Foul, spongy fungus,
Nursed on fetid, dank decay,
Posturing as food.

It Came in the Mail Flash Fiction Contest

(500 words or less)

I didn’t win and I didn’t make the short list, but I did make the long list. As a rank amateur, I’ll take it and crow! 😉

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Mark Me Tardy But Present

Opening my mother’s mail after she passed felt like an overstep of boundaries, but it was left to me to tie up these strings of her estate. Even three months later, it remained an uncomfortable responsibility. Mother had cherished her privacy and autonomy.

They arrived bundled, envelopes of differing size stuffed inside a large bubble mailer. Eleven total. All but one displayed the jaundiced touch of age and carried the dusty scent of decay. The postmark was local, the same zip code as mother’s, but offered no return address. The smaller envelopes were not addressed or stamped. Each one simply bore my mother’s name,  Mrs. Perdue, in the same large, studied hand.

The first one, I chose by bulk. Though the size of a standard greeting card, its bulging middle begged investigation. The gummed flap parted at the pressure of my fingernail with something akin to a sigh of relief.

Inside was a carefully folded paper napkin. A piece of yellowed tape had been placed at its bottom to seal the sides, but had long since detached. With care, I unwound the napkin to reveal its mystery.

Despite the sender’s attempt to preserve it, the cicada nested in the folds had been visited by the harsh hand of time. The mosaic of its wings had disintegrated into shards and its corpse had collapsed in on itself. By some fluke, its red eyes were still intact.

The second envelope contained two squares of cardboard: one humble five cent Mallo Money token, the other a more impressive twenty-five.

Five Bazooka Joe comics were enclosed in the next envelope, one with the fortune “You can count on others, but it’s better to use your fingers and toes.”

 At first glance, the next two envelopes seemed to be filled with a modest amount of pot. It took a moment to realize they were the ghosts of wild flowers, wasted to shadow by neglect.

Seven conversation hearts filled the smallest envelope: Be Mine.

Next: a pristine plastic whistle sporting the Trix rabbit, three fossilized pixie sticks, fused together, and a mood ring, its cheap metal band flattened and tarnished to brown, the crown’s crystal stuck at Stressed.

The last envelope contained a card. Its cover featured a teacher with signature apple. Inside, in a tighter, more mature version of the now familiar script:

Mrs. Perdue,

I was out of the country and didn’t hear of your passing until a few days ago or I would have been at the funeral. Please mark me as tardy but present.

I’m paying my respects and giving you all the gifts I was too shy to give you then, when you were my teacher and savior. You taught me to read when others gave up. You changed my life and have remained with me throughout it.

Your faithful friend forever,

Anthony Bartelli

At the next visit to mother’s grave, I left the card and gifts save one conversation heart which I stood and sucked until it was gone.

   

This was written for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction 2016 Challenge

This was the Round #2 criteria for my heat (#33):
Genre – Science Fiction

Setting – A Hunting Lodge

Item –  A prosthetic limb

Dude Seems Squirrely To Me

We all go through awkward transitions in life. Why should extraterrestrials be any different?

 

Prixxod landed the zipcraft and winced as it docked to Hunting Lodge #7’s charging portal. The hammering vibration during connection meant he’d berthed poorly and evidence of that would be on the craft. Evidence his parents would notice.

Not a good start to his virgin solo flight.

Inside the lodge and divested of his flight suit, he stretched his cramped muscles and powered up a nearby console. The hunting ground popped into view.

Prixxod made use of one extruded prosthetic limb to hook to a nearby fluid-protein hose as he used two others to navigate the viewer’s controls. He zoomed in on the blue and green planet’s western hemisphere and tapped in population density queries. Yet another prosthetic scratched idly across a series of inflamed eruptions on his face as he checked the data. Once each completed its task, they reabsorbed.

He practiced a few transformations to mimic various humanoid configurations and called it good.

Fifteen minutes later, he entered the energy sheath connecting the lodge to the planet below. His descent speed increased beyond his calculations and halfway down he realized with sinking hearts his second virgin solo might also leave evidence of his ineptitude. But in a much more painful and personal way.

