Flash Fiction International

by Robert Shapard James Thomas

  There were trees every twenty yards along the sidewalk, an interesting problem that demanded a great deal of expertise. I turned off the headlights and accelerated. She only realized I was going for her when she heard the sound of the tires hitting the curb. I caught her above the knees, right in the middle of her legs, a bit more toward the left leg—a perfect hit. I heard the impact break the large bones, veered rapidly to the left, shot narrowly past one of the trees, and, tires squealing, skidded back onto the asphalt. The car would go from zero to sixty in less than seven seconds. I could see that the woman’s broken body had come to rest covered with blood, on top of the low wall in front of a house.

  Back in the garage, I took a good look at the car. I ran my hand lightly over the unmarked fender and bumper with pride. Few people in the world could match my skill driving such a car.

  The family was watching television. “Do you feel better after your spin?” my wife asked, lying on the sofa, staring fixedly at the TV screen.

  “I’m going to bed,” I answered. “Good night everybody. Tomorrow’s going to be a rough day at the office.”

  Translated by Clifford E. Landers

  NEW ZEALAND

  Truthful Lies

  Frankie McMillan

  I’M A TRUTHFUL liar, believe you me. You could cut out my heart and throw it to the dogs but I still couldn’t give you the bare facts.

  Ask me what I had for breakfast. Go on. I’ll say what you want to hear: something ordinary and safe. Like Weetabix with chopped banana, milk and a teaspoon of brown sugar. Toast, whole grain with Marmite. You’ll understand that. You’ll think I’m just the same as you. Okay, now ask me something personal. Go on.

  Have I ever been engaged to a dwarf? Yes. No. Choose yes.

  His name was Stan and he wore a black suit and had to jump for the door handles. He jumped with both feet so you could see the pink flesh between sock and suit leg. The door would swing open and he’d march on through. The only sign of this little accomplishment was in his hands. For a moment his pudgy hands would flare out like startled starfish. He could kiss. I think his tongue was thicker than normal. Ask me. Ask me what you want to know.

  He had special shoes made; his feet weren’t long but his fat toes made them wide. Stan could have worn sandals. Get a pair of Roman sandals I told him. No one wears brogues anymore. Only dentists who commit suicide wear brogues.

  Ask me about my kids. One day I’ll tell you I had four kids. Another day I’ll say three. So what happened to the fourth one? Look at me. Watch my cheeks, not my eyes. See the two bright spots of color? That’s blood coming to the surface. I’ll tell you I lost him. You’ll think I was careless. Left baby on the bus. Or at kindy with a stranger in a checked shirt, open necked.

  My baby was born in a garage. Stan and me did it up—had Frank Zappa posters on the wall, a batik cloth hung over the ceiling.

  Looking at the colors while I was pushing the baby out. Stan running for the doctor because there wasn’t a phone and next door didn’t want a fuckin’ circus on their hands. The dog licking the baby clean and me laughing and crying and not knowing if dogs should be licking newborn babies.

  You asked. You wanted to know. Anyway he died. The dog—run over by the milk truck. He was a good dog. Stan took the baby because it was the same as him. Ran off with the baby one night. It was raining. He had an umbrella. You wouldn’t think a man would run off carrying an umbrella and a week-old baby boy. Stan did.

  My breasts leaked milk for months. The mattress smelt of stale milk; the smell followed me everywhere.

  People understand lies. I lost my baby. I had a miscarriage. A loving lie gives you a picture in the head. A dwarf, an umbrella, a garage will give you a headache. You will look at me sideways. You will wonder if I’ve lost the plot.

  I lied when I told you I was lying. You knew that. I let you think that I was lying in order to lie some more but you knew. Because you lie too. Your lies are trivial lies.

  Tell me you’re made of truthful lies. Let me believe in the goodness of your lying. Go on. Lie. Make it good.

  AFGHANISTAN

  The Tiger

  Mohibullah Zegham

  IT WAS MARKET day. I had loaded a dozen sacks of potatoes onto a truck and we were taking them to Kunduz. It had been a long time since I’d been to the bazaar. Traveling the vast Shorao desert, the truck was raising clouds of dust. The desert was so flat that it was hard to believe we were on top of a mountain, and I saw no other vehicles for an hour.

  As we descended to Kunduz some armed men in long brown velvet shirts signaled us to stop at a checkpoint. One of them, with his long hair tied back with a handkerchief, came forward. He hovered around the truck for a while, then stopped and wiped his sweaty forehead with a dirty sleeve.

  “Who owns these goods?” he demanded, squinting through dusty eyelashes.

  “Me,” I said.

  “Come,” he said.

  I got down and followed him to an old stronghold where a stream flowed through a courtyard. Silk rugs were spread out beneath large poplar trees. Five men sitting on velvet mattresses were playing dice on a checkered cloth.

  Ten or fifteen brown-shirted gunmen sat apart from the game. One of them was puffing hard on a hashish cigarette. “Pull harder, harder!” his companions encouraged him. He puffed again, coughed six or seven times, waved his hands to thank them, then handed it over.

