Flash Fiction International

by Robert Shapard James Thomas

  But in private, when practicing, the circus artists always do things the dangerous way, and the knife thrower boasts of being able to hit his wife or any other woman in the eye from twenty paces.

  Translated by Steven J. Stewart

  ENGLAND

  Appointment in Samarra

  As retold by W. Somerset Maugham

  DEATH SPEAKS:

  There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

  UNITED STATES

  The Hawk

  Brian Doyle

  RECENTLY A MAN in my town took up residence on the town football field, in a small tent in the northwestern corner, near the copse of cedars. He had been a terrific football player some years ago for our high school, and then played in college, and then played a couple of years in the nether reaches of the professional ranks, where a man might get paid a hundred bucks a game plus bonuses for touchdowns and sacks, and then he had entered into several business ventures, but these had not gone so well, and he had married and had children, but that had not gone so well either, and finally he took up residence on the football field, because, as he said, that was where things had gone well, and while he knew for sure that people thought he was nuts to pitch a tent on the field, he sort of needed to get balanced again, and there was something about the field that was working for him in that way as far as he could tell after a few days, so, with all due respect to people who thought he was a nutcase, he thought he would stay there until someone made him leave. He had already spoken with the cops, he said, and it was a mark of the general decency of our town that he was told he could stay awhile as long as he didn’t interfere with use of the field, which of course he would never think of doing such a thing, and it was summer, anyways, so the field wasn’t in use much.

  He had been nicknamed the Hawk when he was a player, for his habit of lurking around almost lazily on defense and then making a stunning strike, and he still speaks the way he played, quietly but then amazingly, and when we sat on the visiting team’s bench the other day he said some quietly amazing things, which I think you should hear.

  The reporter from the paper came by the other day, he said, and she wanted to write a story about the failure of the American dream, and the collapse of the social contract, and she was just melting to use football as a metaphor for something or other, and I know she was just trying to do her job, but I kept telling her things that didn’t fit what she wanted, like that people come by and leave me cookies and sandwiches, and the kids who play lacrosse at night set up a screen so my tent wouldn’t get peppered by stray shots, and the cops drift by at night to make sure no one’s giving me grief. Everyone gets nailed at some point so we understand someone getting nailed and trying to get back up on his feet again. I am not a drunk and there’s no politicians to blame. I just lost my balance. People are good to me. You try to get lined up again. I keep the field clean. Mostly it’s discarded water bottles. Lost cell phones I hang in a plastic bag by the gate. I walk the perimeter a lot. I saw coyote pups the other day. I don’t have anything smart to say. I don’t know what things mean. Things just are what they are. I never sat on the visitors’ bench before, did you? Someone leaves coffee for me every morning by the gate. The other day a lady came by with twin infants and she let me hold one while we talked about football. That baby weighed about half of nothing. You couldn’t believe a human being could be so tiny, and there were two of him. That reporter, she kept asking me what I had learned, what would I say to her readers if there was one thing to say, and I told her what could possibly be better than standing on a football field holding a brand-new human being the size of a coffee cup, you know what I mean? Everything else is sort of a footnote. If you stay really still at dusk you can see the progression of what’s in the sky in order, which is swallows, then swifts, then bats, then owls, then lacrosse balls, and when the lacrosse guys are finished they stop by to say hey and to tell me they are turning off the field lights. Real courteous kids, those kids. If the world to come is going to be run by kids who play lacrosse, I think we are in excellent hands.

  IRELAND

  The Egg Pyramid

  Nuala Ní Chonchúir

  THERE ARE THINGS you can do when your husband sleeps with your sister. You can sit in your studio and imagine them together, the toad and the mouse. Him moving over her. Her on top of him. You can hear dark skin slap against honey skin; you can hear moans. But he is your toad and she is your mouse—your Diego and your Cristina—so you drown those thoughts because they bring more tears than a bloodletting.

  But there are things you can do. You can take the pins from your hair and unweave the plaits. Then you can use a scissors to hack off the lengths. You can scatter the strands on the floor and on your yellow chair, where they lie like snakes. The dogs and monkeys—who still love you—can watch. You can forgo silver rings and turquoise beads. You can dress like a man, in a baggy gray suit and maroon shirt. You can hang your Tijuana dresses in the closet and shut the door on their gaiety.

  What else can you do? Well, you can imagine his seed nestling in your sister’s womb and blossoming. You can witness a baby—a boy, let’s say—making a hard melon of her belly. You have never had a ripe stomach. Three times that might have happened for you; three times you bled your baby out before anyone knew that you too could give life. You can look at your sister’s children and ask yourself if they have features that belong to your husband—drooping eyes, full lips, cruelty.

