Nobody Bled on the Butter
Today, I’m sharing two short shorts loosely inspired by the prompt, “Write a story during which two conversations happen simultaneously.”
“One Girl”
They fall into the house, hair dusty and crusted with leaves. One shoe escapes the mudroom, others drop in corners as the three kids fight with jackets and space. Muddy hands grip the doorframe. A boy emerges, announcing, “The sword in the basement – I have armor for you, you can share it – no light sabers, only swords – my dad won’t care – ” He hustles to the basement door. A second child follows. “I want the black one, didn’t you have a black one?” and continues to shout down the stairs. They are certain they’re the only people in the house, even though they’re not. The third whimpers in the corner. Her feet are wet, she doesn’t know why, and she wouldn’t dare to trace herself along someone else’s floors, damp footprints giving her away, leading eyes from socks to knees to dirty face. She wipes her tears and waits to be remembered.
“Crumbs”
The butter dish rests beside the toaster. She swipes a knife through the soft bricks, replacing butter with crumbs. He watches her coat the toast. She stands on one leg. “I wondered if you were bleeding yesterday,” he says. She munches her toast. She flips through the magazine on the counter. “Why’s that?” she says. She does not turn to him. “The red all over the butter.” She hums to herself. She perches like a flamingo. She doesn’t reply. “I saw red on the butter and I thought you cut your mouth.” She chews more toast. “And that you didn’t even know you cut your mouth. Which is why you let yourself bleed all over the butter.” He flicks the butter dish with two fat fingers. It wobbles. “You were standing over the butter as you were making more of your toast, and that’s when you noticed you were bleeding. But not until the blood slipped onto the butter.” The magazine rustles when she turns the page. “And then I looked for you. I wondered if you were so injured that you had to go get help immediately, that you had drug yourself into the bathroom to clean up, or that maybe you were bleeding so badly that you passed out on your way somewhere. I couldn’t tell where you were, and because you didn’t clean up after yourself, I figured you must be in trouble somewhere – maybe in the house, maybe not. Because why wouldn’t you clean up the blood, if you could? Surely you’d do that? Clean up after yourself, if you could?” She drops both feet to the floor and takes another bite. “Unless it wasn’t blood at all. Unless it was raspberry jam that looks like blood when it’s smeared all over a stick of butter. About which I thought, if she’s not bleeding, and this is just some jam that she left all over the butter, then why can’t she just clean it up? She knows how much I hate a mess. She knows that. She’s known that for years, hasn’t she? Or is that something she doesn’t know yet?” She swallows and turns to face him. His hand fists on the counter, ever at the ready. She takes a step toward him and places both her hands together in front of her, as if in prayer. Then she brushes them together, unleashing miniscule crumbs. They look into each other’s eyes as the remnants of her toast settle on the floor between them. His nostrils flare. She moves to the door, where she slips on some sandals and grabs her keys from the bowl.
Summer so far has been hectic and hot, and as much as we all like to complain about the weather, I much prefer hot to the nine months of ice and night we get in Minneapolis. Getting the writing done in the mornings so far has continued to work when I let it — though there are still sleepless nights with toddlers and bug bites after camping trips that lead me to sleep through the early morning writing session. I notice I am especially grouchy on those days.
I am set to attend the Midwest Writers Workshop Conference in Muncie, IN in July. The last (and only, I think) writers conference I attended was in 2017 at The Loft here in Minneapolis. I enjoyed being there, but the focus of that particular event was novel writing. This conference will be much broader. I’m putting together a plan of sorts for the conference and trying to decide what my expectations are. The big takeaway from the conference I attended in 2017 was that one of the novelists on a panel said she spent 10 years writing her first book. I think about that a lot. The clock is always ticking.
Thanks for reading.
Good luck out there.