June 27, 2009

• Waste Not (flash fiction)

  Use the following words: amoeba, tomato juice, tire, tiger lilies

  It was always the damn tiger lilies.  I growled as the coppery scent filled the air, a red, tomato-juice consistency filling the sides of the planter.  From the way the light slanted I could still pick out the letters, “OODYE R” from the tire it had once been.  Waste not, want not.

  Startled by my movement, or perhaps sensing my body heat, the whispers began again.  “Feed us . . .  Feeed usssss . . . “  Absent-mindedly, I reached for the sheaf of papers tucked into my coat, shuffled through it . . . gunshot wound, car crash . . . yes, this one.  This one would do.

  My hands closed around the slip of paper indicating a young man who had died of amoebic dysentery.  “Soon,” I whispered to the flowers.  “Soon.”  I thought of how the last body had looked under the light, how the plants had spread their creepers, how the flesh had been stripped from the bone before it had time to rot.

  Waste not, want not.

  • 1:05 pm
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