Flash: KSquare

By Gene Lass

This collection of 41 short stories spans multiple genres, from horror to science fiction to dark fiction to spy thriller. Each story is unique, many are thought provoking. The stories include the popular vampire story, "Cold House", as well as its sequel, "Puppy."

• Language: English
• Publisher: KSquare
• Release date: Dec 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223428756

Book preview

Flash

Short fiction

By Gene Lass

Foreword by Clifford Meth

Shape Description automatically generated with low confidence

Cold House, first appeared in Coffin Bell Journal.

Vampire, and Reunion appeared in Black Petals.

Small, Dangle, Tile, Robot, Alley, Race, Elevator, Loki, Plank, Relics, Actor, Snack, Clock, Santa, Wolf, and Man were published in KSquare.

Move, Quarry, and Parked were published on Vocal.

Cover art and design by Michele Rivera

Words Copyright © 2023 by Gene Lass

Cover Art Copyright © 2023 by Michele Rivera

All rights reserved

Published by KSquare, a SelfPubEmpire, LLC Imprint.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, recording, etc.) without the prior permission of the publisher.

Limit of Liability / Disclaimer of Warranty: THE AUTHOR OFFERS THE WORK AS-IS AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE WORK, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE.

ISBN-13: 9798867495008

1st Edition

Also by Gene Lass

Poetry

Like a Moth on a Pin (2019)

Candle in Oblivion (2019)

Ashes on the Sun (2020)

Delta (2020)

No Thunder in Heaven (2021)

Ghosts (2021)

The Corona Poems (2022)

Songs of Love and Hate (2022)

American (2023)

Fiction

Flash (2023)

For Diane Doerfler

Foreword

Yelling at Clouds

As I write this, there’s an older man, maybe 70, maybe not quite, sitting next to me on the bus. His hands shake while he struggles to open a small, packaged pill he’s removed from his shirt pocket. From the corner of my eye, I watch his fingers as they desperately work to catch the edge of a tiny bit of foil so he can peel this stubborn barrier away from its plastic encasement and free his pill. But no luck. The edge eludes him and his trembling increases. It’s painful to watch. If you were sitting next to him, you might offer to help, or you might not, but you probably wouldn’t film the scene mentally, nor note that his nails are dirty and that his right thumb pad is nicotine yellowed, and his faded turquoise, flannel sleeves are rolled up unevenly. Most people don’t note such granular details, let alone store them, and why would they? Their minds are unafflicted by a preoccupation with impractical particulars. They’re un-obsessed.

But Gene Lass would notice.

I initially encountered Gene’s words as a brief social media post. He had stumbled upon one of my books and was prompted to list me with some poets he’d paused for, or perhaps it was a litany of folks he feared might pitch themselves from a high structure. When writers encounter notices like these it’s momentarily flattering, even when we pretend it’s not. The polite response is to step forward and say thanks, and the practical thing is to step back and away and get on with the writing, which by necessity is a lonely assignment. At 62, I’m reasonably practiced at dodging distractions. But when Gene and I corresponded, there was a certain unpolished honesty and absence of cloying that put me at ease. I read a bit of his work, too, which confirmed my initial reaction.

I don’t like a lot of people. I like less those things people ask me to read, regardless of its position or opinion, because most writing is artless or tries too hard. For better or worse, that’s how I ended up, and after six decades as an accidental elitist with an avocation for yelling at clouds, I’m not apologizing.

But I like Gene. Emotional honesty resonates with me, particularly if it’s not too emotional. Besides, I’m fairly certain people don’t make friends as much as they recognize them. I saw something in Gene that made sense.

Better still, I saw these same things in his writing. Eureka!

It’s impossible to like everything that anyone writes, even if you like them a lot. Read too much Hemingway and he’ll bore the fuck out of you. But when you catch an honest line here, a stripped down turn-of-a-phrase there, a genuine response to some joyous or miserable experience—the ones we all share, like it or not—if the missive is tuned just right, there’s that occasional shock of recognition that makes all that cloud yelling worthwhile. At least for a few moments.

