Tag: flash fiction

Apologies. Apologies because this is short, and for the title, but you can’t blame me for at least referencing it once, right? Very tired tonight. Back tomorrow.

The rational mind, that is to say my rational mind, kept trying to categorize it, carve the scene down so it would fit into my stable, boring worldview. The worldview that had carried me through hopscotch and tetherball, through ABCs and cursive writing, through bag lunches and midterms and car loans and mortgage payments and insurance.

I think the little guy was doing the Charleston. But I’m no expert.

It would be so much easier to laugh it off as a dream. But I can’t.

I wanted to get away from it all, take a break from my em-to-eff nine-to-five. Backpacking, sleeping under the stars, smelling the pine-fresh air. Oh, I got that alright.

I think it was the music that woke me. And the singing, if that’s what you can call it. Beastly grunts and groans, paws thumping time against the underbrush, the occassional ribbet. The fire had died down, only coals softly glowing. And the noise.

I unzipped the nylon that cocooned me and rose to my 50% cotton/50% polyester covered feet. To the west of me, a clearing was highlighted in the silver glow of Earth’s moon. Men of Science had walked on that moon. Or so I believed. Until I had seen the racoon dance.

I crawled closer, trying to avoid the attentions of the creatures that played audience to the strange, jitterbugging rodent. A wolf, a bear, a fox. And where had the crocodile come from? I was in Montana, for God’s sake! What twist of reason had brought me to this place?

What was more disturbing? Hard to say. The pink tongue the masked furball showed as he obviously was lost in concentration? No. The oppossum’s friendly smile? No. The bear, slapping his paws in applause? No.

The most disturbing moment was when I joined in.

It was fun.

Apologies. Another short one tonight. Apparently I’ve got cars on my brain lately; this is all I can come up with.

Gregory Caldecott shifted down from fourth to third, tapped the brakes lightly, and late-apexed into the corner. The tires squealed a little, and the car did a neat four-wheel drift to the outside of the turn, coming dangerously close to gravel that was the only separation between the asphalt and the cliff, but there was very little body roll from the nearly ancient Triumph.

Gregory (never Greg) loved the little British car with an affection that his girlfriends could never fathom, and he enjoyed immensely the times when he could take it out, put down the top, and put it through it’s paces on smooth dry pavement. The mountain air was fresh, but not biting. The coupe surged, it purred, it roared.

It was alive.

Much more alive than the rest of Gregory’s material possessions. Come to think of it, Gregory readily admitted to himself, he didn’t own that much more than the car. He had the furniture in his apartment, his clothes, a decent teevee and stereo, a cell phone that he rarely used (he’d justified it’s purchase with the familiar “it will be of use to me in ’emergencies'”), and a few knick knacks that tried to fill the empty spaces in the five small rooms he called his “box”.

Gregory was counting the books in his modest library when the tire blew, causing Gregory to miss a shift, a turn, and the rest of his life. In that order.

One person mourned his passing: his mechanic.

Well, two more, for certain definitions of mourning. But that’s another story.