Short Stories
Published by Flash Fiction Online Magazine on July 29, 2024.
Bat Gram
The dog was barking.
Dorothy sat on her porch swing. Normally she’d be knitting, but even at 11:00 p.m. it was too hot, too muggy, and breezes were elusive. She smiled watching the bats flitting around the streetlights swooping up bugs; their swirling shadows reminded her of tiny, animated versions of the signal used to summon Batman.
Lights were out at the Carlsons’. Henry must be working the day shift tomorrow. Two bikes were strewn on the sidewalk in front of the Greys’. She tsked. Someone would break a leg falling over them one of these days.
The dog was still barking.
Dorothy sighed, peeled herself off the swing, and went inside to scrounge for leftovers. A pork chop would do.
She carried it to the house three doors down the block.
The smell of the feces littering the yard assaulted her olfactory senses as she approached.
The dog was a German Shepard mutt. It whined as she walked up to the fence, but its chain leash was too short for it to come over for a pet. It watched her, ears wary, but tail slowly wagging. She tossed it the chop, which it scarfed down, then looked at her for more. “That’s it, Buddy.” She wasn’t sure of its name, but Buddy seemed to fit. Nice enough dog.
The dog’s owners had moved to the neighborhood a few months ago. The woman was never outside. The man, large and hulking, looked mean. Dorothy had never seen either play with Buddy or even pet him. She went back to her house for a bottle of water and a bowl, then used a stick to push the filled bowl towards the dog. The water was gone in seconds. Dorothy left.
The barking began again.
Once home, she made a phone call. Good friends always pick up, even when it’s late.
She valued the quiet late night evenings. Dorothy’s days were filled with raucous activity—her five-year-old grandson Sammy had been dropped off to live with her some time back. She sighed. Dorothy didn’t like thinking about her daughter and her many problems. Her grandson’s newest obsession was Batman. Sammy would zoom around the house, clad only in his worn Batman underpants, chasing bad guys, which consisted of some motley stuffed animals he’d found in the back of a closet. When there were no other kids to play with, Sammy enlisted her help. She’d been dubbed “Bat Gram” and when the laundry was folded and the dishes put away, they schemed together to save the world.
Back on her porch, Dorothy saw a van roll up the street and park. A man got out, jumped the fence and walked over to Buddy, holding out an offering. Buddy ate it. She heard a small noise as a bolt cutter neatly sliced through the leash and watched as the man guided the dog to the van’s door. He tipped his hat to her as they drove away and she waved her thanks in return.
Ron and Joan had a big farm. Buddy would enjoy being one of their pack.
In the darkness, Dorothy surveyed her domain.
All was quiet.
All was well.
Bat Gram.
Published by Miniskirt Magazine Link, Issue 17, 2022
Carousel
In the most romantic city in the world, under the magically beautiful Eiffel Tower, Joan leaned against a post and stretched her knotted back muscles as she watched her twin boys ride the carousel.
Suddenly, the wooden horse winked at her.
She looked around to see if anyone else had seen it, only to find a young Frenchman watching her. She wondered idly how she knew he was French. Thin and dark, he was quite the contrast to her blond husband, who was tending towards a nicely padded dad bod these days. But it was more than that. The way he leaned against the carousel fence, simply the curve of his smile, was clearly French, and he was indeed smiling - at her.
Embarrassed, she looked down.
When she gazed up again, he was standing next to her. She felt for her purse. Pickpockets were rampant in this tourist Mecca, but her purse, with its cross-body strap and slice-resistant construction, was still in place.
She turned to face him, and found herself smiling back at him, drawn by his laughing brown eyes, unable to turn away.
As they regarded each other, the Seine was reflected in his dark and deeply liquid irises. Without thinking, Jean leaned over and kissed him full on the lips, drawn by those two slowly moving swirls.
Their tongues touched, and time stopped.
She caressed his cheek; he touched her breast. Clothes disappeared. They were in a whirlpool now, which was starting to move faster and faster. There was no way to resist the powerful, churning water. As they wrapped their legs and arms around each other, the water, circling tighter and tighter, pulled them through a dark mysterious tunnel which enveloped them for an eternity…
————————————————————
The sun was bright on her face when she finally opened her eyes. There he was, still leaning against the carousel fence, still smiling. When he glanced her way, she blushed. Then, the twins were jumping beside her, demanding money for another ride. She searched in her purse and found the needed euros and they ran away to mount their favorite animals.
The calliope played, the lions and tigers and ostriches began to move rhythmically up and down, and in Paris, the most romantic city in the world, the painted horse winked at her again.
Published by Creation Magazine, Vol 3, Spring, 2023
More Cowbell!
Emma looked around the living room full of boxes. She was packing to leave the house she and her husband had moved into a few years ago, hoping for a life-long stay. But, after enough screaming arguments, her marriage joined the wrong end of the divorce statistics.
It had taken both their incomes to qualify for the mortgage, so of course they had to sell the house when they split. He had moved out almost immediately, which meant that the bulk of the move ended up on her shoulders. Typical. Emma shook the bottle of merlot—almost empty. She upended the bottle and chugged the remnants, then rummaged around to find another bottle before realizing the corkscrew was already packed. Damn. As if the night wasn’t hellish enough. As if her life wasn’t hellish enough. Divorced. No kids. She was moving to a cheap apartment complex where she didn’t know anyone, the only place she could afford; the divorce had eaten up most of her savings. With the recession, even keeping her job was in question.
The cowbell sat on the counter waiting for Emma to determine its fate. She had forgotten about it, until she found it in a high kitchen cabinet, tucked behind a casserole dish. She picked it up and felt its hard metal coldness, then shook it to hear its ring. It had hung on her great-grandmother’s brown jersey cow, a much-loved animal with soft dark eyes and a velvet nose. Her father traded five bushels of apples for it and for years the cow had given them milk, and cream, and butter. But fate and weather intervened, and they lost the farm, and with it the cow. When it was time to say goodbye, Emma’s great-grandmother had tearfully slipped the cowbell from the cow’s neck and tucked it into a suitcase.
The family thrived in their new home. Emma’s great-grandmother married the handsome neighbor and had three daughters. Two became nurses, and the third married her own love and they had one child, Emma’s father.
Emma rang the cowbell again. It was passed to her father when his mother passed away, and to Emma when he died. It survived that initial move away from the farm and untold additional moves as the decades passed. Moves to college, moves because of war, because of the depression. A move home to care for a dying aunt. The cowbell stayed in her family, life after life, move after move, its story told to each new generation.
Emma realized that mixed in with the family memories of the cowbell was the memory of the old Saturday Night Live cowbell skit. Emma decided to take a break from packing and found the video on YouTube. Watching it, she laughed for the first time in months. Christopher Walken demanding more and more cowbell from the band. Will Ferrell camping it up with the cowbell, furry belly revealed by a shirt several sizes too small. She downloaded the song from the skit, Blue Oyster Cult’s, “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” turned up the volume on her iPad and hit play. She found a big spoon and tentatively tapped on the cowbell. Clang. The sound satisfied and she whacked it harder, then started to sing and play with the music.
“Don’t fear,” clang, clang, clang, clang. “Don’t fear,” clang, clang, clang, clang. “Don’t fear…don’t fear…don’t fear!”
Suddenly she was singing at the top of her lungs, crying and laughing, yelling and running through the bare-walled house. Across time and universes, the spirits of her ancestors were awakened by the pealing of the family cowbell, and they all danced, all danced, all danced, together until dawn.
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