FLASH FICTION

by
Peter Wild

BUTTERFLY

Better than the sex, better than anything is her sitting up, with her small bare feet on the floor and her back to me, reaching behind fastening her bra, her shoulder blades angle poised, her arms bent at the elbow, impossible, hard fleshy butterfly wings made of bone and thin skin.

Watching her, she is already gone; I am already thinking that this - the few brief seconds it takes to cover her tits - is what I will remember later. It won't be the months of wondering, the hours spent ruminating over casual throwaway comments. Did I read what she said in the right way? Did she mean me to take what she said in a certain light? Was I over thinking everything? It won't be the long night in the crowded bar, the stilted conversation, the happy drinking, the stifling club, the stray accidental touches that could be nothing or something or nothing and something. It won't be the stupid first kiss, front teeth clacking as she ducked into a cab with her housemate, and it won't be the awful hours of wakefulness that followed, debating whether the kiss was a kiss off. I'll forget the awkwardness at work, the both of us staring into empty cups waiting for the kettle to boil - my adding milk before hot water, you saying boys always do that, me saying boys with a question mark and you not saying anything. I won't dwell on the emails that said nothing and the emails that said something and the emails that lead through the wood to Grandma's House. I won't linger around the fact that this morning I had no idea today would turn out the way it has. In the first instance I won't dwell longer than is necessary upon your white shirt and your brown skin. The delight of buttons - the intoxicating ease with which my fingers undressed you - and zips, the sound your skirt made as it slipped to the floor between us. I will not tarry by your elegant grace (the way you stepped out of your discarded skirt and your shoes as one), I will not dawdle over the warm brown taste of your skin, nor the heat of you. I will not dilly-dally in the shadow of your immediate nakedness (your breasts larger than I expected, your nipples smaller, the sweet loveliness of a freckle on your tummy). Neither will I trifle with the determined way in which your nipple grew hard in my mouth or feel again surprise with your quick and easy movements beneath me, your legs slipping above and around my own pulling me deeper inside you (although I suspect the moan that greeted my being deeper inside you will detain me for a moment, the tense expulsion of sound from your mouth catching me like a hook, already with the hooks, your skin into mine). I will not potter in the minutes that followed, or idle in the push-me, pull-you of our collective desire, your small arse in my hands, you atop, a palm flat against my chest hissing between your teeth like some beautiful snake. Us. Busy us. All lips and tongues and fingers and teeth. The feast.

No. I shall clutch the evening light to my mouth like a ripe plum and think we have fucked for the first time and it is not yet dark. I will drink the outline of your body, sat still, gazing out of the window as you say I can't believe we didn't close the curtains. It is all one with your dressing. You sit and reach from the bed to the floor, freeing your bra from where it is snagged through the arms of a white shirt, and dress - and, as you dress, you transform, from a face in the crowd, a body in the office, to a butterfly, a kind of butterfly, desiring to fly with arms instead of wings and foolish, too. It is a brief half second of madness and were you to break it down, it is the furthest thing from beautiful and yet it is not too.

© Peter Wild
Reproduced with permission

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NEWS OF YOUR ABORTION

There is a man shouting outside in the street. I can see him if I press my face up close to the glass. He is wearing a suit and tie – a good suit and tie, he has money, you can tell - and holding a suitcase and umbrella in one hand (the long raven black umbrella held between thumb and index finger, the handle of the case resting in the palm over the remaining three fingers) - the hand he is raising, as if to flag a cab. But he is not flagging a cab. He is shouting. There are crowds around him, scores of people making their way from point A to point B. But he is not moving. He is transfixed, rooted to the spot, a hand holding a briefcase and umbrella held in the air. He is a weather vane. He is a lightning conductor, despite the fact of the shining sun.

I can't tell at first what he is saying - I am only aware of the tone. The pain. The sense that he is vocalising something primordial and wrong. He is out of place, this man.

I look from him down the street. He is communing with somebody. He is shouting one word over and over again. It can only be a name. I am too late. Whoever it was is gone or is moving through the crowd hoping to draw the least attention to themselves. Who can blame them? There is a madman shouting in the street. You can sense their tension – the tension of the person trying to escape - the hope that nobody knows their name, the fluttering death rattle eye glances between fleeing person and random strangers (that shared relief - there is a mad person shouting, thank goodness they have nothing to do with us) - until there is distance and the voice grows dim and disappears.

