Issue 60 September 2018 Flash Fiction Online September 2018

In the cool of the morning, I walk between my rows of peppers, brushing my fingers against the glossy leaves of Anaheims, Brazilian Starfishes, and Carolina Reapers. I grow peppers the way my mother and grandmother before me did—I grow them for the dead.

Grandma taught me about peppers, how they gather up the anguish of the deceased as sure as they gather up sunshine. Grief is strong stuff—it concentrates into the sharp heat of a green jalapeño, the sweet burn of the habañero, and everything in between. Once someone’s digested their sorrows, the dead can rest in peace.

Martin, my neighbor, is always telling me I should sell seeds or enter a competition at the fair. But it doesn’t feel quite right. Like I’d be profiting from someone’s pain. Martin doesn’t understand—like most folks outside my family, he can’t sense the dead when he eats peppers, and I’ve never explained it. Better to help the dead out quietly, on my own.

As I snag a few shishitos for breakfast, a blotch of black catches my eye, dangling from my ghost pepper plant. It’s the wrong color for a ghost pepper.

Well. I’ve gotten odd peppers before. Grandma taught me to cultivate my acre of land soulfully—a patch of peppers surrounded by the right flowers and trees to draw in stubborn old regrets that evaded other folks’ plants. I’ve gotten peppers as hard as peanut brittle from calcified grief, and lace-thin peppers from ancient sorrows that hardly remember how they started.

I walk up and feel the black ghost pepper between my fingers. This grief is only a year old, but the pepper’s filled to bursting with it. Like the plant somehow scooped up a hundred lifetimes of sorrows at once. I can’t let that fester. I snip it, too, and head inside.

I blister the shishitos in my cast-iron skillet first, and snack on those. Most of the time, they’re mild. And these are. I get the impression of elderly folks, tinged with the sad warmness of missing the people they’ve left behind.

While I munch, I slice up the ghost pepper and scramble it with two fresh eggs from Martin—I often trade him cayennes and such. Barter doesn’t feel wrong with peppers.

In a jiffy, I’ve got a pile of golden orange scramble, studded with black. I dig in.

Grandma taught me to love the sting of even the hottest peppers, but this is something else. My eyes swell shut. In my hurry to the fridge, I knock the plate onto the floor. I grab the milk. I gulp. I pour it over my head. And then I lie on the floor for an hour, trying to remember how to blink. When my eyes clear, I realize I broke the plate, shattering ceramics through the eggs, chunks of pepper, and all that unresolved sorrow.

Those woes will find another pepper to scoop them up. Hopefully in a way that someone can actually digest.

#

The next morning, the black ghost pepper is back. Right where it grew before.

There’s nothing for it. I can’t manage it cut up, so I swallow it whole.

There’s only one man’s sorrow inside this pepper. Each one flashes before me as a face—the face of someone he couldn’t save. Burned faces, cut faces, old sagging faces. I can’t tell if he was an ER doctor, or an army soldier, or a pastor. But he sat with plenty of people in their last moments, holding their hands, mourning their own looming deaths with them. Soaking in their regrets right through the palms of his hands.

I can’t keep it down. My stomach cramps and I’m in the mud, coughing bile up my nose. I feel like I’m breathing shards of glass.

A hand. On my shoulder. Martin. He helps me into his car and drives me to urgent care. They can’t do much for me there, except check that my throat is all right when the vomiting stops.

Martin takes me home. “Well, you were right about not entering your peppers in the fair. Judges would probably disqualify you for attacking them. How many did you eat?”

Just one. But I don’t say it out loud.

#

The black pepper is back in the morning. This man deserves to have his anguish digested and put to rest. I can’t change his sorrows, but I absolutely want to witness them. Just like he witnessed for so many others.

But mourning with someone when you can’t do anything to help—that takes an iron stomach. I’m not him. I can’t do it alone.

I kneel in the dirt and stare at the pepper as the sun rises.

Martin walks, then runs toward me.

“I’m fine!” I promise.

But Martin frowns at that. “You’re looking mighty sad to me. Maybe you need a day away from here. Fair opens tomorrow. Come with me?”

I stare at the ghost pepper. I really can’t handle this by myself. “Only if you’re driving the truck. I’ve got a cooler I need to bring.”

Martin raises an eyebrow but nods.

#

The next day, the other competitors at the chili cook-off laugh at me for bringing only one little black chili. But it’s more than enough to flavor an eight-quart pot. Dozens and dozens of folks take tiny tasting bowls—from judges who compliment the smoky flavor to teenagers trying to show off, who walk away with red noses. Martin has two bowls.

