kaitlinsflashfiction

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

I have this memory of napping in the van on Signal Hill and it was so windy and I was so tired and we had the seats full back and Courtney Barnett was playing, I bought it as a birthday gift from the record store off Water Street that wasn’t called Ditch but we called it Ditch, and every time that one song came round again someone would sing along “Men are scared that women will laugh at them […]  Women are scared that men will kill them” and people and tourists thought we were strange, half-asleep on the top of Signal Hill but we didn’t have anywhere else to go. I can’t keep places, but I can keep this.

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

She says, like she always does, in different languages and words, “Do you love me?”

He says, in a different language, “Yes.”

She can’t help but notice the lack of “Of course.” But unlike last time, she doesn’t care. Why not? Because he wasn’t supposed to love her. Regardless of inherency. 

The different language, though, is complicated, because it isn’t quite verbal. And this, also unlike last time, doesn’t bother her like she thought it would. And this is not because he wasn’t supposed to. This is because she doesn’t love him back. 

The negativity of the conversation weadles its way into her language. Every single word is “can’t” is “lack” is “unlike” is “doesn’t” is “not” is “wasn’t supposed to” is “regardless” is “complicated” is “isn’t” is “this is not” is “doesn’t love him” in subtle cues. 

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

I know what love is now and to not date an incel is a breath of fucking air

, a story

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

Letter to Eli #1

Dear Eli, 

When I love you I love you so much and it’s never good because I know you can’t love like that. And I know that maybe you’ve moved on and I thought I had too. I used to be moved on, but now I am uselessly sad and obsessive and sick and all I can wonder about is the last time I felt safe and the truth is that it was with you when we lay stoned on the mattress in my parent’s spare room (my room?) and made shadow puppets on the wall and listened to The Beatles. Or maybe when we found the ice patch that was smooth enough to boot-slide on. You brought a broom the second or third time. Or maybe I brought the broom. I don’t remember.  You called me selfish and you’re the only one who ever has, and you’re right. It is why I fuck up the good things. But I’m only emotionally selfish and who isn’t. Other than that I’ve been told I’m generous and I know that I give a lot away. But I’m not really generous because I don’t have that much left to give. 

Hold on when you get love and let go when you give it.

Where is this love to hold onto and reciprocate? I feel like I’m giving more that I have to spare. Which, you know, isn’t much. I felt love on those days in the woods of the tree farm. I felt love on the morning runs around the straw grass fields towards the cows. If this really is the last time that I felt safe then it was over a year ago. And even then I was unsure of when I wanted to move back to BC. I didn’t think it would mean I wouldn’t see you again. 

Well, except your quick visit to see me in Toronto, where I got to feel cool and all-knowing about the Subway and the street cars. (Even though the old ones were being repaired so you mostly just saw the busses and the big tubes that are the very same as the C-Train.)

Oh -- We’ve had our times on the C-Train. Hungover, burnt out, you name it. And when we met at Tuscany Station and you laughed at me as I pretended to be sober. You were so proud to be able to read me but you didn’t know the full truth that I had been dropped off there by the mother of an old friend and hadn’t taken the train to meet you. I don’t even know why I didn’t want to tell you this except that once the lie was out it would have seemed significant and you would have asked exhausting and boring questions that had exhausting and boring answers. 

Or maybe the last good time was when we fell asleep all over each other in your bed. Safety for me is so rarely in a space not my own. And there was music playing. The same mixed CD repeating over and over. It’s how I knew time was passing or rather how I knew that I had lost track of the passing of time. It was so sunny and we were both half-asleep and I was happy if not fully-loved because you can’t love like that. 

Napping is the only thing I have done with everyone I’ve dated. You boys are so sleepy all the time and maybe so am I. Maybe I get tired of reading between lines when I have too much ON-the-lines reading to do as it is.

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

Complicated

1. TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure and the calculations for weight loss are suspiciously easy. Some detail, some factor must be missing. You want to convince yourself that any science that easy can’t be science at all. 

2. Kids have an amazing patience for continuing to google using different keywords until they find what they want. A product of the internet generation or more patience than the average adult?

3. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and works by using keywords. We are at a time when employers will continuously ask if you know how to work with SEO. It feels complicated, but at the same time, how complicated could key words be? The idea is simplicity. 

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

The Jacket (Part 1)

He had the same jacket that she remembers her father having, but it wasn’t just the same style, or the same shade of brown, the same brand or the same corduroy material: it was the same jacket. There was a hole on the left sleeve that she remembered slipping her own little hand through when her father took her to the zoo. There was an ice cream stain from a mishap involving a wet patch of summer grass behind the backyard swing-set. It was the same jacket, and she wasn't sure how he got it.

The date was set up by a dating app algorithm that she wanted to say was just for hookups but that in reality she knew was the reason most of her couple friends had coupled. Lots of apps start as one thing and become another, this was one of the lesser changes, considering. She asked her date if he had ever played The Sims.

“Everyone played The Sims.”

“Obsessively, I mean.” She realized that this is what a lawyer might call “leading the witness”.

“No, I wouldn’t say obsessively.”

“Sometimes I think I only like things obsessively. I was obsessed with The Sims.” She slurped her iced cocktail through the cracking straw. “It started as an architecture program, you know, then they added all the human aspects. It was the human aspects that made me stop playing in the end. Games get a little less fun when the death of a loved one fundamentally alters their mental state. Or moodlets. Or whatever.”

“They called Sex WooHoo. That’s pretty much all I remember.”

Janet forced a laugh. She was fixated on that coat. Even the places where the brown corduroy had warn soft was the same, as though between her father and this man the jacket had gone untouched. It could have, for all she knew. It was a hideous jacket — she had made fun of her father for it as a teenager. A complete product of the 80s. This man was only getting away with it because of the eternally revolving wheel that was fashion. Or maybe as an ironic statement. Actually, Janet decided, he wasn’t getting away with it at all. 

She wanted to ask him where he got the jacket but she was afraid of the answer. She hadn’t seen her father in years but as far as she knew he was living in Florida. As far as she knew he had moved there on a whim, without even enough time to say goodbye, let alone to drop off his old clothes at a thrift shop.

What was even more strange was that the dating algorithm had brought the jacket back to her. As much as she wanted to hear the story of how it got here, she wanted even more to somehow end this night with the jacket. She was afraid that this meant she would have to go home with this man. He stabbed a fork into his rare steak and tried to rip a piece off with his teeth. His knife sat untouched. It was clear that this show was meant to impress her.

“I like your dress,” he said.

“Thank you.” She swallowed the return compliment — the obvious volley of niceties that was expected. She had never been good at compliments. She plucked a potato from her plate with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. If he was going to eat like an animal, she could too.

The last time she had seen her father he was in his backyard and, if she misremembered, she could picture him wearing the corduroy jacket. She knew that he wasn’t, because it was summer, and the jacket — though thin — was too big for him and thus only worn in the fall. The last time she had seen her father he had been cooking salmon steaks on the grill while his new wife made meticulous mojitos that involved mint from her actual “mojito mint” plant. This was a month before they ran off together to Florida. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that big change was on the horizon. Change often tasted like fresh mint.

The man payed for the bill and Janet let him, more out of a lack of focus on anything that wasn’t the jacket than by intention. She had decided that she had to say something. The ice cream stain, the loose strands from the lining from where her childhood dog had jumped up and torn it, the re-sewn button on the pocket, it was too obviously the same jacket. But Janet didn’t know what she wanted to say so she just stared and didn’t move until her date asked if she was okay.

“I love your jacket,” she said.

“I like your dress,” he repeated. Illegal double hit of the ball.

“Where did you get it?”

“Why, you think it would suit you?”

“I just— I’ve seen it before.”

“Corduroy was big in the 90s.”

His intent to not quite answer turned Janet off. But still, she let him pull out her chair for her, let him drape her own jacket over her shoulders. Ever the gentleman is the man who believes he’s about to have sex.

(To be continued.)

