A collection of 31 flash fictions continuing the series started with Flash! Fiction. Each story was first published online. An attribution appears at the end of the each story. In this volume, the writings of Adam Mac appear for the first time.
Flash! Fiction
Flash! Fiction 3
Flash! Fiction 4
From the Book:
The Boss
She was dead, finally. All of us went to make sure. We still couldn't believe it. We skipped the memorial service and went straight to the cemetery ... and waited. With steely eyes, jaws and fists clenched, we watched every last piece of dirt drop to fill in the hole, as if every speck of dirt was needed to hold the coffin in place.
Dirk, Paula, Aurelio, Stephen, Valerie, Alex, Ryan and the rest of us stood there until the gravediggers, or groundskeepers as they preferred to be called, had left. The grave was now a mound in the midst of rows and rows of headstones, crosses and other markers. We stood there until dusk — almost expectantly, so not quite satisfied.
The groundskeepers finally came to usher us out. The gates closed at dark. Vandalism and debauchery had long plagues this cemetery, and overnight the groundskeepers became security guards.
We all went out for a drink, just like we said we would, but somehow it was missing the jubilation and relief we had all expected. So we just drank. Three or four or five rounds, I can't remember now. Numbness was pretty much the common feeling, both emotionally and physically, for we literally stumbled down the stairs to the subway platform where we helped one another get on the right trains ... more or less.
All night long, I must have half-slept, because I kept hearing her voice, though I knew it couldn't be. "It's quite straightforward, really." How many times she'd said that to me when I was new on the job. And after me it was someone else. "It's quite straightforward, really." And there was the "Please and thank you" benediction she spoke every single time she gave you that little extra assignment that made you late leaving the office.
"Please and thank you."
"Really, it's quite straightforward."
"Please and thank you."
"Robert, it's quite straightforward, really."
"Please and thank you, Robert."
When the alarm went off at 6:00, I was up like a shot. The voice was gone.
Thanks to a wretched night, I was up, dressed and ready for work a full hour early. I phoned Ryan and Paula and we met for breakfast at the restaurant around the corner from our office building. Ryan and Paula looked even less perky than I felt. We kept our conversations on the food and the front page. Paula started to smoke but we stopped her before anybody saw. Ryan was fixated on his phone. Neither seemed to notice, thankfully, but I was self-conscious and distracted by my excessive sweating. I felt like I'd been splashed with a bucket of my own sweat — my forehead, my scalp, my armpits, my hands ... were dripping.
In the elevator, we punched different buttons. I would be the first to meet her replacement, and they wanted me to phone first chance I got.
Still worried about my perspiration wetness, I toweled off in the men's room before cautiously making my way to her office. Her— The door was closed, so I knocked, and a voice invited me in. It was a huge relief to find a man sitting behind the desk.
Subconsciously, I had feared that I would open the door and find her still there. I paused for a moment to take it all in, and he said, "Would you close the door ... Robert, isn't it? ... please and thank you."
A Fantastic Commute
Lately, he hadn't been feeling himself. Overworked, burnt out. Covering for this person then that one. Pulled in all directions. Spread thin and stretched beyond his limits.
It was standing room only on the morning express train, and he stood wearing a freshly-altered suit with the back of his head mashed up against the roof of the car. In twenty years riding the train, he'd never been so cramped. From his vantage point, he could see the little heads, tucked behind newspapers, chattering away on the phone, or retreating behind shuttered eyelids and pulsing earbuds.
At Union he realized he was stuck and couldn't easily dislodge himself. Twisting his broad hips and long legs to the edge of the aisle, he watched upside down as the passengers shoved under and past, paying him no more mind than they would a column in the station concourse.
Once the car was empty, he was able to kneel and bend until he came loose, and in a semi-squatting stance, still stiff, he waddled out the door. After unfolding to his full height, he looked up and down the tracks for the nearest exit. It was on the other side of the tracks. Seeing that no one was looking, he grabbed the CCTV camera and pointed it away, and in one great stride crossed from platform 5B to 5A. Squeezing through the narrow double exit doors, catapulting down the station steps, and finally swimming above a swirling stream of tiny heads on short, bifurcated pedestals, he made his way to street level.
It was too early for the sun. The city lights cast faint shadows in the dawn. Cabbies honked and there was a multilingual cacophony of loud and excited voices in the cab rank.
Pedestrians and drivers dared and double dared over the last bit of amber in the traffic light. A homeless person, unable to get his attention, spat at him as he walked by holding a handkerchief to his face. A gaggle of teenage girls crashed into him and, on turning their heads, screamed and ran.
He hurried away himself. In two effortless steps he reached the opposite curb where he knocked over the pompous doorman of the Royal who was signalling a limousine to pull up. Getting to his feet, the servant, red-faced and ripe, with a tone that comes from years of service, launched into a fusillade of spiteful and contemptuous remarks. Mid-sentence, the lumbering colossus, provoked, gazed down on the round, red, balding head and squished it between thumb and forefinger.
He waited in a makeshift jail in the port lands, while the authorities debated their extrajudicial options, namely whether to ship him to the zoo or the museum. It was the museum. There, a new tailor—this one a PhD in anthropology—outfitted him with clothing suitable for a wide range of exhibits BCE.