  The long-haired gunman was kneeling on the rug now, watching the game.

  “You have a lucky hand,” he said when one of the players reached in to collect his winnings on the cloth. The other gunmen on the bank of the stream turned their heads and repeated his words.

  “Hand it out among the boys,” the winner said and threw two bundles of 10,000-Afghani notes toward the long-haired gunman. Then, when he saw me, he said, “Qaleech! Who is that?”

  “Sir, he is the owner of the goods.”

  “What are you carrying?”

  “Some potatoes,” I replied.

  “Where to?”

  “To the bazaar, for sale.”

  “Then you have to pay the tax.”

  “What tax? I grew these in my own field.”

  “Qaleech, this man seems a stranger. Do you think he is a spy?”

  “By God, I haven’t seen him before,” Qaleech said, fixing his gaze on me.

  I was wondering where I had seen the commander before. His long hair, the beautiful white face, the red lips, the eyes skillfully darkened with kohl, and the soft feminine voice—all were quite familiar to me.

  Then I remembered. This was Feroz. His thin moustache, the few hairs of beard on his chin, the long shirt, and the ammunition belt around his waist had changed him entirely.

  Feroz had been Haji Murad Bai’s keeper and dancing boy. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. Years ago, Haji Murad would invite us to his house, where Feroz would appear wearing ankle-bells, a woman’s costume, powder on his cheeks, lipstick on his lips, henna on his hands, eyes darkened with kohl, and he would dance for us.

  Five years ago, rumors spread that Feroz had shot Murad Bai dead and eloped with his younger wife with whom he was having an affair. Murad had won his younger wife, the same age as his daughter, in a partridge-fighting competition. I had heard rumors that Feroz then became a commander of a militant organization, but I didn’t know any details.

  “I am asking who you are and for whom you are spying?” Feroz’s voice brought me out of my thoughts.

  “I am Qadoos,” I said, “a friend of Murad Bai. Feroz, don’t you recognize . . .” A hard blow hit my shoulder before I could finish. Suddenly I was flat on the ground, and then I was being beaten and kicked and hit with rifle butts.

  After a few minutes the long-haired gunman pulled me up by my hair to face Feroz but I couldn’t. The pain was too fierce. Feroz looked at me furiously and chewed his words to make his voice hoarse.

  “Who am I?” he asked.

  “You are Feroz,” I said.

  H
e hit my mouth with all his force. “No! I am a commander,” he shouted. “I am the Tiger!”

  Translated by Rashid Khattak

  UNITED STATES

  Everyone Out of the Pool

  Robert Lopez

  THE CLOSEST THING to tumbleweed in New York City is the people.

  I say this out loud to the woman next to me because I think she is from Arizona.

  Whenever it starts to rain I think end of the world. Whenever the telephone rings or someone calls me by name I think Leonidas at Thermopylae or Custer at Little Bighorn.

  What this speaks to I try not to think about.

  Don’t try to trick me into being happy, is what the woman says back.

  We are in a museum when we say this to each other. This particular room in the museum has windows for walls and you can see the weather from anywhere inside it.

  This is not just me talking, I say. I pause a moment and then keep talking about the weather until I hear myself say, One bolt of lightning and it’s everyone out of the pool time.

  I think I’ve known this woman for years. I think we met in college and have tried since then to get away from each other. The problem is one or the other of us has nothing better to do at any given time. Then I think we came to New York two months ago to help the poor or feed the poor, something with the poor.

  The trouble with me is I think too much and don’t know anything.

  I don’t know why this is, though I suspect it’s my own fault.

  Outside the rain is coming down like it’s angry with someone. Like someone had made fun of the rain’s mother.

  We are sitting on a bench surrounded by twenty giant speakers arranged in an oval. From the speakers a children’s choir sings in a foreign language that might be Latin. When you walk from speaker to speaker you hear a different voice, which is why it’s in the museum, I think. When you are outside the oval you can’t distinguish one voice from the next. To me, the voices all sound the same, even the different ones.

  The woman next to me is looking out the window, watching the passersby tramp through gaping puddles, watching the rain like she’s never seen it fall down before.

  This is when I say something about the homeless, something that sounds like at least they’ll have a bath today. Why I say this is because I don’t know how she’ll react and I’m curious.

  Between the choirboys and rainfall the woman can’t hear me, though, and from the look on her face I can tell she’s making her mind up about something, something that might include leaving me here on this bench to go play in the rain, eventually finding her way west to feed the poor of Tempe or Phoenix or wherever it is she’s from and that maybe if I’m lucky she’ll call when she gets there.

