Posts Tagged ‘flash fiction’
Friday, January 21st, 2011
When, at odd moments during the day, when Roger moved his hand, it blurred. Which caught his attention. He dropped everything to stare at his hand. Waiting for it to come back into focus.
Later, his hand affected his arm, and it too became a bit blurry. And now standing naked before the bathroom mirror, he didn’t see himself. He saw a blur. He reached out toward the blur, but that too turned out to be a blur.
“Honey, come see. I’m out of focus.”
“Again?”
“What do you mean, again?”
Tags:bizarre story, flash fiction, short story by Vincent Eaton, short-short fiction
Posted in Noises in the House | 2 Comments »
Friday, January 14th, 2011
Somehow I had sucked a virus into my system that had affected my hearing. It turned voices into a muffled mumbles way in the distance. Sounds became indistinct mysteries. To most everyone who tried speaking toward me, I said, What? a lot.
I was prescribed medicine. Bit by bit I heard the world again, until I stalled at the last 20% of my hearing. Seemed the last 20% was the most difficult to get back. Time and medication. Then, during a movie, I heard a pop and more sound suddenly was there in my ear. Later that week, there were a series of underwater notes, a clearing, and everything seemed back to normal.
But the body, being holistic, with the whole ear, throat, nose combo involved, other mysteries happened.
Because when my hearing kicks in again, my sense of smell kicks up a couple of notches.
Getting out of my car, my head shifts like a dog’s, aiming my nostrils high and slanted. It could also look like a blind person listening to a voice. I sniff.
“Leafs are burning somewhere.”
And they are, a few houses down on the opposite side of the road in someone’s back yard.
I go into a house and there’s a huge bunch of flowers and it overpowers me, a sickly scent like a decrepit person slapping on too much lotion. I have to stand by an open door to get relief.
“Someone’s cutting wood,” I say another time, walking down my street, I eventually pass an open garage where someone has recently buzz-sawed some two by fours.
The world has become wider through my nostrils; I am smelling a lot of things that other people don’t detect.
I even smell things that you aren’t supposed to to be there.
I’m next to the person who is full of love for me. She smiles benignly upon me.
I sniff her.
“What?” she asks, with only a hint of alarm.
“I smell,” I tell her, “I smell something on you.”
“What?”
I sniff. “Love.” I smell her ear. “I smell love on you.”
I smell her throat, bury my nose in her hair, sniffing like a dog wild on the trail of a favorite prey.
She giggles and her love fills my nasal passages, until my insides become like a series of mini-waves, creating the kind of ripples that happen in the middle of a wide lake right after you have thrown your heart in.
Tags:ear infection, ear throat nose, flash fiction, free story from Vincent Eaton, illness and love, love and smelling, love story, medication and love
Posted in Noises in the House | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Wrote a short-short story a while back called Puppy’s Dead.
Seems to be one of the more popular stories–at least people keep coming back for it.
So I’ve made a little video of it. Did the voice over myself.
CLICK HERE TO SEE IT.
Hope you enjoy. Thanks for coming by. –Vincent
Tags:dead puppy, doggie, fiction, flash fiction, funny, Hidden People, humor, little boy, puppy, sorrow of death of domestic pet, Story, Vincent Eaton, writing
Posted in Videos | No Comments »
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
We were having brunch at the Brussels Hilton one Sunday at a longish, noisy table with some people we knew—and some people we didn’t—when one man we did know, having finished his cake, smiled, leaned back and said, “I’ve been depressed recently.”
Everybody laughed.
“Look at him,” the woman to my right said in French. “He says he’s depressed with a big smile.”
“No, no, no, I assure you,” he answered. “I’ve been very depressed.”
His name was Daniel and he earned his living by buying and selling paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries Dutch and Flemish Masters and sub-masters. He had a small gallery on Avenue Louise, the big deal Brussels Avenue. He had recently decided to close it down because it took too much time. From the beginning of the year he was a going to work selectively: select paintings, select customers.
“I want to become less materialistic. I find it depressing to be busy with money, and phone calls, and contacts. No, I’m going to get rid of my big car and get a small car. It is all depressing.”
He did not look particularly depressed. His brown eyes gleamed, his ironic smile was quick to surface on his face, and he spoke with an easy earnestness that made his unsought confession of depression difficult to sympathize with.
I looked for the typical signs of depression we Westerners have refined: the ringed eyes, the slumped shoulders, the silence.
He was nearing forty, he was living with a pretty mother of three, none of whom were his children. He was having brunch with close friends at the Hilton on Sunday. He had spent his summer in Turkey and was planing to spend Christmas holidays in Naples, with other friends, and they knew a good place for water sports in February. And he was depressed.
