Flash fiction, Samantha Backlund-Clapp

 Race to the bottom

Last night I saw two rats wrestling in a yin-yang harmony, each with its teeth around the other’s neck. How were they doing that? And why? They were making these horrific screaming noises the entire time, too. And it wasn’t just two rats, it was America and England, it was Cain and Abel, me and my old landlord and me and my current landlord, it was me and you. It was everyone else who’s ever been born, the story of humanity told in two rats, each trying to be the first to kill.

 On my birthday I accidentally sat in front of the Nama stap tapestry for 43 minutes thinking about Gestalt theory, about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts and how there isn’t a single thing that this doesn’t pertain to. I switched leaning arms throughout, because of the bench with no back and I thought about how even in a museum of acquired taste, admittedly easy to make fun of, it still felt like a lacking experience without him being snarky and pissing me off. I would have traded my perfect museum day, alone with no headphones and dancing with my thoughts, to be pissed off and angry and exasperated, surely paying less attention to the actual art, surely getting kicked out for whisper yelling. I was just sitting there looking at this tapestry which might be my favorite piece I’ve ever seen in my life and I was wondering what he would say. I hadn’t responded to his last message. Thinking about what he’d put into my birthday card last year. Wondering if NASA takes astronaut volunteers to shoot up into space and never come back. 

 I was painfully sober with the kitchen light on, naked on my back with his sweaty red mop of hair on my chest like a fur coat. The bubble wrapped moon like a button fastening the sky together, barely visible through the window. My eyes full of tears focusing on my breathing pattern. My eyes full of tears and the moon zinging at me like a bullet and the kitchen light too bright, flies taking turns killing themselves on it. He’s tracing my stomach but it feels like he’s disemboweling me. He’s tracing my stomach and it feels like a lie, my head is turned away from him and it feels like a lie, it feels like a lie that I’m even in bed with him pretending to enjoy this (definition of lie), it feels like a lie in a Poe short story that’s going to rot under the floorboards and drive me to violent insanity. Given what I know now, about myself. Given that no one can ever go back no matter how hard they kick and scream. 

 On the dock, drunk, socks off feet swimming with the ducks. On the dock, open bottle, three cigarette butts. The sun drowning behind the science museum. On the dock, have to pee, she asks me if I think I’ve met my twin flame. She looks at me like she knows the answer and is waiting for me to choke on it.