  ARGENTINA

  The Baby

  María Negroni

  MY BABY IS playing in the bath, delighted. I begin to wash his head and spend some time at this. Then he begins. When I start to rinse his hair, I can’t find him. I turn around, and there he is again. I don’t understand what is happening, and grow stern. I scold him. I don’t like what he’s doing. The baby laughs, more and more amused, glimmers for an instant and vanishes again. My impatience only makes things worse. He disappears more and more quickly, doesn’t even give me time to protest. Through layers of uneasiness, I glimpse his mischievous glance; my blindness is his victory, my jealousy his passion. For a while, I go on resisting: I don’t know how to welcome impotence. The baby just wants to play. The game is dazzling and lasts a lifetime.

  Translated by Anne Twitty

  UNITED STATES

  Aglaglagl

  Bruce Holland Rogers

  LITTLE GÁBOR LOOKS like any other baby, a fat Buddha whose eyes roll this way and that because he hasn’t learned the trick of aiming his gaze. He can’t even lift the weight of his own head to look around, so his parents aren’t to blame for thinking of him as a blank sheet of paper on which they will write, lovingly, all that they know about the world.

  But ever since he opened his eyes to the bright air, ever since his fingers first closed accidentally around his mother’s finger, a bit of blanket, or the edge of his basinette, Gábor has been thinking. The dog’s nose is here, then it is not, then it is here again. Voices come and go. Faces are the same and different. Light alternates with darkness. Wet alternates with dry. He wants milk. He doesn’t want milk. A crying sound comes from somewhere, and startles him, and then more crying comes. He has been making inferences, figuring out what it is to Be. He invents a language that contains all of his awareness. His sentences are marvelously efficient, each one containing a whole chapter of his philosophy. Aglaglagl is one. He says it when the dog’s nose comes to visit the basinette.

  Aglaglagl strikes Gábor’s parents as a sound of contentment, but they don’t know just how right they are. Aglaglagl contains what any number of wise men have tried to write in their holy texts using languages entirely unsuited to say Aglaglagl.

  When Gábor’s father leans his face close enough for Gábor to grasp his nose and says Aglaglagl, even though he mispronounces it, a squeal of happiness happens. Yes! Aglaglagl! The nature of being, not being, and the dance between them!

  It will be some time before Gábor will find that he must learn a second language, a language so broken and unrealistic that in mastering its false categories he will, word by word, learn that he is Gábor, learn that the dog’s nose is not a part of him, learn that flowing water is river or Duna or Danube. In acquiring the razors of such language, he will forget nearly everything that he once knew.

  SYRIA

  The Five New Sons

  Zakaria Tamer

  THE MARRIAGE OF Abdel Sattar and Laila was a clamorous event in which everyone in the neighborhood took part, but he was not destined to complete his honeymoon. Three days into it he was put under temporary arrest, and when he was released ten years later everyone in the neighborhood—men, women, and children—were there waiting for him. No sooner did they catch a glimpse of him coming through the gate than the women broke into trills of joy, the boys raised a din, and the men rushed to embrace him warmly and congratulate him with words coming straight from the heart. He thanked them all in a trembling voice that could barely be heard for the clamor. But all this din ceased when he scanned the crowd for his wife and saw her standing there, surrounded by five children of different ages, shapes and sizes—fat, thin, short, tall, with fair and dark complexions, and with blond and black hair. Laila saw him looking at her and waved with one hand while the other wiped away the tears. He approached her, his heart beating wildly, and with both hands reached out to the small, soft hand that was wiping away the tears and took it as if it were held out to rescue someone about to drown.

  Abdel Sattar stared at Laila in amazement, for she had grown more beautiful and youthful, and looked much younger than her age. The neighborhood folk shouted back and forth in make-believe disapproval, but Abdel Sattar laughed and said, “Legally she’s my wife. Have you forgotten that I married her according to the laws of God and His Prophet?”

  The noise got louder as it mingled with laughter, and they walked with him to his house. Once there he sat in the shade of the bitter orange tree in the courtyard and sipped his coffee slowly. Suddenly he pointed with his index finger to the five children who were standing apart from him, some eyeing him with hostility and others with shy looks, and said, “Who are these children? Are they the children of neighbors, or relatives?”

  His wife immediately started praising the neighborhood for its manliness and gallantry because it had fulfilled its obligation and provided well for a woman who had lost her family and was living alone. Abdel Sattar interrupted, asking her about the children again. She gave him a look of amazement and surprise. “What a question!” she said. “Poor man! Don’t you recognize your children? It’s true that prison weakens the memory.” Abdel Sattar said in a questioning voice, “Were you pregnant when I was arrested?”

  “No,” Laila answered. “I wasn’t pregnant. What a s
hame! As you remember, the honeymoon lasted only three days, and we were bashful.”

  Then Laila sighed and said, “But there’s no other place like our neighborhood. Do you know Mr. Said, the elementary school teacher? He was the one who volunteered to help me with the first child. Men like him are rare. I can’t describe to you the trouble he went to.”

  “And the second son?” Abdel Sattar asked.

  “Look at him closely,” Laila answered, “and you can tell right away who helped me with him. There’s only one man in our neighborhood with blond hair, Abdel Hafez, the notable. He helped me even though he is married to two insatiable women.”