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Photo by Kristin Fouquet

either/or
by Tomas Moniz

It’s already raining.  The forecast calls for rain to chuck down for days.  It’s a hard rain.  Heavy and constant.  My coffee is weak.  Scrimping on beans.  Too broke to buy more.  Cut the scoops in half, you taught me.  You argued it’s better like that, better than my theory of using the grounds twice.  Once used, something can’t be used again, you proffered.  I tested it.  You’re true.  I need to leave soon to work, but today is my deadline.  Can I go on living like this?  Broke’s not the problem; the problem is everything else.  Small rooms.  The comingled smell of you and I, acrid, biting.  Entangled bikes in the hallway.  I stand, sipping, looking at the hallway leading to the front-door.  If there were a fire, there’d be no way out.  Two bikes don’t fit in small spaces.  I taught you that.  But when you have no other choice, you have nothing else to do, so you do what you know is wrong.  I’m exhausted of doing that.  That’s surviving, not living.  I choke down the coffee.  I’ve never been able to find the balance between just a splash of cream or a dash of sugar.  Get it wrong, it’s too creamy.  Or worse, too sweet.  I know what I need to do, but I don’t want to.  I know that something once used can’t be used again, and small spaces are meant for only one thing.  I draw the conclusions.  I face the facts.  I put the coffee mug down.  I bundle up.  Grab my keys, wallet, phone.  I put them all in the front pouch of my hoodie and squirm into my vinyl raincoat.  Joggle my bike from yours with two shakes and a push of the pedals.  I slink out the door.  I say nothing to you about leaving.  Down two flights of stairs, out on to Genoa.  I usually bike the side streets.  Avoid the main ones like MLK or Shattuck.  But today, fuck it.  I trudge through the wet street and ride hard over the speed bumps and hit MLK.  I already squish rain in my socks.  I bike madly taking up the whole lane.  Cars beep, some cut close to my body, others give me a wide birth.  I feel arrogant, defiant.  I cut a figure, sitting up straight on the bike.  Spread my arms.  Let the rain slosh and sluice me.  Let it come.  I stop.  It’s now or never.  I will call you now.  I will tell you the things I learned and the meanings I found.  I reach for my phone.  I flip it up.  And find a dead black screen.  I shake it.  I punch the on button.  The off button.  Repeat again and again.  I put it back.  I can’t decide: either go forward or return home.  I know there is something to learn.  I know you’d have an idea as to what it is.  But this time, I will come to my own conclusions.

 

MemScape,3rd Generation
by Tres Crow


There they are on the grass, Father and Baby.  Light tinkles down through leaves and speckles the grass, the blanket, Baby’s face.  Above there are cotton-ball clouds, the type that used to make Father so happy he’d feel like a water balloon bobbing from the faucet, filled with all those thoughts that now seemed so naïve and youthful, to him.  But he doesn't see the clouds, only feels them in the breaks of sunlight.

He sees Baby and looks sorrowful, worried.  Baby sees Father too; he sees his eyes and his mouth, nose and beard, which make up Father.  His Father.  Love is the word for his feelings but only because there are no better words.  Even now there are no better words for love than 100 years ago, or 100 years before that when Keats tried so hard to invent more.  But Baby’s love is more like a warm sheet covering head to toe, inside and outside, a comfort and safety so thorough that Baby writhes and kicks with the pleasure of it, when Father looks at him, when he sees him.  His Father.

And he sees him, and reaches out a hand to touch Baby’s cheek.  One more time.  It is soft and cool from the slight breeze of the afternoon, he knows because he remembers.  Baby grins wide, his teeth like jack-o-lanterns, his fists clenching and unclenching with the ecstasy and the pleasure of being, which fills him.  Father reaches out his hand to touch.  One last time.  He knows what comes next.

The scene wobbles.  Splotches of missing pixels bloom across Baby’s face then expand, dark stars chewing away the world.  The third dimension flattens and Father is pulled from the MS3g into the darkness of his flat.  Outside there are no cotton-ball clouds; there is only rain spitting against the glass.  He is alone; no memory can take that away from him.  It’s been two years, which is not long enough to forget.  He presses play again and then they are there on the grass, Father and Baby, and he reaches out one more time.

 

 

Contributor Biographies and Credits

 

 

 

MiCrow Winter 2010 "Half" was edited by Walter Conley.

MiCrow 2010. All rights to content at Full Of Crow belong to the respective writers and artists.

MiCrow is the flash fiction supplemental section of Full Of Crow and is produced by Lynn Alexander for Full Of Crow Press and Distribution. 2010. Contact: microw@fullofcrow.com.