  You can count up the seven years you have lived together and you can see that there are plenty of itches to be scratched on both sides. You know that Diego’s urge to scratch burns more than yours; his need is eternal. You can leave your house and take a flat in the heart of Mexico, to create a space for your husband to sulk into and for your sister to wonder in. You can fly to New York then hurry home again, because Diego pulls on you the way mother moon pulls on the sea.

  Your husband is an accident that happened to you but he is also your north and south. And, because you love him more than your own skin, you can try to accept and you can try to forgive. You can shrug off the pain that pinches like a body brace and throw laughter bombs out into the world to blow up the hurt that remains.

  But, when your sister sleeps with your husband, it is like balancing a pyramid of eggs on a glass platter on the top of your head. You dare not move much for fear of what might happen. The best thing that you can do is to take your brush in one hand, your palette in the other, and sit at your easel and paint. Yes, you can paint.

  ITALY

  An Ouroboric Novel

  Giorgio Manganelli

  A WOMAN HAS GIVEN birth to a sphere: it’s a question of a globe some twenty centimeters in diameter. Delivery was easy, without complications. Whether or not the woman is married is unknown. A husband would have presumed a relationship with the devil, and would have thrown her out of the house, or perhaps would have beaten her to death with a hammer. So, she has no husband. She is said to be a virgin. In any case, she is a good mother: she is very attached to the sphere. Since the sphere has no mouth, she feeds it by immersing it in a small basin filled with her milk. The basin is decorated with flowers. The s
phere is perfectly smooth and uninterrupted. It has no eyes, nor any limbs by way of which to move itself, but all the same it rolls about the room, goes up the stairs, bouncing lightly and very gracefully. The material of which it’s made is more rigid than flesh, but not completely inelastic. Its movements show will and decision, something that might be referred to as clear ideas. Its mother washes it every day, and feeds it. In reality, it is never dirty. It seems it does not sleep, even though it never disturbs its mother: it emits no sounds. All the same, she believes herself to understand that, in certain moments, the sphere is anxious for her touch; it seems to her that in those moments its surface is softer. People avoid the woman who gave birth to a sphere, but the woman does not notice it. All day long, all night long, her life revolves around the sphere’s pathetic perfection. She knows the sphere, no matter how much a prodigy, to be extremely young. She watches it slowly grow. After three months, its diameter has increased by nearly five centimeters. At times its surface, generally gray, takes on a pinkish hue. The mother has nothing to teach the sphere, but tries to learn from it; she follows its movements, attempts to understand if there’s something it’s “trying to tell her.” She has the impression that, no, the sphere has nothing to tell her, but all the same is a part of her. The mother knows the sphere will not remain forever in her home; but this precisely is what touches her: to have been involved in a story both alarming and utterly tranquil. When the days are warm and sunny, she takes the sphere in her arms and goes for a walk outside, around the house. At times she goes as far as a public park, and has the impression that people are getting used to her, to her sphere. She likes to let it roll among the flower beds, to follow it and catch it, with a gesture of fright and passion. The mother loves the sphere, and wonders if ever a woman has been so much a mother as she.

  Translated by Henry Martin

  ENGLAND

  That Color

  Jon McGregor

  SHE STOOD BY the window and said, Those trees are turning that beautiful color again. Is that right, I asked. I was at the back of the house, in the kitchen. I was doing the dishes. The water wasn’t hot enough. She said, I don’t know what color you’d call it. These were the trees on the other side of the road she was talking about, across the junction. It’s a wonder they do so well where they are, with the traffic. I don’t know what they are. Some kind of maple or sycamore, perhaps. This happens every year and she always seems taken by surprise. These years get shorter every year. She said, I could look at them all day, I really could. I rested my hands in the water and I listened to her standing there. Her breathing. She didn’t say anything. She kept standing there. I emptied the bowl and refilled it with hot water. The room was cold, and the steam poured out of the water and off the dishes. I could feel it on my face. She said, They’re not just red, that’s not it, is it now. I rinsed off the frying pan and ran my fingers around it to check for grease. My knuckles were starting to ache again, already. She said, When you close your eyes on a sunny day, it’s a bit like that color. Her voice was very quiet. I stood still and listened. She said, It’s hard to describe. A lorry went past and the whole house shook with it and I heard her step away from the window, the way she does. I asked why she was so surprised. I told her it was autumn, it was what happened: the days get shorter, the chlorophyll breaks down, the leaves turn a different color. I told her she went through this every year. She said, It’s just lovely, they’re lovely, that’s all, you don’t have to. I finished the dishes and poured out the water and rinsed the bowl. There was a very red skirt she used to wear, when we were young. She dyed her hair to match it once and some people in the town were moved to comment. Flame-red, she called it then. Perhaps these leaves were like that, the ones she was trying to describe. I dried my hands and went through to the front room and stood beside her. I felt for her hand and held it. I said, But tell me again.

