Two Flash Fiction Pieces

Encyclopedia on Apocalypse 

After “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On” by Franny Choi

Before the apocalypse, there was the world of burning. Apocalypse setting fire to my heart, waiting for me to restart as if a sky of smoke can’t blacken the lungs quicker than— Before the apocalypse, knowledge burned too. Burned before the world even had a chance. Words as slights against the skin, a blade carving through the mind like butter. Before the apocalypse, it was the sunflower, the ivy, the hope. The peony, fear of God, the rose— a blossom beneath my tongue, the carnation— wilting under the gaze of mothers and daughters, sisters bleeding from the gums, the forget-me-not Mother for I have not sinned against you but against myself. Before the apocalypse, no smoke dwelled in the hearts of girls but fire instead, cleansing and growing claws and fangs and other sharp things that could draw blood. Before the apocalypse… It’s mothers and daughters mothers and daughters daughters and mothers daughters and mothers sisterhood isn’t real unless it’s bathed in blood and bile. Before the apocalypse, it was a different kind of rage. Starvation in everclear conditions, a wanting that could only belong to us. Apocalypse as collapse— but what doesn’t collapse when everything is ash?  Before the apocalypse we would sit on a bench in the park, me with a bag of clementines and you with plastic Tupperware full of berries. Before. The. Apocalypse. I would peel three clementines, each in one go. One for each of us, the third to share. Fingers stained orange and smelling like citrus for the next day no matter how many times I washed them. You would eat all the blueberries, because they were your favorite and I hated them. Before the apocalypse, we would gorge ourselves on fruit. My cheeks would be full of citrus vines and raspberry seeds. Could this have been Apocalypse? It almost felt like it. Apocalypse as dissident love and the smell of something fresh, before rot could set in. Apocalypse as you and me, waiting to burn in the sun. Does that hurt, too? At the end of the day, someone always had to leave first. 

Before the apocalypse, there was leaving. 

There is leaving after, too. 

Milk Teeth

Her mother existed there, fading in and out like a fever dream clouded in cigarette smoke. 

            It always started the same. Here, like this. Watch. Don’t blink.        

DAUGHTER stands in her kitchen. DAUGHTER is washing a mug and nothing else. The mug is clean and has been for quite a while now. November light filters through barred apartment windows and assaults DAUGHTER’s body, deepens wrinkles and darkens spots. DAUGHTER’s eyes are blue, but not in winter. DAUGHTER is young but hasn’t been for quite a while now.

            DAUGHTER has not a shadow but a tumor.

            The November light dims and wanes, and finally DAUGHTER sets down her mug to dry and turns around slowly. It is always slowly with her. DAUGHTER surveys the living room before her, as is routine before entering. Her brown eyes scan over peeling wallpaper, a lamp that stopped working almost a year ago, a couch that she’s lived on for longer, a coffee table complete with condensation rings and out-of-date magazines. She stops before she reaches the armchair. She always stops before she reaches the armchair.

            Out of the corner of DAUGHTER’s eye she sees it. The shadow. The dark spot. Like an itch set into cotton and knit. If she were to walk forward, just a few steps, towards the armchair, she would smell lavender and Marlboros. She would smell wallpaper and baseboard yellow with nicotine rot. She would smell childhood and sweets and other cloying things.

            It is difficult for DAUGHTER to take a deep breath here. Like this. It is difficult for her to take air deep into her lungs, deep inside her chest cavity, and let it live there for a time. Let it oxygenate her blood. But many things are difficult for DAUGHTER. And sometimes, she does them anyway.

            DAUGHTER takes in a breath, as shaky and rattly as a car engine turning over, and lets her eyes roam toward the armchair and linger there. In the end, she always lingers there. The shadow is still there. It doesn’t ever move, even if she looks directly at it. The clouds will clear soon, just a couple short hours. The light from a setting sun will float in and land there, on an armchair that should be sun-bleached but was shielded from the warmth for so long by something shaped like a body, like a mother.

            With unsteady breaths but sure feet, DAUGHTER strides towards the armchair and stands over it, allows her body rather than her gaze to linger there now. There is a thick layer of dust smothering the surface of the chair. The smell of everything mixing with the heavy dust leaves a knot to form in DAUGHTER’s lungs. She holds her breath.

            She holds her breath and reaches out a hand, touches the tip of her pinky to the edge of an arm, lets it sit there collecting age and frost. She stands there. She stands there and doesn’t know how long she stands there but she stands there and then she sits there, places the backs of her thighs against the cushion and presses her flesh into the softness, places her long hands on the arms like royalty, sits there like a queen.

            DAUGHTER sits there like a queen, allows the dust to give her back things she lost. It’s been a year since she lost them. Maybe more. She turns her head to the left, the couch there holds the indentation of her body like a kiss, like a hug, like the most violent of embraces.

Inspired by:

“The Haunting (1999) directed by Jan de Bont and by the show Fleabag (2016-2019) directed by Harry Bradbeer (and others) and written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The piece takes elements from the beginning of The Haunting, mainly the main character Nell's grief after her mother's death, as well as some literary supernatural elements. 

The relationship between the titular character Fleabag and her deceased mother, who is only ever mentioned, also informed this piece in many ways. There is a season in Fleabag season one where Fleabag is speaking to her best friend, Boo, and says (approximately), "I have all this love for her and I don't [...] know where to put it [...] now."“