Signs & Oddities: A quirky collection of flash fiction Page 4

  The bedroom door crashed back against the wall as he flung it open. I jumped and dropped the book. “I should have known I couldn’t trust you to mind your own business,” he said, pointing his pistol at my forehead.

  “What are you talking about?” I babbled. “I took a sauna, then I’ve just been here reading all evening.”

  “Is that so?” He jerked the white towel I was wearing right off my body and waved it accusingly. “Then how did this blood get here?”

  “I—I cut myself shaving. Look, I’ll show you, there’s a nick on my ankle.” Frantically, I fumbled my foot out from under the blankets.

  “I don’t think so.” He didn’t even look at my leg. “Unless you were shaving in my office closet. I found blood on the floor there too.” He cocked the pistol. “I warned you to stay out of there. Now it’s too late.”

  Just like in some movie, my brothers burst through the door at the very last second, automatic weapons blazing. I dove under the bed until it was all over. They took me home and somehow made everything all right with the police. I think a great deal of money changed hands to keep it quiet, even though it was clearly a case of self-defense. After all, the guy who’d been holding me at gunpoint was a madman with seven severed heads in his closet.

  Not a madman, my brothers said. A businessman. And, as his widowed bride, I’d just inherited his business. Now it was time I was told exactly what kind of business Bluebeard Enterprises really was.

  By the sea, beneath the yellow and sagging moon, the old Selkie dragged herself up the empty beach. Black sludge from a recent oil spill coated her fur, and one of her flippers left a trail of blood from the gash where a shard from a broken beer bottle embedded in the sand had sliced her flesh.

  Still, she was undeterred. For thousands of years, the seal-people had come here on this night of the year to dance the ancient dances, reunite with old friends, and find new mates before the turning of the year. She must do them the honor this one last time.

  She pulled herself upright, shed her sealskin upon the gray sand, and unfolded into her human shape. There was no one there to tell her she was no longer radiant and beautiful. Her withered limbs were no longer smooth and bright as silver, but were rough and gnarled as old driftwood. Her hair hung dank and limp upon her shoulders as rotting seaweed. Only her eyes, raised to the last light of the failing moon, retained a hint of their former silvery brilliance.

  She sniffed the air but scented no others of her kind. She was the last.

  In the old times, when her people were plentiful, there had been music for the dances: pipes, fiddles, drums, and whistles, wild rhythms and melodies that swirled around the dancers like tumbling tidal currents. But tonight there was only the sound of the sea lamenting against the rocks. It was enough. The sea was all the music she had ever really needed.

  She began the dance. Her body remembered the movements. Each step, each gesture was a part of her, woven into her flesh and bone for all the years of her life. The familiarity gave her back some small semblance of the supple grace she had possessed in her youth. Faster and faster, she trod the circle, keening the eerie wordless song of her people until the moon sank at last beneath the horizon.

  No one had come. She was truly the last.

  She picked up her sealskin and looked back up the shore. In the distance, lights from streets and houses blazed like fixed stars. Were there people in those houses who would take her in, destinations along those streets where she might find solace? In times past Selkies had sometimes taken human mates, lived for a time as humans. But the stories always ended in heartbreak and tragedy.

  She pulled her old sealskin around her and folded herself back into her former shape. The cold water embraced her like an old friend. She slipped beneath the dark waves and swam for the horizon. She would seek the place where the moon went down and allow herself to sink down after it, drowning in its light below the dark, cold waves.

  The old man shifted his corn-cob pipe to the other side of the mouth and hoisted the egg up to his ear, giving it a gentle shake and tapping on it to hear if it had the right resonance. Finally, he gave a reluctant snort of approval. “The last time I saw one this size was nigh on forty years ago, and it turned out that one was a fake.”

  “It’s not a fake,” I said. “I took it from the nest myself.”

  “You did, eh? And where might that have been, eh?” His eyes looked shifty, but he didn’t let go of the egg.

