Issue 22 July 2015 Flash Fiction Online July 2015

Evgeny slouched before a computer screen inside a trailer that smelled of hot solder and dog piss. Between him and the screen, his weapons officer for the last three months lay with her head on her paws. She cast a baleful eye on Evgeny as he tore open a package of Chicken and Rice Plov.

“Dogs eat dog food.” Evgeny shoveled in a mouthful of rice. It needed salt. And pepper. And cyanide, because Putin’s Grave was he sick of plov. He made it halfway through the meal before his stomach started to churn.

The UAV posting was supposed to be safe. A favor called in by his grandfather to protect his only grandson from the war. It will be close to the front, Grandfather had told him, but not too close. Grandfather hadn’t told him of the nightmares from watching so many lives snuffed out of existence.

Yana licked her chops, detecting his hesitation.

“Fine. Have it.” He set the plov before her. “Hope it gives you the runs, too.”
She devoured it in three precise licks.

* * *

Evgeny, and the other technicians like him, maintained the fleet of computer-operated UAVs. They worked close enough to the front to keep latency low between the real-time flight control computers and the aircraft, but far enough away that the technicians (and especially the expensive computers) were not in direct danger. Yana, and the guard dogs like her, were trained to ensure that while the technicians fixed the computers, Command made the decisions.

The screen in the trailer showed a cabin in the Ossetian Mountains with a wisp of smoke snaking from its chimney. A tethered horse moved in and out of sight under a stand of swaying pines. Evgeny watched from the perspective of an eagle if an eagle flew at five thousand meters.

The latest person of interest emerged from the cabin, a rifle over his shoulder, and saddled his horse. The computer locked a targeting reticle on him as he mounted his horse.

Evgeny sent a message on his tablet, alerting Command that the target was moving. Yana’s tail flicked idly as she watched him check the UAV’s diagnostics.

Command responded a few minutes later: Accessing disposition matrix. Wait and observe the target.

He waited. He observed. The target dismounted and took a poorly aimed shot at a deer as skinny as he was. The deer spooked, unharmed. The target continued on his way.

Evgeny tracked him to a church on the edge of town where the houses gave way to the mountain’s slope. A few dozen horses were tethered outside, swatting flies with their tails. A fence behind the building, barely visible from the high angle, enclosed a playground with swings and a slide and running children.

The reticle grew larger, encompassing the entire church. Icons flashed, turning from red to yellow as the computer armed its weapons and the UAV went into attack mode. A high-pitched tone warbled from the speakers, alerting Evgeny to move away from the console and Yana that it was time for guard duty.

Man. Church. Playground. Visions of carnage danced through Evgeny’s imagination. He furiously punched a message into his tablet, requesting an override.

Weapon detected, Command replied. Maintaining kinetic action.

The missiles turned from yellow to green. Fully armed, target locked, awaiting only the final launch code to be relayed from Command through the trailer’s computers.

Terrorists set bombs. Terrorists murdered civilians. They didn’t go hunting on the way to church.

Sweat beaded on Evgeny’s palms, hot as freshly spilled blood. He couldn’t sit and watch. Not again. A few keystrokes could disarm the missiles; orders be damned. He just needed a second at the command console.

Yana stood, her hackles rising. The damn dog could read his mind.

“Move it,” Evgeny warned, then edged forward.

Yana growled. She didn’t have three heads or a serpent’s tail, but she was about as likely to leave her post as the Volga was to flow backward.

Evgeny considered charging the command console and executing a manual override, but he wasn’t sure his fingers would work with forty kilos of dog attached to his throat. He hurried to his foot locker, five meters behind his chair.

The trailer contained a single weapon: Grandfather’s ancient Nagant revolver. Just in case, Grandfather had said. Evgeny’s hands shook as he loaded the cylinder.

Yana didn’t move a centimeter.

Her growl rose in pitch, almost to a whine. She knew what the revolver represented. Too smart for her own good. Evgeny raised the pistol and aimed with shaking hands. If he pulled the trigger, his tour would be finished. If he didn’t kill her, he’d be finished, too.

