Flash Fiction- Avery

This is a sort of first attempt at magical realism. Sort of.



It was a big day, the day she died. Voluminous flowers burst fitfully from their copper-knuckled buds; multicolored birds trumpeted songs just small enough to fit into the crevice of your ear, just hungry enough to eat your eardrum whole. With all of this, the flashing color, impossible music, skies frighteningly expansive, hardly anyone noticed when Rosita Winston sighed gently, tipped back in her rocking chair, and died.

I was in the room at the time, and watched as her soul came pouring from between her slightly parted lips like honey and evaporated rapidly towards the ceiling, concentrating around the lamp that clung there, full of the carcasses of insects. The gold liquid glow disappeared suddenly, taking the light from the lamp with it.

The room was full of carcasses, I the only living thing.

Aunt Frieda came in the room then, and when she saw Rosita, all soulless and still, she began to cry, letting the bowl of soup she had been carrying fall to the floor. The carpet drank in the pale broth, and burped up the celery and carrots. It probably would have lapped up Frieda’s tears thirstily, too, but instead of falling down, they fell up, following the soul of the woman who was once Rosita.

Men wide as elephants came to take her away, and she was just a little husk of a woman. It had been her soul that had been heavy; heavy and sweet. Frieda ended up carrying Rosita out in her arms, too bereft to consider one of these crushing men stealing away her dead mother. I looked around at the room: the furniture was springlike, bright and colorful, and there were pictures framed in gold hung upon the teal walls. A cactus protected one corner, a turntable another. The room closed its eyes gently, as if asking to be left alone awhile. A bee buzzed in the curtains. I shut the door.




One day, a month later when the grief had caught up with me and I was tired of crying but couldn’t yet stop, I walked almost by accident into the room where she had died. The curtains hung lankly across the windows, too stubborn to be moved by the breeze. The plants had been dipped in plastic. The pink chairs held very still, refusing to beckon as they usually did. Instead, I lowered myself into her chair, the rocking chair, and waited.

A ticking interrupted my vigil, frustrated its silence. I turned to look at the clock, which Frieda had turned back one minute to rest at exactly 4:39, the moment when Rosita had died. It remained perfectly still. The ticking stopped.

A humming sound was making the back of my head ache slightly. I turned to interrogate the record player. The needle was settled in its groove contentedly, not making a sound. The humming paused.

My eyes were drawn upwards towards the light fixture, a dark nimbus, Unidentified Soul-Zapping Object, and a humming and a ticking and a scratching all ensued, furiously scrambling at the inside of my heart. I couldn’t turn away.

A golden-striped honeybee arose from the basin of the lamp like the Lady of the Lake, ethereal furry body too round to be lifted by such translucent, tear-shaped wings.