  “Come on, old man, do you really think I’d tell you that? I know how much dragon eggs are worth, and I spent the last fourteen months looking for this nest. I’m not going let you send some hired ruffians out to mess up the nesting ground and set the mother off to a new spot where it’ll take me another year to find her again. One egg out of seven, she may not miss, but I know you lot, greedy to the core. You’d steal them all, and she’d never nest near here again.”

  “You environmentalists,” he griped, “always so high and mighty. Maybe I don’t want to do business with the likes of you.” But even as he spoke, his skinny, blotchy hands caressed the egg. I knew he’d pay me plenty for it, given the right incentive.

  “I think you may change your mind when you hear my offer,” I said.

  He perked up a little. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

  I leaned over the counter and took the egg out of his hands. “You give me a thousand gold pieces for this egg—oh, don’t lie to me, I know you have it. I do my research. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t know for a fact that you could afford me. You give me a thousand gold pieces, and I’ll give you this egg. You can quadruple your money by selling it to some nobleman who wants to hatch it out so he can have the status symbol of his own tame dragon, or some king who wants to scramble it for breakfast to cure his impotence. Whatever.”

  His shifty little eyes narrowed. “A thousand is too much. I’ll give you two hundred.”

  I straightened, clasping the egg against my chest. “I think you’ll find that you can manage to scrape together my full asking price.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? What makes you so sure of that?”

  “Because if you don’t, I may accidentally drop this egg and break it open on your doorstep. Do you know what happens when a mother dragon smells broken dragon-yolk? Of course, I’d be long gone by then, so I wouldn’t actually have to witness all the carnage.”

  The old man swallowed. Hard. “I’ll get you your gold.”

  “Put down the zucchini, sir,” the store manager says, “and step away from the shopping cart.”

  “Keep back!” I flourish the vegetable as if it were a switchblade. “I’m not afraid to use this!”

  “Now, Mr. Robertson,” he pleads, “don’t make this hard on yourself. You know you don’t want to do this. It’s all right. I understand. Hey, my wife put me on a diet too.”

  “Don’t say the ‘D’ word to me!” I hurl the zucchini at him, and he ducks aside like a dodge-ball pro on a grade-school playground. Considering the efficiency with which he cleared the other startled shoppers from the aisle when I pushed over the cabbage display, I begin to suspect I’m not the first man to crack under the pressure of a wife’s misguided attempts to force nutritious foods into his—gulp—diet.

  Oh sure, she says it’s because she loves me and wants me to live a long and healthy life. But a man can’t live on green vegetables and tofu. It’s just not natural. I hoist a grapefruit from the shelf, and the store manager backs away. I was my high school shot put champion, and he knows it.

  “Why did she have to pick this diet?” I’m dimly aware that I’m wailing like a tantrum-bound toddler. It feels oddly satisfying. I restrain the urge to throw myself to the floor and kick my heels against the tiles. “Mike Jacobs, down the street, his wife put him on the no-carb diet. Hell, he could eat beef jerky and bear steaks fried in butter every morning for breakfast if he wanted to. So what if his cholesterol is through the roof, at least he can eat like a man!”

  Behind his glasses, th
e manager’s eyes blink rapidly. “Err, we don’t sell bear steaks at this store, Mr. Roberston.”

  “That’s not my point! Look at this shopping list Claire gave me! Look at what’s in my cart! Bean sprouts!”

  “Those are alfalfa sprouts, sir. But if you’d like bean sprouts instead, they’re right over—”

  “I DON’T WANT BEAN SPROUTS! I want baked potatoes with bacon and melted cheese and whole-fat sour cream! I want waffles dripping with butter and real maple syrup! I want those disgusting prepackaged chocolate mini-donuts with white powdered sugar coating. I want a 16-ounce prime rib so marbled with fat I can cut it with a fork. I want fried chicken, extra crispy. I want corn chips and M&Ms and beer!”

