FlashNano25 Day 28: Mornings

 FlashNano25 Day 28

Prompt: Write a story that includes a bizarre ritual

 

Mornings

Morning wake-up means hitting the snooze button three times: 6:45, 6:54, 7:03, then bolting out of bed at 7:12. Next comes coffee, always two cups. The first one, savored, is taken at the kitchen table while reading the important news of the day which consists of comics, obituaries, court records, and if time the local headlines. The second is gulped while making the bed, rifling through the closet and drawers for anything that looks clean and unwrinkled, finding two shoes that match. 

Next comes the part where you pack your lunch and the gym bag for after school. This takes up most of what is left of the pre-work morning. Must have the right running socks, bra, top, bottom, plus an energy bar, two bottles of water, a peanut butter sandwich, a yogurt, piece of fruit. By now it’s 7:44. Departure time needs to be no later than 7:50 or you’ll be late. 

Morning ablutions. Can’t forget the important face washing, hair brushing, and if there’s time glance at least once into the full-length mirror. Students are brutal if you show up to class with your sweater on inside out. 

It’s 7:48 and for once in your life you might arrive to work early. 

But then there’s the searching for keys frenzy. So you rush around the house, pocketbook slung over one shoulder and book bag hanging from the other, arms full with coat, sweater, gym bag, and water bottles which fall to the floor at least three times and each time you bend to pick them up something else falls, like your wallet, or apple, or a pen or three. 

Where are those keys?

Kitchen counter? 

Top of microwave? 

Bathroom sink? 

Bureau? 

Sock drawer? 

Front table?

Front walk? 

Still in the ignition?

Still in the front door?

Litterbox? 

Pockets?

Have you been holding them this whole time?

7:58 and you’ve found them in one of the above places. 

You have seventeen minutes to get to work but there’s 30 minutes of traffic. The entire drive, you curse yourself for being undisciplined, forgetful, disorganized. 

You know all the short cuts and make it to work with one minute to spare. 

You’re relieved. You swear that tomorrow will be different. But then the self-satisfaction kicks in. Why change? You beat the clock. You’ll beat it again. 

 

FlashNano25 Day 17: Served

 FlashNano25 Day 17

Prompt: You are served something unexpected for dinner 

 

“Here’s your dinner,” she said, as she placed his plate at the head of the dining room table. 

She left the room, heels clacking. 

He was expecting the usual Thursday night fare: two steamed hotdogs, a half can of beans with molasses, a side of homemade piccalilli, two squirts of ketchup, and a couple of slices of generously buttered brown bread fresh from the oven. 

“What’s this?” he said, holding up the fat business envelope that lay on the faded Corelle instead.  

She reappeared, dragging behind her two suitcases. 

He asked again, his voice more strident now. 

The luggage thunked as she descended the carpeted stairs. She stopped at the front door, opened it, and pulled the bags behind her. 

“Where are you going? What are you doing? What on earth is going on here? For God’s sake, Millie, get back here. Answer me.” The plastic centerpiece shook as his hand slapped the table. 

From the front yard, she called to him. “Come on out and see.”

Still holding the envelope, he emerged onto the front stoop. 

His luggage was at the curb, next to a Yellow Cab with exhaust spilling from the tailpipe. 

With Millie was their neighbor, Sue. He’d told Millie to stay away from that woman, a bad influence, one of those civil rights lawyers. Mouthy. Opinionated. Had a Mondale for President sign on her front lawn. 

Straightening his tie he approached, his polished Oxfords clomping on the cement sidewalk.

Sue held up her hand, indicating for him to stop.

“You’ll want to look at the documents,” she said.  

He clenched his fists and wondered who was watching from behind the curtained picture windows of the other split-level homes in the cul-de-sac.

Millie stepped back and opened her mouth as if to speak. Then she shook her head. Biting her lip, she linked her arm through Sue’s and walked around him back toward the house. 

“Read the notes,” Millie said. 

“See you in court,” Sue said. 

The front door shut. The lock clicked. The deadbolt snapped into place. 

FlashNano25 Day 19: 19 word story

 FlashNano25 Day 19

Prompt: Write a 19-word story

Persistence or This is Some Bullshit

I came, saw, failed. 

Fivepeated.  

This is some bullshit. 

So stop.

Months, ready yet?

Weeks, set? 

Day? Yes, go. 

*A favorite Resident Alien quote

FlashNano25 Day 18: It hasn't snowed for 213 days

 FlashNano25 Day 18

Prompt: It hasn’t snowed for 213 days

 

The room is always quiet. 

The murmurs constant. 

The monitors – they beep.

The air – how I long for fresh pine breezes or the perfumes of lilacs and roses or even the grit of car exhaust. Anything is preferable to this processed stuff sanitized with soap, rubbing alcohol, medications.

Sometimes there are grunts as they shift me from back to left, from left to back, back to right. 

