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FLASH!, Many feminisms, Popular & established authors, USA

Bonanza keep digging

!Epic Tomorrows

By Nina Hart: This story originally appeared in the book of short stories, Somewhere in a Town You Never Knew Existed Somewhere

Bonanza was a scary girl, all backwards in her thinking. Five years old and she didn’t like anyone. No-one liked her either. She often wondered which came first, did she like no-one and then did no-one like her, or was it the other way around?
       “Shut up and keep digging,” cried her mother, while Bonanza was busy burying the bony remains of her ten last, best and only friends. “Shut up and keep digging,” mouthed Bonanza in a sour, mocking voice, hoping her mother didn’t hear but secretly wishing she would. Bonanza was digging and stacking, digging and stacking, and burying her little toy dolls, one on top of another, digging and stacking and burying them all in the backyard.
       “There goes Frances,” she said, one by one patting them on the soft tops of their heads. “Little Limp Suzette, Astrid, Lingafore, Penitence, Rye Bread, Amber Ocean with the Amazing Marble Brown Eyes, Lori Fred the Beast, Marmalade.” And then there was The Ancient One, who kept bobbing her loose plastic head back and forth, stacked flat on her back on top of Marmalade, in the ruddy brown dirt. “Stay still,” said Bonanza through stinging tears.
       These were the days of no return. Her mother was right. If she couldn’t be a friendly, polite girl, then she would be liked by no-one. And so it was that her mother, with resounding voice, descended heavily down the porch stairs, thick ankled, to the backyard to supervise Bonanza’s burial of the word F-r-i-e-n-d-s-h-i-p.
       All the summer light grew dim, darker, until Bonanza was just a small speck of dust beating away at the backyard air, then, her self, buried. Fell in with the rest of them. Fell right flat on top of The Ancient One.
Ecology of the absurd, Many feminisms

Cryptic episode

!Epic Tomorrows

Two animals circled each other in love and hate. One of them was wild and one obsessively tame. The wild one started to see danger everywhere, fear and aggression artificially heightened when she became aware that her kind was threatened. The tame one encouraged her into a cage, but only, or so he thought, because it was a cage where she might rest and ingest calming substances and sentences in safety, so as not to explode her brain. Because the tame one had been so hurt by her exaggerated wildness, and he saw that the wild one had hurt herself too.

The tame one picked a tarot card, and it read, ‘La Force’ which gave him the strength to encourage the wild one to stay in the cage. A few days later he picked another card, ‘Roy de baton’ which helped him to adopt the role of a just and kind father, or so he thought. He spoke soothingly through the bars of the cage:

‘This will make you stronger, so that you may fight for the survival of your kind’ he told the wild one, his enemy and lover, and she understood, or so he thought. Secretly she used her restrained wildness to hatch a plan to undo her lover’s tameness. Ultimately, it was her wildness that was the stronger force in both of them.

Originally published in the Schemattic digital garden.

Ecology of the absurd, FLASH!, Popular & established authors, USA

Chipper Dale

!Epic Tomorrows

By Nina Hart: This story originally appeared in the book of short stories, Somewhere in a Town You Never Knew Existed Somewhere

Charles Chipper Dale stood dressed in the full regalia of an eight-year-old on his front lawn in Xenia, Ohio. The air was hot, and black, and sweet. Charlie jumped nervously from one foot to the other, nostrils flaring like a hunting dog’s. “The tornado will hit without warning!” prophesized Chipper to his audience of six children, one dirty sparrow, and a beat-up red Tonka Truck. “We will all be dead, taken up into the wormlike mass, cold faces pressed against one another in the brutal raging wind!” The children all sighed and began to shake and cry. “I have to go home and get my Snoopy Roo-Roo.” cried Ellen, who looked like a ringing bell in her oversized green dress. “Well the clouds will suck you up like a milkshake into the sky if you do, Ellen! I forbid you to go anywhere, Ellen.” said Charlie. “Where are the parents? Where are the parents?” asked Jake Lacky, who had a wide chest just like his pot-smoking dad. “My teacher said I’m a latchkey kid. What’s a latchkey kid?” No one knew. In the distance the raw smell of rain drew closer. The children could taste the mist as it slipped on their lips like hard candy. They could feel a rumble in the earth under their hot tennis shoes. “What do we do, Charlie?” asked Rainbow, one of Jake Lacky’s three siblings, latchkey kid and daughter of the pot smoker. “Look to the wind.” said Charles Chipper Dale, fingers twitching, eyes veering off into the far distance. “It’s here, it’s coming, and it won’t be long. We won’t wait for the sirens to go off. We’re children. We can feel things. Let’s head on down to the root cellar, one at a time. Single file.” “I love you all so much,” whispered Rainbow, as she held her brother Jake’s hand and followed him down the stone staircase. Cars and their drivers drove past the children on the street. Faces and heads and necks propelled forward on their way back to work after lunch break. All of them ignoring the twisting sky in the distance and the staunch smell of darkness. The tornado would hit without warning. The latchkey kids would be safe in Charlie Dale’s root cellar, listening to the roaring sounds of the King of Winds. All of them holding hands and Rainbow mouthing I love you I love you and I love you all into the dark green landscape.

Canada, Collapse chats & diaries, DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Reflections

Fresh, harder times ahead

!Epic Tomorrows

Arguments with my wife. Arguments with myself. Arguments with the past, present and future. But then there was some kind of movement. And here I am. In a new city, fresh; on a new continent, fresh. Sat in a booth in the corner of some kind of conference room. One light broke, the other one shining me up askew. Working on my stuff. I was here a few days ago too, but that was before all the argument. I’m here as if for the first time. Actually talking to people. Having things to say. And whatever I went through earlier, I know there will be much harder times ahead.

Originally published in the Schemattic digital garden