I did silent writer’s musing at him. What was the nature and extent of this depression? Was it only the nagging doubts of material comforts? Affluent anguish? Mid-life? Perhaps he was in the process of rearranging his priorities and was sorrowful for lost time and wrong directions taken?
He was giving no details. I continued looking at him as he made a joke about something. People laughed. They liked laughing. It’s why they came to brunch with friends.
Depression. I knew about depression and I was interested in depression. Whenever people mentioned the magic word “DEPRESSION” in my hearing, I gravitated toward the emotional mess. Depression is often the meat and matter of much modern fiction. One needed conflict in stories, just as many people needed conflicts in life, and some, who had no material or personal conflicts, gave way to mental conflicts. Mental anguish as higher, spiritual needs remained unfed
Maybe he was feeling existential anguish. That self-made hell. Full bellies, painful heads. But I’d seen enough existential anguish claimed by people who simple wanted to be romantic and forlorn. They know the words, they had the terms (and the time); they put intellectual labels on emotional turmoil.
Many people, by naming their misery, hoped to tame it.
But Daniel didn’t name anything beyond using the word depressed. He chatted, allowing me to continue bringing out my handy mental file, supplying private suppositions, imaginary and real cases, cause and effects, but all that was nothing compared to the immediate real thing before me. What’s really with this guy? Depression’s a serious business. I looked across at him, wished he’d give more explanation, an expansion, about this depression that allowed him to smile so often.
Friends chatted; the conversation moved on; Daniel talked but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I leaned toward him, trying to make out his French from the surrounding hubbub.
He was discussing Naples in December with his neighbor.
Tags:a depressed person, brunch, depression story, flash fiction, planning vacations, sad man funny with friends
Posted in Noises in the House | 4 Comments »
Saturday, October 16th, 2010
It never failed to happen—it always happened—he always went into a museum ready to be stimulated, amused, moved, awed by art—but inevitably, before he’d gotten twenty-six paintings or three rooms into an art museum, he’d start feeling sparky.
There was no fuller, better, harsher word for it. Slowly, subtly, before a picture any picture—didn’t matter which—his hands would begin sliding up and down the back of the woman he was with.
Before another dozen paintings were out of the way, he’d want to head her to some impossible secluded corner in the museum to grope.
It had happened before. And before. And before that. For years, every time. Once he’d dished up an explanation for it: “I think it’s because in museums there’s this sense of extinction. It’s all done, dead, hanging on the walls, inert, trying to be masterpieces. And I react to this by getting a certain base, jumpy, grabby horiness. I’m fighting the overwhelming sense of still life and eerie permanence by being invaded, overwhelmed by the possibilities of a woman’s flesh, alive, new, there.”
“Don’t,” she whispered, looking around, squirming out of his clutches.
He tried to take his mind off the matter by going to stand and look at another painting. He appreciated. The colors, the composition, the brush strokes … and then he’d glance sideways, and there’d be another woman. He’d stand back, as though appreciating the painting by giving it a fuller view, from a fine connoisseur’s distance. He’d study the woman instead. He’d study any woman. Face, eyes, hands, thighs, ankles and everything in between.
The museum was filled with wandering women. The pictures, the chef-d’oeuvres, the exhibit that had cost so much to get into—it all became incidental background compared to the alive and moving women.
Outside, escaped, the drums of sex would dim.
“What gets into you?” she asked.
He took in a chestful of outside air. “I don’t know,” he said, quieting. He breathed.
They began descending the cement steps.
Two women passed, ascending. His eyes followed. Followed.
Within, deep within, a muffled drum beat on.
Tags:art exposition story, flash fiction, men and women and museums, sex and museums, Story, the sexual instinct and art, visiting a museum, writing
Posted in Noises in the House | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
When people come knocking on my front door, the first thing I do is ignore them. I didn’t ask them to come.
If they insist by knock and knocking again, then I creep over to stand on the other side of the shut and locked door and wait a long second…then I knock on the door from my side.
Now I believe they stand there on the other side of the door no longer knowing whether they are knocking to come in, or I am knocking to get out.
So we stand there together on either side of the shut door, silent and thoughtful and hesitant, until, for some strange reason, they knock on my door, again. This time oh so lighter, gentler, with a certain healthy trepidation.
Since they are insisting, I unlock and rip open the door: “What do you want?”
“We—“
“Hurry up. Say what you have to say. I’m busy killing my furniture.”
“You’re what…?”
“Give me a moment.”
I nearly close the door, enough so they can’t see. I grab a nearby chair and toss it across the room. It smacks against the opposite wall, cracks a leg, takes a chunk of plaster from the wall, then I open the door a bit. “What were you saying?”
“Did you just do what I think you did?”
“Oh crap. It’s started again. One sec.”
Once more I almost close the door. I reach for a nearby picture and Frisbee it down the hallway. “Die!” I yell after it.
I return to the door. “Make it snappy, there’s a lot of death I have to handle in here.”
