Two Flash Stories

by Laton Carter

 

This Pleasing Sting

Lady Mary Wroth was having a devil of a time with Auto-Correct. In this strang labourinth how shall I turne? she cried out. But her words were  deleted and revised: In this strangled labor, without shallots I return. Shallots. Had someone ordered soup? And she was supposed to grocery
shop?

Lady Mary was done with her crown of sonnets. She took a last drag then rubbed her cigarette out in a crystal tray. Her pug barked from the divan. What came after a crown? Maybe nothing. Maybe she would invent something — a lute of sonnets. That could be done.

Queen Anne had taken away her lover. William Herbert, whom Mary called Willie and Anne called Herbie, was keen on powerful women. But when a powerful woman is in debt because of her gambling and drinking and dead husband, and another powerful woman happens to be the queen — Lady Mary knew how things would play out. She would be left with three things: her pug, her sonnets, and the slightly gross compliment that her friend, Ben Jonson, claimed to be a better lover after reading her work. Oh Benny.

Noe clowde can apeere to dimm his light, nor spott defile, butt shame will soone requite Mary whispered to herself while fingering through some tax forms. Auto-Correct was confused. “Did you mean butt shame?” it asked over her shoulder. Lady Mary did not have to glare. She spun around in her chair, inhaled against her corset, and crossed her arms. Auto-Correct grew sheepish, twisted a toe in the rug, then gingerly backed out of the room.

Enough blood pudding. It was time to go vegan. Against a power structure, measures could be made. Turn scandal on its nose — see Annie squirm for once — and leak some sonnets to the court. Let the nobility cringe. Watch as they denied their exploits.

 

Note: Italicized lines in Early Modern English are from Lady Mary Wroth’s A Crowne of Sonetts Dedicated to Love, published 1621.

 

Wild Turkeys

Some cities are neither urban nor rural. Their size and location leaves them in-between and perturbable on account of it.

The wild turkeys were bickering again. It was that dark blue time of morning — not yet time for work, and not enough time to return to sleep. Filtering out of the woods at the city’s periphery, the turkeys poked their way down into the drowsy bowl of its neighborhoods. Expansion and the clearing of lots in accordance with new zoning laws had forced the birds into foraging residential areas. Not just once had elementary students on their way to school been engaged with the large fowl.

•

Rain has its way of making people lose their minds. There exists a pleasant, fleeting type of Hawaiian rain, and there is also a renewing, birth-giving type of Sub-Saharan rain, and then there is the type that holds on, outstaying its welcome for no other reason than to pester, when the plants have had enough and the gutters have had enough and the intersections have had enough and even the sky itself has had enough, and from its grayblue panel in the heavens splits at the seams only to crash down onto everything, creating a moss-inducing mildew-breeding stew.

•

The woman had just made her favorite cup of coffee. She twisted the plastic wand, and the blinds above the sofa opened to let in the sight of a dozen or so prehistoric-looking  creatures pecking mindlessly in the boulevard where she had planted tulip bulbs — red, white, and the nearly-blue Blue Parrot — purchased from a mail-order nursery. Shoots just this week had broken through the damp earth.

Still in her slippers and oversized I ♥ NY shirt, the woman found herself outside and stamping through the lawn directly toward the gaggle. What was she doing? A male puffed itself up whereupon the females, the ones who had been doing the pecking, lifted their heads and regarded the intruder. No. Flowers were flowers, not food — not something to be picked and scraped away at! In a stroke of indecipherable fury the woman lunged at the group, successfully scooping up one of the slower bodies. The thing gobbled wildly and crashed its feathers against her chest as the excited remainder bumped and circled and hurried themselves up the sidewalk.

Thanksgiving was eight months off and it began to rain. The majority of females were soon pecking at something else two houses up, but the lone male had stayed behind to assess the woman’s motive. The female bird, feet dangling and body held firmly within the woman’s arms, had given up somewhat and seemed to be either resting or in a state of shock. The male would not have it, and with outspread wings charged the human, reigniting the female’s protest.

What had she done? And who exactly was possessing this rage-induced behavior? A chill slithered down her spine. If she’d been dressed for work and in her car, and if the turkeys had been blocking the driveway, she was the type of person who would wait — patiently, and without honking — until each body had carried itself over to the safety of the lawn.

•

Undomesticated animals rarely appear in internet fail videos. While their presence on social media is not uncommon, it is generally the domain of the accident-prone Homo sapiens to star in recorded mishaps. But the male bird had lost its footing. Over a sunken patch of sidewalk the turkey had unambiguously tripped. Its awkward figure tumbled down onto its chest feathers and engorged wattle.

The thought of how many views and likes this pitiable sight would tally in her virtual communities flashed across her thinking, but the woman was without her devices. Here was her opening for rational thought — everything else until now had gone off in a frenzied blur. The rain increased, flattening the bun on her head, and she lowered the hen onto the ground. The freed bird sped past its protector and rejoined the harem.

•

Her coffee was surprisingly still warm. Across her belly, small puncture wounds from the turkey’s spurs had seeped blood through the cotton of her shirt, and now its large graphic ♥ appeared to shed literal hematic fluid. She ran the yellow side of the sponge under the faucet and dabbed at the spots. Rain shimmied down the window. She had just held a wild species hostage. Work began in less than an hour.

 

Laton Carter’s Leaving (University of Chicago) received the Oregon Book Award. Previous work has appeared in The Absurdist, The Brooklyn Review, Necessary Fiction, and The Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2018. Carter teaches in the BFA program at Portland State University.