Tag: fiction

Featured blogs, sites & lit works, Popular & established authors, SHORT short stories, South Korea

A Fridge Named Deprivation

!Epic Tomorrows

By Hyoungshim Choi

Knock, knock, knock. Exactly three times. This is what you have to do to get the fridge to ready itself for conversation. It must have been white originally. But now it’s an outdated model, like an old woman, covered in blotches like liver spots and freckles. With its yellowish tint it resembles a yokel from the country, totally devoid of sophistication. Flush against the stained wallpaper, it looks like a built-in wardrobe that’s been part of this shabby gosiwon (1) from the start.

First, I scan my surroundings. No one’s about. I place both of my hands on the middle of the fridge’s door. It’s a little cold. That means it’s running quite well. Following this ritual, I open the door a crack and shut it again. Then, I greet the fridge a tad overdramatically.

–Hey, babe!

Whir, whir, whir. The fridge hums three times in a staccato rhythm. That’s the signal that it’s ready. A smile quietly forms on my face. As I wait for it to ease open, I reach up and touch my chin. My stubble feels coarse.

–Got chased for the rent again today, huh?

The fridge clicks open and immediately sours my mood with its sudden opening remark.

–Says who?

–I’m a refrigerator. Do you think I haven’t noticed you stocking up on beer when you have money and opening and closing the door empty-handed when you don’t? It’s not like I just met you.

–So what?

My blunt tone shuts it up for a moment.

–By the way, don’t you think there are more ants in the communal kitchen these days?

I change the subject. Instead of replying, the fridge emits a single whir.

–I don’t know where they’re coming from. Strangely enough, it feels like more and more are spawning out of nowhere.

–Ants need a home, too, I guess.

The fridge’s words make me think of room 201. That room has been vacant for a little while now. I heard that the guy was six months behind with the rent. Then one day he was not to be seen, and a few days ago the superintendent came and took his belongings away. Not that there was much to clear out––just enough to fill two large boxes and a few black garbage bags.

–Where do you think the guy from 201 went?

I ask. The fridge hesitates.

–He probably found another place.

–A guy who couldn’t even afford rent?

–There might be a place where he doesn’t have to pay rent anymore.

I stare at the fridge, dumbfounded.

–And where is such a place?

The fridge doesn’t reply. I nearly lose my grip on the handle.

–Oh… Oh…

The fridge door threatens to shut. With all its strength, the fridge lets out a whir. Startled, I grab the door as it’s closing. For as long as we’re talking, I have to keep a respectful hold of this guy’s doorhandle.

–Be careful. If you keep doing that I won’t speak to you again.

The fridge pretends to sulk.

–Whatever. This is because it’s getting hard to hold you since you’re growing fatter by the day. What are you keeping so much of inside?

–Hmph! Have you contributed anything to my expanding waistline? What do you think you’re doing, moving the occasional couple of beer cans in and out of me?

The fridge huffs out a sharp blast of cold air. Finding the spectacle ridiculous, I laugh and take out the last can of beer.

–Actually, I need to find somewhere, too. Not a gosiwon like this, where even one person feels cramped lying down.

–Why?

–My girlfriend said she has nowhere to go.

The fridge is quiet for a moment.

–Then come to me. One can just live here.

I laugh.

–How’s a human supposed to live in a fridge!

It doesn’t reply.

At that moment, I hear the thud of approaching footsteps. The fridge suddenly turns cold. We close our mouths nearly at the same time, it’s difficult to tell who is first. I quickly grab my beer and close the door. I give the fridge a discreet nod in parting. As if to say it got it, the fridge buzzes three times again: whir, whir, whir.

It’s a shame, I feel, that my chat with the fridge was so suddenly cut short. Nonetheless, I head to my room as if nothing happened. I briefly exchange glances with the man emerging from the narrow corridor. His sweat-soaked shirt smells like cheap cologne. I quickly open the door to my room, which is in front of the communal kitchen. Behind me, I can hear the sound of the man opening the fridge.

I lay down on the bed and close my eyes. At that very moment, my phone rings.

–Baby, what about the house you said you were gonna look for?

Without so much as a hello, my girlfriend brings up the house first thing. Her voice pronouncing the word “house” through the receiver is a jagged point that stabs me straight through the heart. I feel my body curl up strangely.

–Do you really have to call me at this hour just to ask about the house?

–I really have nowhere to go now.

At those words, I close my eyes for a moment.

–Once I find work again I’ll chip in with the rent. For now, you should do the looking.

I know it. She’s not asking for some sort of luxury apartment. Even a single room would be fine; she just doesn’t want to be kicked out of places anymore. But I don’t even have that money, enough money to get that one room.