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

Dax #1

The end of the world felt inevitable but the fact that it felt inevitable felt surprising. Like the time Dax was hit by a car while jaywalking. In his defence, there had been a stop sign only 20 metres away, and if the car had obeyed, he wouldn’t have been hit. In the car’s defence, Dax was jaywalking, and if he had chosen to use the crosswalk he wouldn’t have been hit.

The day of the car crash was a Tuesday morning and the sun was hot and bright and as soon as Dax realized the impact was coming, he realized the inevitability. He wishes he could say it was because the day had been shitty, but truly the day had been nothing.

During the impact he was sure he would die.

After the impact he was surprised that the hunger that had been dragging its nails down the inside of his stomach had disappeared. He wondered if horror movies should be added to the routine of his next diet.

The end of the world felt like that car crash, except instead of the hunger disappearing, it intensified. It wasn’t only in his stomach. This was a hunger that tingled his fingers and made his toes itch. This hunger felt like the muscle ache that comes two days after a workout but also the need to stretch that comes from four hours of lying around. This apocalypse felt like the world that had once made sense to Dax had been replaced by a world of contradictions. Two parallel universes converging. A car crash of nonsense.

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

Pineapple

It was through work that I met Caroline and through Caroline that I met Andy and when I went out to the Mugshot Tavern on Bloor Street across from High Park with Andy he brought his sister. That’s how I met Joanna. Or at least, that’s what I tell people when they ask how I met Joanna, because believe it or not that’s a simpler story than the truth.

Caroline, my coworker, was a high-strung boss-type who was at the bottom of the food chain in our office, where we both worked as corporate transcribers, but everyone knew that she would rise up fast and crack her dark-haired head on the glass ceiling. Caroline was my best-friend-from-work. Andy was my best-friend-not-from-work and also happened to be married to Caroline. He was a radio engineer for the local Alt-rock radio station and he sometimes did voice-over work, which is important to remember, I promise.

So I was an interminable third wheel in this relationship and as most third wheels in successful relationships, I was always being set up on dates. Or, to be more specific, I was always being ditched at parties and restaurants with some random dude that Andy knew from work.

But here I was at the Mugshot Tavern to which Andy brought his sister, Joanna, because she was visiting from a town outside Toronto and he didn’t want to leave her at home but he also respected that we had a standing weekly friendship date. As soon as I saw Joanna I knew that I wanted to put my face against her face and this surprised me probably more than anyone else in the bar.

But here’s the thing: we did not meet at this pub, not really, because before I could even take off my jacket Joanna was sliding from her chair and pulling her white leather purse string around her head and in a flash of strawberry blonde she was gone.

Andy apologized and said that Joanna wasn’t feeling well, which I obviously called bullshit on, and he apologized again, this time without an excuse, which was better, I guess.

Weeks later I would learn that Joanna did a lot of drugs that I hadn’t heard of. Most of these drugs were expensive and I’m pretty sure some of them were just vitamins that were extracted from dried up fish. She kept most of it in a cupboard that she built into her wall above her mattress, which was on the floor. And let me tell you, sleeping under that cabinet was frightening. Especially after she said that she had once tried to build a bed frame but that it had collapsed and a nail had come up to stab into her thigh. She showed me the scar to prove it.

Drugs were the reason that Joanna left so quickly from the Mugshot Tavern. Later, she would tell me that the sight of me had driven her into a hotness-induced anxiety attack but I’ve never been one to buy such overt flattery.

Where we really met was outside of a flower-and-fruit shop on Roncesvailles that she had just robbed. I knew that she was going to rob the flower-and-fruit shop but I also hadn’t officially met her yet, so knowing this felt like knowing that Bono is a part-owner of Facebook: pretty useless and a bit sickening.

I was on Roncesvailles across from the flower-and-fruit shop because Andy had told me to meet him at the studio there where he needed to record the alphabet and count to ten in both English and French so they could ship it off to some other country and learn from his perfect specimen of a voice. Joanna was inside the waiting room but when I said hello she didn’t say anything, and instead tapped her foot so fast it looked like her leg was being zip-zapped by electricity. When she stood up I knew that she was going to do something extreme. She moved with that kind of intent. I watched her walk across the road and into the flower-and-fruit shop and that’s when I knew.