“Don’t make me do this.”

Yana bared her teeth.

Two hundred kilometers south, the kids at the church kept playing.

Evgeny squeezed the trigger. The revolver roared. He squeezed again. A third time. Fourfivesixseven until it clicked on an empty chamber. Multiple impacts scarred the command console and its computer rack. The screen flashed crimson, the reticle deformed.

GUIDANCE ERROR. GUIDANCE ERROR.

The children played on, oblivious. Yana huddled before the console, unharmed.

Evgeny let the revolver slip from his fist. His ears were on fire. The gun hit the floor soundlessly.

Command would come for him, and not even Grandfather would be able to protect him. Evgeny shoved open the door and sat on the asphalt outside the trailer. They would lock him up. Probably throw away the key. And what, it would be worse than the trailer and its rancid plov? Worse than murdering more kids for having the wrong parents?

Yana padded out and lay down beside him, tongue lolling out as if she hadn’t a care in the world as long as he wasn’t near the console when the warning alarm sounded. Evgeny scratched her behind the ears. Her tail beat a slow rhythm against his hip.

Grandfather had been wrong. The war had found him and claimed him, after all.

The writing business is tough. Every writer that’s submitted a story has a rejection or thirty to prove it. At the beginning, it seems like it won’t be so bad. The editor just doesn’t get the story, so you send it back out. You know a good story when you see it, yours is just fine, and the name on the check is Baldwin, B-A-L–. And then those rejections start to pile up.

That’s the harsh truth of this business. You’ll be rejected far more than you’ll be accepted. It’s a painful lesson, but from it, I’ve discovered something very interesting:

There’s more to be learned from failure than from success.

Every published story succeeds in more ways than it fails. We read because we love getting lost in the fictive dream, but that very dream, that spell that good fiction weaves around the ol’ gray matter, it lies. It fills us with adventure or romance or wonder and obscures the craft it takes to evoke those emotions. Writing is magic. It’s not just the art of mind control, it’s mind control at a distance, both physical and temporal. That kind of magic takes skill.

If you’re starting out as a writer, it’s hard to see why another story works. It’s even harder to see the ways your own stories are failing. What you can see, however, are the failures in other stories. We’ve all read books that were disappointing. We’ve all read stories that made us stop and thank, “Someone published this?”

It takes hours to write a short story. Weeks or months or years to write a novel. And inevitably our early stories are flawed. It’s supposed to take 10,000 hours of dedicated work to become a master of a given skill. Notice the key words there. Not the hours. Not the mastery. The dedicated work. Those hours spent blindly consuming; those hours spent repeating the same mistakes? They aren’t helping you.

Around a year and a half ago a fellow writer convinced me to read slush for Flash Fiction Online. I say to you now, fellow ink slinger, that I learned more in the first six months of reading for FFO than I did in the previous decade.

Every writing teacher and every writing book talk about avoiding clichés. How do you learn what the clichés are? You see what’s overdone. There are other red flags they tell you to avoid. Dialog without personality. Prose without attitude. Sure, you can read that you should have personality and attitude in your writing, but how do you know what that means? You see the failures. Dozens or hundreds, far more than you’d see if you wrote them yourself. And you learn from them.

In addition to the straight up failures, slush also provides an opportunity to see the stories that almost work. The ones that could be amazing with a little more work. I’ve found that often a story will bother me, but I can’t put my finger on why. The comments from the other readers often help me see the flaws. And as time has gone by, as I’ve invested more and more into this fickle mistress of words on the page, my ability to diagnose failure has grown.

So I suggest to you, tale spinner, that you go forth and read some bad fiction. Find the things that don’t work and ruthlessly cull them from your own writing. Find the things that do work and marvel at the craft behind them. And after a year a half, you’re pretty much guaranteed a sale.

Mike

Your past life drank all the milk again. Please get more on the way back from lectures today. Also, takeaway tonight?

Love Kay

P.S. Is it true Janey’s PL was Helen of Troy? Lucky bitch!