I have just one. I feel the ghost’s pain over a young woman who died far too early. He wept with her over the scholarship she’d never take, the places she’d never paint, and the good-byes she’d never get a chance to say. I feel his sorrow burn up my nose, mingling with coriander and onion.

I couldn’t mourn for him all alone. Maybe no one should have to.

He climbs the spiraling stairs. Bowtie dangling from his fist, he climbs and sits atop the castle wall, where the torch-dotted city folds to dark shapes. Below, vastness, empty, as he feels sitting here. His feet are heavy, pulling downward.

He doesn’t need to fall to crack into a million pieces. At tonight’s wedding, he shattered.

Clicks of glass slippers, a sweep of satin, and she appears—the queen. Fresh jewels still settling in her hair. Surrounded by lily-of-the-valley scent. She checks her phone’s screen. “They’re going to cut the cake, Hugh,” the queen says.

He pats his round shell. “Thank you, but no.”

“Shall I order you?”

“You won’t,” he says, wondering how she manages to sparkle even on a moonless night. She is extraordinary, a wonder. And I am fragile as china, he thinks. “Your king said I’m someone’s ‘Before Picture.’ That I always will be a ‘Before Picture,'” he says.

“Come. Celebrate our happiness.”

“Do you love him?”

She puts a hand on his sloped back; the queen turns to leave. “I know my duty, as does he,” she whispers. “But do you?”

#

He holds the bowtie out. The straps flutter as it falls into the darkness. It would be easy to follow, Hugh thinks.

Hooves clatter on the cobblestone below. Two score men boast and argue. “Humpty?” the king shouts up to him and raises a mug. “A toast to you, Humpty Dumpty!” The King’s voice is rich as musk. “I’ll have the queen save a dance for you!”

The men parrot the king, “Hump-ty! Dump-ty!”

Hugh glares down at them until they fall silent.

“You’ve dropped your tie,” the king says.

“I am still tied,” Hugh says. “Or perhaps I should say yoked.”

“A jester—Humpty, my funny, fat friend!”

“Is that all I ever was? Or is that what you decided I should be?”

The king’s horse nervously paces. Without looking away from Hugh, the king says, “Leave us.” The king and Hugh quietly sit, separated by a dozen stories.

The king splashes his ale across the cobblestones. “What?”

“I loved you,” Hugh says.

“Should I admit I hoped to break your heart now? Confess that I tried to save you from worse?”

“I love you!” Hugh shouts.

The king holds a single finger up. “Please, stop. I won’t be cruel. Come back. Smile. Laugh. Be happy.”

Hugh stands and feels his balance pitch forward.

The king holds his hands out as if to catch Hugh. To save him. To hold him safe.

“My love, if you should fall…” he begins.

Hugh feels his nostrils flare. “I won’t need you to put me back together again.” He pushes a tangle of hair from his eyes, the way the king—then a prince—used to not long ago, once upon a time. He touches his lips, the way the king used to once upon a time. Before. Before duty. Before a princess. Before they all decided to live happily, ordinarily ever after.

Previously published in Podcastle, 2017. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

The hard truth is that everything is fleeting and control is often an illusion and we tend to make art to obliterate our own sense of mortality so that perhaps we will in some fashion endure beyond our bones.

Some built pyramids on the graves of their workers.

Some wrote poetry locked in an asylum.

Others scratched in the margins of their term papers.

So why do you do it?

And not the usual platitudes, please. Something with a deeper reality. This is, after all, for posterity.

You do it because it’s the worst game of chance in town, yet the stakes are so low nobody really cares until your scratchers say, “Short story sale!” or “Minor advance for novel!” or “You now have an agent!” And what brings you back to scratching is the same itch that gamblers have chased forever, but in a different kind of transaction since we don’t pay hard currency to be a writer (most of the time): instead of, “I’ll be rich,” it will be, “I will nudge the world a little.”

And you have. You’ve peopled the minds of strangers with your creations. You made imaginary weapons for RPGs and got paid real money. Your tales of fisticuffs, fun, and hardship have offered escape for those who needed.

And that is good.

But there’s another reason.

And it’s less noble and more pure ego:

You want a contradiction: you want to succeed in the cultural marketplace without compromising anything.

Thus, like all gamblers, you’re doomed.

Unless, perhaps, the next time will be the big time.

So you keep scratching.

Scratching to be the best you can and accept the glory or gutter as fate may chose.

Keep scratching. Until the coffin lid shuts tight.

A beautiful woman robed all in white, lips red as rubies, followed the young, pale-skinned priest as he walked though the forest.

