flash fiction

LOVE

| betweenstops

 We were in Barcelona, so we were going out to dinner at nine. We finished around 10:30 and then we walked down to Barceloneta because it was the feast day of Saint John in late June and there were bonfires on the beach. The bonfires would burn all night long. None of us were going home before sunrise.

I was looking for a special someone. I had been single about six months and was still furious that my last boyfriend had broken up with me. What made me most angry was he didn’t have much of a reason. When I thought about it truthfully I didn’t have much of a reason for getting together with him in the first place. 

My girlfriends and I were drinking sangria on the beach and with each glass we got louder. Some people had a beach ball and we began throwing it back-and-forth. Someone made a makeshift fence and we were playing pretend volleyball. A person started drumming on an upside down plastic bucket and someone else started to sing.

It was a joyful scene but I was sad inside. I was so sad that I walked towards the water’s edge and then I walked along the waters edge. It was around midnight and there were so many people on the beach. I felt like I was in a crowded bar even though I was outside. 

I looked around and then I saw him. He was standing in a clearing all by himself looking up at the moon. I recognized him. I recognized in him what was in me. It was like I was looking at the other half of myself. It was strange.

Just as I was thinking that, he turned to me and smiled. At that instant, all of the anger within me drained out the bottoms of my bare feet into the sand. I felt like the stars we’re inside me pulsating new hope home. With that tingly feeling throughout my body, listening to the sound of the sea, moving back-and-forth along the shore, I started to walk towards him with more certainty than I had ever felt before.

He stared at me with a serene presence, and I could hear a voice inside my head that said, “I know you.”  I wasn’t sure who was talking to who.

Bicycle King and the gumball machine

| betweenstops

Once there was a bicycle king. He was the best bicycle person. He had the most authenticity and genuine earnest enthusiasm for being kind and fair to all.

He made bicycles with parts from Australia, France, Italy, China and even parts from the United States. Much attention was paid to detail and the bicycles were like none other and became popular.

The bicycle king was a very likable, lively guy. He had gathered around him 13 employees. No one ever left the job. His employees had been skaters, they had been surfers, and they were musicians and photographers and bicyclists.

The shop where they assembled and sold their bicycles was super cool. It was in an airplane hanger with lots of musical instruments on the walls and black-and-white photographs that the staff had taken of each other. There were flowers around the outside.

The bicycle king was passionate. He was passionate about one thing one season, and the next season he was passionate about something else. However, one object that continually fascinated him was old fashion gum machines full of brightly colored little balls.

He collected the gum machines and had them all over the shop. He filled some with gum. In other machines he put blueberries, grapes, cherries, raisins, peanuts, chocolate covered espresso beans etc. He put macadamia nuts in one gum machine.

The bicycle king and his crew had fake money coins that worked in the gum machines. The macadamia machine was different. It didn’t operate according to the rules. The rules being: you put in a coin and you got out an object.

The macadamia machine after having received a coin sometimes didn’t give anything and other times gave five. It was unpredictable.The bicycle king had the machine thoroughly investigated by himself and others. There was no rhyme or reason to it.

It was the talk of the shop because there was one employee who always got five out of that machine, and no one knew why. It wasn’t about him cheating. It was about something else.

A Bug’s Life

| betweenstops

With all the rainy weather, the ants have come inside. They are all over my kitchen counter. Even when I have nothing that they can possibly eat on the counter, they are running around looking for food. If I do spy a bit of even avocado, covered with ants, I take the plate outside, get rid of the avocado and before you know it, those guys are clean gone.

I once had a spiritual teacher who said that if it was only himself and an ant after the nuclear holocaust he would do everything in his power to make friends with that ant. The statement made an impression upon me. Now almost a decade after that teacher has left his body, I look at an ant and I wonder how can I make us friends.

Ants are not the only evidence of insects in my house. My high school senior son has been doing a report on insects. He has a shoebox with a styrofoam square on the bottom. In neat rows, there is a grid of dead insects with pins poking through them. They hover over the Styrofoam, still as can be: dry, beautiful and intricate.

He has another shoe box of butterflies. I was looking at the butterflies today, and I said out loud to myself, “They are so beautiful, it’s too bad they’re dead.“ In my mind, I heard a voice say, “But I am not dead.” 

I knew I hadn’t been getting enough sleep but still this kind of hallucination was unusual. I’ve never heard voices in my head before. I looked at the box more closely and saw that one of the blue butterflies wings was maybe slightly moving. Then I thought I saw an antenna jerk. I looked around for some kind of validation of what I was seeing but there was no one else in the room. I wanted to ask my son but he was gone at a friend’s house. I looked more closely at the box. For sure the wings were moving.

There was no wind I was inside with no heat and no air-conditioning, no open window or door open. No breeze. I heard the voice again, “I am not dead. You just think I am.” The voice was coming from the box. I looked a third time. The blue butterfly’s wings were definitely moving. I pulled out her pin, and she flew away.