Fictional Publications

#8: Rearview

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:29:00 +0000

Summer had come and gone that year, shorter than usual. Before long, it was time to go. It wasn't until the harbor was almost out of sight that he noticed all that he had given up. It would be three years before he came back. At least that's what he thought.

He already stood, watching the harbor shrink and roll over the world, composing a letter to her in his mind.The air, the smells, the sounds. One of the few aboard that wouldn't be undergoing backbreaking toil over these years, he had his own quarters and as much ink and paper as he could use. Volumes, he swore to her, he would write and send volumes aboard every homeward bound ship they came across. And the three years would feel like nothing.

But he didn't come back. Someone else in his skin, did. Solemn, tempered, and distant. He had given up much more than he thought he had that day. And it was as if that passing summer ha just fallen off the branch for her.

She didn't recognize him in his rags disembarking the ship. He walked past, coming close enough to smell her. And she still didn't see him. It was evident, then, that he wasn't the same. He kept walking.

Issue Six Index

#7: Deus ex Machina

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:13:00 +0000

"Well, I think it's lame. Why does the woodcutter come out of nowhere to cut open the wolf? And what kind of wolf eats a kid and her grandma whole?" said Mother.

"Sorry, I just threw that in. The girls were too bothered by the ending," Father replied, dipping a scone into his coffee. "They were overjoyed that Red lived."

"Why didn't you just change the ending? Like have the grandmother hide in the closet and then have Red trick the wolf into jumping into the fireplace or something?"

Father thought about this. As much as he tossed and turned it over and over in his mind that night, he couldn't imagine a grandmother with the wherewithal to hide when the wolf knocks on the door nor a little girl who could trick a predator like that so devilishly. No, the only way was to have a man enter the scene and take care of things. That was the only way for a happy ending.

"I've given it thought," Father said, tightening his tie the next morning. "And you're right. I think it's not fair to have the woodsman show up like that, out of the blue."

"Thank you, I think it would do good to not have them eaten at all, don't you, dear?"

"Not at all; they must be eaten. I've decided not to soften the story. They'll simply be torn to smithereens."

Mother stood agape. "Dear, how in the world do you expect them to sleep at night with a story like that?"

"Away from wolves, honey. That's the point. They'll have to learn it some way."

Issue Six Index

#6: The Yard

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:09:00 +0000

"It's quiet out here."

"It would be if you'd shut up."

"No, I mean like, no crickets or cars passing by or anything."

"Shhh."

Ryan somehow knew that it was better to stay quiet walking through Live Oak Resthaven. The concrete and stone slabs around us stood stoic, quiet, and alert. I couldn't help the feeling that talking or whistling would break the spell they had over the place. I followed, though, in quiet, as he was the leader.

Finally we stopped at a grave; a sculpture of a woman grasping a headstone, mourning her lost love.

"Here she is," he whispered. "I stayed the night here one year ago tonight. It's your turn."

"You're staying too, right?" I blurted loudly.

"Shh! Of course not. You think I'm going through it all again?"

"All what, for God's sake? What happened?"

He never did tell me what it was that happened that night. We had joked about it before hand, put money in a pot, and I swore that if he did it, I would go a year later--the second date carved into the rock. But when he came back, he didn't joke, he didn't laugh when we asked him how it was. His relationship with Sara fell apart quietly, and he didn't seem to mind working later hours at the record store.

"We can talk about it in the morning. God knows I've waited too long to talk about it. I can't wait."

He turned and I wasn't able to see him for more than fifteen second until he was swallowed by the darkness. I was afraid I would be swallowed next.

Issue Six Index

#5: Rotary

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:32:00 +0000

It wasn't the first night I spent in the new place, but maybe the third or fourth.

The old rotary phone that was in the closet when I moved in still worked, I found out. I plugged it in next to the bed and played with the wheel, pulling it to 9, letting go. To 8, letting go. To 7. Sitting on my bed, looking around the room, moving the rotary.

It rang, bright and jarring, just past one in the morning. I answered it, mentally surveying the list of people who knew the number already.

"Mark?" The voice wasn't familiar.

"No. Eddie. You must have the wrong number."