The priest knew she was a yakshi, a demon that tore men’s throats out and drank their blood to quench her thirst. She was said to live atop a palm tree. When darkness fell, she would descend to the ground, smelling of fragrant pala blossoms. Hapless travelers, entranced by her beauty, would approach. Coyly unfurling a betel leaf, she would ask them for a twist of slaked lime to smear on it — crushed limestone paste to add flavour to her paan. If the man offered her any with his finger, he was fair game for her.

The priest wasn’t worried. His shiny new crucifix lay weightless around his neck, but the magical stones in his pocket felt reassuringly heavy. “Throw one,” his old friend, the tribal chieftain, had told him, “and any monster will be hurled all the way to the otherworld.”

The woman followed him, humming a few indistinct bars of song. The priest wasn’t sure why her presence bothered him. But he had to get rid of her. There was something quite untoward about the situation.

When he next reached a clearing, he sat down beneath a tree and opened his bundle.

The yakshi settled down on the grass and regarded him with rapt fascination.

He took out a tin box in which he kept betel leaves and chewing tobacco. He opened it, unfurled a betel leaf and, his eyes on the yakshi, took out a stout iron knife with which he spread slaked lime on the leaf. A sudden flutter of pain crossed the yakshi’s face, as if he had said something extremely unkind to her.

When he resumed his journey, chewing the paan, he thought she wouldn’t follow. Iron was poison to a yakshi. He had heard stories of ancient magicians tricking a yakshi by offering her slaked lime on an iron knife; if she touched the iron, she would be weakened and easy game for a priest who would nail her—with an iron nail—to a banyan tree.

But she followed, a few paces behind him.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

For a moment, he thought it was the wind, so low had her voice been. He walked on in silence, her tinkling anklets keeping a steady rhythm behind him.

“So cruel,” she whispered. A breeze ruffled the neck of his cassock. The priest fought a sudden impulse to turn around and check if she was indeed so close behind.

“I wasn’t planning to drink your blood.”

He snorted. What did a yakshi want with him if not his blood?

As if encouraged by his response, her anklets jingled briskly as she moved a bit to the side, so that she was just visible out of the corner of his eye.

“You’re awfully boring,” she said.

He shot her what he hoped was a quelling look. She responded with a mischievous smile that went straight to his heart like a bolt of lightning. His breath quickened. “You can’t hurt me.”

She pouted. “True, there’s an etiquette to things. I can’t kill you without asking you for slaked lime. And if I do, you will extend it to me at the tip of your nasty iron knife!”

“So there we are,” he said.

“So there we are.”

It was an impasse. But still she walked by his side.

“Why are you following me?” he asked.

“It’s a free forest.”

He thought of casting the stones and ridding the world of her. True, she had not hurt him yet, and it was a bit unchivalrous to harm her first. But she was a yakshi. It would be a good deed.

Suddenly, she pointed. “Do you know what that flower is?”

“No.” His reply was flat.

Undeterred, she started giving him a guided tour of the forest, naming each tree and each flower, explaining the medicinal uses of plants and herbs. He soldiered on, trying in vain to ignore her.

As he neared the edge of the forest, she started dragging her steps. Her voice rose in pitch. She tried to entice him back with the bounties of the forest, with her laugh, with her expressive eyes.

She would never know how close he was to submitting to her eyes black as night, her blood-red lips, her skin golden like twilight dust.

He could see the sunlight ahead, the village path, and the spires of his church on the horizon. In a few more steps, he would be out of the forest.

“Can I have some slaked lime?”

He turned at the desperation in her voice. She stood pale and trembling, a betel leaf unfurled in her hand.

It would have been easy to take out that iron knife and nail her, ending her threat forever. Easier still to cast aside the knife and just go to her. The priest did neither. He shook his head and turned away.

Her pain and rage burst out of her in an unearthly howl, chilling him. The wind swept around him, pulling at his cassock. Trees swayed all around, showering him with leaves and tiny branches. The light ahead seemed unattainably far.

Fear eclipsed all thought. In an instant, he had taken out a magical stone with a muttered mantra. In that one instant, when he turned to throw the stone, he caught his last glimpse of her.

She hung onto a low branch, keening in sorrow. Through the rising storm, through her thick black tresses, he saw her face. He would never see such loveliness, such devastation, in a woman. His soul ached to wrap itself around her fragrant body.

And then the stone flew from his hand with a blinding light, and he turned and ran towards the village without looking back, like a madman, like a coward.

Six months pregnant, and I should have been happy. Six words to fire me, and I should have been angry. Instead, I drifted in a fugue. Spring faded, summer swelled, and our lives were falling apart.

