June 2024 Flash Lit 10.3 - Pineapple

“You just don’t like it,” Bella said.

Jason protested, “Yes, I do, but I’m trying to be principled.”

 

“The principle, then, is to be as annoying as possible?” Bella asked.

 

Jason looked miserable.  “No.  I’m sorry.”

 

“All right,” Bella said.  “What’s the real principle?”

 

Jason uncollapsed his spine, lifted his head, and pulled back his shoulders.  Bella’s interest was like water to a wilted plant.  “So it’s about eating local,” he said.

 

“You won’t eat pineapple because it’s not from around here?” Bella said.

 

Now that the idea was out, Jason got excited.  “Eating locally reduces fossil fuel use and food costs.  It helps prevent further climate change.  It’s good for the body and the planet.”

 

“And you don’t like pineapple,” Bella concluded.

 

“Fine.  I don’t,” Jason said.

June 2024 Flash Lit 10.2 - Pineapple

“It’s a symbol of welcome,” Aunt Phyllis said.

Ford looked dubious.  “Sure.  Everyone wants to be welcomed by a fruit that looks like a giant prickly grenade on the outside and has enough acid to dissolve your tongue if you’re foolish enough to eat it.”

 

Aunt Phyllis looked at him over her glasses.  “Symbol, child,” she said.  “It’s not literal.”

 

“Is that why you kept it?” Ford gestured toward the object in her hand.  “Because it’s a symbol of welcome?”

 

“Of course not,” Aunt Phyllis said.

 

They both regarded the semi-pineapple-shaped trivet with the patchy stain and the bumpy upholstery nails hammered into it.

 

“I kept it because you made it.”

June 2024 Flash Lit 10.1 - Pineapple

“It’s a terrible movie,” Christy said.

Annie didn’t disagree.  “But I love it anyway.  It was a time thing.”

 

Christy thought about it.  “There was a time when you thought it was a good idea for a girl to give up everything she was to get the guy?”

 

“First, have you met my mother?  Second, did you see the tight pants and the sexy high heels at the end?  Third:  John Travolta was hot.”

 

Christy said, “But she could have chosen to wear those clothes for herself!”

 

“Consciousness raising takes time,” Annie said. “We are trained to think about the male gaze.”

 

“Yeah, and then some yahoo says you look like a pineapple,” Christy said.

 

“What?” Annie said.

 

“Oh my God, don’t you remember?  When Frenchie shows up at the dance?” Christy said.

 

Annie laughed.  “See, you love Grease, too.”

June 2024 Flash Lit 9.3 - cherry

“Pretty please,” Holly wheedled.  “With a cherry on top?”

Michael held the skateboard over his head where Holly, three years younger, couldn’t reach.  “I hate cherries,” he said.

 

“Then with no cherry on top?” Holly said, adapting as best she could.

 

Michael gave in, partly because his arms were getting tired, partly because he didn’t want to hear Holly whining anymore, and partly because he saw their mom coming around the corner of the house with a bucket of weeds for the compost bin.  “But don’t crash.  It’ll mess up the design.”

 

Holly, ecstatic, put the skateboard down, put one pink tennie in the center of it, lost her balance, and fell.  Blood welled up from her skinned knee and Holly wailed.

 

Their mom came running.  Two minutes later, Holly had a Wonder Woman bandaid.  Michael was in trouble.  “Why didn’t you help your sister?  You know she’d never skateboarded before.”

 

Michael smarted at the injustice, but he also knew there was only one thing to do.  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

 

Then he went back outside and skateboarded furiously away.

June 2024 Flash Lit 9.2 - Cherry

“It’s offensive,” Molly said.

Dave looked startled.  “It’s just an idiom.”

 

“Lots of idioms are offensive,” Molly countered.  “And when we realize it, we stop saying them.  Unless we’re jerks.”

 

“Me for jerk!” Dave said.

 

Molly stabbed him with her eyes.

 

“I love offending people,” he said.  “It makes life interesting.”

 

“Crosses off all lists for party invitations forever and dumps boyfriend…” Molly said.

 

“Wow,” he said.  “You’re serious.  I was just fucking around.”

 

“This would be the finding out part,” she said.

 

Dave, shocked into contrition, said, “I’m sorry.  I don’t understand, but I didn’t want to hurt you.”

