PseudoPod 576: Flash On The Borderlands XLI: Flash Fiction Contest 5 Winners
Authors : Evan Dicken, Stephanie Malia Morris and Drew Czernik Narrators : Karen Bovenmyer, Alexis Goble and Austin Malone Host : Brian Lieberman Audio Producer : Marty Perrett Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 576: Flash On The Borderlands XLI: Flash Fiction Contest 5 Winners is a PseudoPod original.
Third Place: The Taking Tree by Evan Dicken narrated by Karen Bovenmyer
Second Place: Legal Tender by Stephanie Malia Morris narrated by Alexis Goble
First Place: Two Step by Drew Czernik narrated by Austin Malone
The Taking Tree by Evan Dicken Governor Porter,
I deserve to die for what I’ve done, just please don’t bury me.
I’m reaching out because I got no one else. Even my lawyer keeps asking where the bodies are buried. I wish I knew. Then I could chop the damn thing down, but the tree don’t work like that.
I see it sometimes–out in the yard, beyond the prison fence–waiting for me. At night, I dread the moment when the heater clicks off and all that’s left is the rustle of leaves in the vents.
Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.
In my earliest memories, the tree was an old thing, dry as driftwood. The story was it’d been a hanging tree back in the day–men, women, even children had kicked out their last seconds under its branches. I used to play in the woods nearby, passing judgment on squirrels and starlings, the tree my executioner. Once, we caught a stray cat. I think it was the screams that brought my parents running. People say I killed them too, but I was nine for god’s sake.
The tree followed me to foster care, its bark the rusty brown of old blood, leaves plump and shiny. I would wake to it tapping on my window, wanting more, wanting me.
I had this foster brother, Raymond, used to hide outside my window while I was changing. One night, I opened the curtains to give the creep a real show. I remember him staring from the bushes, eyes like quarters, then he just disappeared, twisting away like he was on the end of a rope.
I ran to the toilet and vomited blood. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t mine.
Once, I saw Raymond’s picture on a milk carton and almost got kicked out of the house for laughing.
It got easier after that, especially after I turned eighteen.
Lots of men will follow a young girl into the park, some women, too. The tree would snatch them up, quick as a heron gulping down frogs. I’d stand on my tiptoes, fingers brushing the tips of their kicking feet, feeling alive.
Afterwards, I vomited blood, organs, even bones sometimes. I went in for an x-ray and the negatives showed ribs of interlaced branches, the faint shadow of my organs picked out like leaves against a starless sky, and there, inside my heart, an acorn.
The doctor got this funny look when I asked him to dinner. I should’ve paid attention to the news. Someone had taken blurry video of one of my “dates.” They had some bullshit name for me–Lady Death or the Sorority Strangler. The doctor recognized me, and well, here we are.
Tomorrow, they’re gonna strap me to a table and I won’t get up, I accept that, hell, I welcome it. I’m not expecting a phone call. Burn my body, donate it, dump it the goddamn ocean, I don’t care. Just don’t put me in the ground.
I’m terrified of what will grow.
Legal Tender by Stephanie Malia Morris We are women with money under our skin. A red rash of pennies peppering our ribs, dimes scattered across our bellies, a honeycomb of quarters sprouting between our thighs. The coins break out over our backs, fatten our wrists. Half dollars pave our scalps. We wear chokers of nickels.
The coins burn, like hot stones. Our fingers creak with the violent urge to scratch, to peel open our epidermis and dig among the follicles and sweat glands to where the coins lie, or down into the dermis and subcutaneous fat to where the coins are still soft zinc and copper nickel, not yet keratinized. Our mothers say, “Don’t scratch.” Most of us listen. But some do not. We see these women in the ER, the free clinic, on the side of the road, their faces shredded, hair wrenched out by the handful. We imagine how good the hair felt coming out, coins clotted in the roots, slick with gore, the metal glistening.
We contemplate the welts of our mothers’ coins, shadows beneath the long sleeves of their blouses. “Did you never get tired?” we ask.
And they say, “Of course we did.”
“Cover up,” our mothers say. Most of us listen, sickened by our reflections. Some do not. Our mothers send us a news story of a man who cut open his girlfriend with a razor and filled a plastic bag with dollar coins.
Our mothers say, “Don’t visit doctors.” They cite women opened up on the operating table, their bodies mined for silver. We ignore them. We show physicians our coin-spattered skin, answer their impersonal questions: yes, we break out daily, no, we don’t know why. Our physicians name...