Flash fiction // One shots

Changes in conditions

Somewhere in a rock filled, sand filled landscape. Hidden within clusters of apartment complexes after apartment complexes, is a two story house, with large wooden doors and swirling gates. It sits there on top of a hill, rundown in a way a building of such beauty should never be. With its own lawn (the grass fried and dried up) and trees (withering under the heat), it's an oasis in this city.

There is a man who lives in this house. A strange man, though boring in appearance. He's rarely in said building but when he is, it's impossible not to notice. He's full of a certain light; roaring flames, calm but... fire makes its way through his veins, filling up his insides till his bones glow white. Maybe that's what burns away at his garden and not the sun. With this man there is always a woman. Women, who are only ever there long enough for the house to just begin to feel like home, before finding their way out again. Everyone has to leave eventually.

Everyone but the felines, all abandoned. Left by people too tired to attempt and bring a pet along to whatever new home they are going to. They want a new start, a fresh beginning, can't have anything holding them back. So the women come and go, and the people come and go, and the cats just keep on coming.

The cats think of the man as kind, his breath sour as he leans down to run calloused fingers and spotless nails through the fur of a sunbathing tabby. "You won't leave me" he states, so sure in his words. And it's true they won't, they get food from this man smelling of soot and gasoline, so they will stay. And he lets them, they keep the mice away.

Years go by and this cycle of conditions continues. Relationships of pure negotiation. It's the business of life. People don't get that. But it's fine, the deals keep on coming and he does no harm by accepting them, he's helping as a matter of fact. Giving others another start at life. It's their fault that they don't understand what they are trading.

Then a new woman, No. Girl. Comes around, who stays for far longer than most. The girl is kind, with hair like corkscrews; a warm brown, the same color as sparrow feathers, and skin with divots like the bricks of the house; worn down. The girl brings a softness to the man's light, calming the flames. For the first time in a long time the grass and trees are green, making shade for the porch where the cats bath and late night talks take place. Weeds are uprooted and in that exact same spot grows a garden of wonder.
"Thank you." The man says gruffly, looking out at the land, the permanent furrow upon his brow relaxing slightly.
She replies with a simple smile, a sliver of brightness on her sun kissed face. No more needed to be said. She doesn't even know what she did to earn a thanks, but she'll take it.

***

Winter that year was the warmest any of the cats had ever seen, for when the sun hides behind thick clouds and bone chilling winds (that left even the man's flaming insides frozen) the cats were let inside. A fireplace warmed up the cozy living room, adjacent to the kitchen, where the island counter space is cluttered with little nick nacks. Bits of what appear to be stone and white washed wood, and little gems are interspersed among the common household clutter.

It seems to breathe, the inside of the building, walls shifting like smoke and feet seeming to sink into the tile floor, deep into the cool earth below. The girl found it wonderful, what time she didn't spend in the garden, was spent in the halls, where swirling staircases seem to rise and fall in the blink of an eye.

The man still left sparingly, throughout that winter, on those grand adventures he never spoke of (not even to the cats). The girl stayed, so the cats never had to go a single day hungry, bowls re-filled daily with small pellets of food.
"Such sweetheart's you all are" the girl croons "I'm not sure how I will go on without all of you." A sigh, bitter sweet in its sorrow.
"I will have to go soon though, the contract is almost over". The cats pay her words no mind, this isn't news to them. They didn't expect her to stay.

A few days later, much later than it should have been, a vehicle pulls up to the back gate of the house. It's a vehicle with a whisper for an engine. Yet somehow this girl, like the women before her, hears it. She climbs in

                                      ***

I wish it doesn't have to be this way, the man thinks, a cup of tea in his hand, warming the stiff joints of each finger as he stands alone in the early morning on the porch. With his very eyes he can already see the garden of wonder that he'd been successful in growing, start to wilt. He knows he is helping... at least he thinks he is. The man slouches, smoke curling from his lips, pondering. He chuckles, disbelieving "I just stole that child's soul."

***

It's summer now and the heat is brutal, seeming to rise off the ground in rippling morphing waves, little bits of illusion. The man's been gone for a while, longer than he's been before. The cats don't even notice at first with the rhythms of time passing as it always does. Till it doesn't. It changed gradually, the rhythm being interrupted, till it was a completely different thing. The food was gone. That changed it all.

So they begin to leave, like leaf's taken by the wind. Cat after cat steadily wanders away, as these things they need to survive dwindle. Conditions change and even as the man knows this, he's still sad when he comes back to the house (no one alongside him), on the hill, lawn and trees dead once more and now not even the cats for company.