Issue 4 January 2014 Flash Fiction Online January 2014

January is not my favorite month.  I suppose if I lived in Australia or Brazil I’d feel differently.  But I don’t.  I live in the northern hemisphere, where January is cold, dry, and dreary.

You would think the perfect solution would be to publish a string of lovely, uplifting stories, the kind that makes the heart sing, the kind that puts a smile on your face.

But, no.  We’re not publishing those kinds of stories this month.  If I could choose one word to describe this month’s stories it would have to be this one:

Squirm /skwǝrm/ verb 1.  To wriggle or twist the body from side to side, especially as a result of nervousness or discomfort.

Sometimes the characters will do the squirming, sometimes it will be you.  I apologize ahead of time.  At least one story may be too much for some people.  It was almost too much for me.

So what do you say we just dive right in.

We’ll start off with Bonnie Stufflebeam’s “The Land of Phantom Limbs.”  How’s that for a squirm-worthy title?  Still, not so bad as it sounds.  In fact, a touching telling of a soldier recovering from traumatic injury and the blurry line between hallucination and reality.

Next up, H. L. Fullerton gives us “The Card.”  In this story our characters do the squirming for you when a mysterious card arrives in the mail.  You know how sometimes there are things in the past that you wish would stay there?  They seldom do.

Last we bring you a story that, well…  Stop now if you’re squeamish.  Katherine Crighton’s “Your Hand in Mine, We’ll Be All Right” is a creepy psychological horror piece that, for me, hit a little too close to home in some ways.  Not that I would EVER do what she did.  If I’ve piqued your curiosity, if you read on, don’t blame me for what you endure.  You’ve been warned.  If you love the super-creepy, you’re going to love this story.  We did, which is why we’re bringing it to you.

Sometimes a good squirm is just what January needs.

After the grenade went off under him, they had no choice but to cut off Jon’s arm. When Jon woke, he still felt the arm’s weight, but it wasn’t there. He fell back into the cot, eyes closed, and he saw it, his arm, his left arm, dancing in a field of purple pansies. How could an arm dance? he wondered. But there his was, its fingers moving like music, carrying the stump along, parting the flowers as it went. Pollen flew up and settled in the arm hair, which he knew would not stop growing, for hair grew on the dead and what was the arm but dead now?

Jon fell asleep, and the arm disappeared. There were no dreams of fingernails, of holding his Karen around the waist, no dreams at all, as his brain was overfogged with morphine. When he woke, he found it again, behind closed lids: his arm.

This time it was at a table in a smoky room. On the table’s green felt surface, an array of playing cards was spread like a lady’s fan. Across from his arm sat two legs and a hand, the hand using a stool to reach its own deck of cards, which it then held between fingers. The legs used their toes and kept dropping cards onto the ground, and each had a fat cigar hanging between the big and little toe, unlit. Smoke oozed from a machine in the far corner, which he could also see. The label read Sleaze’s Smoke, for that real cigar smell.

“Call,” said Jon’s arm. “You bastards better not have anything good.”

“I have double Aces,” said the foot. The hand slapped him across his arch. “Oops,” the foot mumbled.

Jon could still feel the arm, warm and scheming, could feel the slick of cards in its fingers. He opened his eyes to see if it had in fact returned, and the image of the card table vanished.

The nurse came in and changed the bandage, sniffed the air. “Has someone been smoking in here?” she asked.

He tried to describe what he had seen, his arm, playing poker, playing well, in fact, pretending to smoke a cigar. The nurse checked the morphine dispenser by the bed, asked him if he’d been pressing his button correctly. He nodded as best as he could and pressed it again.

Sleep came without dreams, again the fever sweats, the warm sensation of urine trickling down a tube between his legs, and the hairs on his arm standing attention at the sound of a medical cart squeaking down the hall. Again when he woke he kept his eyes closed, and the arm was in another room, at a table, across from an arm gloved in white lace. The hands closed their fingers over little sandwiches, Jon watched as white cream cheese oozed from the crust, and the sandwiches turned to mush in his hand’s tight squeeze. He opened his eyes to a white room. Closed them to a blue one, two hands intertwined in a bed with black silk sheets. My Karen, he thought. My Karen with two arms, and I have only one.

The sight of the coupled arms wrenched his gut. He tried to sit up, tried to call out, but found that he couldn’t – perhaps he was dreaming after all. The place where his arm once was throbbed, and the rest of him felt cold, as if all the blood in his body was pumping into a limb that wasn’t really there. Eyes closed, he saw an ocean of water, steam rising from its surface, a beach of the exfoliating salt scrub Karen used to keep in her bathroom. He could smell the perfumed flower scent of it, see the oil collected on its surface, disturbed only when a hand or foot waded through, pushing the oil to the side. A little arm dove into the oil and buried itself in the scrub.

“Come wash yourself off in the ocean,” Jon’s hand called out to the little one, and they dove together into water, one rinsing the other, the other moving its fingers in circles, like a dog wagging ten tails.