The blinds are always open and from my pillow I see a narrow strip of sky above the encroaching roofs of this foreign metropolis. 

When they brought me here after the surgeries after the accident during the squalls after the party following the hours of meetings, phone calls, endless ennui, and the office banalities that once seemed so important, the sun was strong, the nights starry. Or at least that’s how it seemed. 

One day fades, blue, gray, black. The machines tick.  Another day begins. 

Sometimes there are clouds. Sometimes rain.  Sometimes there are faces that say we did this, and we did that and they show me pictures of beaches, babies, and once a photo at the mountain where they say we skied just days before the awful crash during that storm that came out of nowhere, the last of the season. But hopefully we’ll be on the slopes soon. Politely, they include me in this.

Supine, I blink and attempt to nod as breath whooshes through my tube, this two-bit piece of plastic pinning me to this prison, purgatory, half- life.

If I could speak, I would say I know better. The time for miracles has passed. It hasn’t snowed in 213 days. 

 

 

 

NanoFlash25 Day 12: The errant charge

FlashNano 2025

Day 12

Prompt: You find an unexplained charge on your statement 

 

The first time you read your credit card bill, the unexplained charge didn’t register. Maybe because it’s a little overwhelming, this pile of magazines, envelopes, catalogs, postcards, and ads, cascading edge to edge on top of your kitchen table. 

You are energetic enough to work full time and hit the gym five days a week but apparently haven’t yet figured out how to gather the life force you need to take those simple, mindless really, steps to retrieve your mail from your association mailbox five houses away more than two or three times a month. 

You read through the bill again, but the extra charge still doesn’t register. Nothing registers, not the electric bill, water notice, pizza coupons, leaflets from four different gyms telling you why they’re the best and if you’re truly serious about losing that weight, gaining that muscle, staying young forever, you won’t ignore them.

None of it sinks in because you’re remembering the real reason why you avoid the mailbox, dread that small walk. 

It’s easy to drive by the mailbox and those houses, particularly that house. You do it every day, three four times a day. You’re protected by metal and glass. You can turn up your music, pretend to sing along. Simply stare straight ahead because you ARE driving after all and should be focused on the road.  

But when you walk it’s just you, your legs, arms, skin, with only the flimsy protection of your wool sweater, cotton jeans, as your panting breath whispers hurry hurry hurry, your key fumbles with the mailbox lock and finally after what seems like hours but is maybe five minutes you stumble home, holding your mail tight to your chest because. . . 

What if an envelope drops, creating the unthinkable opportunity as you retrieve it, for that neighbor to harm you, the neighbor who is a grandfather with children and grandchildren who visit every weekend and play football with him in the street in front of your house. Who cuts his House Beautiful lawn four times a week and hoses down his Architectural Digest front porch on Sundays. Who complained to the association about you once because when you watered your lawn, rivulets formed in the gutter, harming no one and nothing but he didn’t like the way it looked. Who when you first moved in you used to shovel out after snowstorms, until you noticed that when he was the first one out in the morning pushing his mega snowblower he’d take care of all your neighbors and stop short at your property line and turn his machine around, even that time it snowed two feet. Who hosts neighborhood parties that you’ve never been invited to in his garage, and who has a Confederate flag pinned to the wall next to his big screen television. The neighbor with the flashy red sports car that he only drives in summer, and the truck on oversized wheels, with the bumper sticker that says, “Your body my choice," and the other: “Celebrate Diversity” which has pictures of six – you know it’s six because you’ve memorized that horrifying, stupid sticker -- six different kinds of rifles. 

How can you be expected to notice that suspicious credit charge right away? How can you be expected to focus on anything other than how soon can you sell this place and other thoughts related to your own survival, when every time you visit the local supermarket, jog on a nearby trail, and even walk to your mailbox a paltry five houses away from the safety of your own home you’re facing the fact that your very right to life hangs in the balance, dependent upon the whims of others and how they choose to act?

 

 

FlashNano25 Day 11: A magical story

 FlashNano25 Day 11

Prompt: Write a magical story

 

The day after the Election 

In the dark hours after the polls closed, the land was silent. While many slept the deep sleep of the ignorant, content and calm, those attuned felt the tremors, the inexorable shaking giving heed of what was to come. 

Like others of her kind, the woman startled by this shifting of the firmament, awoke from sleep and threw off the covers, panting, sweaty, heart palpitating to a beat so insistent she had to wonder if this was to be her end. 

Bits of the dream but not dream --in truth reality that had pushed her into consciousness, came back in flashes. The sunny start to the day, then too soon dark clouds, dissipating optimism followed by stark predictions and finally the realization of what this all meant, for her, her daughters, women everywhere, their children and beloved ones, and her body knew, finally in understanding, demanding consciousness and forthrightly calling her to arms. 