"Oh my god, sorry!" she said, hanging up.

Then again, the phone bells range. "Hi, Mark?"

"Still Eddie," I said.

"Oh shit."

The third time I answered, "Mark here." And she laughed.

Mark was her brother, new to the area like I was and gave her the wrong number. She knew he'd be up because he got off work that late. We talked about the city and the coast. I looked out the window at the clouds moving across the moon when she told me about her husband, how he left with their accounts in tow two years before. When I told her about my work, the job I was worried wouldn't make it through the turmoil that I had just take. Holding the heavy old receiver in my hand, I listened to her crying as the sun was stretching up over the hills, stars receding.

She apologized for not fixing her hair at breakfast, sorry she looked like she was up all night.

Issue Six Index

#4: Morning in Haiku

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:34:00 +0000

When at last the sun
rose, we couldn't remember
being so scared.

But the whole night, through
the wind and the cold and what
sounded like animals

sniffing at the sides
of the tent, we slept little
if we slept at all.

Underneath us, spread
out for miles, a canyon of
red rocks that wasn't

visible when we
pitched our tent last night was just
being touch by the sun.

We built a fire
with little fuss. We ate. Then
it was time to go.

Issue Six Index

#3: The Poet

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:50:00 +0000

"I'm always surprised to see where they go." He slurred his words, tongue too slippery with wine. "When I sit down to write them, they are wondering and lost. I bring them in, my children, and make poems out of them."

Mari was finding it harder and harder to enjoy this man whose words she had devoured so selfishly for years before. Glasser had written a slender book of poetry, Slave Heart, that had been like a bible for her and her friends in college.

"It's like God has made me a god for them. Proud, and petulant, you know." His eyes half-closed, his cigarette dangling dangerously between the tips of his fingers.

"But you know this, my child. You know or you wouldn't have come so far to see me, for us to meet this way." He nodded at Mari, almost falling out of his seat. Those surrounding them at the big table in the middle of the bar laughed and cackled at the performance they knew this man to deliver every night he came out.

It took the heater a while to warm up in the car as she drove home. "I am sorry, Mari, but I warned you he'd be this way. He always is," Cera said. "In some ways, I wish I had never taken this position, you know. It breaks my heart to see him this way. I mean, Rick Glasser, you know? The only poet I ever loved, a pathetic self-obsessed drunk. This is the worst internship I can imagine. Tomorrow morning he'll pile grant work on me and pretend this night never happened."

But Mari didn't know what she was talking about. She was hardly listening to her friend. She had seen a depth of pain and sorrow in the man who had written that tome of heartache. She was moved by the way the world inflicted him all over again.

Issue Six Index

#2: Angel

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:39:00 +0000

The dirt made a dusty cloud around the girl who slid into the base. Before it was fully clear, she noticed that her foot didn't quite touch the bag, so Marla dropped the ball clumsily onto the ground.

She didn't mind that her coach gave her shit about it during the stretch. She had known the girl--what was her name?-- back in elementary school, back when she came to class one day after being out for two weeks wearing a halo to keep her neck straight. Marla sat behind her and watched the ways the pins went into the skin on her shaved head.

Brianna, that was it. Brianna Philips.

And it was pitch dark at Camp Vale, the girl scout camp two years later, when Brianna whispered in the dark about why she had worn the halo, how she had broken her neck. And when word of it got around, Marla wasn't at all surprised to hear that her father had found work in another town, that Brianna had to move, that no one had her number.

It didn't make the winning run. It would be hard to say if it affected the outcome of the game or of playoffs or of anyone's chance for a softball scholarship. But she was glad. Marla was glad she dropped the ball. Even if she didn't say hi after the game. Even if they pretended not to know each other. Even if it was he smallest measure of pity she could imagine after all these years.

Issue Six Index

Issue Number Six Index

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:46:00 +0000

Another issue of micro-fictions! And more!

1. Roadside
2. Angel
3. The Poet
4. Morning in Haiku
5. Rotary
6. The Yard
7. Deus ex Machina
8. Rearview

#1: Roadside

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 05:03:00 +0000

Steinbeck Bend Road curved in front of me, sharp and sudden. To my right, a white fence held in a green stretch of shallow hills where horses grazed. Coming up to the light, before turning towards China Springs, a congress of three small crosses stood by the road. They'd been there for as long as I was driving this road, at least five or six months.

