Flash Fiction, “Grass”

Susie smoked grass. I think it was St. Augustine, but it could have been Bermuda. She was bored at recess when she smoked out of a corncob pipe, a prop for a school play. She didn’t tell anyone until after her nose and fingers turned green. The other kids stopped making fun of her sometime after the bark and leaves. Leaves filled her hands and lined her spine, and bark caked her face and legs. People asked if she was going to get the bark and leaves removed, but she said, “I kinda like them.” No one understood why, but she didn’t seem to care and she smiled more. Her classmates took new interest when she was allowed on the play yard for both lunch and recess. She told her classmates it was because, if she stood still long enough, her leaves would tingle and a sweetness would fill her hunger. Some of her classmates wanted to grow leaves too, but they couldn’t ask Susie how because she had grown roots and stopped talking. Everyone was alarmed, and her parents were distraught. Every time someone asked if she was okay she would just nod her head and continue to smile. Soon she was a large tree, and only her smiling face remained. When the children would go near, they sometimes heard her humming.

Short Story Passage, “Entropy”

On the cold rooftop of his apartment building, Neil Gorman nibbled on the butt of his cigarette troubled by a word he had learned on the radio. His head angled to the night sky, he took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled quickly, watching as the faint grey smoke rose and curled toward open stars. He muttered the word to himself, “Entropy,” before ashing his cigarette over the edge of the building. The word on its own wasn’t so troubling. It meant disorder, and disorder was nothing new. It was present all over the world, but the context in which the word had been explained implied a proximity that was paralyzing.

Below, downtown Macon hummed with light traffic and muffled music. From the rooftop, most of the downtown area was visible; the surrounding buildings were politely short, unlike Atlanta where its tall structures commanded attention. They seemed to stretch higher, growing, and once noticed, provoking the unmistakable sensation of being swallowed. 

His cigarette was growing a column of ash and nearing the filter, but Neil didn’t notice. He was unable to break his gaze from the night sky, petrified in the face of something so dark and endless. According to the interview with the physicist on the radio, in the universe, entropy always increases and never decreases. He said it was the second law of Thermodynamics, which sounded very convincing and very permanent. Just as time was irreversible, so was the perpetual disorder of the universe. Neil decided it was the concreteness of the law, the physics, that made him so uncomfortable. The future was supposed to be flexible, based solely from one moment to the next, the outcome a reaction to the various actions and decisions made; with a little forethought and careful planning, one could construct a path to stability. That’s what he had always believed. However, he now knew the passing of every second only promised more disorder, more chaos.

Short Story Passage,
“If Phoenixes Were Real”

Rebecca walked down the porch stairs and onto the lawn. The cottage sat high above sharp pebbled sands and a dull green sea; the edge of the front lawn rested on top of a twelve foot sea wall made of cement, sand, and shells. Like the rest of the cottages along the wall, the front of the house and the front lawn faced the ocean, showing its backside to the street. She moved there because of her parents; they had seemed happy in retirement. Having travelled the world, Rebecca considered many places to retire before finally settling on the cottage. It had spoken to her with a warm familiarity. When she looked out over the sea and sands, she would reminisce of the easiness she had felt in youth; the faded, almost smoky, memories of lying on a towel next to her mother, listening to the foamy break of the waves as the sun rose and fell. 

Rebecca walked across the lawn and onto the sea wall. She preferred the wall to the sand since it was easier to walk on. The possibility of falling excited her, but she didn’t like to admit this to herself. The thought of peril or death made her squeamish. As a girl, she walked the wall, sure that she wouldn’t fall. Besides, soft sands lay below. But in her old age, Rebecca wasn’t sure of anything. 

As she walked, sea sprays and summer winds pulled at her clothes smelling brightly; the warm temperature a reminder that the beach would soon be filled with renters and vacationers. Her neighbors detested renters, but Rebecca didn’t mind them. She enjoyed the bustle, and their crowding presence wasn’t an issue since she spent little time on the actual sands; she preferred to sit on her porch, her little perch, watching from above.

Stepping over a dead seagull, Rebecca felt suffocated; the faint pleasantness of earlier in the morning left her. Her morning walk was usually the most enjoyable part of her day, but the warmth of the sun had grown uncomfortable, the wind kept blowing thin white strands of hair in her face, and she was suddenly aware of how tight her shoes felt. She walked several more paces before turning around. Forced to confront the seagull once more with its contorted neck and feet, Rebecca passed over the bird thinking that it looked more like a large, fuzzy grey slipper than an animal. Could it be considered an animal if it no longer breathed? By the look of its drained and limp body, it seemed to her that it was nothing more than a pile a feathers and bones. If only it were a phoenix. That way, just before its last breath, it would have combusted into brilliant blades of heat, and later emerged, smaller and immature, from the ash.

Rebecca continued down the wall toward her house thinking of phoenixes. She wanted to believe they existed, and why not? Seems as sound as a belief in haloes and kingdoms in the sky, a reasoning she would not share with the others in her parish. Rebecca had been trying to find Jesus; her mother would have appreciated the effort, but even though she attended mass every other Sunday she still couldn’t shake the feeling that nothing waited for her in death. She had always known this truth, and had lived her life accordingly, refusing to be limited, but she knew that somewhere along the way she had gotten something wrong. If people were phoenixes, she thought, she would be able to restart, even if just once, and figure out what she had missed. Perhaps, even if given a thousand chances, she would have never been able to get it right or uncover where to start. Rebecca decided that, if given the chance, she would start with her mother. She had never listened to her, insisting she knew better. Even now, she still wasn’t listening. From time to time she could feel her mother’s voice vibrate within her, somewhere behind and below her sternum. It was whispering now, saying, “It’s alright, Hun,” but that frustrated her further for she knew that it wasn’t. How could it be?