Flash Fiction: "Goodbye, Cruel Richard"

Continuing with NaBloPoMo's theme of RISK this month, here's another flash fiction story about someone who took a big risk -- and got a big payoff in return.

GOODBYE, CRUEL RICHARD

Faye looked up from where she stood on the steps of the front porch. The wetness of an early afternoon found her in the calm before a violent storm. From a great distance, she saw a blue-black mass that churned its way towards her.  Faye thought it looked more like a bruise than a hurricane.  The wind whipped her hair against her expressionless face and began to jostle her. Soon it will be here, was all that she could think.  It would be sudden and frightening and beautiful. And then it would all be over. She returned to her perch, a rusted iron swing by the front door, and kneaded her filthy hands.

Bill had slapped her in the face a few days ago.  Hard. He said that she made him do it, that if she had done things right, there would have been no need to ever hit her at all.  That was the heart of the problem between them as far as he was concerned:  she kept saying and doing things that upset him.  If she'd stop, they could be happy. After he left, as Faye lay on the couch with her head back to stop the bleeding, she realized that after ten years of marriage, she couldn't hear his apologies anymore.  She had shut out so much of what he said and did that in a way, he wasn't ever really there until he took a swing at her.  Which was probably why he hit her so often.

She wished she had the guts to kill him.

They had been happy but somewhere in there, they began to argue a lot. One day, Bill hit Faye and she didn't do anything about it.  The next thing she knew, ten years had gone by.   

When she awoke in near darkness the way she always did, when she felt him reach for her and pin her to the bed and pry her legs open and climb on top of her, Faye thought about having him killed.  But then with her luck, she would get caught and have to go to jail for the rest of her life, or fry in the chair.  So she began to consider other options.

She was watching the weather report one afternoon when she remembered a story she'd heard, about a neighbor's best friend's cousin's ex-girlfriend's neighbor.   She got caught in a hurricane and was found several states away.  Battered and bruised, broken legs, completely disoriented--but alive.  That's when Faye realized that, although she was terrified of planes, she'd always wanted to fly.  She decided that if the hurricane came close enough, there would be a flying lesson.  She could hardly wait.

Faye had taken every precaution.  Everything was unplugged, cleared away, set aside.  Windows and doors were flung open as the wind whipped its way through the house,  searching for something.  Faye scrambled into a pair of steel toed boots, a large woolen sweater and finally a leather jacket.  As an afterthought, she grabbed Bill's motorcycle helmet before heading outside. Maybe it will take me to a Chinatown somewhere, she thought to herself as she put on the helmet and stepped out onto the road in front of her house.  Or someplace up North.  Jersey or something.  Anywhere but here. 

The sky turned sullen.  As the wind shoved her, she stood there, legs apart, arms akimbo, mesmerized by the fury that surrounded her.  When she was small, they gave hurricanes female names but this one was named Richard.

           " Don't that beat all?" Bill laughed one evening as they ate supper and watched Richard's progress on the news. "A homo hurricane."

Faye looked at the back of his head and thought, Who are you and why did I marry you?

The question fell between them like a brick.  She wished she could hit him with it.

Faye leaned into the wind and staggered towards a clearing nearby. This is fun, she thought, and she laughed.  That's when she heard Bill's voice, calling to her from somewhere near the front yard. He was waving to her, then walking towards her gradually, spewing obscenities.  Something about you crazy dumb bitch, are you nuts, I'm gonna beat your ass. Something like that. He came home early from work and how he's going to ruin everything, Faye thought.  So she began to run towards Richard.  As she did, she involuntarily cried out for help and fell into a ditch, with a resounding thud. Startled and frightened, she pressed her face into the soft wet ground and sobbed uncontrollably.  It was the very first time that Faye had ever done such a thing, in all the years that her husband had known her.  Bill stopped for a moment, stunned.

By the time he realized what was really going on, it was all over.

All kinds of things seemed to be going up, up and away, into the darkness above them.  Rooftops.  Cars.  Dirt.  Animals. Bill was carried away, kicking and screaming, lost in the ever-widening swirl of debris that lifted itself higher and higher as it moved farther away until it was finally gone.

Faye closed her eyes and waited her turn but fortunately Bill was the last one scheduled for take-off.  After a few hours, she worked her way out of the ditch and limped towards what was left of the house--her house now.  It would be awhile before anyone found her.  May as well  wait out the rescue effort from the front porch.