But today they had a visitor.

A woman stood next to them and bent down to lay something on the ground in front of the middle cross. The cross stood white against the green grass, reaching up and out, stoic. She stood up and looked again at the three memorials before her.

My light turned green; the truck in front me began to roll forward into the intersection. The woman fell back down to her knees, her hands covering her face.

From the rear view mirror, I couldn't tell if it was her son, daughter, husband, friend, or lover who had died on the road, in the middle of the night, five or six months before.

Issue Six Index

Publication!

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:19:00 +0000

My first book is available for purchase today!

I wrote a short-story version of "The Traveler" almost 10 years ago while I was in college. I always wanted to revisit the story--something about those characters really captured my attention. I finally sat down to write the novel version two years ago and I managed to finish a first draft in just over a week.

You can now buy my book in ebook format. It is for sale as an ebook, published by Jupiter Gardens Press. If it makes a good showing in that format (300 copies), then it goes to print. That's right: you can buy the book twice!

It's cheap, five bucks, and it would help my dreams come true to have you buy a copy and write a review of it today.

Thanks!

Issue Number Five

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:53:00 +0000

#30: Awake

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:59:00 +0000

"Are you awake?"

The soft voice could have come from my own head; in the dark I couldn't tell.

I rolled over.

And it came rushing back to me. All of it. The way I almost drown when I was five, just a month before getting Castle Grayskull for Christmas; the time I made a pinch-pot in the fourth grade, sitting next to the blond girl who I had a crush on; running away from security guards with my brother and our friends, laughing; the Grand Canyon; a car accident I saw in New Mexico, the people I watched die; moving to a new city by myself, learning without studying; Vermont, green and with snow; Erik and how he left the world; the time I died when I was 26, reborn in the same place during the same instant, looking down on a smaller version of me; doing it again a year later, but seeing clearly how this one was so much more than I could ever be.

I reached out to hold her hand in the dark.

I wanted to tell her that 30 years ago, I jumped into the abyss and was still falling. I'm staring down to the bottom of Grand Canyon now, feeling smaller and less important, but less lost.

When I stop falling, I know she'll be there to see me off.

"I'm awake," I say.

Micro-Fiction Index

#29: Stillborn

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:30:00 +0000

"We've been staring long enough."

But it wasn't long enough, no matter what I tell myself. "There were over 50,000 books published last year," I think. "But I can walk into a bookstore and pick one out in about five minutes. This," I say pointing, "is a lot bigger deal."

It feels like I'm getting through this time. It feels like I understand. But still, I have to just pick one.

Mine was a boy, so that part was obvious enough. The hair made it little easier--fine baby hair like all of theirs. They didn't weigh it, or didn't tell me the weight, or I don't remember, so that doesn't really factor in.

"Just take one, just take that one, now!"

I reach down and look at him. His hand reaches out and grabs my fingers. At 38 weeks, I was having dreams about my baby's hand reaching out--my stretched skin like a thin membrane--and holding my hand. A week later, he was gone.

"That's him!" I hear myself saying. "He picked you over them."

I trip the fire alarm. I move.

Micro-Fiction Index

#28: Stove on the Face

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:04:00 +0000

Charlie and Claire had fought earlier that day. They made up and went out for dinner.

They were wandering around Seaport Village, a touristy collection of ocean-themed shops when they came across a loud guy with a collection plate bragging about his balancing prowess. He was going to balance: 1) a Coke bottle on a stick at the end of his nose; 2) a little girl in a chair on top of his head; and for a finale, 3) a stove on his face.

Claire clapped when he balanced the Coke bottle, laughed when he drank it empty. She held her breath when he balanced the little girl, who took a little bow at the end of her part. And Claire held her two hands together with her fingers wrapped tight against her heart, mouth agape, eyes stunningly wide, while the large bald Eastern-European guy balanced the stove on his face.

Claire hopped up and down wildly, a smile stretching her skin to the limits of its elasticity when he took the stove down and bowed.

