Tag Archives: relationships

Shooter Flash: “Lisa’s Little Lie” by Steven Bays

Posted on by Standard Reply

The wheels of the gurney squeaked as an aide moved Lisa to recovery. Half asleep, she stirred, then moaned and curled into a fetal position. She pulled the sheets over her shoulder and stuck one foot out from under. When she saw the blue hospital sock, she remembered where she was. A feeling of nausea overcame her and she cupped her hand under her chin. A nurse noticed and held a small kidney-shaped bowl, just in time for Lisa to vomit.  

“It’s the anesthesia,” a nurse said. “It’ll pass. Drink this.” She gave her some apple juice. Lisa tried drinking but the nausea came back. She closed her eyes. “Could I have some ice chips instead, please?” she asked. 

Lisa did better with those. They soothed her thirst and she no longer felt sick.

The nurse asked, “Are you ready for a visitor?”

Lisa nodded, and her boyfriend Peter came in. He sat on the edge of her bed. 

“You okay?” he asked. “You don’t look so good.”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah, just a little nauseous.” 

Peter waived his hand. “What smells?”

“I puked. Sorry.” 

“How do you feel?”   

“Like I was out drinking all night.”

Peter waited until the nurse stepped far enough away that she couldn’t hear. 

“No, I mean now that it’s over. Any regrets?”  

“Peter, not now.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time with this.”

The nurse came back to check on Lisa.  

“When can she leave?” Peter asked. 

“As soon as she can keep something down, use the bathroom. Won’t be too long.”

Peter had always been good to Lisa. She knew that someday he would ask her to marry him. Even now, after what she’d put him through. He’d brooded about her indiscretion for days but he forgave her. Still, he didn’t want her to have the procedure. She remembered the argument.  

“It’s not right. It’s a sin. We’re Catholic for Christ’s sake. I don’t care if it ain’t mine. We’ll get married, and I’ll adopt it.”

Lisa knew she wasn’t ready to be a mother and doubted Peter would make a good husband.

“Who’s the father?” he’d demanded.

“Does it matter? I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Can we leave it at that?”

“I know the guy. Is that it?”

“No, you don’t. And it’s better if it stays that way.”

“Can you at least tell me how many times you cheated?”

“Once.”

“Once?” 

“Yeah, imagine my luck.” 

“Does the father know?” 

“No. And I’m not telling him.” 

The nurse brought some apple juice and asked, “You feeling better yet hon?”  

Lisa smiled yes. As soon as the nurse stepped away, Peter asked, “Are we still going to Brian’s?” 

“Yes.”

“Why? Do we have to?” 

“It’s close by and I can rest. Don’t worry, he’s working. I have his key.”

“I’d rather take you home.” 

“Are you kidding?” She whispered so no one would hear. “You want me to sit on that train for a freaking hour? My mother will flip out when she sees me like this. What do I tell her? Oh, I skipped work to have an abortion? No. Take me to Brian’s.”  

“Is he the father?”

“Keep your voice down. No. Just a friend.”

They were silent for a bit. Peter worried whether he could ever trust her again. Lisa’s guilt about what she’d done to him made her wonder if she’d made the right decision.

The nurse broke the silence. “Do you think you could use the ladies’ room?”

Lisa said yes, and the nurse walked her to the bathroom.  

After being discharged, they took a cab to Brian’s.

“I’m gonna take a nap,” she said. Lisa went to the bedroom and climbed into Brian’s bed.   

Peter watched TV in the living room. After a while, he stuck his head into the bedroom. Seeing Lisa awake, he asked, “Are you okay?” 

“I could use some Tylenol,” she said. 

Peter checked the bathroom. “None in here. Guess I’ll run out and buy some.”

“Look in the kitchen.”

Peter did as she suggested. He looked in the cupboards, shuffling things around, searching behind cereal boxes and cans. Utensils rattled as a drawer opened, then slammed shut. The noise stopped, and Lisa heard the tap running. Peter walked into the bedroom holding a bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water. 

“Here.” He handed it to her. Lisa took two pills and then gave back the empty glass.  

“I thought you said you’d never been here before.” He stood with his arms folded in front of his chest. “How’d you know where he kept the Tylenol?”  

Lisa frowned. “I didn’t. It was a guess. Don’t your folks keep any meds in the kitchen?”

“I don’t know if I can believe anything you say.”

“Look, I’m not lying. I’ve never been here before. And Brian, first, he’s not the father, and second, he’s just a good friend from work.”

They started arguing again. The same argument they’d had when she first told him of her infidelity, only more heated. 

“Yeah, you’ve been fucking Brian,” Peter said. “Who knows how many other guys you’re screwing behind my back.”

Stung by his accusations, she decided to tell him the truth. At this point, Lisa didn’t care if she hurt his feelings.