* * *

Mike

Just a quick note to say I added some observations to the sheet for yesterday. No shellfish allergy. (Sorry, he got to the sweet and sour prawns before I did.) Also, likes classical music, hates rock, and refuses to wear anything but black. Past life or not, you guys have nothing in common!

Love Kay

* * *

Mike

How long is this project going to last? I’m sure observing your past lives will get you great grades and all, but I’ve got a shedload of reading to do which is actually quite hard when we have visitors. Gone to the library, won’t be back until I’ve finished Titus Andronicus or it closes – whichever happens first!

Love Kay

P.S. Watched The Lion King last night; our guest hated it. I guess you do have something in common after all!

* * *

Mike

You seem to be up early and back late a lot these days. Surely observing past lives means you need to spend some time with them? While I’m happy to make notes while you’re out, I do have a degree of my own to study for. Can we talk about this later?

Kay

* * *

Mike

Gone out on a local museum trip for class. Taken PL with as he’s looking a little peaky. He was surprisingly keen. Don’t know why I still expect him to like the same things as you. Is that nature or nurture though? Will note down my observations for you, like always. Might visit the gallery after, since we’ll be over there anyway. See you later?

Love Kay

* * *

Mike

I notice you’re out early again. Thanks for the note. I get that your studies are Very Important to you. Guess what? Mine are important to me.

Your Past Life Interferes With My Very Important Studies.

There, I said it. We talk about this tonight or else.

Kay

* * *

Mike

Sorry for storming out last night. Only when I agreed to this, you didn’t mention anything about not being around in case you “influenced” your past self. Is that even possible? Maybe you’re more worried about being influenced yourself? You certainly share his Mummy-issues and over-sensitivity. I thought investigating inherited traits was the point of this experiment?

Kay

P.S. I notice you’re not worried about influencing Janey’s PL.

* * *

Mike

Have taken PL to the Student Union Bar. He got hold of my copy of Hamlet today and has spent the last half hour locked in the bathroom crying. Figure getting him drunk will help, not sure he realized everyone died at the end. Don’t wait up.

Kay

* * *

Mike

Exams all day. Not sure why I’m even mentioning it, as I won’t see you anyway. Janey called for you. Wouldn’t stay, didn’t want to talk. Have left PL with the keys to Netflix.

Kay

* * *

Mike

Thanks for leaving the flowers and chocolate, that was really thoughtful. Missing you loads right now.

Love Kay

I just read the card. Is that why she came over? Fuck you.

* * *

Michael

By the time you read this, we’ll be on the Eurostar. We’re off to Europe, Germany actually. Will send you a postcard from Wittenberg, apparently, it’s beautiful this time of year. Don’t be angry, we just ended up spending a lot of time together and really clicked. None of your business anyway.

Kay

P.S. Left my copy of The Iliad on the table for you. You really should read how that whole Helen of Troy thing turns out.

I gave my left arm to Elizabeth. You’ve never met her, but she was my dearest childhood friend. After my disembodiment party, she went home to London and put it on her end table, hand side down, with a lampshade made of green velvet and children’s nightmares. The nightmares gnawed at the nerve endings on my shoulder, or maybe the unpleasant sensation was my longing for Elizabeth. Or perhaps the scab was itchy. The arm was the first part of me to be removed, so it was hard to be sure what each sensation meant.

My long-ago first boyfriend Michael was surprisingly squeamish, so I gave him my hair, thinking that it would be bloodless and therefore more appealing. He stuffed it in a plastic bag and took it home to Houston, but then he threw it away. Inside the plastic bag, the hair will never weave itself into the dirt and sing lullabies to earthworms. It will never tangle in a shower drain and capture off-key songs. You know how fond I was of my hair, so you will appreciate how angry I was to see it wasted. Let us never speak of Michael again.

Tim and Jim and Annabel and Nora — did you meet them when we were in college? — have become so close as to be practically a single entity, and they each got a finger from my right hand. They are in San Francisco, which is where I would live if location were an attribute that I could still possess. Tim uses his finger to thumb wrestle with Nora, even though technically it isn’t thumb wrestling because he has an index finger. My fingers are happy that they get to be together, although they miss the middle finger, which I mailed to Michael, of whom we are not speaking because he isn’t worth the words.