In a flash of reverse energy just before impact, Prixxod dumped into the spindly limbs of a small, city tree. The bows snapped under his weight. They, plus one angry, red squirrel and a surprised homeless man, cushioned his fall.

Other than his ego, very little was bruised and no limbs, prosthetic or otherwise, were broken.

#

A bottle blond in a red bandage dress nudged her friend and gestured with her chin toward a nearby table. Over the thump of bass, she shouted, “What about him, Hannah?”

“Are you kidding, Courtney? He looks homeless. And -” Hannah squinted through the pulse of lights, her nose wrinkled in disgust, “are those fur gloves he’s wearing? Super tacky.”

“You’re way too picky.” Courtney met the man’s eye, wrapped plump lips around the straw in her glass, and sucked down half of the second drink ordered that evening. An exhale of satisfaction feathered her fingers as they fixed her lipstick. “It’s called ‘grunge’. He’s cute.”

Hannah frowned as the man put his hands in his lap and bowed his head. “Who comes to a club alone?”

“He’s confident. No posse needed.”

Hannah didn’t reply. The lights had gone down as the DJ transitioned to the next song. Under the dim light of an exit sign, the man in question seemed to waver. “That’s weird.”

“Plenty of people go to clubs alone. It doesn’t mean they’re desperate or anything.”

The lights flared white hot then began pulsing at rainbow intervals. Hannah leaned forward. “What the –? Didn’t he just have a scraggly pube-beard?”

Courtney shrugged. “It’s the lighting. It plays tricks on your eyes.”

After a long pause, Hannah leaned back. “Well, at least he took the gloves off. They were creepy.”

“I didn’t see any gloves.”

“There were definitely gloves on his hands. Red fur.”

“It’s spring. No one wears gloves in spring.”

“Homeless men and hipsters do.”

Courtney raised her glass at a passing waiter. Satisfied she got her request across, she turned to roll her eyes at Hannah. “He’s not homeless.”

“He’s wearing a trench coat.”

“Businessmen wear trench coats.”

“It’s wrinkled and stained.”

Courtney’s heavy sigh was lost in the cacophony of dance music. “Are you a cyborg or something? How can you tell it’s wrinkled from here? You thought he had a beard a minute ago!”

The club was thrown into deep shadow for the length of a long bass line. When they spiralled back to life, Hannah’s hand clamped hard over Courtney’s forearm.

“Ouch! What the hell, Hannah?”

“Courtney, his coat.”

“What about it?”

“It’s clean and pressed now.”

“Oh my God, Hannah. You need to relax.” Courtney flapped her hand at the waitress. “Jameson’s!” She mimicked throwing back a shot and held up three fingers. “When the shots come, we’re going to invite him to join us.”

#

Hannah slumped against the door as Courtney fumbled with the key.

“The place is small. And the property manager lives right next to us, so we’ll have to be quiet.” The door swung open, Hannah landed with a thud, and Courtney whispered through a fit of giggles, “Oh shit. Shh. Pick her up off the floor? I have to pee.”

Prixxod watched the blond disappear down a hallway then extruded two additional arms to pick up the unconscious female and place her on a raised surface.

Her eyes fluttered open and she let out a drunken squawk of surprise. For an instant, Prixxod’s arm erupted into a mass of startled, bristling squirrels before he got his damaged prosthetics software back online. Mercifully, the female once again blacked out.

His parents had just had the software installed in him for this first, solo data hunt. He was so screwed when he got home.

“You guys, you have to be quiet!”

Prixxod whirled and retracted his arms as Courtney entered the room. She stopped, her eyes widened, and then she broke into another fit of giggles. “Not on the kitchen counter, silly!” She gestured a few feet to her right. “Put her on the couch.”

#

Courtney wasn’t sure what he’d said his name was. The club had been so loud, it had sounded like the chatter of an angry squirrel when he’d told her. Then when she’d asked in the cab, his hand had been up her skirt and all she remembered was that it sounded Russian. Or maybe French. It didn’t really matter in the end.

What mattered was that the guy was eager as hell and had foreplay down to an art form. Her head was reeling and she could barely catch her breath. He had moves like an octopus!