  By now, tears are streaming down my cheeks, but I don’t care. I’m a hero, a patriot, a defender of men’s God-given right to gorge themselves into an early grave if they want to. Even the store manager, thin stick of man that he is, starts to look hungry.

  He twists the corner of his red apron and glances nervously over his shoulder. “Aisle seven,” he gulps.

  “What?”

  “Corn chips, aisle seven. Left side, halfway down.” He backs away for a few steps, then turns and bolts for the front of the store.

  Well! Score one for the men’s dietary freedom movement! I whistle to myself as I push my cart toward aisle seven, leaving a trail of discarded vegetables behind me.

  I must have lost track of time a little after that, because next thing I know, I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by half-eaten bags of chips, candy bars, and cheez-coated pretzels, swigging the last mouthful of Pepsi from a two-liter bottle, and the manager is peeking around the aisle’s end cap at me. “Mr. Robertson? There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

  “Leave me alone.” I fish my wallet out of my back pocket and shove it across the floor toward him. “My credit card’s in there. I’ll pay for all this, if that’s what you’re worried about. You didn’t have to call the cops.”

  “He didn’t. He called me.” A shadow falls across the empty wrappers, and I look up into Claire’s stern, bean-sprout-and-tofu-fed face. On each side of her, my children: Daniel, age twelve, and Michaela, age six.

  “Hi kids.” I force a guilty smile and wipe the traces of orange cheez coating from my mouth with my sleeve.

  Claire’s arms are folded across her chest, and her foot taps ominously. “You didn’t throw them away, did you?”

  I suck in my breath. How could she possibly know that? Does tofu enhance your psychic powers or something? “What-what are you talking about?”

  “I thought we agreed that we were going to eat healthier from now on. I would clean all the junk food out of the fridge and the pantry, and you would go get the groceries. We agreed, Bill. So what happened to the Pop Tarts? You ate them, didn’t you?”

  “Of course not! I resent the way you assume—”

  “We saw the empty box on the passenger seat, out in the parking lot, Dad,” my son breaks in.

  “Well, what if I did? A man has a right to—”

  “You’re having a sugar crash,” Daniel informs me with perfect seriousness. “That’s why you’re acting so weird.”

  Now little Michaela pipes up. “His serotonin levels are dropping, and he’s trying to self-medicate. Right, Mom?”

  My wife beams at her and pats her head. “That’s right, sweetie.”

  I can’t believe my ears. Does she have my six-year-old lecturing me on blood chemistry, now? “Good God, Claire! What are you teaching them?”

  “Proper nutrition,” she snaps, “so they don’t end up making scenes and wrecking the entire produce section of their local grocery store like some people.”

  “Yeah,” Daniel says. “It’s time to come home now, Dad. You’re embarrassing us. Plus, I think you scared the store manager.”

  I can’t believe they’re all ganging up on me like this. “I’m not going. I like it better here.”

  “Daniel.” Claire signals and from behind his back our son produces a square plastic package from the bakery section. I recognize the contents. Cherry strudel. My favorite!

  I reach for the box, but my son pulls it away. “You gotta come home first.”

  I climb to my feet, a bit light-headed. Maybe there is something to this whole blood-sugar theory after all. I follow the box of strudel down the aisle, towards the front. The store manager hands Claire my wallet, and she signs the credit card slip for the damages.

  They load me into Claire’s car. She says she doesn’t trust me to drive in my condition. I don’t know if that’s true, or if she’s just afraid I’ll make a break for it and head straight to the Ben and Jerry’s store down the street.

  When we get home, the strudel goes straight into the trash, and the kids help Claire unload the bags of green vegetables and tofu she had the store manager stash in her trunk while she was talking to me.

  I sit slumped at the kitchen table watching them happily putting everything away, chatting about stir fry and hummus. The kids are completely on her side. We have the only kids on the planet who actually like bean sprouts. I’m alone, and beaten.

