time to belabor the point, John Doe began to reach into his wound and pull crinkled one dollar bills from the gaping hole. He took a moment before setting each and every bill onto the bedside table, and with deliberate care, smoothing out the creases. 7 dollars. 

Jo vomited, filling the trash can with the day’s lunch. The weight of what he had done to himself set in on John Doe’s face. 

“I woke up one morning, found the man I had slept next to for 6 years clawing at my stomach, trying to get at my dinner. It was cold that morning. My hands and feet were so numb that I could barely move to shove him off. He left easy at first, didn’t really put up much fight, but came back a couple of nights later, waited until I fell asleep then took everything I had. It wasn’t a lot––just some cans, a little money. I had to hide what was left,” he said, breaking into a sobbing mess. 

Jo looked at him, and for the first time, felt something other than disgust, pity. Had she forgotten her oath, the promise etched in stone that made her swear to always aid? 

“I had to hide it somewhere, somewhere they wouldn’t find it.”

Jo reached down and smoothed back the old man’s thinning hair.

“What’s your name?”

John Doe had to think. The name didn’t readily come to him.

“Lionel.”

Jo nodded, departing the room and thinking about how much looser her scrubs felt.

In Heat (First Published in Flash Fiction Magazine (Forthcoming) ) (993 Words)

Davey swore that the lock stuck something awful. He swore it alright, not that Bill ever gave a damn what he said anyways. Christ, Mom is putting that lout up and he ain’t even good with a hammer and nails. Lotta good a man around the house is then if he isn’t worth the red piss of being one. Davey didn’t even know why Bill had gotten so angry, they weren’t his breeders anyway. His father, now that was a fine, upstanding one, one who could fix anything, he had bought the entire brood of blue tick hounds from a man in the North Country, Amish maybe, but Davey’s father was certain they was pure. You could tell by the smell of their piss, his father had often been known to say. Davey didn’t track much with that, didn’t try it more than a handful of times. Piss smelled like piss to him, ‘sides they looked pure and that was what mattered, at least until you got further enough down the line. 

That lock though, it was in need of grease or maybe a wire brush, but it was in need of something, Davey had tried to tell Bill in between wacks of the belt. The lock didn’t close all the way and if you weren’t looking, well it might just fly open behind you and that would be that.

“A man’s gotta fess up”

“But it ain’t like I’m lying about it!”

Davey didn’t even get anything out of it, they were his father’s blues but Bill’s pups or so he said, but it didn’t make a lick of sense to Davey. Bill could sell them all and Davey would still end up carrying spoiled ham for lunch, every dime went to Bill. So why the hell couldn’t he just oil the damn lock? 

“Man’s gotta fess up”

“I’m being straight with you!”

Davey knew Marsha was in heat, she kept em up late enough at night with her howlin. Long week too, Bill said they couldn’t bring the spike in for at least another week, buddy of a buddy or something, youda thought thata given him enough time to fix the lock! But all the block knew and all the mutts too. They just kept sniffing against the fence wood, bending it in with their wet noses. 

“Man’s gotta fess up” 

Davey had gone down to the match. It was fair, no matter what Bill said, it was fair.  Crippler Stevens was wrestling and Davey wasn’t going to miss it no how, but it really shouldn’t have made a difference, not if the lock was proper! Davey didn’t know that Wilkes’ Saint Bernard had been sniffing around, hell even if the lock had been working the thing was big enough to break down the gate anyways. It wasn’t his fault, but Bill caught them in the act and he swore it was. 

Wilkes’ poor Saint Bernard lost a chunk of ear Bill dragged him off so hard, but Bill swore it didn’t make a difference. 

“Man’s gotta fess up”

None of us were sure everything got done, but the spike was brought in a week later. Bill’s belt broke before he could tell Davey to pray they came out clean, he’d wear his rings otherwise. But it took months and none were sure, Davey hoped he’d just up and forget. 

Litter poor would keep Bill away from that new truck bed of his, a decent pure Blue could fetch 200 to the right eyeball. Bill would even throw in the collar for that price. 

Marsha didn’t do nothing, she could give up another litter, two or three more maybe before they came out foul, but the ones that came were mutts, real odd ones with a bent up noses and stuffy bodies. Not good for hunting or tracking, house dogs. 

Woulda thought it’d been Mom’s choice, maybe even Davey’s. They were his father’s pups if you track it down the line, shoulda fell to Davey. Not Bill, he didn’t see it thataway, was costing money to feed ‘em and more if you consider the loss of an entire litter of Blue Ticks. 

Bill brought home the burlap sack on one night home from work, big enough to fit a barrel or something, didn’t even do nothing with it at first, just left it sitting draped over the back of a chair. Let it go until after dinner when he set it down alongside a ball peen hammer. 

Davey tried to come up with tears, but they just couldn’t come out while trying to win an argument. He’d set them straight, keep them fed and find owners, it didn’t have to be done.  

Bill didn’t even look past his beer. 

“I’ll know if you don’t, then it’ll really pay. Man’s gotta fess up”

He tried to turn to his Mom, she shouldn’ta sanctioned it because it steamed her all the same. She didn’t approve, but it wasn’t her call, Bill swore up and down that it needed to be done. But he didn’t even fix the lock, things that needed to be done Davey didn’t think. 

Davey cried some, but the tugging on Bill’s pant leg didn’t help none. He just kicked him off and sent Davey through the screen door. 

Davey went out to the shed, easy enough to grab the pups while they were at the nip. He thought about throwing them over the fence, letting a few go and only doing a handful, but Bill would figure it out, see ‘em roaming or they’d break their legs on the way down from the fence. 

So he stuffed them into the burlap one by one, gripping the ball peen hammer by its splintered hilt. The soft mewling echoed through the burlap, Davey swore they’d only gotten louder. If only that damn lock had worked he told himself and even if it wasn’t his fault, he knew…

Man’s gotta fess up.