  UNITED STATES

  Like a Family

  Meg Pokrass

  THE CITY IS always moving its pinkie to tell me it’s alive. One day it smells like steaming artichokes—another day, lapsang souchong tea. My friends, other secretaries, gather on the sunny bench like a bouquet. From a block away it looks as if they are complaining, bending backwards and yawning. He never liked them, or even wanted to know them, but now that he’s not around, they’re what I have.

  I live on Carl Street near the park in a room big enough for myself and maybe a ferret, a half block from the express train. I work downtown in an office complex where I keep schedules for three generations of architects. For Christmas they gave me a robot dog and a gift certificate to TravelSmith.

  My stomach twists like an earthworm after the rain. I tell myself I won’t wait for the phone to ring anymore, but have waited all Saturday morning again. When it rings, I count to three, touch “talk.”

  “Yo Yo Ma,” I say.

  Calling me is probably on his “to do” list, which I imagine includes trying on new running shoes in preparation for his next marathon, meeting his training coach in her live/work space, upgrading his phone or his GPS running gizmo, catching up with his ex-wife over Dragonwell tea. Taking the kids for the weekend, so she can play.

  “What’s new?” he asks.

  He’s lighting up—I can tell because his breathing sounds ragged and doggy. Rain starts drumming on my roof. I look at the ceiling, which seems to be sagging in on itself. It’s not my ceiling, so let it crumble.

  “I miss you at lunch,” I say.

  “The world is your oyster,” he says. He said the same words when I told him my period was late, very late and that we had a pink color from it all. Still, he said, he was moving to London to help raise his elementary school kids. The main thing, he told me, was that his brother would never fire me—that I was like family. As long as I remained with the firm. His voice sounded thick, like he’d just received Novocain.

  “So we’re a firmly?” I’d said, blood warming up my face like a space heater that really worked.

  He didn’t laugh. He never laughs.

  On the phone there are silences and delays—words that could have been taken from flash cards. My voice echoes back at me, and I hate the sound of it. I imagine the glow of his cigarette illuminating London. I hang up and it all comes out. After I clean my mouth and face, I take a walk.

  MALTA

  The Madonna Round Evelina’s

  Pierre J. Mejlak

  HE HAD MET her at the Hungry Duck, in the heart of Moscow, where the ladies can drink as much as they like free of charge until half eleven at night. The two of them happened to be at the bar. She with a Hanky-Panky, he a Vodka Martini. Their eyes fell first on the glasses; then, they looked at each other and realized that they were, kind of, alone. And it’s astonishing how, even in the freeze of Moscow, one word leads to another.

  And six months later there she was, with him in the house he inherited from his grandfather, in a small village in a dwarfish country somewhere between Sicily and Libya. Roża—the neighbor across the road, who administered the holy communion to the old ladies of the village—said that in order to find a woman he must have bought her. Others elaborated somewhat and said that he bought her over the Internet. And there were some who would smile whenever they saw the couple, as if they were some kind of joke. Of course, some of the priests and those a little too intimate with them would look at the couple as if they were seeing Judas Iscariot carrying a crate of Hopleaf beer. Because—quite obviously—they were living in sin.

  They were happy. She took care of the house, decorated it, watered the bougainvillea, killed the flies and rode around on her bicycle, whilst he would shuttle home from work and to work from home. They never spoke much about religion, except for the obvious stuff, such as “see that over there, look, that’s a church” or almost in passing, like when she took down a poster of the Last Supper from the kitchen wall because it didn’t match the decoration, and he accepted with a hug. He was a Catholic. Baptised, first communion and confirmation. But as Evel
ina never mentioned mass or anything along those lines, he didn’t want to bring them up himself. Until one day, a Saturday morning, whilst Evelina was out on her bike, they brought them the Madonna.

  “We brought you the Madonna,” said the neighbor, as he opened the front door.

  The Madonna was passed around the entire village, from one end to the other, each house passing her to the next. Each home would keep her for two days, mostly in the kitchen with the oil from the chip pan slapping her face, or in the sitting room next to Super One TV.

  What was he to do? Tell the neighbor he didn’t want it because it didn’t match Evelina’s decoration? Refuse the Madonna? Wasn’t it to her that he prayed whenever he was in the doctor’s waiting room squirming with pain? And now he should refuse her? No chance. He took her inside, placed her on the kitchen table, and went back to cutting his toenails. Then, in came Evelina.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “What you want it to be, Evelina, ћi? That’s the Madonna.”

  “And what is the Madonna doing in our kitchen?”

  It was useless trying to explain what it was all about. There was no point in showing her there were people who kept their lives occupied in these things. Evelina took the Madonna and put her under the stairs, such that you had to crouch down in order to see her, as if having to go under a truck.