Tag: microfiction

Many Questions

“Should those plants be touching?”

“What?”

“Should those two plants be touching each other?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No! Should they be touching? Their leaves are mingling.”

“ Why are you concerned about that?”

“It doesn’t seem right. Is it healthy?”

“Are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems bizarre to be concerned about the mingling of leaves. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just wondered if its okay for those leaves to mingle.”

<silence>

“Why are you so dismissive of my concerns?”

“Fine. Sorry.  It is okay for those plants to touch. Better?”

 

“Yes, thank you . . . what about those two plants?”

 

Image by Robin Anderson

Power Down

Tonight I write by candlelight.  A scheduled outage they said.

No light, no heat, no electronic hum but in the shadows story pours from my pen.  Stream of consciousness, words flow like water or wine or my own blood.

Now I know I should have contrived a blackout long ago.

Image by Robin Anderson

Power Down originally published at fiftywordstories.com on 

Quiet Like Sunday

Listen.

Quiet like Sunday on the first of Spring.  No traffic, no voices, no airplanes.  Only birdsong or a dog barking.

Listen.

Humanity withdraws and the world settles into silence.  People in houses gaze through closed windows.  They can hear sunlight drip off buildings and roar down empty streets.

Listen.

Image by Harrison Fulop

This story also appears at fiftywordstories.com 

Skyhawk

In his carefree youth, he and the camera were inseparable.  When a daredevil friend took him flying in a one engine plane, the camera went along.  They flew off the coast, over the Pacific, getting the bird’s eye of trees, cliffs and sea stacks, cold wind seeping into the cockpit.  He clicked the shutter a hundred times.  Back on earth, he printed a dozen images.  In one, the sepia sea gleams like glass, the sky stretches into silence.

Much later, his adult children gaze at the old photograph, smell naphtha-kerosene and feel the dip and rattle of the Skyhawk.

Image by Chris A Anderson, courtesy of the Estate of Chris A Anderson

RITUAL?

Quintuplet Cluster, NASA on the Commons

Up, down, up, down, updown.

The weird choreography of gnats in the late winter sunlight, rising in unison from the incense cedar and bouncing in the chilly, bright air.  A constellation of illuminated bioplasm.  Is it a communal mating ritual?  An invitation to passing birds to come, feast?  A celebration of approaching seasonal change?  All of that? None?

Faster and faster, the frenzied dance brings their tiny grey bodies together, until they are a single whirling orb of gossamer fluff.

Bang!

They resettle, simultaneously, into the cedar.  The sun shines, the breeze stirs.

And then again, up, down, up, down.

Image by NASA via flickr.com/commons
“Quintuplet Cluster”

FERAL

She had always shared her life with cats and dogs.  Still, the transformation was a shock.  First came the growth of an undercoat on her scalp.  Next, her fingernails hardened and curved.  When her arms and legs grew excessively hairy, she covered them.  When she could no longer grasp her coffee mug, she dashed it against the kitchen wall.  After several decades of vegetarianism, she craved, then ate, meat. Raw.

On the last morning, she stripped off her nightgown, running out the back door on all fours.  She vaulted the fence.  The pets would have to fend for themselves.

Embellishment for HaikuEmbellishment for Haiku

Image by Martin Arusala via Unsplash.com

Altitude

In the high mountains, the air is clear, the sun shines hot.  When the wind blows, it rages.  Thunder deafens and lightening blinds with obliterating brightness, erasing all shadows.

She sees across a vast expanse.  To  Eternity?  Further?   All because the air is thin.

Now, if only she could breathe.

Image by David Siglin via Unsplash.com

This Beach, In Summer

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

This beach, in summer, is full of life; Bright human life, pushing all other bits of consciousness aside.

A family group, mostly males, flying dangerously large kites to the squealing encouragement of the females.  Elders, walking slowly and frowning at their mates, but mostly perturbed by the shenanigans of youngsters.   Volleyballers, runners, sitters, sunbathers, readers.  Solitary walkers with bumptious dogs.   And a boy who named himself “Siegfried the Dog”.  A single child at sunset, bent in contemplation of a seashell as the tide slips quietly out.

Oh for the cold, sandblasted landscape of winter, when we others will have space.

 

Featured image by Ray Hennessy via Unsplash.com

 

With Feathers

Black-capped chickadee

“Hope” is the thing with feathers.   Emily Dickinson

In the kitchen on a warm afternoon, the breeze blowing in an open door.  An unexpected movement near the window.  That’s not right.

A flutter and chirp.  Distress.   Small bird inside the house.

The family dog sleeps in the next room so I rise quietly.  A black-capped chickadee stares up at me from the sill.  Crooning in the face of terror, I try to catch it.  Frantic fluttering and shed feathers.   Still not right.

Softly, I open two windows, stand back and hope.

YES!  It flies out into its world.  That is right.

Image by Brandon @greener_30 via Unsplash.com

My Immune System

“What?  What is that?  Oh. My. God!  What did you let in?”

“It’s no big deal.  I just saw my doctor, it was time.”

“Are you kidding me?  It’s huge, it’s going to foul everything.  I’ll be cleaning up this mess for a week!”

“Calm down.  Why do you always make such a big deal–“

“Calm down!  Big deal!  How dare you.”

“Stop.  You’re giving me a headache.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side, you asshole!  You’re going to have more than a headache.”

“Why are you being so hysterical?”

“I’ve had it with you!  Five years ago it was shingles!  Now this!”

“Uhhhh.  I feel sick . . .”

“You bet you do.  And it’s gonna get worse.  Pneumonia vaccine my ass.  I’ll show you pneumonia.”

Image by Hannah Fulop

PS.  This is an imagined conversation between myself and my immune system.  It is not an anti-vaccination manifesto.  GET VACCINATED.  Even if your immune system is a wuss.  RA