short stories

All Fall Down – flash fiction

/ Scott Nagele / 2 Comments

Jack stuck his head through the doorway of his son’s bedroom. “Kyle, Mom says dinner’s ready in ten.”

Kyle lay on his bed, eyes glued to his phone. “Uh-huh.”

Jack stepped into the room. It might not be the best time to ask, but there seemed never to be good times to ask things anymore. “Did you go to all your classes today?”

Kyle’s eyes did not move. “Uh-huh.”

“That’s good.” Jack lingered, searching once again for common ground with which to break through the wall of ice.

His eyes found the shelf across from Kyle’s bed. On this shelf, in neat ranks, stood dozens of PEZ dispensers. Superheroes stood shoulder to shoulder with Star Wars characters. Villains surrounded Santa Claus. Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes kept company with Mario and Luigi.

 Jack stepped nearer the shelf. “There’s a lot of memories on this shelf,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s the Joker, on the end. I gave him to you when you scored your first touchdown. That was fourth grade, wasn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“You dropped him on the tile floor and broke off a piece of his base. We tried to glue it back, but we couldn’t get it to stay. You almost cried, but you didn’t. I started calling him Gimpy Joker and that made you laugh. Remember that?”

“Not really.”

“And there’s the stormtrooper I gave you when you got perfect attendance in sixth grade.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized that was probably not the best subject to mention these days.

He moved on quickly. “I don’t remember when you got them all, but I remember most of them. Those presidents are from the set you got when you made first chair in eighth grade band. I wish you would still play. You’re so talented.”

“You can have ‘em back, if you want.”

“Oh no! I’d never take them. There’s so many special moments here.”

“Dad, can you just leave me alone for a while?”

Jack took a breath and decided this was a moment to resist. “Kyle, you always want me to leave you alone. Sometimes I just want to spend a few minutes with you, talk to you like we used to. We used to have such great times together, and now you look at me like you hate me. Where did I go wrong?”

“I don’t know. Could you please just go away for minute.”

“I don’t want to go away. I want my son back.”

Kyle’s eyes moved from his phone. He rolled out of bed and shot up like a bolt. “If you won’t leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone with your toys!” He stormed out and slammed the door behind him.

The vibration in the walls caused the Gimpy Joker to wobble.

Jack leapt to catch him. It was too late.

The Joker toppled into the Halloween ghost beside him. The ghost hit the vampire and the witch. Each of them took out two or three others. They fell like dominoes until no Pez memory was left standing. Those at the edges spilled onto the floor.

At Jack’s feet lay the Gimpy Joker, with his green hair, ruby red mouth, and thin row of white teeth. He grinned up at Jack with his unchanging smile, as though it would always be yesterday.

Flowers – flash fiction

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The cemetery was within walking distance. In fact, it was in shuffling distance.

Arthur shuffled through the front entrance and made his way along a familiar route. He stopped at his usual place, before the stone that said Claire Adams. It would be nice if there were a bench nearby, but he’d grown used to talking to her standing up.

The stones on either side had flowers tenderly placed around them. Claire’s stone didn’t have flowers. Arthur never brought flowers. Weeks ago, those flowers around the other stones looked fresh and vibrant. Now they were brittle, dried out, and brown.

“Flowers die,” he muttered to himself.

He stared at Claire’s name on the stone. “Well, it’s prescription day,” he told her. “You know I always stop by on my way the to the pharmacy.”

“I miss you,” he said. “I even miss your scolding. You scolded me a lot towards the end. I wonder if you still loved me as much.” He shrugged. “Maybe you loved me more. To be honest, I have no idea. It was easier to feel certain about things when we were young.”

For a few minutes, he stood silent. He’d never loved the sound of his own voice. Silence made him think about the future, and he didn’t like that either.

“I’d better get going,” he said. “Got to get my scripts.”

He walked slowly these days, but he still had the stamina to make it to the pharmacy. He might have had his prescriptions delivered, but it was exercise, and he looked forward to seeing Sara.

Sara was the pharmacist who worked Tuesday mornings. She was warm and bright, and she was nice to him. A rare bouquet of kindness, she made the world smell sweet again.

Sara knew him. She knew all his prescriptions. He didn’t have to say a word to her about drugs. She gave him exactly what he needed. He never spoke to Sara about business. It was always a pleasant visit with a friend.

His pace quickened as he passed the sliding door.

The pharmacy counter was at the back of the store. Arthur’s lips turned up as he walked down the shampoo aisle. At the end of it, they fell into a frown.

Standing behind the counter, was a woman who was not Sara. She had a stern look. She did not smile like Sara.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked in a wholly businesslike fashion.

Arthur struggled to respond. At last, he found a couple of words. “Where’s Sara?”

The lady seemed puzzled. “Sara?”

“Sara,” he said.

 “Who’s Sara?” she asked, as if he were making things up.

“Sara,” he said. “The pharmacist.”

Recognition came at last. “Oh! You mean the girl who used to work mornings. She transferred to the store across town.”

Across town might as well be the far edge of the universe. Sara was gone. Forever. Replaced by this stranger who would talk about prescriptions.