“Maybe it would be better if I returned—”
“Watch out!” I shout and spin around and catch the blurred sight of the cactus in a vase that is hurtling itself toward me while my back was turned. I barely have time to jerk my head out of the way as some of its needles tear across my cheek. The cactus and its pot bust up against the rear of the door, falling to the floor and rolling around as though in pain. I kick it away. I touch my cheek and my fingertips come away with some bright blood that seconds ago was safe within my body traveling around, taking cells for their one minute trip all around my body. A telephone receiver smacks hard against my shin.
I go “Ouch!” before stomping my right heel hard into its mouthpiece, cracking it open.
It’s a tough business, killing your furniture, but I’ve learned, over time, it’s me or them.
I feel bits and pieces of costume jewelery pelting my back.
A throw rug tries to hug my ankles to trip me up.
Postcards people sent me and I forgot to throw away slice through the air and toward my neck.
My stereo’s loud speakers have mouths with teeth.
The tissue paper in the box comes out used with snot embedded around bits of blood and they float determinedly toward me like huge stained butterflies.
The pens on the desk are lined up and furious, their hard points out.
The guy’s still at the door. Why, I don’t know and care even less.
“Excuse me for being blunt, but how can I help you because I’m a little occupied in here.” I feel little nudges at my feet and look down. There’s three of my favorite CD music cases trying to bite me. Three quick heel ‘n’ twist movements in the middle of each jewel case takes care of them.
I look to see the guy’s now halfway down the path from my house, glancing over his shoulder as if there’s something wrong with me.
“Thanks for nothing!” I scream at his retreating back and I hear something heavy and turn around just in time to see the television set rolling straight for my crotch. I leap over it and it smacks against the side of the door with a little crunch sound and halts in pain.
Okay, okay, time for a little breather before battle is truly engaged. I glance toward the doorway to the kitchen and there’s the refrigerator and the washing machine already getting traction, preparing to have a go at me. I straighten, roll my head back and forth on my shoulders to snap my bones back in place, getting combat ready, because the next part of this was about to get real, real nasty.
Tags:fantasy fight, fighting furniture, flash fiction, household violence, inanimate objects alive, short-short fiction
Posted in Noises in the House | 6 Comments »
Friday, July 9th, 2010
I kill slugs. At night, in the beginning, I placed little bowls of beer embedded in the earth to tempt them to come, like wary animals arriving to sip in the savannah during the depths of darkness. But like unreconstructed AA members, they could not resist as they came to sip, and then sip some more, then more still, until they waded right in, and literally drown in their beer. Next morning, the little pools of beer held a number of floating and semi-sunk oblong corpses.
Snails, too, a couple of them were in there. Not a one of them could hold their liquor.
Still every morning I see my salad gets munched, holes appearing in the leaves. So another plan is formed, more sinister, more immediate. I waited until midnight approached to go hunting. I got my flashlight out but found it held dead batteries, damn, went around the house unloading batteries from remotes and cameras and suchlike discovering I had a house full of half-dead or utterly dead batteries. The flashlight kept its single eye closed. So I got a candle, lit it, not enough power, then a second candle, lit them both, and went into the night.
When I held the candles up to view the immediate territory, weird bendy shadows were cast over the land. But they were there. A transient city of snails and slugs, poking along slimeily, seeking their midnight snacks. I had filled a can deep with water and put it down near my feet. With carefully gloved hand I picked them from the ground, plucked them from the plants, one by one, and plopped them into my bucket to drown, and kept culling, and they kept acoming.
After a bit of capturing and tossing them into my mini-well, I had a look to see how many I had taken care of. Six or eight or an army of them were crawling up back to the rim, wanting life, or more free food. I pulled back three inches, as though under a surprise mini-attack. Naively, had I thought they’d just drown if there was enough water. I lowered a single finger into this world and pushed each one back down and each one was no match for my finger and fell with a tiny splash and a bob but still, still they still came up, crawling back with a zombie’s determination. This midnight raid was turning into something like night the living fucking dead.
So I put a second thought into the matter and and dumped in a dash of chlorine, swished it around in the water, then again poked those slime-balls back in. Again they went plop into the water but this time they curled and met their maker. Each released a little bit of distressed foam.
Pick ‘n’ plop was the main movement and sound thereafter out there in the garden when reasonable men were asleep. I tried pouring some salt on a couple of them and saw their innards sort of catch fire as some different but more raging sort of foam came bubbling up from under their bodies, their inner fluids flushing out.
I killed many during the next three midnights, decimating the local population. Then the following four nights there were no attacks on my small vegetable patch. The lettuce leafs thrived. No nibbles. One never foolishly declares victory in such matters, but the lettuce began to believe in themselves again. Courgette plants spread their leafy wings. Rhubarb went rhubbarbing.