The Loose Screw
Andrew hated flying. He hadn't flown in years. He had good reasons. Eight years earlier, his plane had crash-landed in the Arizona desert. A year later, en route to Chicago, his plane got caught in a downdraft and, for a moment, appeared headed right into the sea of green corn below.
Even before these close calls, he'd never cared much for airplane disaster movies, but afterwards he wouldn't finish a movie if there was a scene about an airplane in distress. He walked out of several. Nevertheless, images lingered. For this flight, a transcontinental flight to attend his father's funeral, he had bought a first class ticket because he wanted to get as far away from the wings as he could. If there was something on or wrong with the wing, he didn't want to know about it. If it's going to be bad, he thought, at least let it be quick and painless.
Finally, in the air and out over the water, Andrew leaned over and asked his neighbour, a middle-aged man wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt, to close the window blind. The flight attendant had insisted the window blind be kept open for takeoff. Regulations, she said. At the same time, she asked the man in the billowy blue flowered shirt to stow his bag in the overhead compartment. Instead, he offered to make it more compact so it would fit under the seat. He jostled things around and finally shoved the bag under his seat.
The beverage service was dispatched quickly and efficiently. No one got a lapful of hot coffee. For most, it was too early for alcohol, but not for his neighbour who got a double bourbon on the rocks and then another five minutes later. Everything seemed normal. Quiet in first class. The Times or the Wall Street Journal opened wide in front of every other person. From economy, the excited conversations of families or groups travelling together, and the hyperactive screams of young children were benevolently muted by distance. Classical guitar flowed through his earphones. Outside the window on the other side of the aisle, the plush white cottony clouds hid the ocean, and that was good.
Lunch service seemed to follow closely on the beverage service. When it arrived, he picked through the meal package methodically as if he was taking inventory. Nothing unusual, at least until he had finished eating. That's when he saw a short, fat, silver screw with a head like a mushroom. Just lying there on the floor. It was a machine screw, the kind used for metal on metal.
Where could it have come from? He didn't expect to find another screw, but he double-checked all the packaging that came with lunch. He checked the tray table—the top, the bottom, and the sides. Nothing was missing. Overhead, he didn't see any exposed metal. He felt his seat and the one in front. He looked up and down the aisle. He got up and investigated the overhead bin. Frustrated, he sat down, fastened his seat belt, and glanced over at the man in the blue Hawaiian shirt who had gone to sleep. He glanced at his neighbour's lunch, which hadn't been touched, then leaned back and closed his eyes.
He wondered what he should do. He thought about calling the young flight steward and showing him the screw, but he imagined the steward would shrug it off and say it was probably a loose screw from a food trolley or something. Nothing more. Certainly no reason to worry, he would say, then he would walk away tossing the screw in the air like a kid playing jacks.
Andrew hadn't thought about that. A screw missing from a food trolley. They probably do get handled pretty roughly and you wouldn't expect food trolleys to be maintained by the same people responsible for airplane maintenance. And, with that, Andrew settled back and turned up the music.
He suddenly jerked forward upon hearing the grating sound of metal rubbing on metal. Of course, he wouldn't be able to see the metal of the airplane because it was covered by the plastic facade of the cabin interior. So, with his music off, he listened to locate the noise, but the metallic scraping sound had disappeared.
He tried to relax again, but he began to imagine where that screw might have come from. Maybe it wasn't from a food trolley. That's just what they say to get passengers to relax and leave them alone. What if it was a screw holding together two pieces of the curved fuselage's metal skin? And what if the wind, at 600 miles per hour, was forcing those two sheets of metal apart, so that the rivets and screws were popping out all along the spine of the aircraft? How long would it be before the plane was ripped apart at the seams?
His eyelids popped open. The flight crew had to be warned. This time he wouldn't be put off like he had been by the steward. Someone who understood had to see. But the screw? Maybe there was another one. Maybe a lot. His neighbour was still sound asleep, so he removed the food tray, lifted the lid, and checked the grilled chicken, the green beans, the pasta, the cookie, and cellophane packaging for the plastic cutlery, but no screw.
Clearing away all the food, he buzzed for service. The steward came, collected the garbage, and asked if there was anything else. Andrew started to shake his head, then decided he had to ask for the screw. So, he did. The steward said he didn't know what Andrew was talking about. Andrew raised his voice, and several heads popped up. He lowered his voice again and reminded the steward of their conversation, the screw, the food trolley. But the steward earnestly restated that he'd never seen the screw, much less taken it. Andrew backed off, confused by the man's evident honesty and his own clear recollection.
He apologized, said that he must be overwrought—his father's passing on top of his real fear of flying—and asked if he could have a drink. Something stronger than the ginger ale. How about what his neighbour had ordered before he passed out, er, went to sleep? Double bourbon, yes, that's it, but no ice. The steward returned with the drink and a pillow. Andrew thanked him and started to apologize, but the steward waved it away as unnecessary.
Andrew swallowed the last of his drink and, within minutes, he had fallen asleep, seat reclined, his head back against the headrest, mouth partially open. He must have slept quite a while, because he was woken up by the steward who asked him to move his seat forward to prepare for landing.
His neighbour was up and fiddling around with his carry-on bag under the seat again. He told Andrew that he had lost something or, rather, something had come loose. He had bought a toy for his nephew and it was very elaborately constructed, but the threads at one of the joints must have been stripped, and now, he was missing a screw—a short, fat, silver screw with a mushroom-shaped head. Had Andrew seen it?