“I’m hungry,” you said.

“I’m hot,” I answered.

So we went for ice cream. June heat, dirty pavements, crowded store. Still better than being inside. We bought treats with dwindling money because what’s a little bit less, when you haven’t got anything anyway.

“This strawberry syrup tastes fake,” I said.

“I’ll swap you my vanilla,” you answered.

We swapped. For a moment I was happy, and I think you were, too.

#

I used to think Rapunzel was a stupid story. Why would you risk pissing off a witch for radishes?
Pregnancy soon corrected that naivety. I craved ice so badly I dreamed about licking snow off car roofs. About trekking to Antarctica and gulping down glaciers. No snow or glaciers in late June, but we bought ice cream every day. We’d walk out, dip into the store, sit on the bench outside.

“How’s the job search going?” you said.

“People don’t hire heavily pregnant women,” I answered.

The Cornetto seemed to peel its own wrapper. It wanted to be eaten. The cone had a texture like cardboard, like the boxes in our living room. We were packing, moving, the rent too high without my job.

I bit my cone and imagined I was chewing those boxes up to spit them out again because I liked the house we had. I think you liked it, too.

#

Ice cream became routine. Tuesdays were for Twisters, and I always saved the sticks, little souvenirs of joy. You made some into finger puppets, for when the baby comes.

“What if she chews them?” I said.

“Then I’ll make more,” you answered, and I almost smiled.

Wednesdays and Thursdays we bought whatever was on sale. I’d never tried choc ices till that summer and they tasted like poverty; cheapest of the cheap. They melted in the August heat even faster than our savings.

On Fridays, we’d try something new. I developed a minor addiction to Callipos.

Magnums were an expensive treat for Sundays and my birthday and also the day we moved—from a good house with a garden to a basement flat that leaked. The only thing I unpacked was the crib and some furniture. Didn’t want our books ruined by the damp.

“Where will she play?” I said. “We don’t have a garden anymore.”

“There’s always parks,” you answered. “How about we go for a walk?”

We finished our ice creams and drifted in the park, catching sunshine through the trees. If I kept moving my feet, I could believe we had somewhere to go. I think you believed that, too.

#

Something was wrong.

We went into hospital three weeks early and waited, waited, waited. You bought me an ice cream from the cafe, and I couldn’t finish it. Not until I knew she was going to be okay. So you held it for me while it melted with the last of summer’s light.

The baby died.

I didn’t cry.

It rained some in September.

#

My clothes smelled of leaking milk, and I couldn’t speak at the funeral. You spoke for both of us, every word eating into you. Small bodies make scant ashes.

Afterward, we found a cafe near the church. The kind of place where tea costs more than a mortgage. How much did the ice cream cost? My child, I guess, since we wouldn’t have come here otherwise.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “November’s too cold for ice cream.”

“It’s not about eating,” you answered. “Here, let me open it for you.”

Yorvale, organic and local; honeycomb flavour. It tasted of dust. We sat together by the window, looking through it, looking away.

#

We should have talked about her.

We should have talked.

Instead, I threw the crib out. No child to use it, nowhere to store it. We meant to put the finger puppets on her grave but couldn’t bear to touch them.

Christmas came and went, the season of celebrating newborns. Our flat stayed freezer-cold. The people upstairs had their baby, and you sat awake at nights, listening to it cry. I bought earplugs and avoided parks. In the new year, I found a new job. You lost yours.

“Nevermind; jobs come and go,” I said.

You didn’t answer.

Lent bled into Easter. Spring was around the corner, and the ice in me started to thaw. I no longer dreamed of snow. You started taking walks—going out every day, in fact. Spending hours in the cemetery.

I thought you were thawing, too.

I thought wrong.

You were melting.

#

I’ve drawn the curtains back. I hope that’s okay. It just seems a shame for you to sit here in the dark when we’ve already lived so long without the light. I made a box of memories, like we used to talk about doing. I put in the puppets you made, the clothes she never wore, and that book we wanted to read her; it’s sat untouched all winter.

And I’ve brought you an ice cream, the kind that comes in a tub with a wooden spoon. I know you’re not hungry—you never are anymore—but like you told me once, it’s not about the eating.

It’s about sunlight on dark days and ice cream on hot ones. It’s about sweetness that lingers when everything is bitter and making puppets from the trash. It’s about all the words you said to cheer me up whenever I fell down.

I want to say those same words back to you and maybe talk about our daughter, if we can. I want to go on walks and unpack our books and remember how to thaw without collapsing.

I want to have ice cream in summer again, and I think that you do, too.

Here, let me open it for you.