Tag: short-story

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.
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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.