Charlie didn't feel threatened. It's just that she showed a level of enthusiasm and happiness in her composure that she had never come close to displaying when watching him do anything. No matter how hard he tried, Charlie would never think that he captured her imagination and held her heart again, he just knew.

He looked out across the bay at the Coronado Bridge and imagined what it would feel like, those rich moments of free-fall, breaking the surface-tension of the choppy water.

Micro-Fiction Index

#27: Rita

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:18:00 +0000

He wasn't even outside the tollway before he realized what a bad idea this evacuation was. Two days later, having traveled less than a hundred miles, he knew that he should have turned back during those early moments.

There was no where to stay but a crowded gymnasium. The cast-off cafeteria food, the information sheets being handed around, and the smell of a thousand displaced Houstonians sleeping in the same huge room made him wish the hurricane would wipe out his little apartment so he could just move on.

But he called her anyway.

She left with her new boyfriend. They'd headed north to Huntsville where he kept a small lake house. When she answered he could hear the ambient sound of people enjoying themselves. In the middle of their conversation, she turned her face away from the phone to request that her steak was cooked "medium."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I have to go. I'm making the potato salad and I need two hands. I really don't want you to be upset, if that's any consolation."

"It's not. That steak would be consolation."

She laughed.

"I just need a fresh start, I guess," he muttered into an empty phone.

And by the time the hurricane had passed, and news had reached him that the damage was minimal, he was too tired to think of turning around and heading back down 290 again. But not even Rita was going to hand him a fresh start.

Micro-Fiction Index

#26: Her Place

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:31:00 +0000

"God, I never bring people here."

By comparison, my apartment and any of my friends' houses were sparse if not empty.

Her house was small, full of windows, creaky hardwood floors, floor lamps, and shelves on every wall in the first two rooms. They were filled with books in one room, and vinyl records in another. She had a turntable that looked brand new with a large stereo system.

"I'll just be a second," she said, slipping down the hall.

It was a singular experience to see the records, arranged alphabetically, in the cubby-shelves. I looked under "S" and found Spiritualized and put on Pure Phase. The slippery strings rang around the room in the opening track. I picked up a picture from the table next to me; it was her, younger, with her father, the photo yellowed with that 70s wash.

"You live with your parents?" I called out to her room, picking up other pictures. There wasn't one that I could find of her over 15, not one that was of anyone besides her and her parents.

"No. Well, no."

I paced the room, looking at the records, looking at the pictures.

A desk, covered in pictures and dust stood out, made an impression, and I felt a void standing there.

I stood, looking at the desk. She came over.

"When did they die?" I asked.

"When I was 17."

I saw in her eyes the distance of stars. I felt her heart beating in her fingertips.

Micro-Fiction Index

#25: The Appointment

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:25:00 +0000

She'll be here, she'll be here, I keep telling myself.

I sit on a couch, drinking some kind of latte-of-the-day. I'm reading Kerouac, hoping that will give just the right impression. Saturday nights are filled to the brim here, but I have perhaps the only empty seat next to me, reserved by my over-stuffed backpack.

She'll be here, she'll be here.

She finally walks in. She changed her hair a little, which seems to be something she does every week, and now it's more red. She wraps a black apron on and slips behind the counter saying, "Sorry" to the manager who's face would be more comfortable tapping a watch.

I read and I wait.

I listen to the conversations around me. Someone's failing math. Someone's breaking up with her boyfriend, but he won't find out for another couple weeks. Someone's planning a road trip, an escape from this town, maybe never coming back.

She pulls shots, mixes drinks, smiles. Repeats.

Three and a half hours and the place is still packed. It's loud, even with the carpets and soft furniture. Even with the people in the next room concentrating on chess, it's loud.

Finally, I see her making a drink for herself, her apron still tied around her but taken off her shoulders. She has fifteen minutes.

She steps from behind the counter, looks around at the full coffee house.

I move my backpack. I motion to the now empty seat and smile.

Micro-Fiction Index

#24: Back

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:50:00 +0000

The road hummed beneath them.

"I just think we should have gone back."

