Tag Archives: Flash fiction

Cell Division

This is one of those ‘how wrong can a person be’ type of scenarios.

We were so wild, and we were the same. One person expressed twice. We skated all summer, and in the winter we let the cold animate us. I guess I just thought that when one of us died it would be like cell division. Nothing would be lost because we were both fully contained in each other. And we both wanted to die, that was no secret. There was a recklessness to us that scared everybody else.

There was always a roof we hadn’t climbed, or a train we hadn’t surfed. And at the end of it there was always the stars in the dark, holding each other and screaming like wolves as the moon reflected off the clear, cold water. Nobody could ever synthesise a psychedelic compound that affected me like you did, and I know I was the same for you.

All my illusions were shattered at once today, when they told me you were never going to wake up. You see, it’s not cell division. It’s a compound fracture. And the weak sunlight filtering into this corridor is laughing at my complete failure to realise before now that, for all the risks, the self-destruction, the daily nearness to death, we loved life because we loved each other.

How is that all supposed to stop now?

We thought death was the adventure, you and I. Nothing to fear. I guess like me you thought we were a cell that lived and died as one. You never imagined what it would be like to be standing outside a hospital room, whole, with me inside so horribly broken, either. To be so suddenly and irreparably awakened to the reality that we were, in fact, two. That there was a way to feel more alone than we ever thought possible.

There’s so much that is going to be lost with you. A library of genetic material that can never be copied or retrieved. You’re dissolving into nothing and I’m being swept far away by the bloodstream.

We didn’t hate life. We loved hating the world together. Now you’re gone, and all the light with you. You were a bioluminescent cell, and it’s all gone dark.

And, you know the craziest thing? In this moment, I don’t want to die. For the first time I can remember, I don’t feel like I could let go in one instant and leave this world behind. Because that was all an illusion too, and all I want to do is grieve for you the way you deserve.

Then I have to find others, others who think they hate life. I have to show them how wrong they can be.

Asomuprisma

It started with the rust.

Like cities decaying from the loss of manufacturing, a pervasive corrosion, a disease known as coffee rust, was settling upon many of the mountainous regions that supplied coffee to the world. Delicate coffee trees became almost metallic, as if to be a living metaphor for the times. Communities impoverished by corporate exploitation found themselves losing vast portions of their crop.

But the rust was only the start.

The climate was changing. It was easy to get fixated on how many degrees global average temperatures would rise by. It wasn’t this that killed the coffee, though. The weather just became too wild, too unpredictable. Heatwaves when it was meant to be cold. Deluge when it was meant to be dry. We lost so much of the land that could yield us coffee. At first, higher altitudes could sustain more crops, but who among the small growers and coffee co-ops could afford new land?

And at the start, most of us were unaware. Drinking our damn fine cups of coffee. We didn’t really notice the unfolding fate of our growers, or register the new research into the hybrid coffee that we were going to become totally reliant on. If we did, it felt more like big tech developing a new gadget than what it actually was – the entire future of coffee.

I’m writing this because I want to record a sad moment. I have only a few grams of my favourite Colombian arabica left. Enough for one coffee. You can criticise me for caring so much about a drink, when we look at the utter devastation that has befallen this world. But the coffee economy was huge, and dependent on people who have lost everything. And the fact remains that every day, that rose-gold cafetiere slowly brewed what was to me like captured sunlight, roasted and darkened. Most days it was the best thing that happened all day.

Now, most growers have been forced out of business, and the experts are still trying to hybridise the West African wild coffee, to become a realistic successor for the global coffee industry. Supply is scarce and prices are insane. So I’m raising my cup to the times when coffee was a daily ritual for most of us, when none of us could quite appreciate enough what we were about to lose.

Orange Grove

A small girl splits open a juicy orange, dropped ripe from the grove. The sun is risen to its zenith, and her father, all weathered-skin and cracked palms, watches from a worn deckchair. The sky is an improbably deep blue, one of those really special days where you can’t look up or down, left or right, without seeing something wonderful. The father knows his girl is the most wonderful of all. As she enjoys the orange, the fruit of a complex array of natural systems and not a little hard work from him, he wonders about her future. What lies ahead for her, beyond the grove?

