Flash fiction: A sideways journey

A little flash fiction...

“We’ll go to Nidden for the summer,” my wife told me. “You can write your paper there. We can swim in the Baltic and you can draw inspiration from the artist’s colony.”

My paper is important. I am a metaphysicist and believe I have intuited an important facet of time: that it is not a single continuum but a series of parallel progressions between which, in theory at least, one might cross, by accident or design, to enter a reality that may be radically estranged from one’s own; or much the same, but rendered subtly different by some slight accident of history; a battle lost, instead of won; a weapon that wasn’t forged, a prince who lived when he had died.

A.Savin/Wikipedia

“I suppose we might,” I conceded. I do like the Curonian Spit with its light and air; it is conducive to one's intellectual process. Before I could change my mind, she had opened her computer and booked our tickets online. 

So now we sat in the departure lounge. We became aware of an elderly man, dressed in a suit but without a tie; he looked quite distinguished. He was staring at his ticket and at the signs over the gates. He seemed confused.

My wife stood up. “Are you looking for your gate?” she asked politely.

He looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “I thought it was announced. I am on the Easyjet flight to Bratislava.”

Now my wife looked confused. “Easyjet?” she said, “I do not know them. Where is Bratislava?”

“Bratislava. In Slovakia,” he said. “I am going to attend a conference. I am giving a paper. On philosophy.” He laughed nervously. “I am a logical positivist. But it seems one must use intuition to find one’s gate.” He pointed at the gate sign for our own flight. “Surely that sign is a joke.”

My wife frowned. “Might I see your ticket?” she asked. She studied it, then nodded briskly. ”Ah. Look, that is this gate, here.”

“You are sure?”

She nodded, and took his arm and guided him to his gate. He thanked her, but seemed uncertain. Beyond the window I could see the tail-fin of his jet, with the big red-and-white flag, the familiar crest offset a little to the left of centre. She walked back to me.

“What on earth is logical positivism?” I asked. “I suppose it may be one of these wretched modernist movements that question the use of intuition. And where is Bratislava?  It sounds vaguely Bohemian.”

“I really don’t know, dear,” she said. “But his ticket was for Austro-Hungarian Airlines Flight 470, Pressburg via Lemberg.” She glanced at me a little mischievously. “I wonder,” she said, “perhaps he has strayed, by accident or design…”

“Oh, do stop,” I said. Ahead lay the Baltic, sun, sea and the warm sand of the Curonian Spit. 

I smiled; she smiled back.

“Last call,” said the Tannoy. “Last call for Imperial German Airways Flight 1918, Königsberg via Breslau and Danzig.”

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of human geography

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Flash fiction: Displaced

A short story

Grandpa’s 90. He doesn’t move much anymore. He sits in his dressing-gown by the window and looks out on the street. He used to read but he finds it hard now. We have the TV on but he likes the sound turned down. My kids treat him like a piece of furniture mostly but he doesn’t mind, he looks down at them, and now and then when he doesn’t know I’m looking I see him smile at them.

This month’s been cold. Really cold. It set in the day after Christmas. It’s the 15th now. The cops just went round the subway and rounded up all the bums. You stay here, you’re gonna die, they tell them. You’re coming to the shelter. Right now. And today it’s snowing heavy, early lunchtime, and Grandpa’s looking out the window at the cars going up and down East 94th Street and the new snow building on the heaps already there by the side of the road.

“I ordered pizza for lunch,” I called.

“Yeah pizza!” The kids beat the carpets with their hands. The youngest starts jumping around. “Pizza! Pizza!”

US Customs and Border Protection

Grandpa just smiles. He’s looking at the TV. Then he looks less happy. I go in there wiping my hands on a dishcloth and I see he’s watching a news program and first it’s from the border and there’s this reporter and there’s the Rio Grande behind her and there’s these people getting onto pickup trucks and these guys in uniform, from Border Patrol I guess, and the strap reads ‘500 more cross river in last three days’, then there’s a Congressman being interviewed. I know who he is, he’s young and he has this bouffant hair and a check jacket and the sourest face you ever saw, and the DoJ just questioned him on suspicion of sex trafficking.

“You want I turn the sound up?” I ask.

“Nah,” says Grandpa. “I know what he’s sayin’. He wants them all shot in the water.” He’s bellowing. Grandpa always speaks loud because he can’t hear so well now. Says, “That guy’s creepy, you hear me? That guy’s a major-league creep.”

“Take it easy, Grandpa,” I say. I look over his shoulder into the street. There’s this guy coming up it on a bike, one of those wrecks the pizza parlours use, with all the tape stuck round them make them less worth stealing. He’s a short and squat with a dark complexion and he wears a parka with a baseball cap worn back-to-front. On his back he has a big square box. The guy’s nearly at our door when he skids on the snow, must have been some ice beneath it. Over he goes and lies there a moment and a yellow cab brakes behind him and skids a little and blasts him with its horn and steers round him. Then he picks himself up and brushes the snow off and he’s coming up the stairs and I open the apartment door and his face is a mask. “Mrs Blaskowitz,” he says.

“Yep. One 12-inch cheese, and an 8-inch Meat Feast.”

“You got it.” He slides the hot pizza boxes out the satchel and hands them over. Then I hear Grandpa bellow, “Hey son. You OK? Saw you took a fall off that bike of yours.”

“Sir, I’m fine.” He isn’t really. His face is grazed. I reach in my pocket for a $5 tip. I add one online but I know the pizza joints don’t always pass them on.

“Where you from?” asks Grandpa.

The man hesitates. You don’t ask these guys questions like that. Undocumented, I guess.

“Guatemala, sir.”

“How are things down there, son?”

“They’re not too good, sir. No rain, no corn. And trouble. Gangs. Narcotraficantes. Everywhere trouble.”

Grandad nods slowly. He reaches in his dressing-gown pocket and pulls out three $5 bills. He starts to get up but I take them and I give them to the pizza guy. “Thank you, sir,” says pizza and turns to go and then Grandad bellows out:

“I came from a shithole too, son.”

The guy blinks.

“A real shithole. The houses were wood and the roads were mud and they hated Jews.”

There’s silence for a moment then Grandpa bellows:

“You hang on in there, son. You’re gonna make it here. You’re gonna make it.”

The guy gives a sort of bow and mutters, “You take care, sir.” And he turns and goes down the stairs, he’s still got snow on his sneakers and he leaves a trail of moisture on the steps and I catch sight of his face and I think his eyes are glistening a bit. Then I pull the door shut and Grandpa’s sitting at his table with his chin on his hands and his sleeves have slipped down and I can just make out the number on his forearm. 

More flash fiction

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of human geography

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.