But for those three nights running, with candles and evil intent, I sought and killed slugs and snails which dared assail with mucus mouths my struggling salads. Those nights were like my own little intense slasher-horror film out there in the dead of night. The foam and the bubbling. The single sound of a snail plopping into chlorinated water, that midnight plop a full one-note sound, masking the terminal.
Tags:beer for snails, beer to kill snails, bizarre story, courgette, death of slugs, flash fiction, garden under attack from snails, lettuce, night of the living dead, Rhubarb, salt on slugs, slug zombies, slugs, snails, Story, Vincent Eaton
Posted in Noises in the House | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
…Here’s this popular short-short story, comes in three different forms:
WORDS
My short-short fiction piece, “Big Toe Walkabout” has proven to be popular story.
AUDIO
So after the story appeared, I made it into a Podcast/Audio clip.
VIDEO
Yet, maybe some out there would like to watch this big toe illustration while listening, so now I have made it as a one shot video story.
Yep, stories come in all sorts of packaging around here.
Enjoy, and endure. Thanks for reading, seeing, listening. And leave a comment below! Or in the YouTube comment box–I’ll get it.
Tags:bizarre story, fantasy on body parts, flash fiction, funny, funny story, odd story, Story, story of a big toe, story of a man and his feet, weird
Posted in Videos | 2 Comments »
Monday, July 5th, 2010
I wrote and posted a short-short story (read HERE–click it!) about a toe detaching itself from my foot to go live its life. It proved popular. So I recorded it.
Listen (and/or download) here: Big Toe Walkabout read by the author.
It’s less than 3 1/2 minutes.
Enjoy and thanks for dropping by. Don’t forget to leave a comment below! Vincent….
Tags:Big Toes, fantasy, flash fiction, podcast, story about a silly adventure, surreal story, talking feet, toes, weird
Posted in Audio | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
People have been trying to steal the flower box outside my house.
There used to be a flower box set outside my window ledge facing the street where pedestrians pass. It was long and it was full of pretty things. Indeed, the point was to pretty up the neighborhood. But some passing people would pluck out the flowers, roots and all for, one imagines, their own home use, leaving gaping holes. I replanted the missing flowers with just basic leafy greenery reducing the plucking thievery, making it, one would think, no longer such an attractive steal. But someone was not happy with this solution. One deep night someone or a couple of someones pulled the flower box off the ledge and it free fell to the sidewalk where it fractured, splitting in half. It was discovered the next morning, dirt spread across the pavement, people stepping over it like some new obstruction that’s none of their business. So one cleans up and disposes but does not give up, damn it. One puts out a pentagon cement box full of tight smiling flowers right on the sidewalk, right next to the front door, insisting on bringing a little damn cheer to this damn neighborhood. Still, still, unknown people pluck at it, as though trying out pick-pocketing skills on the inert and attractive. So, sinking to their level, getting crafty, I planted some wall-aimed though hidden sticks usually used for skewering meat, deep in the ground, sharp points behind the leaves, so when an evil hand reaches in to thieve a plant by its roots, they get their greedy little fingers and/or palms jabbed. As a result, becoming frustrated and lightly wounded, they now kick at the cement box by my front door, jarring it out of its snug place. Every morning I put it back in its place, defiant, determined. They leave coke cans in it. Sometimes cigarette butts. Plastic wrappers. Last week someone laid a steel portion of a shower pole across it. Some foolish one actually tried to take the whole heavy flower container last week. But it had been tied to a steal horseshoe shaped shoe scraper embedded near the front door, left from the days when this city street was part of the outlying fields (I don’t live on rue de l’Agriculture for nothing). But when these determined plant robbers lifted it, the two wires encircling the box held it secure, so they could only get it off a ground a tiny bit. They must have jerked at it, hoping brute ignorance would help, and it wouldn’t give because I’m smarter and so it slipped from their grip (or they just gave up) and it fell to the sidewalk, yet, a sturdy construction, it did not crack and smash. It was left right in the middle of the sidewalk as the unsuccessful thieves drifted back into their empty-handed night.
Yesterday, someone tied across my front door some plastic police tape that had “Police” stamped repeatedly in black on yellow, the kind of official narrow strip found at crime scenes or accidents, to seal off the area from a curious public. It was tied at a slant right across the bars protecting the window of the front door, with some excess tape stuffed firmly in the keyhole, blocking my ability to lock or unlock my door to the world outside.
The flowers now look nervously up and down the street to see who or what might be coming next. A sensation of paranoia has begun seeping in from the flowers outside to the life within. The next assault is awaited….
Tags:bad neighbors, flash fiction, flower box, flower container, flowers, non-fiction personal essay humor, social customs, stealing flowers, Story, Vincent Eaton
Posted in Noises in the House | 1 Comment »
