You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Laugh’ tag.
Tag Archive
Blackmail Heart
October 16, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Blackmail, Confess, Handicap, Laugh, Pity, Secret, Sibling | by davidbdale | 3 comments
Yes, I want fresh water, and a tongue I can arch to chase the water down, and thumbs I can stick in my ears, and fingers I can wiggle to praise the almighty, and hands I can ball into fists I can slam to the tray when you don’t hurry back with the water you promised. You stop to talk, because you can, to Nobody, about Nothing, while I wait and dangle my Big Bird glass at you across the ward, with its tepid splash, warm, slimy, barely wet. You apologize with your eyes. My eyes forgive you. My eyes say Keep the water, bring me legs I can kick and feet I can aim and I’ll open the walls, burst the plumbing, flood the ward, capsize the chairs and float the residents out to the street with their pointing-rods and their pill bottles bobbing like fishing tackle. I’m in here, you know. They run their tests on me and read their meters and tell you I don’t understand because they think you want them to, but when they go, I lock your eyes in mine and tell you what you can’t deny. I don’t forgive you then. I lock you in my hopeless longing and beg. I make you laugh. I bellow my noises and flail my chicken wing arms. I make you laugh until you cry. You confess to me then and always have. What makes you think your secrets are safe with voiceless me? Nothing is safe with me. I tell everyone everything. Admit you know I’m in here, that’s my price. Wheel me out of here and I’ll live on pity and make the world feel good for it. Wheel me out of here once and for all and I’ll keep all your secrets forever.
Copyright ©1997
The Truth About Sex
October 16, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Cheat, Drinking, Flirt, Laugh, Marriage, Sex, Truth | by davidbdale | 4 comments
The honest man tells his wife the truth about sex. It’s a vertiginous moment. The truth about sex is that he always wants it and will forever continue to want it with whomever is nearest and most willing and most attractive, but that of those three indicators attractiveness, while important, is not essential and will, if mitigated for instance by distance or disinterest, yield to nearness and willingness every time, so that if she, the wife, will only continue always to be near and to arouse or to feign arousal, she will never have a rival even among the most attractive for his sex, such as it is, from which longish explication the wife detects primarily that she is not considered the most attractive by the one most near.
Without a word she lifts his keys from his jacket pocket, backs his sweet young Buick without looking into traffic and proceeds adroitly in reverse to the corner bar where her 7th 7and7 tells her a secret about boys and girls. To the gentlemen in the tavern her attractiveness is sufficient by several tenths, her nearness a matter of no dispute, her willingness the only occasion for a round of lively wagering. Those to whom her posture indicates a hasty readiness place bets they can’t afford to win or lose with those persuaded of her modesty. In a random forward gear, she drives one such home to meet her husband, who regards him with an active curiosity, then offers him a drink. Then, having made her point, she thinks, she retires to the bedroom alone, leaving the boys to drink away the night talking about the girls they’ve known. Toward morning, she hears her husband tell the one about the honest man. She laughs out loud. She hears them laugh.
Copyright ©1997
Very Short Novels 
Recent Comments