AND WE’RE RUNNING RACING RUNNING the powder-man behind us but our tails flick too fast for his eye. Game, this is a game but terror spikes up my spine-like-snapped-liquid and I’m laughing little squeaks and ragged wheezes, my fellow fox. How up we’ve been stitched in this place of fur and ears and whiskers, how forgotten our selves have been, as if it’s really our bodies this dead canine’s using.
But who were you really, in the before? Before this game of borrowed skin? I forget everything; all slips from my mind as this fox-body slips from the wavering line of light drawn neatly as war on the ground. I can still taste you on my tiny-spiked tongue. I can still feel your calluses furring me all over. You I can still remember turning my knees backwards and my skin to graying red. Game. This is a game and you’re behind me, teasing my eyes around, letting me feel competitive.
The hunter draws behind him the cloak of dark.
You can run yourself gone past where the hard line of shadow chases us, but me I’ll turn, I’ll end him and win, I’ll hide behind the tree no shadow can cross, and when the man smelling like powder comes—I leap upon him, all his plaid and metal and I’m not game for this game anymore. Him I remember. He comes flashing back like a gun, he who tore you from me in that before, his ripping of your life away, all his subtle yanking of the years out from under us, some of which we ran together, most of them we didn’t or did, jaggedly.
And him I’m sinking my teeth into now, tasting the mettle of his blood and feeling the way he bucks beneath. I’ll stop him forever so you can keep on running, my love, the wind combing back your ancient gray into the red of my memory.
Young girl eating a bird (The pleasure) – Rene Magritte, 1927
Earlier this year, we asked Rebecca Ann Jordan if she could write us a flash fiction inspired by Rene Magritte’s painting “Young girl eating a bird.” The result is the enchantingly eccentric & superbly disturbing “Mother to Chick,” one of many flappy lits you can read in our Fall 2015 issue.
{ X }
IN THOSE DAYS, WOMEN WEREN’T PERMITTED TO FLY. It would have been unseemly, like wearing pants then, or wearing skirts now.
I was born with feathers tucked between my teeth. I bet they don’t tell it that way. Screams of horror at being thrust into a cold world turned to giggles, feathers tickling the mouth’s roof. They who grasped my ankles and spun me around, who made me lust for vertigo, also made me vomit out the feathers.
It was already too late for me. I’d been hooked on flight.
The birds, they listen to me in the way that dogs or horses listen to men but not women. I’ve never seen a man could charm a finch down from an apple tree. (Disregard tall tales, always shinier in hindsight anyway.)
I, avian hoarder, began to accumulate them young. A hummingbird perched on my ear, woodpecker on shoulder, quail hurrying along in my perfumed wake. Now they hover, churning flurry, behind me—a mile-long veil of feathers and cacophonic chirps. All want attention.
All prove their value with flight.
My little dog chases the ground-dwellers until they’re forced to light upon my skin, digging in little claws.
I made my own attempt in all the usual ways, plus:
Lifting molted feathers, fallen in a flurry from my train. First glued, then soldered to my skin, shoved into holey pores. I thought then to skip the easily-melted wax; I’m not incapable of learning from the past
Weaving a net the larger birds could burrow up inside, press against the roof, and me with fingers twined in the ends, they my balloon, I their weight. (Here, you can still see the rope burn that redly elongates my lines of head/lines of heart)
Making a machine. Perhaps the magic wasn’t in the birds; selfish to keep it to themselves. I made it from branches and leaves; gingham and lace from my dress I tore to pieces; strings and papa’s gears and rubber bands. Rubber bands propelled the gears that tugged the strings that pulled the branches and gingham and lace, all strapped between my shoulder blades. Up and down, went my fake branch / gingham wings, up and down and up and down and up and down. I almost felt myself getting lighter on the upswing, but down always counteracted
The dotty narrator of “Chicken Sandwich,”Rebecca Ann Jordan‘s contribution to our Fall 2014 issue, just wants to make the world a better, pink-slime-free place. All that’s standing in her way are McDonald’s corporate interests… and those pesky demons in her blood.
{ ONE }
ONE WEEK AFTER GETTING MY NEW JOB AT MCDONALD’S, I go to the doctor because it hurts to walk. I’m told I have an in-grown toenail, and I need surgery to fix it. It’s going to be a death sentence; it’s dead winter in Colorado, I live alone and I have no social life except for my mom’s occasional calls and now my coworkers too, and after the surgery it’s going to be two months of recoup time, during which I will not be able to walk on my foot except to go to and from the bathroom.
{ TWO }
After a day of feeling sorry for myself, I think maybe I should pick up one of those old dreams that used to haunt me. I could sew, once upon a time. I Google the only fabric store in a 50-mile radius and drive an hour down a dirt road and pull up into the driveway beside a ghost-town lemonade stand. In the distance there is a fence, presumably with cows behind it. Lunch break done, I drive back to work without getting out of my car.
{ THREE }
Maybe with my last days I should try to change the world in a small way. This has never occurred to me before, but the impending two-month death has me thinking clearly. I have never been the lucky sort, but “You’re up, kid,” says the manager (whose name is Reba and who I think is a lesbian), because the fry cook dies suddenly in his sleep. I guess it’s not hard to do if you fall asleep in your car. I notice immediately the pink slime that the media is having a heyday about: the unnatural chicken parts. It’s a responsible choice for the earth, so I decide to turn vegetarian.