Clifford Meth

Rockaway, New Jersey October, 2023

Clifford Meth is best known for his dark fiction. He co-founded Aardwolf Publishing in 1994 with artists Dave Cockrum and Gray Morrow, and has written, co-written, and edited more than a dozen books including the forthcoming Promises to Rockaway.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Small

Dangle

Tile

Robot

Alley

Hope

The Cold House *

Puppy

Race

Elevator

Loki

Plank

Relics

Actor

Snack

Clock

Band

Cold

Villain

Hero

Reunion

Vampire

Sleeper

Poverty

Santa

Dome

Fight

Quarry

Move

Brain

Language

Wolf

Man

Avatar

Family

Blind

Doo-Wop

Rattle

Secrets

Psychic

Parked

Introduction

​In September 2020 I was talking about writing with a coworker, and he said how much he enjoyed it, and how he’d really like to get back to it, but he lacked motivation. He said he was always more motivated in school, when there was a deadline, so he proposed we have a challenge in which we each have a week to write a short story. I asked if we were talking about flash fiction or short stories and he said whatever comes out, it just has to be a completed story.

​I also work better when there’s an assignment or a challenge, and I tend to be good at working writing in-between other things. So I got going, and the next day handed him the manuscript for Small.

​Done, I said.

​What? I’m still thinking of what mine will be!

​I shrugged. Plenty of time. You have six days.

​He got it done and handed it to me the morning of the seventh day. I asked him if he wanted to go again, and he said, Yeah! I’m having fun, let’s do another one.

I had already finished my second one, knocking it out right after the first. He tried to write that second story in a week but couldn’t pick a direction and stick with it. He never finished that story.

I knew when he issued the challenge that my friend would probably be out in three stories or less. A lot of people talk about writing, but few will sit down and actually do it. For me the challenge was pushing myself. I wanted to see if I could finish a story a week for a year, at one point giving myself the out that I had to average a story a week. Some might take longer, and some weeks I might be busy.

I did keep that pace, as you’ll be able to see from the dates at the end of each story. Sometimes they took a while, or I missed an entire week, but other times I caught up or got ahead, all the way until week 40, when I accepted a new job and had to relocate from Milwaukee to Florida with only ten days’ notice. That derailed me, and I still hoped to catch up, but there was just too much to do. Still, I was pleased with the pace I had kept up, and with the stories I wrote. I hope you enjoy them.

Note: I’ve included one story, Cold House that actually wasn’t one of the set of 40 I think of as the Flash Stories. Cold House was written and published by Coffin Bell Journal before I started this challenge, and one of the Flash stories, Puppy is a sequel to that story. The stories can stand alone, but they’re better together. I expect there will be more stories to come with the Cold House characters, who have endeared themselves to the Coffin Bell editors and readers. In fact I know what the next one will be, I just have to get it done.

Small

For Abby

​I never knew my mother.

​She never knew her mother.

​She didn’t die in childbirth. I assumed she abandoned me, from what my father said.

​He told me a few weeks after I was born, she went away.

​I’ve seen her picture. I look like her. Petite. Blonde. Blue eyes. Glasses. She even had the same crooked incisor I have. She was 5’ 2. So am I. Or at least I was. When I went for my physical this week they said I was only 5 feet. Not 5’1, not 5’ 1 ½". 5 feet. 2 inches is a lot to mismeasure by.

​I haven’t been 5 feet tall since I was 16. A growth spurt at 19 put me at 5’ 2". But clearly this week I was 5 foot even again.

​My shoe size has also changed. My feet are smaller. My toes were always tiny. My little toes are so nubbinly small that I never had a nail on either pinky toe.

​I told the doctor that this week. That my feet were smaller and I never had a pinky nail. He made notes on his pad, said, Mm hmm, looked at his watch, and gave me some vitamins.

