Flash Fiction 1

To help me continue to write so that one day I can meet my own life goals, I'll be putting up some short little writing assignments I'll make for myself. Here's a little flash fiction to brighten your day:

The scar wound down from under her eye, down her cheek and neck, and zigzagged over her chest. She wore spaghetti strap tank tops every day. No scarf. No jacket. Not that she needed a jacket. The blinding white desert sun kept the town warm and dry the whole year. Even during the cool nights she seemed impervious to any elements. She seemed impervious to stares, to gawks, to whispers. People pointed and followed the raised white tissue crawling across her skin. She smiled, and sometimes winked at those people, before she clambered up into a dusty pick up truck, its light blue paint peeling away.

"It's from a zombie attack." Jason moved the words over a huge bit of ice cream. The truck disappeared with a cloud of dust. "Her scars are battle wounds. I bet she keeps a shot gun under the bench in her truck."

"Who'd you hear that from?" Brandon threw his half eaten popsicle into Jason's face.

"Hey! Watch it! What is with you?" Jason tossed the styrofoam dish into the garbage. "It's just crazy Sadie. Relax." He kicked at the small trick bike at the curb, caught the handlebars in his hands and jumped on. "Are you coming?"

Brandon slumped at the metal picnic table. Flat, everything was flat and low. And then out on the horizon, just hinting at a foreign world, mountains rose. They were only miniature from here. "Nah."

"Dude! You haven't been there all week! What is going on?"

"I just don't feel like it, ok?"

"Whatever, man." Jason hopped over the curb on his bike and sped off down the road, away from the mountains.

The wind whipped by Brandon, battering against the small market building. He closed his eyes, breathing in the dry air, trying to taste something on the air. All he got was sand. Sterile, tasteless sand.

The moon was right on top of them. Blinding and white. The sun without the orange sky to hold it. Sand dug into his back, stinging and crunching. Each piece shaped by years of wind, all the same. Brandon let his arms slip over her thighs. Thin and white. She moved over him, slowly and purposefully, each rocking movement sending him further and further into the sand, into his mind, into the blankness of the desert. Then, suddenly, he wasn't in the desert. He wasn't in the middle of a small town filled with people copying the styles and movements of a world reflected in a television screen. He wasn't in a canvas void of life and color.

Sadie slumped off of him. Brandon traced his finger from her eye, gently following the trail of her thick scar.

"You like it?" Her voice was thick but even.

"Um...yeah."

She turned toward him, naked and warm. She wasn't shy, but Brandon wouldn't call her immodest. She was comfortable, as she was meant to be. She stood fleshed out in a flat town, bearing her body, bearing her soul. And then a laugh broke out across the sky, stretching around them like a bed sheet. Sadie let her head fall back into the sand and let the laugh take over her body. "You don't have to be scared of it. It's just a scar."

"You, you always show it off though. Why don't you cover it up?"

"Cover this up? It's kind of hard."

"But you could cover up some of it."

"Look, with me, it's all or nothing. Why hide it? It's obviously entertainment for you and your friends."

Brandon turned away from her, suddenly very aware of his exposed body. "I don't gawk at it."

"Now you don't. Before our lovely little late night trysts? Yeah you did. You were just like the rest of them."

"I'm not like the rest of them."

"Aw, little boy. Don't whine."

"What do you know?" Brandon bolted up, ripped his pants on and walked off as he buttoned up his fly.

"Baby." Sadie kicked sand toward him. "Where are you going?"

"Away."

"Away from what?"

"Everything!"

"You know, you think you hate it here, but you don't. You're just growing up."

"What the hell does that mean?" Brandon turned around, his back to the moon, the front of his body pitched in shadow.

"You hate this place. You think it's boring. It all looks the same." Sadie sat up, stretched her arms over her legs and let her thick hair fall in front of her face. "Everywhere is the same. The same people, the same cars, the same buildings. Rearranging the land won't change that. It's not the desert you hate." She sank back into the sand. "And boy can you satisfy. Mmm."

Brandon didn't move. "Then what do I hate?"

"What you were. Jeering those who are different, i.e. me. Now you've opened up. You just want to experience new things. That's all right, just don't mistake that for hate. Now get on top of me before I decide to put my clothes on."

"Will you tell me how you got your scar?"

Sadie rose up onto her side, supporting her head with her arm. "No. I display my scar to the world. I cover up how I got it."

Sadie and the desert. Open to the world. Yet somehow unattainable; elusive as sand slipping through his hands. "Was it really a zombie attack?"

"Get over here." She slid back down into the sand and motioned for him to come back, with her hands above her, as if she were motioning the moon to come closer.