My co-worker Courtney got my right leg because I couldn’t think of anything better and she left my disembodiment party in something of a hurry. She was like that, always dashing off, so maybe an extra leg wasn’t such a bad gift after all. Courtney put the leg in a freezer in her Montana basement, nestled in among the ducks and deer she and her husband killed on hunting trips. Ice crystals transform my skin into a delicate lace, which the deer might lick like salt if they could control their frozen tongues.

Lee asked for my heart, which I was saving for you until I thought of something better. When I gave it to him, he sprinkled it with salt and ate it, raw and bleeding. Then he went back to Germany. It was an interesting experience, being digested on a transatlantic flight. Don’t look at me like that. Lee is from when we were separated — it is your own fault for kicking me out.

My brother Andrew got my stomach, with my esophagus still attached. He loves both food and music, so I thought he might fill my stomach with honey or play my upper digestive tract like bagpipes. Instead, he put his childhood memories into marbles and dropped them down my esophagus one by one. The marbles clink together in my stomach long after all the memories have been absorbed.

I gave my neighbor Deb my teeth because she likes little things that fit in glass jars. She planted the teeth in her garden and waters them with root beer. Every night at midnight she puts her nose up to the dirt and looks for any sign of plants. I’m not sure what she thinks will grow, but so far nothing has come of it.

Our daughter Shreya was the most difficult to decide. Nothing seemed to suit her. She clearly shouldn’t have a leg, or a shoulder, or a torso. No, definitely something smaller, more delicate. In the end, I gave her my three favorite freckles, which she wore on the back of her hand when she boarded the plane to Bangalore. She shared two of the freckles with our granddaughter, who painted them gold and used them as earrings. The last freckle collapsed into a black hole, a gravitational singularity so small that Shreya accidently dropped it down into the gap between two ceramic floor tiles, where it slowly eats away at the grout.

You didn’t come to my disembodiment party to get your piece of me. You cling to your body even as it fails you, dragging you inevitably closer to a final and unending death. I mailed my eyes to you in a package filled with single-serving bags of those potato chips you like to eat, which are better padding than Styrofoam peanuts. I worried that you would throw my eyes away, and the last thing I’d see would be maggots burrowing into my pupils — but instead you strung them like beads on a section of fishing line and wore them as a necklace.

With eyes no longer mine, I see a forest of rowan and maple, overgrown with moss that weeps with rain. I used to find such things beautiful, but I do not miss this world we shared. I certainly do not miss my body, with its parts scattered around the world. There are some who argue that I no longer feel emotion, but moths eat holes in the fabric of my disembodied consciousness. The goldfish of my past swims in restless circles as it drowns in a bowl of whiskey. I miss you.

If you change your mind before you die, invite me to your disembodiment party. I will take anything — an eyelash or a kidney, your left ear or sixteen neurons from the cortex of your brain. It will be all the body that I have.

Previously published in Daily Science Fiction and Toasted Cake. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

I’m sitting in my living room, my feet up on a laundry basket, Bones streaming on Netflix, the sounds of a young violin student trying to manhandle something beautiful out of an instrument that can be as cantankerous as a badger coming from the other room.

I’m also listening to a podcast. It’s on ToastedCake.com, and it’s “Pieces of My Body” by Caroline M. Yoachim. At the end of the podcast is some commentary by ToastedCake’s publisher, Tina Connolly who is talking about how the story reminds her of an art museum she once visited. Apt comparison. Caroline’s writing is art. Which is why we’re particularly happy to republish this story here this month.

Our First run stories are just as impressive—a good mix of fun and fantasy and even some sci-fi action.

For fun, we offer “Your Past Life Interferes with My Very Important Studies” by C. L. Holland. Fun read with an author interview to boot! Woot!

For fantasy, we offer a haunting tale of love and loss and longing, “Portrait of My Wife as a Boat” by Samantha Murray.