​Oh, and he told me I was pregnant. He smiled and said, Congratulations! and almost remembered my name without glancing at my chart.

​Cory and I had been trying to have a baby, so it was no surprise. I was glad.

​I called my dad to give him the news. He said he was glad.  But there was sadness in his voice. He said, My little girl is going away.

​I’m not going anywhere Dad, I told him. Mom went away, but I won’t.

​My baby girl is having a baby girl, he said.

​I told him it was too soon to tell, and he knew that, but I felt it, too. I would have a little girl. My mini-me.

​This morning I woke up thinking of mom, and our house. All her clothes are still there. Her suitcase, her things. Dad packed them away, but they were always there.

​She didn’t abandon you, he told me. She went away. Disappeared.

​My mother was almost 25 when I was born. I’m 24 ½. And today I’m shorter. The pencil mark on the frame of the bathroom door shows I’m 4’11" and a half. And now the nails of my second smallest toes are gone. And my wedding band is too big.

​I’m disappearing.

(9/14-9/16/20)

Dangle

​I’ve cuffed my wrists to cables connected to the twin smokestacks of the Valley Power Plant. The cables are attached to pulleys, the pulleys to clamps. The cuffs are titanium. The cables are 400 lb. Kevlar accessory cable. Lashed as I am to the smokestacks, with this gear, I’m going nowhere. My position is what we mountain climbers call bombproof.

​I have an electrical cord tied around my waist, with one end plugged into an on/off switch in my hand. The cord loops up to my vest. The vest is full of Lincoln logs, connected by loops of wire.  I look like I’m wearing a vest of dynamite. I’m not. But I’m going to die today.

​A moment ago, before I used my leg to pull the loop of cable that locked my arms straight out at my sides, I sent an email to the paper. I also posted on social media, separate posts for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, saying what my intent was. Each was a little different.

​One says I’m on a boat loaded with gasoline on Lake Michigan, and I’ll be blowing it up at dawn. I like that one. A fireball igniting with the giant fireball comes over the horizon.

​Another says I’m going to the Dells, to drown myself.

​The final one says I’m in the Cave of the Mounds, hiding with a manila envelope full of ricin.

​I’m in none of those places. I’m here, where I’ll either die from crucifixion asphyxiation, or gunshot, if they

think I’ll set off my bomb, or if I blow the clamps, by falling. I won’t let them rescue me.

​Despite the conflicting reasons I have in my posts, I have only two motives: I want to be seen, and I want to die.

​I’ve had a meaningless job and a meaningless life. All of this is temporal and temporary. The mountains I’ve climbed are still there, unchanged after I’ve climbed them. Al the effort I put into climbing them is meaningless.

​The reports I’ve written, the people I’ve hired and fired, the women I’ve loved, all of it is temporary, fleeting. I’ve done nothing. I am nothing.

​But today I will be seen. By hundreds, by thousands. Maybe millions. I’ll be part of the culture, the landscape.

​And then I’ll be gone.

(9/18-9/22/20)

Tile

For EAP

​Those cheap bastards in maintenance are trying to fool me. I hate to think they’re doing it intentionally. The tile I saw above my desk, the one that had a cockeyed smiley face in it like my son used to draw, is in the cafeteria now. I asked them to remove it from above my desk, it would be the humane thing to do, but instead of tossing it out or destroying it, they moved it just to save a buck.

​The cafeteria ceiling is too high to be sure. I could feel the tile more than I could see it, but there was a tile in there that was discolored by a water stain and now it’s gone.  I asked maintenance to change that tile out with a new one and they refused, but after I talked to HR I was told they would make that accommodation.

​I wanted to watch them take the tile down and toss it out, to be sure it was gone, but they wouldn’t let me, saying it was disruptive and unnecessary.

​I know they’re talking about me. My supervisor was in the HR office for over an hour last week. After that, things were so normal, so mind-stabbingly mundane, it could only be that they were told to be nice to me, to behave normally in hope that