Flash fiction by Jessica Klimesh
Pretending
At night, Evie and I pretend that we’re not. Not human. Not animal. Not plant. Not anything living. What are you tonight? I say, and Evie says she’s an airplane. So I say I’m the wings, and we run through the house until Mother says that’s enough. She has a headache again, and we both know what that means. We know it’s not really her head, and that this time might be worse than the last. I’ll be a bed, Evie whispers, giving Mother a kiss. And I’ll be a pillow, I say, so you can lie down. But Mother says it hurts to lie down. And to sit. And to stand. And to touch. But she says we can turn off the lights and pretend that we’re all fast asleep. But Evie and I say, no, because we’re already pretending that we’re not. Not human. Not animal. Not plant. Not anything living. Mother doesn’t answer, just paces like she’s a broken escalator, moaning. So, Evie and I walk on either side of her, and pretend we’re the handrails.
Good-bye, Ruby
Ruby hides behind her father’s leg, hugging his knee, contesting his movement, giggling when he tries to take a step. I wonder what’s there, what’s on my leg, he says, scratching at his two-day stubble.
Crawling into bed at night, Ruby turns into her stuffed animals, embodies their plush fierceness. When her mother comes to tuck her in, she says, Now where is Ruby? I swear she was just here. Ruby roars and her mother shrieks. Oh, dear, her mother says, Ruby has turned into a bear!
In junior high, Ruby disguises herself as one of the popular girls, wears the same shimmery pink lipstick and fluffs her bangs a mile high. She learns to sneer like the others, too, and does it all so stealthily that no one even knows who she really is.
When Ruby is older, she finds more effective ways of camouflaging herself, so much so that when she walks out of the department store, alarm bells alerting associates to the theft, no one blinks or chases after her. No one wonders. They just watch her go.
The Tooth Fairy Is Flat Broke
Mother tells me go to sleep or Santa won’t come, but I see her wink, spinning silence into substance like wool into yarn. But it’s the middle of the day, I say. I’m not tired. She tells me go to sleep or the tooth fairy won’t come, but then I hear her faint whispers on the telephone, telling Grandma that I lost another tooth and that the tooth fairy is flat broke. I can’t imagine how Mother knows this, so I say, Mother, where does the tooth fairy get her money, and she tells me go to sleep or the Easter Bunny won’t come, bringing fancy chocolates in plastic baskets, sickly-sweet gifts for good boys and girls because the Easter Bunny’s got a list and is checking it twice. Wait, I say, isn’t that for Christmas? Mother rubs her eyes, gulps down a swig of coffee and says it again: Just go to sleep or Santa won’t come.
Self-Portrait
A Bristol pad is too small, and ink, the wrong medium, so I stretch and gesso a six-foot canvas, start again. But as soon as I do, I feel it, my body wiggling away from me. “No,” I say, panic drubbing at my gut, remembering what happened with Martin, “this isn’t me.” This isn’t me.
But with each startling brush stroke, I find myself disappearing, transferring from being to not being, from existing to not. I paint a nose, then touch my face and notice my nose is gone. This isn’t me. The disfigurement is irreversible, though, so I focus, pragmatic. My dominant arm will have to be last because I can’t paint without it; my eyes, nearly last.
I dip my brush into green. “Why green?” Martin had said when I modeled my new dress for the opening. “That’s your worst color.” This isn’t me. My mistake had been not painting his mouth first, to silence him. I’d gotten one good jab in, though, after I’d painted his eyes, made him blind, when I said, “Can’t you see? Can’t you see what you’re making me do?” Just like he’d said to me so many times. You made me do this. And now he’s hanging in someone’s foyer. “He has a stately face,” the buyer had said. “You just don’t see features like that.” Desire is not only inexplicable but brash, cold, like steel.
I touch the brush to the canvas one last time.
Frosty Goes Back to His Wife
Spring comes too early, the ground unprepared. Our arrangement—illicit, cunning—had been easy, sweet, like affairs tend to be, and now it was over. Do you promise to come back next year? I say, adjusting his button nose. He doesn’t answer, and his nose comes off in my hand. Oh, sorry, I say. I know now that he never loved me, not the way I loved him. His hands which touched me so many times drop, flaccid, as he fades. Dry twigs like kindling. There would be no more warm cider or cuddles by the fireplace. The grass that was once covered with virgin white snow has turned yellow and brown, like a prospect thwarted. I pick his top hat up off the waterlogged earth. This was mine, I say. I gave it to you. I’m taking it back. But my words, meaningless, are soaked up by the hungry soil. It isn’t even March yet.
Jessica Klimesh (she/her) is a US-based writer and editor with words in Cleaver, Atticus Review, trampset, Ghost Parachute, Bending Genres, Flash Fiction Magazine, SoFloPoJo, and The Dribble Drabble Review, among others. Learn more at jessicaklimesh.com.
Flash Boulevard is edited by Francine Witte. Banner photograph Wes Candela.
Flash Boulevard 