And still the man shouts. He must know. She - if it is a she - is not coming back. And still he shouts. The cry changes, becoming something else. He no longer desires the return of the fleeing person. Now he merely wishes to advertise his pain. The sound he makes. He is a wounded wolf howling in the crowd clearing. This man - this respectable man - who may be observed by work colleagues and the like - this man who does not care whether his keenness is witnessed - is glad, rather, that his pain is on show - continues to howl into the early evening, despite the fact that nobody appears to care. Nobody does more than lift their head, cast a sly look from beneath clouded eyelids, nudge a friend. It will be stored, maybe talked about later. Or worse: the people who look and nudge and store will mean to tell others later - the anecdote of the businessman screaming in the street in the early evening - but they will forget and - the man screaming somebody's name will not mean anything, will - rather - be forgotten before they reach the end of the street, before they cross over the road, before they order a pint or make their ride or whatever.

You ask me what I'm doing. You say what are you doing and then: what is that?

I say: there is a man screaming in the street.

You don't answer. I continue watching. I don't turn to face you yet. I don't do anything. I just watch. I leave the news of your abortion on the table with the coffee, going cold.

© Peter Wild
Reproduced with permission

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OPEN LETTER

I saw your photograph today on a website and thought about you for the first time in maybe three weeks, which probably doesn’t seem like so much, but for a long time there, for months, for maybe half a year, if you can believe that, every morning, your name popped in my head, again last thing at night, bang, your name, and with it, that quickening, that pain, the seaswell of jaunty nausea, I can’t even begin to explain to you how it has been for me, learning to come to terms with the fact you didn’t want me, or whatever it was, I’ll never ever understand, I think about what you said to me, how you loved me but that wasn’t enough, how you chose him over me, despite the fact that you never had a nice word to say about him, and living with him, I’ve thought about it all over and over, I’ve worn a path through the grass, it’s the worst kind of parallax, there are days when I hate you for what you did, and hate myself for letting you in, and hate myself for trying so damn hard to make you love me like I loved you, and hate myself for being such a fool, such a fool, such a fool, there are days when I understand, don’t get me wrong, you were unhappy, I was a charming and persuasive distraction but I spoiled everything by falling in love with you, it wasn’t planned, I couldn’t help myself, but that was what did it, you were there, not-there, there, not-there and then gone, gone was the hardest, gone and you, so damn strong, never answering your phone, never replying to my emails, always strong, and sometimes I take it to mean that it’s hard for you too, sometimes I think you can’t deal with what we had either, you slammed the lid down on the box because you were frightened by what you saw, or how deeply you felt, other times I think that’s a total crock, the things you do to rationalise pain and move on, but anyway, this morning, I saw your face on a website and thought about you for the first time in maybe three weeks and I realised things are getting better, I’m getting over you, whatever voodoo you employed is losing its grip and man but that feels good.

© Peter Wild
Reproduced with permission

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PICCADILLY GARDENS HOTEL

She gives no thought to a minute or an hour or a day or a week or a month or a year from now. She can’t. The slightest tremor will tip too many things loose. She doesn’t think about -. She closes the door on the fact that he’ll be home now, in their kitchen, making a cup of tea, eating a ham sandwich. She cannot bring herself to comprehend the scale of her treachery when it’s set against the world, this afternoon, passing outside the window of the hotel room in which she finds herself; naked, with a stranger, virtually, whose fingers and tongue are busy between her legs. She brings her hand up from her side and cloaks her eyes, pinching her nose between her thumb and index finger, knowing that he will think she is loving what he is doing when in fact she is looking to hide her eyes from the insides of her head.

It’s good, what he is doing. She likes it. It’s different too -. different is good. Different is good and bad. Good and bad stand with their backs to each other and take ten paces. In a minute they will each turn and fire. What is she doing? It isn’t like she’s married but they’ve been together ten years. More than ten years. What is she doing naked in a hotel room with a strange man? Worse. He’s worse than a strange man. He’s a familiar man. Within minutes of stepping through the door and into this pokey room she had his cock in her mouth. She pushed him up against the wall and took his cock in her mouth, just to avoid his eyes. She couldn't look at him, abased herself so it would shut out the words forming in her head, she was being a total whore. It’s terrible. This strange and familiar man is like a tar baby, a charming and persuasive tar baby. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t love him. What is she doing?

© Peter Wild
Reproduced with permission

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