His eyes opened to a room which smelled of salt. Closed to a spider web with the hand caught in the middle, writhing and screaming. Jon felt the muscles tense, felt the sticky webbing caught to the arm hair, felt the fear, felt the spider legs creepy crawling over the skin, felt another’s fingers grab hold, pull until the web disappeared, help pick the bits of white away.

The hands and the hands and the hands together, all together, holding each other like lovers, like family in the dark behind his eyes. He concentrated with all his strength, reached his right arm over and let it lie against the bandaged stump at his shoulder. He felt from the other side the warmth of sun, the cold of rain, the soft of cushion, the rough of a book’s pages, the caress of fingernails so sharp they almost cut him.

He pressed his morphine button, not because he was in pain, but because he wasn’t.

My Karen, he thought, my Karen, they’ve got my arm, they’ve got my arm. I can feel everything, they’ve got my arm.

From the other land he felt a warmth press his fingers. He felt a hand with a ring on its pinkie where Karen’s used to be. It squeezed his arm, he felt lips against it, felt the hot mint breath of her, his Karen. She had found him at last, there in the hospital with a name he couldn’t pronounce even if he could talk through the morphine haze. She held tight to his remaining arm.

“You only need one,” she said.

Ever since Mary’s hip replacement, it was Jack’s responsibility to get the mail.  Every afternoon (excepting Sundays and federal holidays), he walked down the block to the trashbox–as he called it–and sorted out the charitable requests, which he hid under his shirt then tore to bits in the bathroom so Mary wouldn’t see.  Way too softhearted she was, wanting to donate to everything from retired priests to pregnant sea monkeys.

One Thursday in August, Jack unlocked the box and pulled out the assorted flyers, credit card offers, appeals, and…a bright blue, Hallmark-sized envelope addressed in indistinguishable Palmer script to Mr. and Mrs. Jack Durand.

Covering the blue envelope with their gas bill, Jack started back to the house, then paused.  Cards arrived in December, May, and June for holidays.  January and October for birthdays.  Never in August.  He shuffled the gas bill deeper into the pile and stared at the card.

No return address.  Postmark read Kansas City, MO.  “You’re not in Kansas anymore,” he said, but the joke didn’t take the edge off.  Neither of them had friends in Missouri.  Kids were in California, Virginia and London.  He flipped the envelope over to see if the sender’s name was on the reverse flap.  It wasn’t.

An old service buddy could’ve moved, but that didn’t explain the size of the card.  This wasn’t an announcement or thank-you note.  This was birthday-sized, yet heavier.  Like an invitation.  From Kansas City.  Sender unknown.  He thought, Sometimes the past don’t stay buried.

Jack shambled home, tapping the envelope as if to induce it to spill its secrets.  He wondered if he should open it, see what it was before he rang the doorbell and announced, “Mailman.”   Before he delivered the bundle to his wife.  But Mary opened the mail.  Jack was just the postman (although he joked to his VFW friends he was more bill collector than mail carrier.)

He forgot his doorbell routine; walked in, mail at the ready.  Mary wasn’t on the couch.  The blue envelope taunted him from the top of the stack.  He tucked the card into his waistband and adjusted his shirt.  “Jack?” Mary called from the kitchen.  “Is that you?”

“It’s me.”  The card crinkled against his lower back.  He almost put it back, but Mary shuffled into the living room, carrying a cup of tea.  “You didn’t ring the bell,” she said.  “Did you forget the mail?”

“Got it right here.”  He waited for her to arrange herself comfortably on the couch, then handed her the post.  It wasn’t until he was in the bathroom that he realized he hadn’t purged the junk mail.  He’d been so focused on the card.  He pulled it out; felt as if he stole it, despite his name emblazoned across it.  Because it was only half his: Mr. and Mrs.

Should he open it?  Or tear it to bits and flush?  Maybe it was better not to know.  This way he wasn’t adding to the secrets he kept from his wife.

He couldn’t remember if Madeleine hailed from Missouri.  It’d been so long ago and he’d worked hard to forget.  He prayed she wasn’t the type for death bed confessions.  It was a concern, at their age–this clearing of consciences before meeting one’s Maker.  “You can’t take it with you,” Jack said and stuffed the card under the bathroom sink behind the plunger where he kept his magazines.

He returned to the living room and found Mary writing checks.  “I wouldn’t be able to sleep, thinking about homeless polar bears.  And those poor children in Haiti.  We have to send a little something.”  She smiled and waited for his requisite crack about feeding the children to the polar bears.  But Jack couldn’t summon up the joke.  When he sighed heavily, Mary said, “Jack?  Are you feeling okay?  I could make you some tea.  Or a hot toddy.”

“No, no.  Everything’s fine.”  He hoped it stayed that way.

Jack tossed and turned all night.  Couldn’t get that damn envelope out of his head.  Twice he tried to destroy it.  But ripping the pretty blue paper felt the same as shredding his wife’s trust–he couldn’t throw it away.  Second time, he moved the card to his coat pocket.  Tomorrow, he’d write ‘return to sender’ on it and let the post office worry about it.  Let it give them insomnia.