–I’ll ask my mom tomorrow if she can help out a bit.

At my reply, she lets out a sigh and hangs up without a goodbye.

The next morning, as I leave the gosiwon for my part-time job, where I work twice a week, I call my mom.

–What?

She asks sharply, annoyed. I falter a few times before finally speaking.

–Mom, the thing is…

But I fail to bring myself to speak about the house. Mom says she got burned by hot soup while working at the restaurant, so for the time being she’ll have to take some time off. I roll the word “house” around in my mouth and then finally swallow it.

I hang up and light a cigarette. At that moment, my girlfriend calls. I don’t answer. The phone keeps on ringing. It keeps on ringing. At some point, it begins to sound like “house, house, house”. I cover my ears, feeling like I’ll be driven mad by it. With every ring, it feels as if my body is being pulled bit by bit. As if my arms are shortening and my legs thinning. Finally, I decline the call. I stub out my cigarette and hurry off to work.

On my way home from work, in front of the gosiwon, I run into the situation I’ve been wanting to avoid. Over the past few days, my girlfriend has grown noticeably gaunt.

–Why didn’t you answer my calls?

She is absolutely seething.

–I couldn’t even bring it up with my mom.

–Why?

–She got hurt.

–So?

–Please just give me a little more time.

One corner of her mouth twists.

–How much longer do I have to wait?

I can’t reply. She looks up at the gosiwon. Then, she lets out such a heavy sigh that the ground seems to give way. I can’t utter a single word.

–But there are so many houses in the world…

Her gaze moves to the large apartment complex across the road. The word “house” lands heavily on my shoulders, with a thud. Simultaneously, my heart tightens. House–I flinch and recoil at the word.

–Why can’t you find just one lousy house!

She shouts tearfully. House–this time, the word makes my toes curl up in my shoes.

–That damn wretched house, house, house!

Her voice engulfs me like a hurricane, and, like ripping off a roof, wipes out the insides of my head. I become useless, a hollow house with no roof. My knees buckle. She stops talking.

–My God, babe…

She looks down at me.

–You just… shrank!

I open my mouth to reply. As I do, she takes a step back. She speaks in a trembling voice.

–Have I lost my mind over this house problem? Why have you suddenly got small?

With those words, I get smaller once again. Seeing this, she takes a few more steps back. She then shrieks and runs away down an alley. Click-clack, click-clack… Her footsteps resound strangely. House, house, house… It seems like I’m the one who’s lost his mind. As her footsteps recede into the distance, I shrink even further. I reach out my hand and try to call her. But my fingers have already become as small as a young child’s. I want to erase the word “house” from my head. But it keeps playing in an endless loop. Before I get any smaller, I start scrambling up the gosiwon stairs. With every step I climb, my body gets markedly smaller. By the time I manage to get to the top, I’ve shrunk to the size of an ant.

Panting, I head to the communal kitchen. I stand in front of the fridge. I knock exactly three times. Knock, knock, knock. A moment later, the fridge hums three times: whir, whir, whir. I’m relieved.

–You’re back.

A voice greets me, seemingly welcoming, as the fridge opens slightly.

–I… I’ve suddenly got really small.

–Glad you’re here.

–Huh?

I told you before, if you need a home you can come to me.

I look up at the fridge.

–Is this a home?

The fridge doesn’t reply. Instead, it opens its door wide. Spread out before me is a massive city of cylindrical beer-can towers and sliced-bread buildings.

–Come on in.

Hesitating briefly at the fridge’s words, I then start to climb the steep steps within a gap in the worn rubber door seal. Cold air envelops my entire body. When I reach the top of the stairs, I’m out of breath. As I’m about to catch my breath, a bunch of people begin murmuring behind a tower of beer cans.

–Did someone new just arrive?

I’m so startled I’m almost frozen to the spot. Right then, someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around to see a familiar face smiling at me.

–You…

It’s the guy who used to live in room 201. He smiles as he steps aside. Under the bright lights inside, a group of people are waving at me. Just then, the door slams shut, and the fridge gives out a small, soft whistle-like sound, whirr…

1. Gosiwon: A form of inexpensive housing in South Korea, typically consisting of tiny single rooms with shared kitchens and bathrooms. Originally intended for students preparing for competitive examinations, gosiwons are now widely used as low-cost accommodation by students, workers, and others living alone.