"There wasn't a way to go back! You saw as well as I did. We looked for too long."

"It's a mistake."

"It's not a mistake when it's the only choice you can make, is it? There's not a 'back' anymore to go to. You saw that."

"There's always a way. If we didn't find it, it doesn't mean it wasn't there. We didn't look hard enough. We didn't see it, it was too hard, and we gave up."

"You want to go back now?"

"No."

"We can try. We can look and fucking look again, and I can tell you that we won't find it. But I'll waste the rest of my life on it if I have to."

"Just forget it. Just," she paused. "Let's try to remember it, okay? Let's try to remember all that we had seen there."

"It's not like we could forget."

The road hummed beneath them.

Micro-Fiction Index

#23: Bone Collection

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:08:00 +0000

Things were unnerving with all the ghosts around. In the living room, when the sun was just right coming through the parted windows, you could see two people playing cards at a table that wasn't there. In the den, there were no less than three people reading books at one time.

We knew the cause was father's bone collection in the basement. He had my brother and me follow him to the old cemetery in the hills and gather the bones at night. The rains and soil on the hill had kept them in "wonderful condition," he told us.

I wondered if the graves crawled with these spirits before we took the bones, or if the movement disturbed their memories, or if it was all in my head, as my mother had suggested that we were collectively going crazy.

I tried to speak with them, tried to hold conversations. Only once did a man look at me, confused, as if he were staring at an apparition.

Father categorized them below us. The different bones, the different bodies, all in a taxidermical strata of organization. He showed us breaks, healed bones, diseases of the heart that had affected the marrow.

In the years that followed, long after the ghosts left our home, I wondered what attentions my bones would have, framed in cases or filtered into stone. Or would the the wind just whip the grasses above them, carrying pollen through gentle breezes?

Micro-Fiction Index

#22: The Shoemaker

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:16:00 +0000

Really, Gus didn't mind sleeping with the dogs. They were, for the most part, courteous, and, essentially, just as clean as anyone else in the household.

The oldest dog, Brik, was really the only one that seemed to care for him. His hair was matted in some places and falling off in others, brown, gray, dingy. If the man hit the boy, Brik would growl until he was hit, as well. The man supposed that the only reason Brik didn't scurry away with the other dogs was because he was so old.

On this night, Gus was lying in the kitchen, his head on a pile of straw that he had taken from the outside. Brik was next to him, huffing out hot air. Gus liked sleeping in the kitchen because the opening in the roof above the stove let him see the stars. The shoemaker had been there that day, traveling from the woods. He spent all day in the village. Near the bedroom was a row of new shoes for a few of the other children and the man's repaired shoes. Gus could smell the leather.

"Brik," the boy said. "The shoemaker showed me where he walked from." His voice was a whisper. "I think he meant us to follow."

When the snores were deep from the bedroom, Gus stood and walked, slowly, to a new pair of shoes and picked it up.

Brik didn't follow him out the door.

Micro-Fiction Index

#21: Activists

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:36:00 +0000

"Only time will let the full story of our actions here tonight be told."

Everyone nodded in agreement. But I wondered what the hell he thought that was supposed to mean.

"It's within the space of the day that we act, that our action's roots will hold together or let fall apart the unity that we feel here today."

Now they clapped. It was within the wash of enthusiasm that the spray paint cans were handed around. Jill and I were supposed to take "Block 49," which was fine with me because it was near my apartment.

"Don't you think he's wonderful?" That's Jill. That's what she said while we're headed out there in my Plymouth Arrow. "He really makes me feel like we're making a difference, right?"

"Right," I said.

Painstakingly, we were to spray umlauts over every vowel on the block. Every so often, Jill stopped to say something like, "This will open their eyes!"

Her smile was infectious. With each stop sign and no parking sign that we struck, I found her more and more attractive. When we were about half way down the block, I kissed her. I pulled away to see her face as the very embodiment of a question mark.

"Only time will let the full story of that kiss be told."

She smiled. We left the rest of block 49 alone.

Micro-Fiction Index

#20: Empty

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:47:00 +0000

It wasn't long after the snow that they started to see blue in the sky again. Strapping on their shoes, the two took a walk down through the trees on the edge of the hill.

