Flashfiction – Page 2

The Displaced

I notice the pores on his craggy face. His split eyebrows. Crow’s feet and sombre eyes. I see all this but I don’t recognize the Latino man’s face staring back at me from the bathroom mirror.

Getting up abruptly, I begin walking, trying to quell the murmur of panic inside me. People are scattered around the spacious terminal. Some are observing me casually. I’m stopped by a firm hand on my shoulder. A man in a bright uniform, either a paramedic or a firefighter, tells me calmly:

Sir, please return to your bench and remain there. We will examine you again as soon as we are able to.

He wouldn’t let me cross the barrier. I see another uniform approaching. Uncomfortable with the odds, I decide against resisting.

Outside the barrier, an Indian lady in a beige sweater is standing with one hand on her chest. She’s following my movement, her mouth partly open.

I return to the bench by a ceiling-to-floor glass wall and sit, lowering my eyelids. My anxious thoughts haven’t subsided. Outside, planes are landing, taxiing, and taking off.

I saw my husband being restrained by the paramedics. Yes, he was able to walk back to his seat unassisted. His gait was familiar. But I noticed that when he looked in my direction, there was something missing in his eyes. He didn’t recognize me. I’m pretty sure he didn’t.

She’s a black girl, around my age. Her Afro and jacket went nicely together. I was so close, I could see the evening light on her bewitching irises. I could almost peer into her soul. But why am I seeing a stranger’s face in the mirror?

photo from Unsplash.com by Serrah Gallos

The Landing

A cluster of lights on a stairwell landing somewhere. One of those ornamental things, probably selected by an ancient building owner. Only one bulb functioning out of four. What light there is barely reaches the carpet directly underneath. What’s gonna happen you wonder?

Is a guy going to walk up the stairs from out of our view, from the gloom and stop under the dim patch of light? That would put him outside the door facing the landing. He might pause there. Then what? If the single light symbolizes a diminished mental capacity, would that apply to the man on the landing or any person behind the door?

OR do you think the cluster of lights actually symbolizes lives being snuffed out, one by one. The one still functioning can represent this fellow outside the door. What fate awaits him? Will something come from the darkness of the stairwell to finish him off?

OR do the lights reflect the inevitability of our existence, that eventually, everything and everyone expires? No matter how brightly or what company we shone with from the beginning. Our buoyancy in numbers, which give us our confidence, diminishes day by day until we find ourselves alone, on a poorly lit landing like this, waiting for what comes next. The inevitable.

What if all of the above is true? What if all of it happens? What if we are the lonely man on the stairwell landing? Shall we ask ourselves the necessary questions:

Why am I here? What’s coming up the stairwell for me? Is this where it all ends for me? And who lives behind this door?

photo from Unsplash.com by Cyrus Lopes

Tusk

The object that had caused all the deaths and fear and suffering in the valley…he knew what it was.

He held it in his hands gently, as if it was the most precious thing he’d ever held, which indeed it was. In his village or the plains around, he’d only heard of these things, spoken in hushed voices by those afraid of the power of the men with weapons.

The men were outsiders. No one who’d been born and brought up in these valleys would be as ruthless. The elders said so and even the elders were powerless. He’d seen money change hands in return for information and silence, although when he’d asked the question insolently, the reply he’d received was that weapons could not be argued against, not when lives were at stake. Mothers and children. The elderly. All possible victims. All helpless.

He’d been tossed into this tent, hands and feet bound, his mouth stuffed with a filthy rag. When he regained consciousness, in the half-darkness cast by the moon outside, his eyes grew accustomed to his surroundings. Returning consciousness brought pain – in his groin and belly, chest and shoulders – and he recalled that he’d been beaten up earlier before being thrown into the back of the lead truck. Shortly after, he’d lost consciousness.

Now, there was blood in his mouth and he couldn’t lose the metallic taste despite spitting into the ground by his side repeatedly. He fell backwards, unsteadied by the weakness of his body and the unfamiliar place. That’s when his hands grasped the smooth, hard object, with pointed end. The object that had caused all the deaths and suffering and fear in the valley, in villages like his own and among the elephants of the plains. Although he couldn’t see it, he knew what it was.

He held the tusk with reverence, feeling a sorrow that wrapped itself around all the living things he’d known since his childhood. He was at the very point where the soul of his community was being repeatedly raped, among the very people who carried out the deed for the rich buyers in the capital and cities overseas, and he could do nothing.

Image from Unsplash.com by Jean Wimmerlin.