 

Molly sighed.  “You’re making me do your work,” she said.  “But I do love you, so I’ll explain.”

 

Dave perked up like a puppy who, after a scolding, is given a ball, but he was smart enough to keep listening.

 

“The phrase is offensive because it implies that women are only valuable when they’re virgins, that some guy’s few inches of flesh is enough to change a woman’s whole worth, and it perpetuates the toxic masculine notion that men have to want to fuck everything that moves in order to be manly,” she said.

 

“I won’t say it again,” Dave said.

 

Then he stole the maraschino from Molly’s sundae and popped it in his mouth with an evil grin.

June 2024 Flash Lit 9.1 - Cherry

Beth’s chest felt like it was stuffed with fluff.  She promised never to pretend to be a stuffed animal again if the feeling would go away.  She looked at Hopsy next to her in the bed with new respect, maintaining his slight smile all the time when it was so hard to breathe.

Her mom appeared at the cracked-open door.  “You’re awake!  How are you feeling?”

 

Beth’s voice came out thick and slow and croaky.  “Yucky.”

 

“I know, honey.  But I brought you some cough syrup.  It should help,” her mom said.

 

Beth made a face at the closed curtains.  The curtains were never closed in the day time except when Beth was sick.  They made the room not dark, but blurry and dim.

 

“Here you go,” said her mom, handing her the little plastic cup with its measured dose of medicine.

 

Beth drank the dark liquid and then sputtered.  “It’s cherry!” she croaked.  “Yucky!”

 

Her mom brought her a drink of water from the bathroom.  It was not very cold and smelled faintly of toothpaste, but it was better than the thick taste of the cough syrup.

 

“I hate cherries,” Beth told Hopsy as she feel back to sleep.

June 2024 Flash Lit 8.3 - Dragonfruit

Billy tugged and strained and sweated.  The crate moved, but slowly.  “You could help,” he said.

Smoky opened a lazy eye and stretched his long, scaly neck.  “You’re doing fine,” he said.  He closed his eye and curled his head back under his wing.

 

“Stupid dragon,” Billy muttered.

 

“I heard that,” Smoky’s sleepy voice said.

 

Billy turned back to the crate.  He’d tried everything, but the soft sand floor did not want to let the crate slide.  The problem was friction, which was what Billy was trying to avoid in the first place.  Smoky was not making it easy to give him a gift.

 

At last, Billy heaved the crate up next to Smoky.  “Here!” he panted.  “A gift from the village.”

 

Smoky woke up briefly, extended a claw, and pulled the crate toward himself..  “Thank you,” he said, his mouth full of the crate contents.

 

Billy was already trudging home, having finished dragging fruit to the dragon.

June 2024 Flash Lit 8.2 - Dragonfruit

The angel had a busy day ahead of them.  Being angelic, they didn’t actually sweat or get tired, but they did feel a little less like rejoicing than usual.

They started with digging the basilisks.  Once the stony flowers fell off the plants, it was time.  Clusters of the little lizards emerged from the soil and the angel scooped them into a bucket with high smooth sides so they wouldn’t escape prematurely.

 

The unicorns on the vine looked plump and ripe.  The angel focused on harvesting them into a basket.  Lack of focus meant tiny punctures all over their hands.  They didn’t hurt, but they didn’t look good, either.

 

Reaping the roc field took skill.  The angel had a scythe in one hand and a net in the other to scoop the fledglings into.  Once they were safely in the barn, the angel paused.

 

The dragon fruit were ready to be picked.  The angel sighed.  Some time later, singed around the edges, they brought a struggling bag to God.

 

“Your dragons, Lord.”

June 2024 Flash Lit 8.1 - Dragonfruit

Elliot looked skeptical.  He poked at the seedy fruit with his finger.

“Just try it,” his mom said.  “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it.”

 

The outside of the fruit was pink and scaly.  It did not look friendly.

 

“We all need to try new things sometimes,” Elliot’s mom encouraged.

 

Elliot blinked at her.  His world was full of new things, all the time.  This week he’d had his first swimming lesson, his first play date with Henry, a kid who was going to start kindergarten with him, and his first sesame candy.  He liked the swimming and the candy.