Next morning, Jack jumped back into their daily routine, letter all but forgotten.  It was a skill he developed during the war: not thinking about the doom waiting to rain down on you at any moment.  You handle what’s in front of you and when the juggernaut comes you put up your umbrella and prayed.

Mary had to remind him about the mail.  “Yes, sir,” he said, saluting her.  He grabbed his coat and headed out.  But when he reached the trashbox, he couldn’t write ‘return to sender’ on the envelope.  It wasn’t the Jack Durand thing to do.  Jack Durand took his lumps and got back up.  So he collected the bills, hid the charitable requests in the small of his back and plopped the card on top.

He rang the bell.  Called, “Mailman!”  Mary was on the couch, teacup in hand.  “Do we know anyone in Missouri?”

“Missouri?”  Mary paled.  She examined the bright blue envelope, front and back.  Her lips pursed; frown lines deepened.  With a shaky hand, she handed it to Jack.  “Maybe we’ll just throw that one out.”

This is going to be very quick, because I can’t tell it slowly. Just imagine you’re holding onto my hands, okay? Keep my hands in yours so that they’re not doing anything else.

I had a baby in 2009. A little girl. I was going to do it the natural way, breathing techniques, nightmares about episiotomies, everything, that was what I was going to do. I had a midwife, even, because that’s the route I wanted to take.

A couple of weeks before my due date I started to get a bad feeling about the whole thing. The baby wasn’t moving right. I felt like I was leaking. I couldn’t get the idea of my baby dead or dying out of my head, so I bullied the midwife until she sent me to the hospital to get an ultrasound.

The ultrasound revealed that I had half the amount of amniotic fluid that I needed. The placenta was shutting down. I needed a C-section immediately. I remember calling into work and telling them I wouldn’t be back, that the routine checkup just turned into my maternity leave. It was a Wednesday.

C-sections are major abdominal surgery. They cut you open. It used to be that the surgeons would cut you lengthwise across your abdomen, right into the uterus, and pull your baby out that way, but it turns out that that’s sort of shit for your muscles. Now there are two cuts: one horizontally on your “bikini” line, which becomes important later, so just remember that spot, between the hipbones, above the bush of pubic hair, under the enormous pregnant belly so you can’t see a thing, that’s where the first cut is–and the second cut, into the uterus itself. Much safer, much less damaging, much more invisible.

Now here’s the part that bugs me. There are options for closing you up again, after the baby’s been removed. Medical science has come a long way. Somebody told me exactly how they would do it to me. Maybe it was surgical glue from the uterus all the way to the top. Maybe it was dissolvable sutures in the uterus, and then surgical glue at skin level. Maybe it was something totally different for the muscles. I don’t know. I didn’t know then, either. It bothered me.

The actual surgery part of this, the part that happened on Wednesday, isn’t important. I don’t care about the surgery. I didn’t get my perfect vaginal birth, whatever, it doesn’t matter. I also got my daughter, she didn’t die, that doesn’t matter either. Focus. Hold onto my hands, they’re twitching.

I’d never broken a bone before. Never been in an emergency room except to work there briefly when I did some EMT classes in high school. I was good at dissecting animals in school, though, fine with working with raw meat when I cooked. After my C-section there was a baby that was taken away to the nursery wing and there was me, in my hospital bed, with a plain white bandage between my hips.

I just wanted to see. They hadn’t let me watch the surgery. And I couldn’t remember what they said they’d close me up with. Maybe it was the drugs that made me think it was a good idea. But probably not. I can’t really back out of what I did that easily. I just wanted to look. I wanted to see.

Under my hospital gown I saw my stomach deflated for the first time. It looked swollen, pitted. I pressed my fingers against one side of my abdomen, slowly shoving. Something moved under my skin. I pushed it back, and went lower.

Under the bandage, there was no cut; just a large roll of skin and fat, what had once held and then discharged a baby, and then my bump of pubic bone. There was a bloody fingerprint beside my navel, the length of a thumb, that suggested there might ever have been a knife, but that was all.

I reached down and pulled back the roll of skin. I had to curl up on the bed to see. Under the skin, hidden away, there was a wide, white line, cut eight inches across, held together with little black stitches. Someone had cut me open there. Someone had cut me open, changed the insides of me, and then closed me up again. Who knew how well they’d done it, either. All I could see were these stitches.

I touched the edge of the cut, and then dug my nail a little between two of the stitches. The cut opened to my finger, showing the white fat under the skin. I rocked my fingertip back and forth, settling it lower, reaching.

The stitches weren’t in that firmly. My skin stretched more than I thought it would. I’d never felt anything so warm and comforting in my life. I’d gotten three fingers in and was checking my muscles by the time the nurses came in and found me.

Please keep holding my hands.

My baby is older now. And I’m better. Have to be better than that, right?

Except it still bugs me that I don’t know how they sealed me up. If there are sutures that might come wriggling to the surface of my skin. If everything was put back into the right place.

So I pick at my odd-shaped scar. I watch my little girl play in the backyard. I make dinner. I cut up hot dogs with the paring knife. I look at the paring knife. I look at my hands.

But you’re holding my hands.

Don’t let go.