Pencils Made This Scar
By Steven Saus
We only see glimpses of other people's lives.
In this collection of over 60 works of flash fiction, you will see into the lives of monsters and saints, homemakers, warriors, and astronauts.
Nearly every page is a complete story, a brief glimpse into the things and events that make us who and what we are.
I hope you enjoy them.
© 2010 Steven Saus
The author of these stories worked hard on them. If you enjoyed them, please come to http://www.stevensaus.com. By purchasing this work, you become a patron of the arts and support independent authors bringing you quality entertainment.
When I was a kid, I loved
Indiana Jones.
I would walk around with my shirts unbuttoned
to my pasty navel, carrying a string for a whip. I ran around
the schoolyard humming the theme song.
I also loved my Luke
Skywalker Underoos. When friends came over, I would
sometimes show them off, coming downstairs wearing nothing but the
orange underwear.
That was decades ago.
Yesterday, a
friend asked me what I was going to be for Halloween.
"I
don't know," I replied. But my hand fidgeted with my shirt
buttons, and I swear my underwear suddenly turned bright orange.
Uncle
Al smelled of vaporub as he poked at me. "How's my little
girl?"
My young voice squeaked angrily at him. "I.
Am. A. Boy."
Al ran his finger through his thick black
hair. "Okay, little girl." He reached out, and
I felt a brief tug. "Gotcher nose!"
"I'm a
boy! And that's your finger, not my nose."
I
smiled. "I've got one too, Uncle." I reached
towards his scalp, then put my hand in my pocket. "Guess
what I've got, Uncle."
He shrieked, feeling the air cold
against his suddenly bald scalp.
"Oh," I said.
"You figured it out."
She
smiled - brightness slashing through the dense music of the bar,
transforming him into an instant mass of cliches.
An awkward
smile creased his lips, brain racing on a wave of adrenaline,
considering and rejecting a thousand trite lines.
He stared
at her, wondering what the best approach would be. Beads of sweat
formed on his nose; his heavy glasses started to slide down his face.
They were adjusted by a nervous finger as he started to walk
across the bar.
He still had no idea what he'd say. But then
her lover returned, so it didn't matter anyway.
As a child I read illustrated
books about asteroid starships. I dreamed of living in
generation ships islands of humanity in the void. And now
I do.
A cylinder is our artificial sun. Fields of grains
feed us and regrown our oxygen. The asteroid's spin provides
gravity. Imagine a multiracial Rockwell painting in space.
We'll make a new world like in the books.
The books left out
the undead horde writhing over the planet we left behind. The
other ships have already succumbed, signals vanishing after a few
transmitted screams.
Our ship is uninfected.
But oh
God, am I hungry.
A long time ago, Best Beloved,
when the tree people returned from their vacation, they were very
tired. They'd gone to the Bahamas, and it was a very long walk
back.
So when the tree people got home, they wanted to sleep.
But they couldn't. The mostly hairless apes that lived next
door kept them up all night long. The apes were making babies
really loudly.
So the next day, while the apes slept
peacefully, breathing clearly, the tree people returned the favor.
That night, the apes' noses were too clogged to make babies.
And
the tree people slept peacefully.
"She's a half hour late."
I shrugged and gave him a sheepish look as I lounged on
the porch banister. "Maybe she's stuck in traffic, man."
"It's nine at night. There's no fucking traffic."
He paced around his porch some more, smoking cigarettes one
after another, flicking the butts into the street.
I jumped
when he punched the other side of the old banister.
"Darrin, man, calm down. She'll get here."
He
pushed past me and went upstairs. The sounds of some metal band
vibrated the windows, and I waited for his girlfriend, watching the
cigarette cherries cool into carbon.
"So Sandy," Gerard
said, "you say that Kut-Haran isn't a good husband."
"He
doesn't give us krat!" the female kobold screeched. The
studio audience roared approval.
Gerard pointed to
stage left. "Well, here he is!"
Kut-Haran was
not a kobold. He was a nine foot tall troll. The studio
chair broke under his weight. This episode Gerard would have to
keep it calm.
"Okay, Sandy," Gerard said, but she
was screeching obscenities at Kut-Haran. The crowd shouted,
chanting Gerard's name. When the troll grabbed its club, Gerard
buried his head in his hands.
He didn't get paid enough for
this.
Before, there was
screaming.
The screams were in my head. It was all too
much. Keeping up the house. Having the newest car.
The stupid forms at work. Her marathon shopping sprees. The
kids deciding their new hobby was too boring after we'd rearranged
our schedules. Working twelve hour days to afford it all.
Even
the dog growled at me.
Then the bum bit me. Twelve hours
later, and I'm infected like him. It's simple now. I
hunger for human flesh, and I kill. And I eat.
The
screams are outside my head now.
But my mind is at peace.
The recipe amused her: "As
this homey dessert bakes..." It was appropriate, in an
overdone kind of way. He had been gone for just over a year. He
would appreciate a little care package.
The scoop whuffed a
small puff of flour onto her mother's old cookbook. When she
cooked, her mother's memory was close. She could almost hear
her voice.
"Sissy, get all the ingredients together
before you start cooking," it chided. Fine.
Sugar.
Eggs. Baking powder. Metal file. Chocolate.
Vanilla.
Her son called from the other room. "Mommy,
when will Daddy come home?"
"Soon, baby. Real
soon."
It's not my fault. I
didn't do my schoolwork because Tommy McDonald kept flicking my neck
with his pencil. Then the teacher yelled at me when I told him
to stop.
And I didn't put the monster in my closet.
I
crawled into bed next to Mom. She didn't wake up until Dad
started yelling again. He said I was too old to be scared of
monsters, and smacked me around for crying.
Mom didn't
say anything. She didn't stop him.
