Posted on

Bingo

Every Wednesday, on Writing Under Pressure, you’ll find a post based on Today’s Word (from Wordsmith.org). Check Wednesday’s Word on the sidebar for past essays, poems, or flash fiction pieces.

Today’s word:

Hobson’s choice. noun. an apparently free choice that offers no real alternative.

I began the first draft of this post with “Write whatever…,” since I woke up void of inspiration and lacking in time. Still, I wrote, which is the whole point of this exercise: write, even when you don’t feel like it. What resulted is more than flash fiction; we’re talking short story here. That’s what happens, I guess, when you chew on a story all day — it grows.

*****

Bingo

After oversleeping, I had fifteen minutes and sixty dollars to get to the bus station.

I begged my college roommate, Andi for a ride. “Come on,” I said as I shook her for the third time. “If you don’t drive me the two miles to the station, you’ll be stuck hauling my butt all the way to Minneapolis.” I tossed her car keys onto the bed. “And don’t ignore me. You’re the one who got me into this mess in the first place.”

Two weeks earlier, I made the mistake of whining – for the thousandth time, she said – about no work for the summer and the horrible prospect of begging my parents for another loan. So, Andi signed me up for catering gigs with the company where she works.

“You earn a chunk of change for each job,” she said. “The only problem is, newbies get stuck manning the Bingo Marathon in Minneapolis.”

“A marathon playing bingo? It can’t be that bad.” I said.

“You’d be surprised.” She had loaned me one of her catering shirts and told me not to spill anything on it.

Knowing I couldn’t miss this bus, I stood at the foot of her bed and threatened her again.

“Get up, or I’ll have a run-in with some chocolate cake. And, you know I can’t afford to buy you another shirt.”

At the bus station, I bought a round trip ticket from Duluth to Minneapolis – fifty dollars even with my student discount. The Ticket Master said he wouldn’t override the automated seat assignment, and I didn’t have time to plead. So, with ten dollars left to my name, I traveled three hours in the last row of the bus, on the side with one seat.

I avoided random conversations with strangers, but I panicked when a waft of diesel fumes sent me hacking and hallucinating. I saw flashes of light and old women shooting craps down the aisle of the bus while smoking cigars. Asking my parents for a loan would have been easier and less traumatic, I thought.

Continue reading “Bingo”

Posted on

Beulah Land

Every Wednesday, on Writing Under Pressure, you’ll find a post based on Today’s Word (from Wordsmith.org). Check Wednesday’s Word on the sidebar for past essays, poems, or flash fiction pieces.

Today’s word:

shangri-la. noun. an imaginary, idyllic place that is remote and secluded.

After reading the definition, I had an idea of the kind of story I wanted to write. The quote that follows the word on Wordsmith.org solidified my idea:

“For just one hour you think you are living in dreamland, a Shangri-La, where if life is not yet quite perfect, it will be very soon.”
~Simon Hoggart; Budget 2010; The Guardian (London, UK); Mar 25, 2010.

What follows is a story about a space in time rather than a physical place, a story that grew from a memory. Memories, for me, sometimes appear as old snapshots — thick and colored with shades of brown and yellow – where details can get lost. So, I can’t call the story memoir, but I can’t call it fiction either. I’ll call it biomythography, a term coined by Audre Lorde in her book, Zami: A New Spelling of my Name.

*****

Beulah Land

As a little girl, summers in Texas were marked by heat, not the calendar.

Heat, and the color of the mulberries on the tree that sat deep in the heart of Fort Worth, in the front yard of my grandmother’s small, old house.

“That’s not a tree for climbin’,” she would remind me. “But, go on and pick some berries. The big purple ones. Not the pink.”

In my sundress and bare feet, I stepped out onto her front porch. The cement was warm from the sun, so I stood there until my feet burned.

Then, too short to reach the tree branches, I dragged an old metal chair, by the arms, down the porch steps. I walked backwards and inched the chair across the scratchy grass. Then, I pushed it up against the tree trunk.