So who cared he smelled a little like a homeless guy. Or chattered during sex?

Hannah was too picky.

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Judges are numbered and ellipses separate each one’s comments.

WHAT THE JUDGES LIKED ABOUT YOUR STORY –   {1504}  Prixxod’s concern about berthing poorly and knowledge that his parents would notice the evidence on the craft makes him three dimensional and a character it’s easy to empathize with. I like the way Prixxod takes on the attributes of the squirrels and the homeless man. It creates much humor.…  {1601}  Good use of dialog to keep the story and action moving. Good attention to detail in the description as well.…  {1706}  I liked when you shifted the story to include Hannah’s and Courtney’s perspectives. Their personalities were well developed.…

WHAT THE JUDGES FEEL NEEDS WORK –   {1504}  Prixxod is the main character, and I think the ending would have a greater sense of resolution if you included a scene with Prixxod after the sentence “Hannah was too picky.” It would be humorous to see his parents’ reaction to the zipcraft’s damage and hear him describe his adventures.…  {1601}  What does Pixxrod have to do with the changes in appearance that occur miidway through to the end of the story? What is its significance in the bigger picture? This is unclear from the context of the story.…  {1706}  The beginning of your story was a bit slow. You could have used those first paragraphs to develop the plot more. You could have also further developed Prixxod’s personality.…

 

I wrote a story for Mashed Stories‘ recent flash challenge. The prompts were: selfie, pizza, corruption (had to be in that order) and the word count was five hundred words or less.

I’m thrilled to say my story was accepted  and shortlisted. For a short time, this was available on their site to read, but now that it’s been taken down, here is the story, below:

Stained

The ‘shrooms kick in as I sit on the edge of the tub talking to Trish. I know her face keeps changing because I’m high, but then I forget and it freaks me out.

She looks like a monster. Her mouth moves, but instead of words, worms come out. I tell her to stop it, but she doesn’t, so I go back out to the party to get away from her.

In the living room, a crowd jumps around to the pulse of colored lights. The song is the same one that played on Don’s car stereo when we were out in the Mitchell’s cow pasture earlier. The music pushes against my face and tries to choke me, so I hurry through it to the kitchen.

I need something to get rid of the nasty taste in my mouth. Trish and Dan told me ‘shrooms taste like regular mushrooms, but that’s a lie. They taste like dirt and styrofoam.

There’s pizza on the counter, so I grab a slice, get a beer, and take them outside. I sit on the porch step with my beer beside me and use my knees as a plate. Pizza grease stains my tights, directly above the grass stains on my knees, but I don’t care. I’m in trouble anyway.

My parents found pot in my jewelry box. They grounded me for the whole summer and, starting tonight, we’re supposed to see our pastor for counseling twice a week. They’ve been angry since my grades dropped and I started hanging out with ‘Godless kids’. They don’t know ‘what’s gotten into me’.

Nothing yet, but I’m working up to it.

My phone buzzes. I pull it out of the pocket of my jeans skirt and see my mother’s text: Where are you?

I tap the camera icon, take a selfie with the beer at my mouth, and hit send. When the phone rings, I reject the call, but I read the text that follows: Melissa Ann, come home immediately.

It’s too hard to text. The touch pad keeps licking my fingers with its sandpaper tongue, so I use the voice recognition software. “The grass stains on my tights won’t come clean. I think you’ll have to throw them out. Dirty things don’t belong in your house, do they?”

Fireflies switch on and off around me. Their lights leave trails and I lose myself in the messages they spell: SLUT. WHORE. TRAMP.

Minutes, maybe hours, later I finish recording my text. “When you discovered John was stained, you threw him out. In four years, when I’m an adult, you can throw me out, too. By then I’ll have caused enough scandal it should eclipse the fact you have a gay son. Then you and Dad can hold your heads up in church, proud you purged your house of all its corruption.”

I hit send.

The phone rings. I toss it into the grass, gulp my beer, then go back inside to look for Dan.

You can read The Good Son on author, Liz Schriftsteller‘s site. My story won Liz’s micro-fiction challenge based on the challenge criteria here.