Before I left their
room, their closet door opened. A big fanged mouth smiled at
me.
I smiled back.
She collects the fee from the
nightstand. He rubs his ring finger, counting ribs as her shirt
slides over them.
"I gotta run," she says. "I
have a exam in biology to study for."
"I had an
exam at the hospital yesterday," he blurts.
She giggles.
"What grade did you get?"
He remembers the scan full
of unexpected metastatic dots.
"They don't give grades."
He hopes his smile seems natural.
After she leaves, he rolls
upright, lights a cigarette - why stop now? - and stares at the
door.
He opens the nightstand drawer, removes the book, and
desperately begins to cram.
Smoke billowed from the ship's
wreckage. Captain Saunders and his crew baked on the sun
blasted island beach. In the near distance, the pirate ship
sailed back out to sea.
"This is a right mess, Cap'n,"
his first mate said. He stroked the grey stubble of his beard.
"Those pirates marooned us here, wrecked our ship, and stole all
our cargo!" He stomped his boot in the sand. "And
them pirates was just women!"
Captain Saunders sighed.
"They stole more than our cargo, Smitty." He touched
the ragged hole in his chest and smiled.
"She stole far
more than that."
You scream over the echoes of
the bomb: "Call 911!"
Two rescue breaths, just
like in the book, move down. Find the xyphoid, ignore the
twisted shape of his ribs and push push.
Ignore
that this kid had shoved in front of you, ignore his shrapnel and his
burned flesh on your hands. Push push. Move back up,
head-tilt-chin-thrust.
He's young, no lines on his
face, then the sirens and wounded wail in chorus, remember breathe,
breathe. Fingers on his neck, feel for a pulse, feel for
breath on your cheek. C'mon, any pulse.
Just
a little heartbeat.
Just one.
When we dated, her lips brushed
my ear, saying: "I don't want to get into anything
complicated." Now, one lip hangs decomposing from her
ruined face.
I stumble back over the playroom's plastic
chairs. I had pretended nothing was wrong, had imagined she was
happy. Our son's first birthday pictures show her flat
expression and storebought birthday cake. She - it, zombies are
it - drops his gnawed arm.
Trapped in the corner, I
can't run from reality anymore. I level the shotgun.
"Keep
it simple, baby."
I fire one barrel through my sobs and
her head.
I save one barrel for me.
I ran as fast as my stubbly
little hooves would go. Gary said my running was
"higgledly-piggledly", but Gary's dead now.
My tree
had fallen. It wasn't strong enough. Stronger than Gary's
straw hut, strong enough to give me a chance to run, but that was
all.
Ralph stared wide-eyed at me through the window of his
brick house.
"Let me in!"
A tear ran down
Ralph's cheek. He didn't open the door.
The wolf's
breath was hot on my neck.
"Your choice, little piggy.
I'll eat you any way you want."
I tried to choose
something quick.
The antiseptic hospital stink
makes it through the red rubber nose. He shuffles faster,
seeing her outside his son's room. His ex-wife's distinctive
braid swings over a black clad shoulder, a katana across her
back.
He yells over the flapping of his oversize shoes.
"A ninja? In a hospital?"
"He likes
ninjas!"
"That was a year ago! Clowns make
everyone happy!"
He realized that wasn't true as she hit
him.
Later, the police handcuffed them outside the room.
Bobby beamed out, cancer forgotten at the spectacle of clowns
fighting ninjas.
His real smile was far bigger than the
painted one.
I found Maria by the airlock,
avoiding hyperventilation by puffing into the sack. Her hair
swirled in the spaceship's low gravity.
She gasped
"It's starting!" before breathing into the paper
again.
"What's starting?" I asked.
She
pointed at the porthole. I looked out, into the black. "I
don't see..." I said, then I did.
The moon, still dark
and new from Earth's viewpoint, showed a different face to our
spaceship. We saw the far side of the moon. It shone
bright and full.
Maria's hand, now more of a paw, fell on my
shoulder.
Behind me, I heard a growl.
The sea of bones pounded the
gate below. Jonah looked through his helm at the mass of
skeletons - all the world's dead, rallied against the kingdom - and
fought the urge to piss his pants.
"We are so screwed,"
he muttered, fingers tightening around his swordhilt.
His
shieldmate Boyd shrugged and took another drink from his flask.
"I
told ya to f'in drink first." Boyd wobbled a little in
bravado or drunkeness, Jonah couldn't tell. "Just gotta
get in there and start swingin'."
Jonah shook his head.
"How long 'till you become one of them like that?"
"Only
about three seconds before you, my friend!" Boyd's smile
faltered. "Only three seconds, mate."
The demons came from the
campfire's smoke. Jonah woke at Reyald's scream. Boyd
slept until Reyald's head bounced off his stomach.
"Last
time I let Reyald stand watch," Boyd grumbled, drawing his
sword.
"You know," Jonah said as he parried a claw,
"I think that someone wants us dead." He thrust
upward, drenching himself in demon blood.
Boyd dodged a
tentacle. "Nah." He stabbed the tentacle before
it could grab Jonah.
"Thanks," Jonah replied,
pouring holy water on a demon. "But you disagree?"
Boyd sliced open the last demon's abdomen.
"Yeah." He sat down. "I think someone
wanted these demons dead."
She lays in the motel bed with
him, afternoon sun hot on bare skin.
Two rings lay on the
nightstand. Hers is a frilly feminine one her husband chose.
His is a thick, simple, plain band. He told his wife what style
of ring he'd wear.
He didn't make a decision on his own after
that. Not until they met.
She kisses the rough stubble
on his cheek, and wakes him. She carefully does not say -
refuses to say - "Time to go."
They kiss, and they
dress. She will leave her ring on the nightstand, and wonders
if he will.