 

But right now, he wanted a familiar banana and then he wanted to watch Sesame Street under his old blue blanket with the worn satin edging.

 

“One bite,” his mom said.

 

Bravely, Elliot stabbed the dragon fruit with his spoon.  He ate a bite of its inside.  It did not taste like dragons.  Elliot was glad.

 

“Banana please,” he said.

June 2024 Flash Lit 7.3 - Peach

Charles, his glasses sliding down his nose, said, “You know, some scholars think the tree of life was a peach tree.”

Andrea said, “That explains why peaches are behinds in texts.  Booty is life, baby!”  She loved to poke Charles when he got pedantic.  He looked so cute when he was irritated because he invariably rumpled his prematurely white hair.  He looked like a grumpy chicken.

 

This time, his snit lasted barely a second, because her comment had distracted him from the world of scholars and books and dead languages.  He arrived at the present moment.  The garden was beautiful.  Andrea was beautiful.

 

“Would you like an eggplant to go with your peach?” he said.

June 2024 Flash Lit 7.2 - Peach

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

 

I do not think that they will sing to me.

 

--The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

 

 

“Don’t…” Althea started.  Then she stopped.  It was too late anyway.  Timmy and Davy had already kicked several pints of sand onto the red plaid beach blanket.  She hoped that there was some nutritive value to sand because they were all going to have some in their systems after this.

 

She’d packed adorable lunches for both boys, open-faced sandwiches—that was ironic, now that they had actual sand in them—spread with cream cheese and smiling faces made with blueberry eyes, strawberry nose, and peach slice smile.  She filled cupcake liners with more blueberries and goldfish like bubbly pools.  She sprinkled a graham cracker crumb beach on top of their yogurts and garnished them with gummy starfish. 

 

But the boys were totally uninterested in sitting to eat.  Davy had yogurt in his hair.  Timmy’s face had a gummy starfish on one cheek like a fancy beauty mark.  They ran and dug and paddled and yelled and splashed.  They took bites of food, sips of water, everything seasoned with sand and salt.

 

She let her Instagram-worthy picnic plan fill up with hot air rising from the beach.  She watched it float over the sunbleached heads of the two little boys, up and up and up.  The boys laughed, running toward her, Timmy clutching a perfect sand dollar and Davy trailing kelp.  She let the balloon of expectations float away.

 

Late in the afternoon, the boys crashed into the shade of the umbrella, sleeping in a sticky, gritty, coconut smelling pile. 

 

Althea got out her own lunch, neglected until now.  She bit into her own peach and pretended it didn’t taste like sand.

June 2024 Flash Lit 7.1 - Peach

Jenn sat in the back of the van with Simon and Willa, like an extra kid.  Her friend Dolly had invited her to join the family for peach-picking and Jenn had said yes.

She was glad she was going.  What was not to like about peaches?  She loved Dolly and her husband Marco.  Simon and Willa, at 7 and 5, were fun to play with.  But even as Jenn listened to the complicated adventure that Captain America was having with  Willa’s very grubby unicorn, she felt sad.

 

Dolly and Marco were talking about some detail at their shop.  It was nothing deep or hard, but they were working through a snag with a supplier together.

 

“Nyroooooom!” Simon buzzed Jenn’s face with Cap.

 

“Oh no!” she cried.  “Cap has to watch out for Evil Claw Monster!”  She flexed her wrists and hands into a menacing position and pretended to attack the action figure.

 

“Uni saves you!” Willa said, poking the soft stuffed horn into Jenn.

 

Jenn made her claws die a dramatic and silly death.  The kids dissolved into giggles.  She loved their happiness and still she felt sad.

 

Seth had been invited, too, but he said no.  He always said no.

 

As everyone piled out of the van into the sunshine and the smell of peaches, Jenn, surrounded by her friends, still felt her heart breaking with loneliness.

June 2024 Flash Lit 6.3 - Pear

I didn’t know any better, really.  It’s not like anybody warns you or tells you pears are different from other fruit.

I just said, when Cynthia offered me some of the pear puffed pancake at brunch, that I didn’t like pears.  I mean, they have this texture that’s not quite mushy and not quite grainy.  They taste like, well, like nothing much.  Given a choice, I’m not eating them.