The best thing about the robbery is that all Joanna stole was three bunches of roses and a pineapple, which it turned out we were both allergic to. She was lucky because as soon as she was out, a group of Japanese tourists swelled into the street and began to take pictures and Joanna could slip back into the studio unnoticed.

Actually, come to think of it, I’m not even sure the shop owner tried to chase her out of the store. Maybe her theft was sneaky, or maybe they realized that three bunches of roses and a pineapple was not a bank-breaking loss. In the studio she presented me with one of the bunches of roses and I asked who the other two were for and she just held out her hand. “I’m Joanna,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

Then she offered me the pineapple and we discovered that we had the same fatal weakness and that, in light of the love that was suddenly blossoming, neither of us wanted to die in that moment. Especially not via citrus fruit.

Two days later Caroline was promoted to be my boss and as a congratulations gift she received one overripe pineapple and a half-wilted bunch of roses, which Andy described as “stinking up our apartment” and which Joanna used as an excuse to stay at my house for the rest of her trip.

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

Don’t Trust Kyle

10. She wanted to write songs and she wanted to fall in love.

14. She wanted to write comedic poetry and she wanted to hold hands.

The band teacher’s face when the girl fell off her horse (and splashed him in mud and all that crap) Became the strain of his nipples through a nylon shirt. Too much for the eighth grade class to handle.

16. She wanted to write fan fiction and for someone to play with her hair.

When Olivia was sixteen she had a dream that a character named Kyle from a TV show she wrote fan fiction about was chasing her around a submarine while she ate a fish sandwich and for once when she woke up she wrote the dream down. It was a period of attempting to entice lucid dreams. The next day, in her spare after math class, she copied that text verbatim (or as verbatim as a written dream can be) and pasted it into an online text-box that spat out dream interpretations. Would Freud be pleased with the algorithm? With any algorithm? Did we listen to Freud anymore? She couldn’t remember.

Kyle is your past coming up and trying to find you, don’t trust it. To see a sandwich with fish in your dream indicates that you will push your self-interests into the background and help your friends. The submarine is repression of a past life.

It seemed a little too forward of the algorithm to tell her who and who not to trust. But here’s the thing: when she was in the twelfth grade, she met her Kyle.

17. She wanted to write tragedies and to touch someone’s face.

The high school she went to was a small one. The high school she went to had a total of thirteen grade twelve kids, eight of whom had known each other since kindergarten. She, Olivia, was not one of the kindergarteners. She had arrived in the eighth grade, and even after three years with the same group of people, she felt outside of something.

For example, there was a band camp trip that had taken place the year before Olivia transferred to this school in which Stephanie had fallen off a horse and splashed mud all up the horse of the band teacher, and drawing this scene or referring to the band teacher’s expression in that moment was an endless hilarity that Olivia had no access to. Though, in her poetry she tried. This was a mission of the class scribe.

Kyle was the new kid who showed up in grade twelve, just in time for graduation. Kyle was also the only new boy who had arrived since the fourth grade, since before Olivia had shown up. Kyle was what everyone called “emo” and what Olivia thought of as “knows who he is”. It doesn’t matter that this was the opposite of the truth — that’s what a strong aesthetic does.

Olivia had no aesthetic, and as far as she could tell, her only qualification for knowing who she was came down to what she wanted to write, and what romantic experience she currently fantasized about. One of these she was loud about, the other was kept secret.

18. She wanted to write a harlequin romance and she wanted Kyle.

Kyle showed up on Olivia’s mid-year report card and it made her feel as though there were guppies flip flopping their way up her small intestine and struggling against the flush of digestive enzymes and bile. She had a fine grade in Biology. The classes she struggled in (math, social studies) were the ones that mentioned that she should pay more attention, that she should sit away from… and there it was.

Olivia didn’t want Kyle’s name on something that should have belonged to only her. Olivia didn’t want him to seep into her own possessions like that. Olivia wanted to write a book and she wanted to get into college and maybe sometimes she wanted to write funny poetry. She stopped sitting near Kyle and she started going through the documents on her computer, looking for something of use.