“I wasn’t going to tell you who the father was, because,” she hesitated. “Well. I figured keeping it a secret from you would be the best thing to do. So, I lied. I never cheated on you. The baby was yours. If you knew you were the father, you’d never let me have the abortion.”

Peter raised his hand to strike her. Lisa stared at him, daring him. He froze for a moment, then dropped his arm and stormed out of the apartment. 

*

Steven Bays was born in Greece but at the age of two immigrated to the US, where he was raised in Brooklyn, New York. He always dabbled in writing but took it seriously after retiring from a thirty-five-year career in telecommunications. He enjoys long walks, listening to music, working out at the gym, and playing guitar in a rock-and-roll cover band. His stories have appeared in various online magazines.

Shooter Flash: “Trash” by Bethany Swett

Posted on by Standard 1

Marg got used to the smell after her first week on the job. Slinging the slick black garbage sacks into the oily maw of the truck all morning, she got so steeped in the stench that she ceased to notice it. It was like water: once you were in it, you were wet. The smells, like drenching rain, only bothered you if you had something to keep nice in the first place.

She tied up her waist-length dreads after Cal, the jerk-off, pretended to feed them into the chomper on her first day. Jack, who drove the truck, more kindly suggested she might want to consider restyling if she didn’t want to end up processed like meat through a grinder. But her dreads were the product of years, connecting her way back to Burning Mans (Men?) of yore. Another life. She’d rather chop off a leg.

The loose bags sagging into each other on the sidewalk she tossed straight into the chomper. Trash cans and recycling got slotted into the mechanical arms and lugged in a big metallic hug into the bowels of the truck, then dumped back down again, like a kid too big to get picked up for long.

Marg hustled to the next set of bins on the worn-out street, its townhouses faded from lack of care and grayed-out by a drizzle of rain. The buildings were mostly brick with concrete stoops; sometimes old people shuffled around out front and hobos, towing errant shopping carts, rooted through the trash. Anyone looking like they had a job tended to scurry in and out like mice after cheese, wearing the cheap suits of office drudgery. Marg knew they looked down on her, if they looked at all, yet she wouldn’t trade places. She didn’t like sitting still, feeling pinned down.

She set a can into the last empty slot on the truck and hit the lift button. As the arms hauled up their load and dumped the contents, something clinked out onto the sidewalk near Marg’s boots. Its glint caught her eye, and she bent to pick it up: a silver ring set with a small diamond. Marg turned it over awkwardly with her thick padded gloves. She looked up at the nearest house, which had a matt-black door and window-frames, recently painted, not peeling like most of the others. No-one was racing out after a missing ring, anyway.

“Come on bird nest, let’s move it,” Cal yelled as the truck lumbered up the street, leaving Marg in its wake, gawking.

Quickly she tugged off her glove and shoved the ring in her pocket, fumbling with the zipper to yank it closed before hustling on up the street to catch the blundering truck, which was gassing and steaming like an old bull elephant.

Later, when Marg returned to the high-rise apartment she’d occupied for the last three years, she sat down and pulled the ring out of her pocket. It winked at her weakly in the dim light. She tried to slide it on. It was too small for her ring finger, but it fit on her pinkie. She twirled it there for a moment, then pulled it off and sank back into the sofa, opening up her phone.

She swiped and tapped to a familiar profile, bracing for the usual self-flagellating burn that came from scrolling his photos: the man she’d loved with the woman he’d left her for, living their best lives. The woman who, in fact, he’d been with before he did Marg the courtesy of leaving. She’d got better lately at resisting the urge to torture herself, but the ring had reminded her, and lured her back.

To her disappointment, though, his feed hadn’t been updated much for several months. Taking time… said one of his posts, captioning a mountainscape with a trail of hug emojis and hang in there buddy comments – and one saying, girls come and go but beer is always there!

With a crackle of anticipation Marg sat up and clicked through to the girlfriend’s profile page. She saw, among her numerous public pictures, the woman draped around the shoulders, torso, and assorted other body parts of a bronzed, toned, tall, and very much different man.

“Wow,” she exhaled to herself, flopping back into the cushions. She felt giddy, but also oddly queasy. Marg realised she was still in her work clothes, faintly off-gassing the morning’s garbage, and headed for the shower, scooping up the diamond ring from the table.

In the bathroom she shucked off her clothes and rummaged in a drawer, coming up with a thin silver chain. She slid off the cheap charm that had swung from it and replaced it with the ring. Squinting down at herself, she attached the chain around her neck, and looked up at the mirror, at the person standing amid the rising steam, bare but for a glint of light resting just above her heart.

One woman’s trash… Marg thought, fingering the ring. Maybe the saying would prove true for one man’s trash, too.

*

Bethany Swett works for a tech company by day and writes fiction the rest of the time. She has published short stories in Lilith, Quick Fiction, Bayou Magazine, 365 Tomorrows, and elsewhere. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her dog Sushi.