 

Cynthia turned to Jason and offered him some.  It was no big deal.  She didn’t seem mad or anything.  But the conversation shifted around me.  We’d been talking about stand-up paddle boarding and Jason had been telling me about the inflatable one he’d doubt.  I had more questions, but he didn’t hear me, his attention focused on what Brian was saying about his upcoming trip to Peru.

 

Then I tried to reach for the plate of bacon.  Not a rude, way-across-the-table reach.  The plate was just in front of me.  I couldn’t see or feel my body.

 

Moral:  Don’t dis a pear.

June 2024 Flash Lit 6.2 - Pear

“It feels sexist,” Barbara said.  “And pretentious.”

“I never know what you’re mad about,” Dave said.

 

“That’s because you never let me finish,” Barbara said.

 

As she was opening her mouth to go on, Dave asked, “Do you ever finish?”

 

“Don’t get me started on that,” she said.  “Five minutes might be enough for you…”

 

Then she realized she’d been distracted from her original point.  She tugged at her sleeves, straightened her bracelets, and got back to it.  “What I was saying is that when you say something has gone pear-shaped, it sounds, to me, both sexist and pretentious.”

 

Dave took a swig of his beer to fortify himself for what came next.  He was not going to encourage Barbara by gesture or sound because she was going to roll on, inevitable, like the tide.

 

“It’s sexist because women are the ones who are pear-shaped.  When you use the idiom as meaning disaster, you’re implying that disaster is a woman,” Barbara said.

 

Dave thought:  you are a woman and a disaster, so I have at least one data point.

 

“And pretentious,” she went on, “because I know you learned it from your highbrow British murder mysteries.  You’re from Fresno, Dave, not London.”

 

“Ah, yes, that extremely esoteric and academic tendency I have to read pop fiction,” Dave sneered.  “Pretentious is reading Dostoyevsky or Joyce, not whodunits, no matter where they were written.”

 

Dave swallowed the last of his beer.  “I’m going home since the evening has clearly gone pear-shaped.  You coming?”

 

“Bastard,” she said, but she went.

June 2024 Flash Lit 6.1 - Pear

 

“So the old guy, he’s blind and crazy jealous,” Brit said.  “So he takes his wife into the garden—it’s like a garden room with walls and a gate—to do it every day.”

“You’re reading this for school?” Matt said.

 

“Oh, it gets better,” Brit said.  “The girl’s like totally over the old husband and she wants to get it on with this young guy, so she sneaks him into the garden and he climbs into a pear tree.”

 

“Why a pear tree?” Matt said.

 

“Just listen!” Brit admonished.  She flicked her hair back over her shoulder and leaned toward Matt across the sticky student union table.  Her eyes sparkled with mischief.  “The girl tells the husband she’s dying for the taste of the pears.  He’s like bummed because he’s blind and can’t get them for her.”

 

“I’m feeling kind of sorry for the bro,” Matt said.

 

“I didn’t say she wasn’t a skank,” Brit said.  “But clever.  Anyway, she says let me stand on your back and I can climb up and get the pears myself.  He’s like, sure I’ll bend right over and she’s up the tree and banging the other guy in seconds.”

 

“In a tree?” Matt said.

 

“I know, right?”

 

“It’s too weird for porn even,” Matt said.

 

“I doubt it,” Brit said.

 

Matt admitted that there was some weird shit out there and even if he himself had not stumbled upon the sex in trees subgroup that didn’t mean it wasn’t out there.

 

“So the gods are watching and one of them—I forget which one—is like she’s doing her husband wrong.  So the god cures the husband’s blindness.  He immediately looks up to see the missus doing the nasty in the tree.  He’s crazy mad,” Brit said.

 

“I’m so shocked,” Matt said.

 

“But the girl’s got an answer.  She’s like O dear hubbykins, my plan worked!  I was told it would restore your sight if I struggled with a man in a pear tree,” Brit said.

 

“Struggled,” Matt said.  “Well, that’s one way to describe it.”

 

“Dude’s not buying it.  He’s like no, he was bonking you, but she’s all righteously angry and says it must not be working perfectly yet.  Maybe it’ll take some time for you to see clearly and maybe you’ll see some weird stuff for a while,” Brit concluded.