For sci-fi, we have “The Disposition Matrix” by Flash Fiction Online Staffer, Brent Baldwin; an intriguing near-future post-apocalypse story. Great story. Great central character. The food? Not so great. You’ll see. Along with the story, we have an essay by Brent on how his work as a slush reader has helped him get published.

Enjoy!

From the editors:

My favourite story since beginning my time at Flash Fiction Online, the one that I recall most often, is “Portrait of my Wife as a Boat,” by Samantha Murray.

Time and again I return to the image of the coracle sitting on the tides edge with the sun sinking into the horizon.

In this story the conflict between the two women is strong, but so also is the tenderness and the intimacy. This story is about the point in time when, although you love someone, you know you must let them go. The main character’s voice is like the wind blowing her wife away towards the white tipped waves. She, in response, is silent, instead showing through action her departure to her lover.

The description is beautiful. The imagery is potent. I love the feeling this story leaves me with – the sad romance, the salted sense of freedom.

Jo Winters

Managing Editor

She comes home later and later even though the nights are starting earlier than they were.

I feel cross and wronged, and pretend not to see her as she hesitates briefly on the doorstep. I bow my head to my stitching. A new quilt this one–with gold, russet, and red, colors for the Fall that is coming.

I do not look at her directly, but I notice that her hair is stiff with salt and spray. She is barefoot and leaves little curved dark marks on the floorboards as she crosses. I cave and tell her, “There is rice on the stove.”

“I am not hungry,” she says, and her voice creaks like old old wood, “I am tired, I’m going to bed.” She rests her hand for a moment on my shoulder, but lightly, so lightly.
That night she tosses and writhes like she is caught on the tides. The bed-sheets are twisted asunder, and I wake and sit up in bed. I touch her arm and whisper soothingly, but she will not be soothed.

* * *

She smells of linseed, of citrus, the oil that she rubs into all of the tiny little cracks in her face. When she leaves, she kisses me, and I taste the sea.

* * *

Then comes two days and two wild gusty nights she is gone. Most of my stitching I have to unpick again and again. When she comes in, I swell up to her. “Where have you been?” I cry, and my voice rises high and wails at her like a spiteful wind, “Where have you been?”

She opens her mouth, but she does not seem to have any words left. She holds her palms out towards me, and stands there squelching.

She looks both harder and smoother, and deeper brown. I can see that she has come back just for me. I can see too that four walls are four too many, and that the hooked rug and the narrow bed heaped with pillows just make her obscurely miserable. She has come back for me, and I am not the sea.

* * *

The next time she leaves I sit with my stitching and stare at it. Then I put it down. I follow her across the old reserve where you can smell the big, old peppermint trees, down over the dune and across the sand. The sun has baked the sand hot, and I feel the heat under my feet, but I do not hasten my steps. Some things are meant to hurt.

She stands at the shoreline, and I see she is already curving, curving, stretching, turning, curving. Till she lies, half in the water, rocking.

She is the shape of two open cupped hands pressed together. The shape of a coracle, in welsh cwrwgl, the light little boats from the place I was born. She has a mast though, as they did not, standing proud against the sky. Her hull is heartwood with swirling shades of gray, like ilmenite in wet sand. She is a thing of beauty, but that doesn’t surprise me at all because I knew that already, I knew that always.

I lift my leg over the side of her. There is room, just for one. She rocks back and forth, and her sail unfurls and billows out. I think she is pleased.

Her rocking motion edges us forward off the sand-bank and into the deeper water. Light and delicate she whips along towards the white-tipped waves. I do not speak to her again, but I run my fingers over the sun-warmed wood of her gunwale. What are words but an anchor that drags behind her, slowing her down, making her stop, binding her to the land. You don’t say I love you to a boat, you don’t, you don’t.

* * *

The wind has picked up and is blowing my hair back from my face. She will take me to shore now I know. I will stand on the sand and watch her as she heads out towards the sun that is drowning itself at the horizon. I will go back to my hearth and sit and wait although I know she will not come. I will start a new quilt, one for winter this time. One with pelagic hues–cerulean and cyan, with flecks at the edges white as the tips of the waves.

Previously published in Flash Fiction Online, July 2015. Reprinted here by permission of the author.