Kate Garklavs - Two Flash Fictions
New Direction
That winter, my dreams were populated by death: my cousin, my first-grade teacher, the old man who runs the produce stall and looks like a thinner John Belushi — all struck down by sudden, irreversible ailments. My dogs, drowned in the bathtub, eight paws upended through the surface of the still water. All paws off the ground and you know it’s trouble. An infant that the military had mistakenly killed in a raid, its tiny neck twisted so its head hung at a funny angle. The baby was lobster red. “Drain it of blood,” the sergeant ordered, “it’ll look more lifelike,” and the unlucky private stuck the needle in and siphoned all the blood out until the baby had resumed a more natural color. Fucked up, how the military sanctioned perserving just the illusion of a young life, but I’m preaching to the choir. What bothered me most was the dogs.
I was feeling OK about the death dreams — not great, but not super rattled — until they started coming more frequently: twice a week, then thrice, then night after night, stacking like rat corpses in a dumpster. One morning, curious & feeling rabidly pursued — but by what? — I called into work and dedicated myself to the research of possible interpretations. A friend had recently told me about her favorite contemporary psychic, a woman who lived in Australia and earned the bulk of her income influencing. Influencing what was unclear; my friend hadn’t specified. I googled the seer’s name, hoping to find a web 1.0 site, a profile picture of an older woman with an air of benevolent knowledge. In actuality, the psychic’s site was slick and definitely mobile optimized. She herself looked like one of my former yoga instructors, all sunshine and teeth. I felt cheated somehow — this woman didn’t have the vibe of someone wiser to the future than the rest of us — but I scrolled the site anyway.
The post about death dreams opened with a warm reassurance. “I’ve worked with hundreds of dreamers over the years,” the psychic wrote, “and in 99.4% of cases, death dreams don’t portend the imminent demise of a loved one or colleague.” I appreciated the inclusion of quantitative proof; I imagine the psychic had learned to rely on hard data to ward off the dismissals of legions of skeptics, took some comfort in the substantiation of the facts she’d visioned.
The psychic continued that dream deaths indicate upcoming change — a breakup, a new job, perhaps only the closing of a chapter of one’s life. Only! What a joke. Though I lay under the comforter, watching the window’s blue light rise in tone, a chill settled over me. What would the change be, and when?
I was single, so a breakup wasn’t a real possibility, but maybe I’d meet someone and fall hard, finally, decide to widen the scope of my solitary life. I’d be swept by the whirlwind of romantic taco dinners on the bluff overlooking the industrial zone, fawn over love notes tucked in amongst my skivvies. We’d move in, get married, develop a crossword routine. Things would continue along their predetermined path, until BAM: they’d meet someone funnier and leave in the middle of the night, no trace. I’d barely be able to muster the energy to trim my nails, let alone carry on with my comfortably productive existence.
Job change was a likelier possibility, being that I had a job. But what sort of change? I liked my job well enough, I guessed. I showed up on time and didn’t grumble to chip in to the common coffee fund. Sure, I hadn’t gotten a promotion last year, but I hadn’t been put on a performance improvement plan, either. I was riding the mellowest wave, bracing myself to stay upright until I hit the shore of retirement. My invisibility to management was my greatest asset & protection. Still, I’m human. The bleak thought arose that maybe I’d done something — insulted the EA’s cat — without even having registered it. It was entirely possible that I’d be canned for some minor infraction I had no recollection, no intention, of making.
The life chapter galled me more than the other possibilities. Quite simply, I had no idea what chapter I was in. I owned my car, and mostly I ate well. I had a few friends who would get to shows early so we could claim the padded balcony seats. I couldn’t tell you the current denim trends, but I hadn’t given up and succumbed to chinos. Still, these data points didn’t feel substantial enough to pin a chapter on. Following the old story-arc metaphor my professors had drilled and drilled home, there was no exposition, little rising action, not even a semblance of a climax. Something, anything, had to give. I shivered, drawing the covers up over my shoulders. Dimmed the lights and forced my eyes shut, praying for the unending stream of subconscious slaughter that would give my life direction.
Proud and Ancient Pet
Returning from Hood River, we drove through the Gorge, which last summer had nearly been destroyed by a freak accident.
“Not a freak accident, if you’re going to be particular about it,” Milly said. Milly, who chased facts, sought precision in everything she did. “Those boys were shooting fireworks into the woods, not away from. The fire seems like an intentional act.”
“You really think they meant to start it?” Joan asked. She was tenderer toward humanity than either Milly or myself. “Fifteen. Remember it? It’s not like you have the best grasp of truth and consequences at that age.”
“Sure,” Milly said, “sure, but I knew fireworks would cause a fire. Those kids weren’t idiots. Or they were the worst kind of idiots.”
I said nothing as I drove, focused instead on the blaze-wrecked pines. They looked naked amongst their fuller neighbors, forlorn. It seemed especially unfair that they were still standing, kept their terrestrial shape even though, at their cores, they were dead. To the untrained, optimistic eye, they could just be dormant, deleafed by heavy drought.
In the backseat, the argument waged. Joan maintained that the boys, whose plastic brains hadn’t settled into rational adult patterns, were right to have been absolved of guilt. Milly insisted that trial as adults was the only fate that would have been suitable.
“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” she said.
“Is that really what that turn of phrase means?” Joan asked. They were off again, this time on a less morally fraught path of argumentation.
The river issued choppy waves, cut through by the wide wakes of speedboats. The sun was a bleeding orb. Though I couldn’t hear them, the still-living pines rustled in the summer breeze. On the right, a highway sign for a local site of interest: a sturgeon hatchery.
“Hey,” I said, “anyone want to stop?” But my friends were too embroiled in debate to hear.
I’d been only once to a fish hatchery, on a family trip when I was a young girl. My parents had taken us west to see how the world really worked, a sort of tour of the country’s forgotten and necessary infrastructure. Fire watchtowers, stream gauging stations, stone bridges erected by the WPA. We stopped at every windswept service station that side of the Rockies; I marked time in orange push-ups. On the last day, we pulled off to tour a hatchery — trout, I think, though the species remains fuzzy in my memory. A ruddy-faced man led us along the concrete walkway separating the rows of pools, all shimmering in that heat.
He must have imparted facts, vital trout knowledge, though I remember none of it. All that stayed with me were the stench, incredible, of fish food and roe, the teem of silver bodies beneath the glass-blue sky. I wanted to rescue them, even just one, but my mother pulled me by the hand back to our car to prepare for another pilgrimage to roadside wonder.
“A life sentence would only have been fair,” Milly said. “Just considering what they killed, the birds. God knows how many birds.” They were back at it, spurred by who knows what.
“Their guilt will be punishment enough,” Joan said. Then, as though to settle the matter, she unwrapped a cough drop, placed it on her tongue, and pursed her lips. Milly said nothing. Each woman turned to look out her separate window.
So lost in thought, in scenery, were they that they didn’t comment as I took the exit for the hatchery, made the sharp turn right onto the gravel road. On some level, I knew the facility would be closed to the public — those open-air tours were no doubt lost to the past — but proximity would be enough. I wanted to see the building where the sturgeon played out their life cycles, whether the ash from the fire had been cleared from the weatherbeaten roof. I wanted a moment with my childhood dream of breaking and entering, concealing in a cooler a long fish who, for a moment, would serve as my proud and ancient pet.