WORKS OF ART is an exercise in serial flash fiction, as part of Declaration Editing’s Super-Short Summer Serial Challenge (S4C). Part eight, SECOND FIG, is below.

“Second Fig”

The great idea — the one single great idea Fig had ever had was that none of this was happening. Of course he couldn’t prove it, seeing as he and everyone else was stuck in the same illusion. Through stillness, maybe. Through transcendence. But how does one transcend?

He stopped writing and looked up at the clock – after three, yet noise still carried on outside and downstairs. Perhaps getting out of time was the way to do it, but how the hell did that happen? Or walking through glass – he wondered if he could walk through one of the tall windows that faced out to Pen Boulevard.

He went back to scribbling, tried to jot down as much as he could before the thought was gone. Things came and went like that, especially in a world that wasn’t happening, where nothing existed including himself, the paper, the pen with which he was writing.

“So why write at all?” he said out loud. He stopped and looked up again. Someone was knocking. He ignored it. Then there was another one, accompanied with a shout.

He walked around from his booth and saw Syl at the main doors. Her face was nondescript, a blurry mix of pain, chemical imbalance and anxiety.

“I just jacked my ankle,” she said. She limped in and put her arms around Fig to keep from falling.

“How? Where?”

“The curb. I need to piss.”

“Restrooms – ”

“I know where the toilets are at, jackass. I can’t make the stairs.”

Fig helped her through the restaurant and into the kitchen. There was a standalone shower back there where the cooks rinsed off. Mostly it was for ringing mops. Fig walked her over. She dug her nails into his forearm and squatted.

“Are you gonna stare or what?”

“Sorry.” He looked the other way until he heard the trickle stop. Then he helped her up and walked her back to his booth.

“Nice setup for the nighttime janitor,” she sneered. “Glass of beer, roach in the ashtray. It’s a regular party in here.”

“I get by.”

“And what if our boss came in?”

“He never has.”

“What if?”

“What’s the point? None of us are here anyway.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about.

“I’m quitting in a month,” he went on.

“For what?”

“Career I guess.”

Syl slapped the table.

“Doing what?”

Fig shrugged.

“I’ll find it when I find it.”

She rolled her eyes and took a cigarette from his pack. Then she opened his notebook. Fig’s hand jerked to grab it. Then he remembered nothing was real. So he stopped. She was too drunk to read anyway.

“I need something to calm me down,” she said. “You got any ideas?”

Fig glanced at the ashtray roach.

“I mean something that’ll really knock me out.”

WORKS OF ART is an exercise in serial flash fiction, as part of Declaration Editing’s Super-Short Summer Serial Challenge (S4C). Part two, Water, Lily’s Morning, is below.

“Water, Lily’s Morning”

The campus clock gonged midnight. Lily liked to think of getting off work as the start of a new day rather than the end of an old one, and so took a deep breath of what she called first morning.

She walked the side street that ran north of Pen. A number of vendors were still open, despite the drizzle, and people waited around for food. Two bodies staggered toward her – Syl, the evening hostess at Shorty’s, and Blo, a line cook. They were both married and didn’t do a good job of hiding their affair.

Blo said something in Spanish. Lily didn’t understand. He repeated in English.

“The days run into one another until they unravel.”

“Neruda?”

“I try.”

“You were close this time.”

Syl lit a cigarette under her coat, then smiled.

“Come to The Din with us,” she said. That was the bar beneath Shorty’s. The same people owned both places. “We’ll fix you up with a boy,” she continued.

“I have a reading,” Lily said. Syl sneered. At some point she’d wanted to be a writer. Now she was saddled with a mortgage and middle age.

“And then what?”

“Then first morning will become early morning,” Lily answered.

Syl rolled her eyes. She and Blo continued on. Lily walked to her place, a three-story house she shared with seven other people. A half-block away, she heard the familiar sounds of a party – loud, bass heavy music, high-pitched laughter, someone cursing. Her throat seized. She asked her roommates not to have a party, yet the place was lit from top to bottom. About 20 people huddled on the porch in the proximity of a keg.

She stood in the drizzle for a while – maybe it was a rain now. When did drizzle turn into rain? Lily figured she’d stand in it until she had an answer. The morning she wanted was gone. The first person to see her pondering the weather was one of her roommates, a tall blond named Tess. She ran down the porch steps with a cup of beer.

“What the hell is this?” Lily asked. She took the cup and gulped at it.

Tess belched. “It’s a poetry party.”

“Bullshit.”

“OK, it’s a party. But it’s a reading too. People are waiting for you.”

“Where?”

“Up stairs. Come on. You’re covered in water.”

“I’m wet.”

“I can see that.”

“I don’t want people here.”

“Who would you read to if no one was here?”

“Just poets.”

“Maybe everyone’s a poet.”

Lily groaned.

“I have a surprise,” Tess said. She asked Lily to open her hand and close her eyes. When Lily looked down, there was a pill sitting between her heart and lifeline.

“Nice and clean,” Tess said.

“That’s what you always say.”

Lil put it in her mouth and swallowed.

–