Flash – Page 2 – Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog

Rough Night

A flash piece (~1,000 words). I remember it came to me full bore but don’t remember what precipitated it.

Oh, wait, I do remember. Can you guess what brought it about? The answer’s at the bottom of the post.

As always, let me know what you think.

Rough Night

Haggarty’s feet seemed to argue with him about walking through the door. His five-o’clock shadow was well past midnight and he wore the same clothes he wore when I last saw him two days ago.

He grabbed a coffee and sat.

Lucello left me in charge and to be polite I said, “Rough night?”

He nodded, pulled his phone out of his pocket and thumbed up a few screens.

I tapped my pencil on the table. “Well?”

“I got home and all day my wife’s leaving me texts and voicemails that the dryer vent is loose and rattling so fix it when I get home.

“So I get home and I know I’m not gonna get any peace until I fix that dryer vent so first thing I go to the junk drawer for a screwdriver to fix the vent.

“But the screwdriver isn’t there. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, she fixed it herself.’ then I notice the little hammer isn’t there, either. I start moving things around. The pliers aren’t there and the Phillips head is missing.

“What the fuck? So I go into the bathroom where the dryer is and sure thing, the vent is completely off and there’s a hand there, the fingers clamped around the pliers, and I’m thinking ‘What the fuck?’

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Postcards

Not sure what caused this one to come out. It’s still a work in progress.

Let me know what you think.

Postcards

I picked a book from the carousel, something to read on the beach. I prefer the feel of a real book and, thanks to years of training and working in the field, I know “I prefer the feel of a real book” tells the reader so much about me. Just about everything you need to know if you’re paying attention.

My son, Jeremy, laughs at such statements. He has his ereader. Nook? Kindle? Android? Phone? I’ve lost track, he has so many devices. I’ll have read four to five pages by the time he’s found what he’s looking for on his various devices.

You would have thought my son would be more organized. I don’t mind him using devices, but for Chrissake organize yourself.

I’ve noticed that about younger people. They lack some rudimentary skills and my memory at twice his age is better than his. I remember where he put things better than he does, and they’re his things!

But a good book, a good cigar, a solid wooden beach chair with canvas strappings and a foldover shade to keep you out of the sun. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

The little bell over the door jingled and I looked up.

I know her. Or knew her. Couldn’t place her name. But my pulse quickened. Her, I remembered.

The Last Drop

The following piece started life as an exericise in mood, atmosphere, and tone.

I’m waiting for some first readers to get back to me on it. One first reader offered, “I got a sickening chill when I got to the end.”

Hurray! I won!

Let me know what you think.

The Last Drop

People use to come from miles around to watch my father pour gas. He could pour gas through the eye of a needle into a siphon-tank without spilling a drop. They’d come, their near empty gas cans on the back of their buckboards, the cans braced all around so they wouldn’t fall over, spill, slosh around.

There were special gas pouring days back then and dad was the only one in our country who had a license to pour.

It was a wondrous thing to watch. He’d put one can on the ground in front of him, walk around it a few times, maybe put his hands on his hips or cross them over his chest and lift one hand to stroke the stubble on his chin, considering. Real difficult pours, he’d get down on his knees and hands, put his head down at ground level, looking around the can, checking for balance; would the can teeter as it filled? Would it slide as it neared full?

Then he’d start with a single, small, drop. A “test drop,” he’d call it. Everybody held their breath. He’d check the neck of the can after the test drop, make sure there was no spillage.

Warm days were the worst. Everybody’d have to stand back lest the fumes got inhaled. Couldn’t have that. Other pourers weren’t as careful as my dad. The fumes would escape and everybody’d have to go see the magistrate, explain what happened. Why weren’t proper precautions taken? My father never had to face that, never had to worry about asking the community to make a decision; make them decide what value would this person bring us? Is their contribution moving forward worth the gasoline fumes now resting in their lungs, in their blood? We can extract the fumes, reconstitute the gasoline, but the person would die.

The Grand Ture

The following piece has been in my unfinished pile since April 1991 (and probably predates that by a few months). It’s gone from 5,000 words to its present ~775. The core idea has remained throughout, it’s framing and presenting it properly that’s taken me years to figure out.

I’m waiting for some first readers to get back to me on it. Let me know what you think.

The Grand Ture

Mace stepped out of his tractor and into the early August heat of the Boston blast zone. He listened for the ocean. It shouldn’t be too far away. Much of Boston was landfill and the bombs – the big ones hidden for years in abandoned buildings – caused the sea to reclaim its own. The stench of The Charles entered him like swallowed bile and he watched the waves come up from the east, from the Atlantic, as if the ocean pushed The Charles’ filth back, refused it, said, “No thanks, those bodies and wrecks are yours, keep them to yourself. I don’t need them.”

The young girl’s voice called him from the bunker. “Hello? I’m not going to open the door until you tell me who you are.”

Mace lifted his service pack out of the tractor, strapped it on his back, and tightened its belt around his narrow waist.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

Just inside the tractor’s door, on the right and only visible when the door’s pneumatics opened it fully, rested like a high-resolution mezuza; a photograph of a little girl, her arms raised and waiting to be lifted in someone’s arms, her eyes and smile open and wide, her blonde hair caught in some wind.

Mace’s fingers went from his lips to the photograph and he tapped the door to close.

“Hello? I know you’re out there. Who are you? Answer me!”

He stands naked in a ditch.

I mentioned back in Four pieces for a workshop I’m taking an online writing course. I’m sharing the exercises from that class in that post, Two Pieces for a Workshop, and in Four (Other) Pieces for a Workshop. This post is from the last class in that series. Here we were given “He stands naked in a ditch.” as a prompt and asked to create an atmospheric flash piece/tone poem from it.

I came up with the following 54 word piece.

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