{ FOUR }
I try a hand at my hobbies again. With my first two weeks of wages I buy a digital camera that can do a bunch of things I’ve never heard of. I spend my lunch hour wandering around the parking lot photographing broken bottles, as though it’s some metaphor for the state of the world or my broken toenails. Speaking of toenails, they’re victims of the camera too, at night in my bathtub, with the camera strap dangling in the water and my toes on display against the tile wall.
{ FIVE }
I start getting rejection letters. The camera gets a time-out in the trunk of my car. I leave it there indefinitely, just in case.
{ SIX }
I join a local meet-up for vegetarians. We eat hummus and carrots, which somehow reminds me of snapping off dirty toes. There is a baby-faced man named Arnold who whispers something about a co-op. I don’t know what a co-op is, but I’ve never been interested in group sex.
“Now,” says a teeny little woman of 60 years, “let’s talk conversion. You’re new, so just watch, but feel free to chime in. What we want is to show the world about the horrific crimes that happen when we eat animals.”
“I work at McDonald’s.” I say this to prove my ethos.
Instead they all begin to scorn the sort of people that enable places like McDonald’s.
I second-guess my decision to be a vegetarian.
{ SEVEN }
“I want a chicken sandwich with fries.”
I overlook the fact that fries have not exactly been outlawed by the FDA yet, but they can still kill you, like everything. “We’re having a special,” I lie, “on Big Macs.”
“Oh, I don’t eat beef,” the man with the stiff hair and stiff tie says. “Just the chicken sandwich, please.”
“No. I don’t think you understand. It’s cheaper with the Big Mac. I can take the patties off.”
“What I want is a chicken sandwich.” I think this man hates me, but doesn’t he know I’m trying to save his life?
“Please, please buy the burger.”
The man leaves. Apparently Reba thinks I show promise because she lets me keep my job in the back, where I don’t have to talk to anyone, just keep plopping pink slime onto the stove.
{ EIGHT }
McDonald’s is open until midnight. I trudge through the snow at one in the morning. The parking lot has been cleared by salters but I put my boots down where the grass used to be and where the crystalline snow now is, because it gives me immense satisfaction to make my mark, like the satisfaction of breaking tiny bones.
I don’t know why I never noticed this before. On the balcony above my unit and three units to the left, there is a woman who is naked from the waist up. She leans over the balcony, smoking a cigarette, and her hair is curlier than mine. She probably gave up trying to tame it when she hit puberty. I think, with the moon behind her like that, wouldn’t she make a great photo? I run back to my car on the tiny bones and find my camera in the trunk. When I come back the glass door slides closed, and I can’t see inside because it is so damn bright out with the moon. I go into my apartment and run a bath. Continue reading “Chicken Sandwich” – Fiction by Rebecca Ann Jordan→
Our Fall 2014 issue is so wonderfully bizarre & freakishly beautiful it’ll make your cheeks quiver & explode. It begins with an Alternate Reality Game, ends with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, and in between there’s pink slime, raving gods, naked alligator rides, regurgitated Raymond Carver, a bunch more fiction that’s too bizarre to summarize here, and some phenomenal poetry.
FLAPPERHOUSE #3 is no longer available for sale in digital (PDF) format because it’s NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE right here!
Ghost Light on Stage, Photo by Jon Ellwood (c) 2014
Rebecca Ann Jordan‘s “Stage Manager,” one of the short stories from our Spring 2014 Issue, has a delightfully waggish voice, though that doesn’t diminish the eeriness lurking in its wings.
{ X }
EVERY THEATRE HAS A GHOST. Ours has three.
“Stage Manager is a thankless job.” This was from Stage Manager, the man I was currently apprenticed to. “Director gets artistic credit. Actors get the glory. And everyone loves the beautiful set, the lights, the costumes.” He shrugged thin little shoulders and tore purple spike tape with nimble fingers. I was a good head taller than him, with his faerie-red hair and green eyes, and I didn’t yet know the art of tearing spike tape without a pair of scissors, tucked now in my pocket like a rumble knife. “Most people don’t even know there’s such a thing as Stage Manager.”
“So why do you do it?”
“Well,” he said, “someone has to.”
We ate lunch at 8:35 exactly. A chocolate muffin, hot chocolate, and a carton of Cherry Garcia to split. It was his idea. I had no complaints.
“Do you know we have three ghosts in Smothers?”
I didn’t really want to know about it. Nightmares really liked me. “Oh really?” I wanted him to like me, too.
“Yeah.” His pixie eyes lit up. “One is an unwed bride, haunting the stage in her wedding dress because her fiancé jilted her.” I highly doubted the first place a bride-ghost would go would be Smothers Theatre, but I nodded anyway. “The second is a crying baby. You can hear it sometimes, wailing on the catwalk.”
We were back in Smothers, sitting down on stage and alternating between spike tape and ice cream. “You ever heard it?”
“Me? No. But I’ve seen the bride.” He grinned. “The last one is my favorite. The Stage Manager.”
I laughed. “The collective ghost of all the managers jilted from glory and appreciation?”
“Something like that. I usually lock up. First to arrive and last to leave…” He ripped the spike tape and raised it, a toast to me, and I followed him as he eyeballed its placement. “You can hear him clapping.”
I tucked the finished tub of Cherry Garcia under my arm and grabbed the opposite end of the spike tape as he strolled to stage left. “You’re so full of shit.”
Stage Manager smiled. “You’ll see,” was all he said. “You can lock up tonight.”
“No thanks.”
“I mean, I have to go work on Millie.” The other play he was managing. He was determined to get as much opportunity to be forgotten as possible. “Here.” He tossed me the keys.
Maybe I would get one of the stage hands to stay with me afterward. Unfortunately, I believed in ghosts.
FLAPPERHOUSE 