Wind catches her hair and she laughs, and turns back at him with a grin. He could write every day for a thousand years, study with the greatest tutors of many generations, and never quite be able to capture what he feels inside when he sees that smile.

Shades

His silhouette casts a tall shadow on the bridge in the fading light. Fallen leaves kiss the ships below. Their autumn-burned colour mirrors the flecks of gold in his eyes. He puts his hand to his mouth and then remembers he doesn’t smoke any more. As a stark-white swan passes below, he wonders if it, too, has lost its mate. As if sympathising with the swan’s furious underwater paddling, he starts to pace restlessly. He absently pats the empty wallet in his back pocket.

He could just bring all his old camping stuff here, and winter with the birds, hoping maybe she will arrive with them. Yet the migratory route they have taken is nothing compared to the gulf of time and space between his split trainers and her restless shoes. Is her hair turning grey too?

A new apartment block towers over the riverbank. He looks up at the penthouse, and his eyes travel downwards as if each floor marks a layer of hierarchy in his world. His eyes linger on the steps leading down to basement area. He forces his hands into the pockets of his jacket, which is the colour of midnight on the water. He knows what that looks like. He has a catalogue of shades in his mind, if his memory was still reliable he could have visualised a 24/7 time-lapse of this bridge. The shades have got a lot dimmer recently.

He suddenly wonders when he last ate, or what it would have been. It feels like his stomach isn’t even inside his body any more. He glances at the road-marking on the bridge. “Give Way”. He wonders if it’s there to describe his feelings. A passer-by stares at him way too long, until he realises it is because a low moan has been escaping him without him really being aware of it.

“Are you ok, sir?”

“Oh yes, I’m sure she is, thank you.”

“Sir, your legs are shaking.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. If they stopped, well…that’s when I would worry.”

“Please go somewhere warm, sir.”

“That is precisely where I am going. Can you tell me which way it is?”

His breath plumes in front of him and he is transported to another place, a hazy cafe, full of cigarette smoke, caffeine and poetry, and barely containing the majesty of her personality. Clinking cups and that familiar smell of ground coffee, and oh, the brightness in her eyes, the sunniest day in mid-August, the glitter on the water, that was her shade.

The passer-by has his phone out. The one-sided conversation fades in.

“Yeah he must only be, like, fifty, but he seems so lost…bit of a beard, deep blue coat…yeah he is pretty tall…no I don’t think he’s wearing one of those…he looks like he last ate a week ago…oh, you do, do you? Are you going to send someone? …Great, I’ll wait with him then.”

How rude to stand there with his phone out.

“You know, I met her before phones took over this planet. We could talk for days, we didn’t need those things or the…cables…wires…screens…”

He suddenly feels tired, exhausted in fact. He lowers himself unsteadily onto the bench, and as the passer-by quickly comes to sit with him, he could swear he felt her touch on his shoulder, reaching across the gulf.

Desert Rose

“You just don’t understand, it was blooming! That’s, like, once every two years! You have to get it back.” His eyes darted around the room as if seeing after-images of all the burglar’s steps.

“Sir, with all due respect, your apartment is half-burned out and your front door is split, and you want us to… find your cactus?” the policeman said.

“Yes! I can’t be more clear on this. You have to find it. Do you have any idea how old it was? Who gave…” the tears suddenly welled up. Damn this policeman, could he not see the obvious value of such a cactus? “Do you hold anything to be universally sacred, officer?”

“Well…I have a wife and ki-”

“Yes yes, but what about the things that really matter? The deep things of the earth?”

“Please understand, sir, that with our limited resources we simply cannot-”

“Helicopters. I want helicopters on this. Right away.”

“Sir, please…”

“You, detective, are being completely unreasonable. I thought with all your training you would be prepared for such a disaster as this. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“OK, sir, this is what we’ll do. We are going to make every effort to find your houseplant. We will scour the town. You will receive the utmost dedication in resolving your case, truly. Now will you sit down?”

“Houseplant, my God, man, houseplant? I’ll pray for your soul.”

“Yes, sir, that would be most kind of you.”

The man sank to his knees. This guy was never going to get it back. The desert was going to completely take over now. Everything was lost.