Kyle is your past coming up and trying to find you, don’t trust it. To see a sandwich with fish in your dream indicates that you will push your self-interests into the background and help your friends. The submarine is repression of a past life.

20. She wants to write every day and she wants to uncover her past life.

[kaitlinsflashfiction]

Bonita

Bonita hated being recognized by the people in the places she frequented. The novelty of TV sit-com service industry workers asking, “The Usual?” turned out to carry some weight of humiliation: more often than not, it resulted in someone wanting to know her name.

The worst was in the liquor store, which stung because that was the most useful place to be remembered. Bonita Baker was twenty-six but looked younger — looked like a teenage boy, in her own opinion — and she was no longer asked for her ID by the woman with the dip-dyed hair. Instead, she was asked if she had weekend plans and all Bonita could do was awkwardly gesture at the two bottles of wine. She always hoped dip-dye would laugh at this, but it never happened.

Bonita also hated being recognized at her neighbourhood coffee shop but she knew that this was inevitable. She probably spent six hours a week there, and usually on the same two days (Monday and Saturday) and there were only three baristas there, far as she could tell. One of them knew her name and would say it quietly in thanks when she dropped her change into the tip jar.

All of this is to say the when the Co-Op clerk tilted his head after asking Bonita for her name, she lied. She dug her nails into the fleshy debit machine buttons as she entered her pin, and then she told him her name was Andrea. It was her middle name, so it felt like a half-lie. The clerk’s question was unusual because as far as Bonita knew, she had never met this person (a boy, really) before. He looked younger than her, but then, he was taller and he had long eyelashes around boyishly big eyes.

‘Andrea’ rattled in her head and she felt fresh, like the kind of person who works picking cherries in British Columbia in the summertime. She wondered if she could make it stick. The bicycle repair shop where she worked had recently automated their drop-off system and now it printed little receipts that said in big letters at the top, “SERVED BY BONITA”. People would call the shop, hear her small voice on the phone and ask if they could speak to BONITA. It’s a loud name, a name like that, and reminded Bonita of a cartoon cow or wiggly skeleton. Not fresh fruit and denim and bandanas to shield from the mountain sun.

The boy standing in front of her was wearing a name tag that read “Patrick”, which Bonita registered after he bagged her peanut butter and before he said, “Andrea is a pretty name.”

“It means daring,” Bonita said, then wondered if that was a strange thing to say. The boy didn’t react at all, which Bonita decided was even stranger and let herself off the hook.

Bonita means “pretty” or “cute" in Spanish and Portuguese.

Bonita was neither Spanish nor Portuguese, and people liked to comment on this. Or they would tiptoe around it by telling her it was unusual (was it?) or fun (really?). And then she had a problem with the surface level of the meaning. Andrea means daring. Kadir means powerful. Renato means powerful and reborn. Bonita had “pretty” and “cute”. The -ita brought a flavour of adorability that always had Bonita feeling vulnerable. More often than she would admit Bonita found these words (pretty, cute, pretty, cute) clicking through her mind like noisy bicycle spokes.

Of course, if she complained about any of this to anyone, they would try to offer solutions. An Ex had started calling her Bonnie, which Bonita recognized as a goodhearted attempt at a solution, but also became a grating sound that accelerated the decline of the relationship. Then there was her mother, who — though the source of the problem in the first place — suggested that Bonita just didn’t want anyone to know her. Her mother had even pulled out the oh-so-cliched “building a wall” metaphor.

The clerk was saying something. Andrea hooked three fingers into the plastic grocery bag. “Sorry?”

“I was just wondering if you wanted to hang out some time. I put my number on you receipt.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“Hang out some time” rolled around in her head now, replacing the word Andrea. Hang out some time. Hang out some time. Once she had peddled her bike halfway home, she looked into the grocery bag and pulled out the receipt. Just like the boy had said, she saw a scrawled number. At the top it read: Daring Andrea, I dare you to give me a call. Bonita shoved it back into the plastic bag, uncomfortable with the fact that he knew this meaning. She hooked a right, peddling harder than she meant to, and glided past a different grocery store, the one that she planned on shopping at next time.