 

“So her plan is to keep on keeping on with her boy toy and telling the husband he’s just still not seeing right?”  Matt said.

 

“Yep,” Brit said.  “Chaucer is like half dirty stories and fart jokes.”

 

“Literature is fucking weird,” Matt said.

 

“But funny,” Brit added.

 

“Wanna go do it in a tree?” he asked.

June 2024 Flash Lit 5.3 - Passionfruit

Bill was grumbling again, so Louise turned down her hearing aids.  That turned his voice into a low continuous indistinct rumble not unlike the sound of the waves on the beach.  Bill was not having a good time, poor dear, but Louise was determined to enjoy herself.

The air smelled of salt and plumeria.  Plumeria had been a pleasant surprise for Louise from the moment she had seen the first one clipped above the flight attendant’s left ear.  The white and gold flowers looked almost fake; the thick petals could have been porcelain.

 

“Hurry up and sit down,” Bill had said.  “My feet hurt.”  Louise had plopped happily into the window seat, luxuriating in the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean, the latter looking like a slightly wrinkled version of the former.

 

Louise had chosen the coffee shop for this morning’s breakfast because it looked like it had been there a long time.  She knew Bill had trouble dealing with novelty before breakfast.

 

But she had forgotten about novelty in breakfast.  The coffee was just the overcooked mass-produced kind Bill favored, the eggs were over easy, and the bacon crisp.  Bill had been able to overlook the presence of linguica on the menu, but the wedge of pineapple garnishing his plate irritated him no end.  When the waitress set down Louise’s fruit salad with yogurt Bill couldn’t believe it.  “I don’t even know what those are.  Those aren’t fruit.”

 

Louise savored the papaya, the guava, the passionfruit, the pineapple, all sweet and a little sharp and a little musky.

 

The deep drumbeat of Bill’s irritation faded as more coffee and bacon disappeared into him.  Louise turned her hearing aids back on in time to hear him say, “But I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

 

“Happy anniversary, honey,” Louise said.

June 2024 Flash Lit 5.2 - Passionfruit

“I’ll have the facial with the charcoal passionfruit mask, the citrus sugar body scrub, and the deep tissue massage,” Margie said.

The spa attendant in her white clothes nodded.  Margie thought:  she looks like some kind of TV chef and I’ve just told her how I want my meat prepared.  As she lay on the massage table later between the caress of the high thread count sheet and the hurts-so-good pressure of Fiona the massage therapist’s hands, she thought that at least she’d die a happy steak.  Didn’t they massage the Wagyu cows?  And the birdsong and flute soundtrack surely imparted some extra tenderness.

 

The thing was, Margie was supposed to stop thinking.  This spa vacation was intended to slow her down, disengage her from the hamster wheel of her thoughts.  Maybe that half hour on the treadmill this morning before yoga had been counterintuitive.

 

Margie couldn’t help thinking, about steaks or hamsters, about how spa treatments were described like wines:  two fruits and a random object.  Cherry, berry, and leather.  Lemon, prickly pear, and oak.  Melon, mint, and smoke.  Okay, mint wasn’t a fruit, but close enough.

 

There would be neither steak nor wine included in her dinner.  This place was vegan and dry and doubtless chock-full of antioxidants.  Margie still felt resentful about her breakfast of half a cup of coconut chia pudding garnished with three berries and a chamomile tisane.

 

“You’re holding a lot of stress in your neck,” Fiona murmured, probing with expert fingers.

 

Margie couldn’t help it:  “No shit.”

June 2024 Flash Lit 5.1 - Passionfruit

“So spill,” Marnie said.  “What’s it like to date a fancy chef?”

Vi sighed inwardly.  “Last night he grilled steaks and asparagus and made pineapple-passionfruit sorbet,” she said, pandering to Marnie’s desires.

 

“Oooh!” Marnie moaned.  “That’s amazing!”

 

“Yes, it was,” Vi agreed.  Curt had used every single thing in her kitchen, had dribbled marinade into likely and unlikely places, and lectured her on the right kind of sugar to buy.  She came to bed with pruned fingers, smelling like lavender cleanser and charred meat.  Very sexy.

 

it didn’t matter what she smelled like because Curt was already asleep by the time she’d finished cleaning up.  “Big day tomorrow,” he’d said over dinner.  “Rolling out the summer menu.”