I surveyed the branches, which fanned out like an umbrella, and the berries that grew in clusters — plenty of big, purple, plump berries.

Because the ground was uneven, the chair wobbled when I stood on it. But, I held myself steady by grabbing onto the trunk. I walked my hands up the tree and across the first branch. Stretching up on my toes, I pulled off one mulberry.

It was ripe and juicy and took up most of the space in my palm. I wrapped my hand around the mulberry and leaned down to drop it gently into the bowl sitting at my feet.

When the bowl was full, I took it inside to my grandmother. There, in her apron, she stood at the kitchen sink. She washed the mulberries and dried them on a cloth. Then, she set them in the bowl again.

She scattered one, two, three big spoonfuls of sugar over the top, and handed me the bowl.

“Take these on outside, now,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

The screen door slammed closed and a cool breeze caught the hem of my dress. My feet slapped the cement as I ran down the steps of the porch. I wiggled onto the chair, still at its station under the tree.

Shaded by the mulberry branches, I sat in the heat of a Texas summer and ate mulberries with a spoon. I swung my legs and thought of nothing but the feel of the smooth metal chair on my thighs, the juice of the sweet berries, and the purple stains on my fingers.

[tweetmeme]

Posted on

Burned: Flash Fiction on Wednesday

Every Wednesday, on Writing Under Pressure, you’ll find a post based on Today’s Word (from Wordsmith.org). Check Wednesday’s Word on the sidebar for past essays, poems, or flash fiction pieces.

Today’s word:

imbricate. adjective: Having overlapping edges, as tiles on a roof or scales on a fish.

Burned

They called him “Albert the Human Armadillo,” and he was.

He had rows of scales that ran down the course of his chest – a hardening of his skin well-studied and biopsied by doctor after doctor but never explained. They prescribed creams and ointments and oils that left him smelling of fish or burnt embers. Though always well-lubed, his armor remained.

Albert’s scales had grown slowly. He remembered the day they started, and the times they spread.

When he was eight, he worked all day on a card for his mother’s birthday, writing letters to perfection and coloring in her cartoon hair with a light shade of brown. She smiled when he gave it to her. But, two days later he found the card abandoned in a pile of newspapers – the letters smeared by something wet – and he felt a burning sensation in the middle of his chest. His mother apologized as she stood outside his closed bedroom door, saying she couldn’t keep every card. But, still, he had spent all day drawing. When he woke up the next morning, his eyes were swollen and a small, rough patch had formed along the spot on his chest that had burned when he cried.

The patch doubled in size after his father’s trip to Italy. His father promised to bring Albert a statue of the Leaning Tower of Pisa when he came home. Instead, he showed up in the kitchen and hoisted an expensive bottle of wine. Then, his father called Albert a cry-baby and said he’d go back to the airport and buy him a postcard if it meant that much to him.

Albert’s whole chest succumbed to scales overnight after Ruby, his first real girlfriend, dragged him to the drive-in restaurant and then told him – over a chocolate malt – that she couldn’t go out with him any more. She said that the spot on his chest was getting bigger, she was sure, and it was starting to freak her out. As Albert turned and stared at the steering wheel, she climbed out of his dad’s station wagon and ran to the other side of the drive-in. She jumped into Roger Simon’s red Mustang, and Roger drove her away with a screech and a squeal.

At the high school prom, Albert approached Roger and took a swing at him. He missed, but Roger didn’t. Roger hit Albert square in the chest. Only, it didn’t hurt at all. In fact, the punch barely knocked him back. That’s when they started calling him Albert, the Human Armadillo.

And, that’s when Albert stopped treating his condition. He settled into his armor that stiffened his posture. Sometimes he even stood in front of the mirror and hit his knuckles against it, with pride.

Continue reading “Burned: Flash Fiction on Wednesday”