Today’s offering is a flash fiction story about feelings.
Difficult feelings, painful to acknowledge feelings, painful to process and face.
Samhain
A.C. Turek
I sit with Gail under a large oak tree near the sword booth. She twirls a red-slathered autumn leaf by its stem.
“Have you ever seen a leaf this huge?”
“It feels like we’re sitting in another Samhain cliché,” I say. “The fair, the witches, the pumpkins and squash.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “But for it to be a real cliché we’d have to get pomegranates and start setting out pictures of William Blake.”
I shift. “He’d like that except, there’s no trace of his spirit.” I’m not speaking of William Blake.
Gail looks down at her leaf, then up again, through narrowed eyes. “Maybe all that talking about it chased it away, or blocked your perception.”
That was not me. I’ve been stabbed. What the hell do you mean?
I said nothing at his funeral, and I should have. It’s a regret. Another knife-twist.
“I’m still so mad at him!” Gail says. “Selfish asshole.” She gets to her feet, limned in the green-gold sunlight. She gestures to the archers on the field. “I’ve gotta go hang with the boys.” With that she takes off, leaving me alone, my grief rekindled.
I sit here, staring through the bent bows, finely drawn silhouettes against deep blue sky. Death by suicide is not what people say it is.
A guy says something, chain mail glitters; Gail’s signature giggle strafes the field. It’s all very purposeful. A collarless dog runs past, brindled and skinny, barking after something. I push myself up to follow it, to find my own purpose, any purpose. I might have taken his dog, had I stood forward and offered. Had my offer had any chance of acknowledgement.
Two costumed knaves balance on a big log stretched across the irrigation canal, sparring with staves. Thick wheat grass cushions either end. A pony cart passes by, obscuring the contest for a few moments. The pony wears fairy wings, and the driver beams beneath her crown while a camera clicks all over them. It’s that literary dude with the long, gray ponytail, from the newspaper. The dog trots toward the pony, then thinks better of it.
A small commotion ensues at the balancing log. Laughter, rude words, clapping. The smaller man has fallen. His moccasined feet are sticking up out of the ditch, bicycling the air.
I realign myself with the dirt track ahead of me. It leads off toward the alley, edged by a weed-footed chain link fence. A faded wrapper hangs in a thistle. The air is flat and stale, and the dog has disappeared.
Siege of the Spirit 