 

In the middle of the night, Vi snuck out of bed and ate the rest of the sorbet over the sink as she stared out the window at the moon.

June 2024 Flash Lit 3.3 - Watermelon

Lynn rubbed the fat tube of lip gloss over her mouth again.  It wasn’t helping.  Unless her goal was to smell like fake fruit salad.  Who thought watermelon lip gloss was a good idea?

 

But Lynn’s mom was sure Lynn was too young to wear lipstick.  No matter how many layers of Bonnie Bell she put on, Lynn was never going to achieve the red-lipped glamour of an old-fashioned movie star.

 

The mirror was the messenger of despair.  Lynn saw frazzle-ended permed hair, a mouth full of braces over teeth that looked too big to be hers, and a big fat zit not quite centered on her chin.  Lynn looked nothing like Lauren Bacall or Grace Kelly.  She sighed and went downstairs in her not-high-enough heels that were all she could talk her mom into.

 

Elena and her dad arrived.  “Ready?” he asked as the girls united in the hope that none of their parents would do anything embarrassing.  Too late:  “I just want to get a picture,” Lynn’s mom said.  “The girls’ first school dance!”

 

Finally, they were out of the house, out of Elena’s dad’s boring white sedan, and clustering with other kids at the gym door.

 

No amount of crepe paper and no disco ball could make the gym look less sweaty and more like a ballroom, but Lynn still believed that it was going to be all right.

 

Then Sam asked her to dance.  Lynn looked around, horrified, to find that John was already there dancing with Marty.  That’s not how it was supposed to go.  But Lynn’s manners took over and she said yes, mechanically smiling in the face of Sam’s awkward flailing.

 

Watermelon tasted like disappointment. 

June 2024 Flash Lit 4.2 - Watermelon

(I have no photos of watermelons, apparently!)

“Don’t swallow any of the seeds,” Jack teased, “or you’ll end up like Mommy.”  He pointed to Mary’s taut pregnant belly.

Jessie turned her watermelon-smeared face from one parent to the other, considering.  Then she deliberately swallowed one of the slippery black seeds.

 

“Jack!” Mary said.

 

“I didn’t think she’d do it,” he protested.

 

“I swear she’s more mature than you are.”  Mary’s voice was sharper than she intended, probably because there was a baby sitting directly on her bladder and the little darling had spent the whole previous night dancing the can-can.

 

Jessie’s wide blue eyes with their long lashes filled with tears.

 

“Oh sweetie,” Mary said.  “I’m sorry.”  She hugged Jessie close into her side.

 

“You get a baby,” Jessie said, sobbing.  “I want my own one.”

 

Mary thought her heart might explode with how much she loved Jessie.  “This baby is for all of us, you and Daddy and me.  I promise we will all share him, just like we all share Spaghetti.”

 

Spaghetti, hearing her name and hoping that meant treats, thumped her tail on the floor under the table.  When no treats appeared, she went back to sleep.

 

Jessie looked more hopeful.  “Do I get to name him, like I named Spaghetti?”

 

“We all agreed on Spaghetti’s name,” Mary said.  “We all have to agree on the baby’s name.”

 

“How about we name him Sponge Bob?” Jack said.  “We love Sponge Bob.”

 

Mary gave Jack a look that said something between “not helping” and “do you really want me to stab you like this watermelon?”

 

“Or just Bob,” he amended.

 

“What names do you like?” Mary asked Jessie.  “Who else do you love, besides Sponge Bob.”

 

“Can we name him Pops?” Jessie asked.  “Because I love Pops.”

 

Mary and Jack both smiled now

 

Jack said, “That might be a little confusing, since they’ll both be bald.”

 

Jessie giggled.

 

“But,” Jack said, “we could give our baby a name like Pops’s secret name.”

 

“Pops has a secret name?” Jessie asked, gripping her napkin tightly.

 

“It’s the one Nannie calls him,” Jack said.

 

“What is it?” Jessie wanted to know.

 

“Nannie calls him Michael,” Mary said.  “So how about we call the baby Mike?”

 

“Can his middle name be Sponge Bob?” Jessie asked.

 

When Michael Robert was old enough, his sister told him, “Mikey, it’s the watermelon’s fault.”