She checked her phone, which confirmed what in her soul of souls she now candidly knew, once dreaded, had earlier trustingly naively thought impossible. The beast was king, elected to the highest office in the land by a hate-filled, uneducated mob who, too lazy to research the facts which were obvious and overwhelming, and too self-centered to consider the general good which when taken into account always lifts them all,  would soon find themselves, like her and the others who’d stridently repudiated his profoundly demented clarion call,  were also destined to suffering unto his unbending, murderous will unless something someone was brave enough to say that no, this is not who we are. 

He of the cloven hooves, goat horns, forked tail, smells of death, decay, fetid bowels, engorged devourer of young women, murderer of innocents, was now supreme ruler of all. Like the rest of her kind, she knew immediately, like breathing, hearts pounding, hopes crushing, what would come next if she stood by and chose passivity.  

More manipulations, blaming, outright lies, and the deaths of multitudes, at home and abroad. A repetition of history because already, first he came for the outliers, the ones on the fringes, those deserving the most of open hearts and arms. Thoughts and prayers? Useless against this onslaught of unspeakable, detestable, reprehensible evil. 

 Action. Yes. That was it. Action called. 

In her heart of hearts she conjured the words, timeless and true that would calm her soul, gird her heart, and carry her forth from this day hence: If not me, then who. If not now, then when. 

Because her words spoke truth they were carried forth into a stream of other like words and the waters followed forth, gathering energy and becoming waves that crashed into rivers forming worlds of oceans that opened into the vast universe that is the collective consciousness, the infinite, blazing light from which all humankind is born. 

Their words echoed throughout the galaxy

If not me, then who. If not now, then when. 

Now a battle cry. 

If not me, then who. If not now, then when.

From within her and the others a great courage grew and with it the determination that the present circumstances would not suffice and would not sustain the life they all deserved. 

This is not who we are. This is not who we will be. We will go forth. We will succeed. 

These lone beings rose up and joined their counterparts. From across the lands, mountains, oceans they united and marched, hearts and arms opened wide, their anger a force for good, for right, infinite humanity. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FlashNano25Day10: Happy wife, happy life

 FlashNano25

Day 10

Prompt: Write a 5-minute (or less) flash play

Setting: Elevator of swanky retail store

Characters:

TFS: Twenty-something female shopper dressed in designer clothing, flashy jewelry, high heels, overburdened with shopping bags. 

FC. Fifty-something female cop, in uniform. 

Random bystander. Dressed in regular streetwear.

Three police, in uniform. 

 

TFS is talking into cellphone, held in one hand while from other dangle several large shopping bags labeled with high end designer names.  She enters elevator and presses button. Door starts closing. 

TFS:  OMG it’s the cutest outfit. Top. Pants. And THE best jacket. (Pause) Please. I’m so worth it. You know what they say hon, happy wife happy life. (Giggles)

Door opens. FC enters, faces TFS, who, ignoring her, hits button again. 

FC (even tone): Ma’am. Excuse me. Ma’am. 

TFS (turns away): Of course I got accessories. It’s not an outfit without accessories. (Pause) Just some earrings, a necklace, two bracelets and the cutest leather belt. Got my hair did too, just for you my love. How cute is this? (She strikes a sultry pose, takes a selfie, sends it.)

FC is louder now: Lady. Lady. LADY!

TFS (obviously frustrated) into phone: Hold on a sec. Some THING here is bothering me. 

(To FC): WHAT? 

FC (all business): You need to come with me.

TFS (flips hair): As if. Who do you think. . .

FC: (puts hands to hip, where handcuffs dangle) Ma’am. Now. 

TFS: (Into phone): Oh my God it’s a mall cop. A mall cop is trying to talk to me. Can you believe it? Too funny, right? 

To FC: Sweetie a good moisturizer would do wonders for that crepey skin. (Continues talking into phone, ignoring FC) 

FC (hits emergency stop button): Ma’am this is serious. Ma’am listen. Ma’am. (Loud enough so person on phone can hear) Ma’am. You left your stroller in the accessories department. We’ve been looking for you for two hours. You need to come with me. 

TFS (looks at her bags, her surroundings, then into phone): It’s nothing, hon. These people.  . . (Her voice trails off as she listens on phone). 

TFS: Honey, you know better than to ask me that. Of course, the baby’s here with me. Give me a sec to deal with this mess. I’ll call you back. (Phone clicks off. Turns to FC) They couldn’t watch him for TEN minutes? God, these people are useless. Accessories department you said? (She hits a button on the elevator display.) Let’s go then. Wait until my husband here’s about this. 

FC: Ma’am, the baby’s downtown at the station. You get one call. If it’s to your husband, so be it. 

(Elevator door opens to three other uniformed officers. All four escort TFS out.)

TFS: (Angrily): Do you know who I am? Wait until my husband hears about this. 

Random bystander, watching her: What an entitled bitch. 

FC: Yeah, I think we do.