Flash Fiction Story #5 -The Various Numerical Assesments of Hans and Artur

Perhaps if a passerby happened to glimpse through the window of the house that stood in the far end of the walled enclave that was Fuggerei, he would think that the two figures sitting by the kitchen table with their heads hunched over it in complete absorption were doing nothing else but praying for the soul of Jacob Fugger the Rich and his honored family members. This of course was the most straightforward assumption one would make, especially in Fuggerei. The fortunate inhabitants of this citadel had no other obligation other than to pray three times a day for the souls of the Fugger family and in exchange their rent was kept to only one Rheinischer Gulden per year, a ludicrous amount no matter what century one lived in.
Artur Ebestark and Hans Petersen did of course nothing of the sort. In their forty three years of friendship they had agreed to only one thing and that was that there was nothing more morally depraved than to be so selective in ones prayers. According to them a simple heartfelt thank you when the gates of Fuggerei had first opened for them had sufficed. Sitting by the old wooden kitchen table they each held a large rolled up cigarette that rested between their now aged fingers. Their hair was as white as the snow that covered the narrow streets outside their house. With their heads hunched over the table they were absorbed in concluding what was for them a sort of numerical assessment of their lives. Amongst the many papers that laid on the kitchen table one could find for example the number of afternoon teas the two friends had shared throughout their lives, which was fourteen thousand nine hundred and thirty four teas each, a number that seemed even larger when written out in words instead of numbers. There was as well an estimation of personal favors they had granted to each other. Out of the total four hundred and eighty three favors they were happy to find that one hundred and ninety six were granted by Artur, a surprisingly balanced number given his difficult character. And so on this day their various estimations, three hundred and sixty two to be exact, had concluded and the papers were being carefully organized by the two.
In the lives of these two friends there was only one shared realization that had astonished both and that was that hey had each reached contentment. Perhaps it was their desire to unravel this rather unusual sentiment that had led them to all their various estimations. Some days after, they found Hans Petersen and Artur Ebestark laying opposite each other on the kitchen floor with a bullet in each of their hearts and a gun by each of their spread out hands. On the kitchen table by the stack of neatly organized papers they found a paper that listed the number of ammunition each had used in their lives, two in total, one by Hans and one by Artur, a surprisingly balanced number given his difficult character the neighbors thought.

Flash Fiction Story #3-The Man from Hong Kong

"Behold, I have a Herculean chore.
How shall I manage to compose a theme?"

E.E Cummings


The two new lovers sat on the small doorstep of their small house in the old Brooklyn neighborhood. Quietly they watched the man from Hong Kong walk down their neighborhood carrying a colossal umbrella, and as he was walking by them they heard him humming ‘...Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me….I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee….’ .We do not know this mans name, but with a white T-shirt and a pair of light blue jeans -loose fitting and short -and a cigarette in his mouth, the girl baptized him O’Hara for reasons unknown to the boy.
We follow this O’ Hara down the street –He passes Joes pizza place, otherwise known as the place of the ‘felonious cocksucker with the intent to swallow’, he passes the two new lovers who are frightened of love, say’s hello to two old lovers, and glances at the Italian soccer players cursing at each other on the wet field. Under that colossal umbrella of his, he must have thought the day to be fine-looking, with the rain making all that brick and cement shimmer a little.
Tossing his cigarette and humming the last lyrics of his song, he decides to go up the narrow stairs of a friend’s house. We will baptize this friend Neruda. Neruda’s stomach was in charge of greeting all the guests, as it was always there first to welcome them in. Swinging his cane back and forth towards and away from his stomach, he contemplated the importance of punctuality when it came to a man’s death and was grateful when he saw O’Hara emerge out of that dim, narrow staircase on time. He invited him in, and offered him some tea, and laid before him three guns from which he could choose from. O’Hara chose the third one, and he must have thought it to be fine looking, with the sun making all that steel and wood shimmer a little. Neruda thanked him for choosing such a fine looking gun and took it amongst his plump fingers, pointed it amongst O’Hara’s eyes, and slowly pulled the trigger. Thinking of Alabama and how Susanna must have looked, and how her sugary tears must have tasted, O’Hara died with a smile.

Flash Fiction Story #2-Death By Boredome

In this small room sat a man with wild grey hair and green eyes that rarely blinked and almost always stared into the blank space. When he would shut his eyes he would squeeze both of them tightly for 2-3 seconds and then they would suddenly both open as if an electrical current had just passed through them. His metal desk faced a small dusted window about the size of his head, and we must note here that this man did not particularly have a very big head. The dust on this window had been accumulating for more than 17 years. Perhaps if the window could speak it would have provided us with an explanation of why it stopped being a window and looked more and more like a piece of the grey walls surrounding it.
This man who went by the name of Thelonious Nile had won the lottery at the age of 28. Knowing that his coworkers would laugh if he did not quit his job as a clerk right there and then, and thinking that he did not have much choice in the matter, he left his job the very next day. Not having any specific dreams or aspirations, a friend or a lover to care for, Thelonious took all of his prize money and bought an office that very same day in a high rise building in the middle of Manhattan.
The office seemed to come with everything but a purpose, so Thelonious decided that until he would come up with a plan he would have to preoccupy himself with something else. Being accustomed from his previous job to order copy paper, and blue ballpoint pens on a weekly basis he picked up the phone and ordered ten boxes of copy paper along with ten boxes of blue ball point pens. When the supplies arrived, he opened the very first box of copy paper and laid a stack of fifty clean, white, blank papers on his desk. He also took a pen out of one of the boxes and sat himself down and his glance ricocheted from the paper under his palms to the window facing his desk. He closed his eyes for 2-3 seconds and suddenly opened them both as if an electrical current had passed through them. He grasped the pen even tighter and decisively wrote down the number 1 and than the number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and went on writing the numbers in ascending order till the fifty clean white and blank papers were no longer clean, white and blank. It was well past 5 o’clock when he had finished but he thought that since he was self employed, and he was the boss of this office as well as the owner of it, the long hours of work did not really bother him.
17 years later they found Thelonious Niles lifeless body in the chair in an office of a high rise building in Manhattan. The office just had boxes and boxes of papers with numbers written on them. In front of him was also a piece of paper with the number 315,619,200 followed by 315,619,201 315,619,202 with the last number written on that page being 315,619,238. His green eyes were wide open facing something that must have been a window at one time.