Flash Fiction: "Chicken Lips"

  

This month's NaBloPoMo theme is RISK. I've been revisiting some flash fiction that I'd written some time ago and I found this one that seems to have a bit of risk in it somewhere, so here you go.
 

Chicken Lips

 

It was their first date and it was a blind one, rabid with good intentions and interesting talk.  A mutual friend had set them up and Dana figured, why not, it'll be fun.  They both put on a mock game face when they met--for Marion's sake, they laughed--but there was a mutual attraction that neither of them could deny.   After awhile, they were chatting as though they'd known each other for years.

Unfortunately, something was killing her buzz. 

Every time Jason smiled at her, what little was there in the way of a mouth disappeared into the rest of his face, revealing two rows of gleaming whiteness. Dana smiled at him warmly and tried not to think about it but as the night wore on, it was all that she could think about.  The words glowed as they hovered around his head, in neon: chicken lips. After she watched him talk through the main course, she was ready to politely excuse herself and go home.  But to tell the truth, she was having a good time.  And besides--she never skipped dessert.

A question loomed over her thoughts like a cloud: Would he kiss her?  No sooner did this query appear than another floated along behind it, listlessly: If he did kiss her, what in God's name would it feel like?

That she was unlike anything that he had even remotely expected was enough to knock the wind out of Jason's Nantucket sails.  The details she gave him about herself and her life made him sputter with a mixture of bewilderment, confusion and pleasure.  He had driven his car past quite a few, locking the doors carefully as his vehicle came to a complete stop at the red light.  Perhaps there were one or two in his classes at his alma mater that he hadn't really paid any attention to.  This was certainly true at work.  And he'd certainly seen plenty in the movies, on television and those videos--music, sports, porn and otherwise.  But to have an intelligent insightful conversation with one--and a beautiful one, at that--this had never happened.

Jason, on the other hand, was exactly what Dana had expected. 

Jason was wonderful in a New England white guy kind of way.  The kind that can trace his family tree all the way back to Old England.  The kind that likes to go rock climbing on the weekends. The kind that walked through this life with the patented swagger of privelege and entitlement.  Jason had no need to stand up and demand whatever he wanted out of life. He understood from a very early age that clearly, it was already his.  An all-American birthright, if you will.  Somewhere down the line, whether they had any money or not, didn't they all come off like that to some degree?  Doing whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, with society condoning them all the way?

If my brother behaved like that, Dana thought, the cops would shoot him in the back 41 times.

As he excused himself and disappeared to the men's room, she sighed and wondered what she'd say to Marion the next day. Dana could visualize the look of disappointment on her face so easily.  How could she get out of explaining this one?  She'd have to think of something.  She always did.  Only someone who'd been in a situation with someone like this would truly empathize. As Dana nibbled on her dessert, she began to count the days leading up to the next night in with the girls and thought about how she'd describe this encounter.

Suddenly, she felt a slight pressure on the embankment next to her.  It was Jason, sliding towards her in the booth.  Here it comes, Dana thought and for a moment she closed her eyes to clear her thoughts.  When she opened them, he was very close to her.  Too close.

"Have you ever seen that movie Annie Hall?"

"Yes."

"You know that part about how they kiss each other at the beginning of the date to get the kiss overwith?  Because if they don't, Woody Allen will be thinking about it for the whole date and then the evening will be ruined?"

"I remember that scene."

"That's how I feel."

Dana looked into his face.  She could see the freckles that speckled his eyelids so delicately, so faintly, she had to resist the urge to touch them.  She wanted to tell him that they were beautiful but nothing would come out of her mouth.  She waited for the words to say and as she did, she held his gaze.

"I feel like if I don't kiss you now, I never will."

As he spoke, he came closer gradually, lowering his eyes to look at her mouth, stained with berries from her half-eaten dessert.  She held his gaze and readjusted, smiling faintly. All at once, she knew. That's why he noticed her.  That's why he harassed Marion into a blind date set-up. That's why he persued her all this time, polite and unassuming and direct.  He wanted a kiss, a real one, from big soft lips like hers that would taste like everything he'd ever wanted.  He got everything he ever wanted, didn't he?   Isn't that why this should be the one thing he doesn't get?

In that moment, Dana felt like the most powerful woman in the whole wide world.  And for a moment that seemed to last an eternity, she was.