Category: Flashfiction

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.

Ray’s Call

Ray found his finger twirling the telephone wire, while he listened.
‘Did you hear me, Ray? It could be different this time.’

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It was halfway through the lockdown, all alone in his apartment in the south side of the city, on day 14, when Ray decided as soon as things returned to normal, he would go back. When he said as much on the phone to Lenore, she’d asked him when things had ever been ‘normal’ between them.
He didn’t reply, but he imagined she was holding her hand in front of her, palm facing inwards, so she could see the scars on the inside of her arm. Thin strips of damaged skin making three red circles in a line. Like bullet holes. The recollection made him uncomfortable and his call seemed like a stupid idea. He left it at that and didn’t say anything about it for the rest of the conversation.
Then less than a week before the government announced that the lockdown was over, she called back to ask him, ‘When you last said about moving back here, were you serious?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. He’d been serious about it. But he’d been having doubts since then.
‘You changed your mind?’
‘You know how something seems like a good idea at the time?’ He hesitated just a bit before saying, ‘If this is gonna work, it’s gonna depend on you.’
‘On me? And not on you, Ray?’
He didn’t utter the first thing that came to mind. Maybe he could have put it differently. Did she realize that for things to be different, it would take more on her part, without him having to put it any plainer? She was silent. He waited. He was trying to recall if it had been her right or left hand with the cigarette burns.
‘Ray?’
‘Yeah?’
‘He’s gone. For good.’
Ray found his finger twirling the telephone wire, while he listened.
‘Did you hear me, Ray?’
‘I heard.’
‘It could be different this time. And you’re right. It would be really up to me.’
Ray got his finger out and looked at the orange telephone. Of all the colors.
‘Lenore-‘
‘Ray, he’s gone. I haven’t seen him in months. No calls, nothing.’
‘Are you healthy?’
He heard her take a deep breath, then her voiced changed,
‘I am keeping well.’
He knew her. He could tell when she was sincere. He also knew when she lied. Maybe she understood him too. That whenever he fell silent in the middle of a conversation, it was because something had made him uncomfortable.
‘Ray?’
‘Yeah Lenore?’
‘I’m fine. Did you hear me? Haven’t been ill or to hospital in a while. I’ve been teaching at a kinder-garden three days a week. Mondays through Wednesdays. When the lockdown’s over, I’m going back to work there.’
‘How long you been there?’
Silence.
‘Just a few weeks so far. But it’s a nice change. The kids are lovely.’
He nodded as if she could see his approval, though she was on the other side of town.  Kids. Yeah, lovely. His finger began twisting the circle of wires again.
‘We can meet for tea, one of these afternoons when you are off, when things are back to normal. You still at the dispensary?’
‘Yes I am. Just completed twelve years, can you beat that?’
‘Wow!’
‘Tea sounds good.’
‘One of these days, Ray. Once the lockdown is over.’
He put the phone down.
photo from Unsplash.com by Annie Spratt