  I eye the corner of the strudel box sticking out of the top of the trash can. I wait for them to leave the room.

  “Hi. I’d like to make an exchange, please.” I push the receipt across the translucent, azure Lucite desk toward the tall, androgynous-looking woman on the other side.

  “I see.” She glances at the name on the receipt, pulls open a file cabinet, and walks her perfectly manicured nails across the folders inside until she finds my file. “And what seems to be the problem, Mr. Larrabee?”

  Her trim white suit accentuates her slenderness, but it’s her smile that makes me lose my train of thought. “Well, I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to be working.”

  She pulls a form from a stack on her desk, fills in my name at the top, and checks off the first box from the list below. “I see. And how long have you been having this problem?”

  “The whole time, ever since I got it.”

  She lays down her pen and peers at me over the tops of her glasses. “The whole time? You mean it hasn’t even worked for you once? Ever? How long have you had it?”

  “Thirty-six years. Long enough to give it a fair shot.”

  She looks back down at the chart in front of her. “Yes, that’s certainly well past the normal breaking-in period. What exactly is going wrong? Can you describe it to me?” She waves her hand at the chair behind me. “Please, have a seat if you like.”

  I drag the chair forward and sit. “Well, look at me! I’m thirty pounds overweight, my hairline is receding, my wife left me, I hate my job, and I’m $23,000 in debt.”

  She gives a puzzled little frown. “And?”

  “Isn’t that enough? It’s not working. Nothing is working.”

  She flips my receipt over and runs her finger down the fine print on the back until she finds whatever it is she’s looking for. “But Mr. Larrabee, that’s the package you ordered. All those things come standard.”

  “What do you mean? I never ordered any of that!”

  “Oh dear. You didn’t read the whole of the contract, did you?” She clicks her tongue sympathetically. “This happens all the time. I’ve complained to the advertising department about this more than once, I assure you. People get all caught up in the flashy headlines and never read the actual specifications.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look, if you’ll just read the fine print… right here, under ‘Warrantees and Disclosures,’ on the back of your receipt, you’ll see that all the issues you’re describing are part of the normal operating system for the make and model Life that you ordered.”

  I squint at the cramped columns of text. That’s another thing I forgot to mention: my eyesight is starting to go to hell, too. “So what does this mean?”

  She cocks her head and gives me another of those distracting smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t accept a Life exchange when ther
e’s nothing wrong with the original.”

  “But this one stinks!”

  “I’m very sorry sir, but our policy is clear. It’s all right there in the contract you signed.”

  “What a ripoff!”

  She shrugs. “You get what you pay for.”

  “Can’t I get an upgrade or something?

  “You know the rules. One Life per customer, for the duration of your contract. I can’t give you another one at this late date. And don’t go home and smash that one and come back here telling me that it’s broken and you’re ready to trade it for a newer model. We can tell when a Life has been tampered with, you know, and it’ll decrease your trade-in value.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do for me? What about customer satisfaction? Doesn’t that mean anything to you people?”

  She sighs, a delicate little breath of mint-scented air. “Well, I’m not really supposed to, but—” She reaches into another drawer and pulls out a sheet of paper, which she hands to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a coupon, for repeat customers. When you come in next time—provided, of course, we don’t detect any tampering—you can redeem this for a free upgrade from the basic ‘Humdrum’ economy model to either of the popular ‘Glamorous’ or ‘Powerful’ models.”

  Doubtfully, I pocket the coupon. “And I suppose both of those models have fine print, too?”

  She flashes that smile again. “Of course.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  As I turn to go, she calls after me, “Thank you for shopping with us, Mr. Larrabee. Have a very pleasant day.”

  Above the endless grasslands, the air shimmers with heat and the whine of unseen insects. The sun is a low, red ball, slowly deflating on the horizon.

  Where am I? I don’t recognize this place. I don’t live anywhere near anything that looks like this place. And was that a lion’s roar I just heard? There are no lions near my home.