February Flash Lit 10 - The Extra Key

“Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass:  there was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas!  either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them.”  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1

The shop was full of fanciful clothes, dresses with tulle skirts, embroidered jackets in jewel colors, wide-legged shantung pants.  Here and there, a bride twirled to see all sides in the mirror or an exhausted bridesmaid concluded that yes, indeed, the dress did make her look fat, but would look fabulous on the maid of honor.  I had no idea why I was there.  I needed to be in the parking lot.  Perhaps this was the shortest way?

The bunch of keys weighed heavily in my hand.  Where had I parked?  I couldn’t remember.  For that matter, I didn’t remember what car I was looking for.  I looked through the keys and found an unfamiliar fob:  it was for some kind of Volkswagen.  A memory or a simulacrum of one came to me and I knew that I was picking up the car that Brent had left there, not my own car.  I had no idea what color or shape it was, so I wandered up and down the aisles pressing the unlock button on the fob, hoping for enlightenment.  Once I thought I found the car, a blue minivan, but it turned out that the high school kids piling into it had just pressed their button at the same time.

The shape seemed right, though.  Yes.  I was looking for a van.  I found it off in a little offshoot of the lot, the kind of place with dumpsters and service trucks.  The van crouched under a tree.  At some point, it had been white, but it was at least half rust.  When I creaked open the driver’s door, I saw that the vinyl seat cover had been eaten away entirely, leaving just spongy yellow foam.  There was no seat back, no passenger seat, and the back of the van had only more spongy yellow foam on the floor.  This was not going well.

It got worse.  I sat in the driver’s seat and discovered that the van had a manual transmission.  In theory, I can drive stick, but in practice it is roughly equivalent to the stress level of going back to seventh grade every day for the rest of my life.  With acne.  And braces.  And the terrible perm.  However, I needed to get home.  Naturally, the van had about five pedals, all of them in locations that did not seem usual.  Thinking about driving was apparently enough to put the van into reverse and none of the pedals appeared to be a brake pedal.  The good news, such as it was, was that the van was moving very slowly and probably would miss the truck behind it if I managed to turn the wheel.

The alarm has never gone off at a more welcome moment.

Februray 2020 Flash Lit #9 – Some Assembly Required

“’Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.’  (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter-day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)” Alice's Adventure in Wonderland, Chapter 3

Louisa, with the part of her brain that was not occupied with the pressing business of continuing to breathe in and out around the invisible weight pressing into her chest, wondered whether it was better or worse that the chairs were so uncomfortable.  There was a hard plastic lip around the seat that cut painfully into her thighs.  Design, overuse, or simple reluctance kept the back of the chair from supporting her back, except for the ridge at the very top that prodded her shoulder blades like an admonishing parent.  Discomfort on such a basic level distracted from the overarching despair.

The other participants fidgeted in their seats, too.  One woman had come in her blue rocket-patterned pajama pants and an enormous gray sweatshirt.  A kid in a black t-shirt under a flannel shirt scratched at the scars from his last suicide attempt.  An older man seemed determined to stare a hole in the gray industrial carpet.  None of them met each other’s eyes.

There were two moderators for the group.  The man wore blues, a chambray shirt, faded jeans.  He looked neither crisp nor wrinkled, which was somehow comforting.  The woman, older, had a brush of gray hair and peered out from a nest of nubby natural fiber garments like an intelligent and artistic bird preparing to nurture whatever eggs came her way.  Louisa noticed that she brought her own cushion to throw on the seat of her chair.

It was the man who spoke.  His voice was higher than Louisa expected, but rippling.  He congratulated everyone for making it to the meeting.  He said his name was Mike and that he and Carol would be facilitating the next six weeks.  “We hope to give you tools,” he said.

“And you can build your own new life with them,” Carol said.

Louisa wrote those words down in the margin of her handout, hoping they were true.

February 2020 Flash Lit #8 - Battle Scars

“’The great art of riding,’ the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice, waving his right arm as he spoke, ‘is to keep—’  Here the sentence ended as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in the path where Alice was walking.  She was quite frightened this time, and said in an anxious tone, as she picked him up, ‘I hope no bones are broken?’”  Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 8

Even a concussion was a poor excuse, really.  No matter how dazed she was, Jenny knew that nothing good would come of letting Craig help her up and dust off the snow and collect her scattered skis and poles.  She should have pulled herself together to get to the lodge on her own.  Of course, in the moment, she didn’t know it was a concussion yet—that wouldn’t be clear until after she got home and kept losing her balance.

Anyway, Craig with that crinkle in the corner of his eyes that implied mischief, snapped her back into her ski bindings and led her, feebly protesting, down the rest of the slope as if she were a good little duck and he the solicitous parent.  There was nothing parental in the way he bought her a shot of whiskey, though.

In an alcohol-and-impact haze, she texted her friends who had attacked higher and more difficult terrain that she was going to head back to the condo.  Craig, his red-brown hair sticking up in all directions now that he had removed his ski hat, insisted that he should follow her to ensure she got back safely.  Jenny Puddleduck led the foxy Craig down the winding path.

Predictably, once inside the condo, Craig offered to rub Jenny’s aching shoulders, suggesting that maybe they should take a dip in the hot tub on the deck.

When her friends returned a couple of hours later, Jenny had the soup on.  Her right hand had a bandage wrapped around the whole thing—she’d have the scar forever—and she was furiously scrubbing at the blood on the carpet.  “We’re going to have to forfeit the cleaning deposit,” she told the others, “but at least he was a meaty one.  Oh, and I’m going to need a new ski pole.”