Ecology of the absurd, Featured blogs, sites & lit works, FLASH!, Popular & established authors, USA

Butterfly Farm

!Epic Tomorrows

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

It had been years since she’d been to the butterfly farm. She had to stop going because the butterflies were too beautiful. She would sit and weep as their soft wings skimmed overhead and grazed her tiny ears. Their grand wings veering wide in flight and showing her prints like African batik.
       She didn’t like being the one who always cried, sitting on the bench and looking down and over to the side. She was trying to hide the tears that rolled out like curling butterfly tongues. The butterflies didn’t know she was crying for them. They were too busy landing on velvety flowers and sucking sweet liquids out of squeaky golden stems.
       The last day she spent at the butterfly farm was the day she cried the most. She was sitting on a bench and she was talking to them. She told them they were “sweet and gentle” in a very loud voice, which surprised even her. Suddenly a slow-moving man wearing dirty beige cover-alls and holding a heavy glass jar began to walk toward her. He came and took her four favorite butterflies. She didn’t know how he knew. He stuffed them with his rough hands through the top of the jar and quickly screwed on the lid, their tiny wings wilting. Dogs barked and birds screeched and the sky turned grey with sadness. Some big bowl of hunger grew up in her and puffed her size up to the clouds. Swollen hands moving like giant wings. Her love was that big. She took the man’s bulbous arm and threw it behind his back and arrested him and took him back to the pork farm and the butterflies now sit on his shoulder and eat from dog bowls for all the rest of their days.
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.
DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, England, Exclusive to COTW

How to ruin a man’s orgasm

!Epic Tomorrows

By Eric Black

The physical techniques are well-known. There is a whole weird subculture online devoted to them. But I refer to the psychological and societal techniques. First, the man should be born into a liberal Western family, which retains just enough unconscious traditional expectation of high male performance as to confuse the young male mind, growing, as it would be, in a free-thinking family which claimed to be indifferent to gender roles. Second, the man should grow to be bisexual, but not to be too comfortable in his bisexuality. Third, his parents should divorce at a young age, with the father leaving the family and maintaining only brief fortnightly contact. Fourth, the man, as a teenager, should over-use alcohol, cannabis, and porn, should go to the wrong university, should leave early and not get a degree, should enter into homo-erotic friendships where neither side admitted the homo-eroticism and where the other guy would dominate the friendship, making it difficult for the man to socialize in a wide and balanced way; and should break up with his first girlfriend, painfully, after a couple of years. Fifth, the man should develop serious mental health problems in his early 20s, feeling like a failure, should make friends with people who later killed themselves, and should have all his prospects for making a living destroyed by peer pressure, the expectations of the university-uneducated and a persistent nagging low self-esteem. Sixth, the man should go through his 2os with no sexual contact with anyone, forcing his sexuality to become auto-erotic, exhausting his orgasms to the point of no return, almost breaking them. Seventh, the man should finally find a long-term partner, but whom he is ultimately not suited to and does not have regular sex with, ending in a protracted and tortuous break-up.

And yet, all this may not be quite enough to totally ruin a mans orgasm, because the man may marry a kind and understanding person, of whatever gender, who may help him to explore his sexuality, who may help him to recover his hardness, as well as his softness, who may support his critique of this abusive society, who may stay with him till the end.

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Caught in an irrelevant frame

!Epic Tomorrows

By Monica Wood

As was to be expected, the waiting room was clinically cold. I was alone, although I had expected to see other men there. The –what shall I call her? doctor, coach, fetishist, torturer?– appeared in the doorway. She was slight of build, very slim, not shapely, but sexy. She had on tight blue jeans, zip-up blue suede boots, a slim black jacket, and straight brown hair which reached a couple of inches below the shoulder. Jim?, she called, as if there were others in the room she needed to discern me from. She smiled warmly and I followed her down the corridor.

We entered a small square consultation room. In it was a tiny square table, and a chair. Everything was very white. My tormentor-to-be (it was clear) sat on the table and rested the toes of her boots on the edge of the chair. She motioned me to sit on the chair. I had to sit with my legs apart, to avoid her toes. She leaned in towards me, holding a clipboard (I could not see where it had come from) and asked me: How small do you want to be? I replied: I am not sure. She went on to ask: Do you find me sexy? I replied: Yes. She paused for a moment, looking deadly serious. So, very small then, she said.

She leaned in further and said: This frame you are in is shrinking smaller and smaller. I could see myself from outside the frame: it was true. Her head and her toes pushed against the air around me, so that I seemed to fade and constrict. I felt like I was being relegated to the back of a photograph. This is your true size and relevance, she said, small and irrelevant. Come back next week for an even smaller frame. I said: Okay. She said, You can go now Jim. Little Jimmy. I walked to the door. One more thing, she called as I had my hand on the handle, ready to exit. I turned to look at her. Do you find me sexy? she asked in a mocking tone. Yes, I replied, and left.