The incline was more than they had remembered from the last time the weather was right for snow shoeing. Out of breath, they stopped in the trees and sat on a stump where they often sat. The murky sunlight filtered through branches and needles. There wasn't as much snow under the canopy.

After they gained their breath, Tom spoke first. "I think this is the last time we'll come here," he said. "Year after year, like there's no other place in the world."

Helen nodded. "Someplace warmer next year. Maybe just stay home."

Sunlight picked up, now, raining through the trees, dropping warmed snow around them.

Tom put his arm around Helen. "It's been fifteen years, you know?"

She nodded.

"I still miss him so much," he said, tears in his eyes. "And sometimes I feel like we were running away when we left here. Running away from him."

She leaned in heavy against his chest. "Maybe it's not the only place in the world," Helen said at last. "But maybe we are stuck here."

The snow would pick up tomorrow. Wood would burn in the stove. Besides Helen and Tom, the house would stand empty.

Micro-Fiction Index

#19: Telemarketing

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:51:00 +0000

Shit, shit, shit, how the hell did they get his number again?

"I'm waiting, sir." The voice said, without even a note so clear as apathy in the voice.

"I'm thinking, ma'am. I just, you know, I'm thinking."

"I don't know, sir. I'm ready for you to stop thinking now."

It wasn't fair. He changed his number six times in the last year, and every single time, they still managed to break through. In fact, telemarketers were the only demographic that ever called anymore.

"No, then, okay? No. Not at this time. Thank you for your concern."

"Can I ask why not, sir? After all, there's no initial risk to you in the very least. After your 90 day trial, you can always cancel by sending in a bank draft with 'cancel' scrawled all over it to our home office. Why wouldn't you try us."

The knife. It was just out of reach. Blast! he knew he shouldn've bought a cordles phone--his wrists would be in tatters by now!

"I have to go, there's (that's it) water boiling over!"

"I'll just send it out, thank you!" *click*

Fuck. He slammed the phone down on the counter. Damn.

Micro-Fiction Index

#18: Leicester Square

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:18:00 +0000

Looking for parking somewhere near North Beach, we kept hitting rewind of the CD player, listening over and over to Leicester Square. It was the anthem for the night, that was sure. I don't know at this point if we were actually under the impression that Leicester Square was in San Fransisco or not, but it was the anthem, god damn it.

Rancid still swimming in our heads, we walked passed the coffee shops, stuck our heads into City Lights Books, and on down the street.

Ours would be a night of bacheloric freedom. It would be held up as a true expression of brotherhood, exhilaration, and recreational debauchery.

Later, lost in a taxi, we asked to be "just dropped off right here." We sat on a cement wall, looking at the frosty waves coming in. We had to be miles and miles away from our car, carelessly parallel parked on a hill.

He started smoking. I had a Pepsi.

A dull evening that stood out in relief among so many other dull evenings. Maybe it was because I left my jacket in the taxi. Maybe it was because the karaoke bar didn't have Leicester Square in the catalog. Maybe it was because the waves were pulling at the sand on the shore, bringing them in to the endlessness; washing up shells from another world to be cleaned, painted, and sold in a hundred different gift shops.

Micro-Fiction Index

#17: Prosthetics, part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Sol Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:18:00 +0000

Outside, clouds drift across the sky. The light in the room keeps changing, a glow behind my eyelids, then darkness, then the red glow again. I think of the way I used to lie under the sky, looking up at the passing clouds, thinking of all the places they've been, all the places they were going.

I just want to sleep. I just want to be away.

I can't help but to feel like it's his fault. I mean, I know that it's not. I know that there wasn't much he could have done. But I also can't help but to think that he's waiting on me now, hand and foot, out of guilt.

Every time I think I will drift off, that damn bird starts singing again. The chirping, almost a clicking, is jarring enough to keep me awake every time I think I might escape.

The pills will help. I finally open my eyes to see him.

"Do you hear the bird?"

"No," I say. His attempts at conversation are so tedious.

There's an itch on my leg again. I reach down, reminded again of the accident, when it's not there to scratch.

Micro-Fiction Index