“Do you need to pick up a prescription?” the fading pharmacist asked.

Arthur stared at the counter. “Flowers die,” he mumbled.

“Excuse me? Do you need something?”

It was too late to start over. Arthur looked up at her drying edges. It was too late.

“No. Nothing,” the old man said as he turned and slowly shuffled away.

Last of the Good Proctololgists – flash fiction

/ Scott Nagele / 9 Comments

Sheila found her husband sitting at the table on the back patio. His face was ashen and he stared off into space. His mouth hung open a bit. His iPhone sat face down on the table.

“What’s the matter, Mike?” she asked. “You look like somebody died.”

“Worse,” he said without taking his eyes off the space before him. “Somebody retired.”

“That’s worse than death?”

He gave a little shrug. “Maybe not worse, but just as bad.”

Sharon sat down across the table from him. “I see. Was it expected or did it come out of the blue?”

“Came out of the blue, to me anyway.” Mike’s eyes fell toward his phone. “I called to make my colonoscopy appointment today. They told me Dr. Mullens retired.”

Sheila let out an exaggerated breath. “He’s probably not a day over 75 either. I can’t believe he would do this to you.”

Mike nodded his head ruefully. “I know. Left me in a pretty big lurch.”

Sheila leaned forward. “Mike, honey, I’m sure there are other proctologists in town.”

“There are,” Mike replied. “I checked. There are exactly three other proctologists in town, and not one of ‘em worth a damn.”

“How do you know that?”

He stared at his phone. “I looked them up online. Horrible reviews all around. Not a one of ‘em rates more than two and half stars.”

Sheila sighed. “Some days I regret buying you that smart phone. The kids tried to tell me you’d do better with a Jitterbug.”

“Well, maybe I’ll just quit the colonoscopies. At a certain age, what does it matter anymore? Something’s bound to take you out soon anyhow.”

“Mike, you’re 55. It’s a little soon to surrender to old age. You’ve got to get the exam; they found three polyps last time and you have the gene in your family.”

Mike made a muted motion of throwing his arms up. “I don’t know how I can get it done now, with Mullens abandoning me. It’s not like we’re in New York City or someplace, where they got a proctologist on every corner. We got three, and two of ‘em almost killed somebody, according to the accounts I read.”

Sheila picked up his phone and began tapping on the screen.

“What are you doing?” Mike asked.

“Looking up flights to New York.”

Mike reached out and swiped the phone from her. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not riding a plane to my colonoscopy.”

Sheila tilted her head a little. “Then you got to go to one of them here.”

“But they’re butchers! If I’m gonna die from medical malpractice, I want it to be during brain surgery or something. I don’t want to go from an ass wound.”

“Well, what about the one who didn’t almost kill somebody?”

“Has a horrible bedside manner. He’s callous and rude to patients.”

Sheila pursed her lips. “So, he’s a real asshole?”

“Exactly.”

“Sounds like the perfect guy for the job.”

 

 

Tombs of the ancient dreams

/ Scott Nagele / Leave a comment

It seems appropriate that my last post was about the people in olden times who wrote novels before the age of word processing.  I made a discovery since then that makes me feel closer to them.

I was searching through a drawer, looking for some object of modern usefulness when I came across a stack of these, tucked into the back corner.

A trove on ancient parchments.

For those too young to recognize this object, it is a floppy disk. It is an object used to store electronic data before the advent of thumb drives and the Cloud.

It is not floppy. Its predecessors were wider, thinner, and floppy. I remember using them too. This ultramodern version is much more durable than the floppy floppies, and likely holds a lot more data, upwards of .1% of what our smallest storage devices hold now, I would guess.

The handwritten notes on my disk labels indicate this group was used between 1999 and 2003. Knowing me, this was probably long after civilized society had given them up. It doesn’t seem like these artifacts could belong to this century at all.

Maybe someday somebody will invent a machine to read these things.

Even though they don’t hold much by today’s standards, words don’t take up much electronic space, so they represent a fair amount of work from a young writer seeking his way. Some of the files they hold were eventually published, but only after years of rewrites. Other files represent work relegated to storage as bits and bytes.

I think I have versions of all these files saved in more accessible places, even though I may never revisit them. I do this for my descendants, in case I become posthumously famous and they need to use my discarded scraps to raise income. With a little industry they may discover these files: “Look, here’s some crap Gramps wrote when he was young. He clearly never meant it to be made public, so we should sell it to a publisher.”

I adore my enterprising great-great-grandchildren, but they should know, before they start counting their chickens, all these novels and stories were written in WordPerfect. My sharp eye for the future of technology determined this format would drive MS Word to extinction as it became the dominant platform with its many advantages.

But I’m sure, in the genius future, there will be a way to convert immature writing from WordPerfect files into cash money.

In the present, I’m not famous, which proves I don’t know how to convert any writing from any file into money. These disks harken me back to those heady days when I thought maybe someday I would figure that out. The amazing thing is I’m still trying to solve that puzzle. It seems some of us don’t know how to let it go and grow old gracefully.