A Collection Mircofiction

 

 

Picture Perfect

There was this one photo in a silver plated frame on the third shelf of the photo section of Michaels craft store. I saw it and I thought the little girl in the photo could pass as my beautiful granddaughter. She was just the kind of granddaughter I always pictured myself having. If only I had a son that had a lovely girlfriend, then got married and three years later had a daughter. Of course I would have to be married to have the perfect son married to the lovely girlfriend with the beautiful daughter. Unfortunately this ideal scenario is unreachable now but the picture will let me pretend for a while.

 

Bad Day, Got Worse, Then Better

I woke up late. An hour and a half late to be exact. I had forgotten that today was daylight savings and to turn my clock a whole hour back before I went to bed. One would think that most clocks would do that automatically or that California could be more like Arizona and not take part in daylight savings thing. So because I woke up late I got to enjoy a ten minute shower that had less then three minutes of hot water. Usually I get at least a fifteen minute shower complete with hot water, but I live in a seven unit apartment and it is obvious to me now all of the warm water is long gone after 9 am. I quickly dry myself with a hand towel which happens to be the only clean towel I currently own and throw on the cleanest looking shirt and pants that I can find on my floor. At a total of two hours later then I should usually be leaving, I finally get out of my shabby apartment, down five long blocks and into the MacArthur BART station.  For the first time all morning I get to catch up with myself and find a semi comfortable seat on the faux wooden benches as I have to wait at least 17 minutes ‘til the next train to San Francisco. As I text my girlfriend I drop my week-old phone under the bench which happens to roll right on top of an open condom. I grab my diseased phone and as I stand up I hear a high pitched voice from behind me.

“Give me your wallet,” says a short little Asian man.

Realizing I’m a good foot and a half taller and wider then this little guy, I give him a little tap on the forehead and walk past. Of course he pulls out a gun and repeats that lovely one liner threat in his pubescent voice and scampers away with my wallet. So I sit back down on that shit bench with my AIDS infected phone and my wallet stolen by 30 pound. Asian man boy thinking this would make a great one on fmylife.com. Before I am able to finish composing what I would type in my FML box the train arrives. I rush on to the train and sit in the seat closest to the isle, one of the pair of seats that face each other. Remembering that my phone landed on a used condom, I reached into my bag got the mini bottle of hand sanitizer and did my best to clean the key pad.

As I scrub away, I notice the bottom of my pants becoming quit moist and the bottom third of my pant leg is soaked. As I throw my head down to see where the wetness is coming from, I find to my amazement the homeless man in the seat behind me whipped it out and had it aimed straight at my ankle.

That was my breaking point. I woke up late, took a cold shower, my phone caught Chlamydia, my wallet was stolen by a dwarf and I was just peed on. My anger and frustration bring tears to my eyes and I fall to the floor and curl up into a ball. After a moment, I tilt my head up and look under the seat across from me and find three hundred dollars. There is a God after all.

 

The letter

I wrote my parents a letter telling them how much I loved them. I wrote saying how much I missed them and how sorry I was for everything. I told them I was trying to change, trying to make things better. I wrote about how miserable it was out here, how the severe weather and lack of shelter make me miss home. They wrote me back once. They said they hoped I would get something out of this. They said they didn’t have time to deal with me anymore due to work and all. They said it’s good I’m out here, that it would give me time to reflect on my wrong doings.

It’s been two years since I’ve been home and the most contact we have had was one five minute conversation on my sixteenth birthday. It was cut short because they had a work related Christmas party to attend and it would be rude if they were to show up late.

 

Sitting and Rocking

 

I sit at grandma’s feet while she drifts into a light sleep in her heavy wooden rocking chair. Bobo is lying at my feet licking my toes while I sing softly to the porcelain doll that grandma gave me when I was a baby. I sit there singing while she sits there rocking. Sitting and rocking, that’s all we do. She is my favorite in the family, and I know that I am hers too. We had always been the closest to each other in the family. We weren’t even really sure why but we cared about each other more then we did anyone else. I always felt lucky because I knew that our closeness made others jealous. No one could be as comfortable as I am sitting with her and her rocking with me.

Sometimes when my voice gets real soft at the end of a verse, I can hear her let out a sigh. This sigh is the hmm of life within her, her secret way of letting me know she is ok. The sun fades from our huge window in the living room. My singing gets slower, her sighing comes less but we are still sitting and rocking together. I once again reach the end of my chorus and wait for grandmas sigh. Her big wooden chair rocks back and stops. No more rocking but I still sit, alone.

 

Left or Right

 

She takes her new born baby for a walk. She walks in a huge blooming forest-like park pushing an old fashion navy blue stroller. The stroller stands at a comfortable height for the new mother’s petite size, about belly button high with the handlebars reaching to her rib cage. They stay on the cream-colored gravel path, keeping to the left every time the path ever splits. Through puddles and over bridges, mother and daughter keep walking through the park. The can hear other little children playing in the park with their parents but the mother and daughter never actually encounter anyone. The morning chirp of the birds put the little baby to sleep as the mother keeps walking, always keeping to the left. Sunlight shines bright; desperately trying to peak through the heavy over top of the trees, but the fair skinned mother keeps to the left close to the tree trunks and the shade. Through some bushes, the mother can see flashes of a golden retriever’s hair wisping about in the wind. The dog runs the same distance every time. Ten yards forward, just passed the bed of tulips, pausing for a moment and then another ten yards back to where he started. Aside from catching glimpses of this dog through the bushes, the mother and daughter are alone in the park. They can still hear the occasional giggle and screech of toddlers with their families and birds and squirrels battling in the tress, but none seem to make an appearance. So the mother continues left on the path, her ash colored flats crunching over the cream-colored gravel. The newborn little girl who only came into this world a month ago continues to sleep in her old fashion crib while her fair skinned petite mother walks keeping to the left on the path. She is thinking no thoughts, she is feeling no emotion, she is just being. The only thing circulating through the new mother’s body is the crisp fresh air. The morning lingers towards noon and as the day grows warmer a light breeze picks up in the park.

 “Lily” calls out a comforting voice from behind her. The mother, breaking her repetitive routine, steps out from her shade, out from where she stayed so close to and into the sunlight to find him walking toward her. The newly made mother and daughter finally turn right.

 

Sibling Rivalry

A young couple is walking together in an outdoor mall. The girl runs into an old professor. As she goes to introduce her boyfriend the professor asks “and this must be your brother, I bet you two are twins!” That was the sixth time that week that the couple had been mistaken for brother and sister. They broke up the next day.

 

The Horrors of Being a Babysitter

It was a hot summer day. The two boys were given their favorite chocolate ice cream after having been so good and cleaning up their toys when their babysitter asked them to. The boys sat on the lawn in the backyard with their plastic bowls and over sized spoons in hand. A minute later the babysitter left the boys along momentarily to go to the bathroom. Upon returning, little Jimmy shoved in the babysitters face saying

“Try this!”

To keep Jimmy from a tantrum the babysitter scooped a spoonful of the chocolate ice cream into her mouth and replying with

“Mmm, that’s good!”

“I added yummy magic sprinkles!” said Jimmy. Turns out those magic sprinkles were the dogs sun dried feces.