Author: Casey Jane

Written: while listening to the rain

Powered by: like 18 hours of sleep

Inspired by: this short story by Neil Gaiman: Nicholas Was…

“Cupid”

You misunderstand him. He lives an eternity of prepubescence, forever wrapping in the blubber of youth, flushed cheeks and innocent curls of gold. His mischievous youth taught him, sneaking up on strangers, lurking in forbidden rooms, watching for what he shouldn’t see. It didn’t take long to learn that what he saw would never be his. The weapon raised and pointed, sometimes at the object of his desire, sometimes at the one she looks to longingly. 

And yet, it never turns out quite the way he expects it to. 

Today I’m taking a slight detour – working on setting up a different writing project that I hope to share with y’all soon!

So, for today’s piece of flash fiction I encourage you all to check out one of my favorite short stories ever – Taylor Swift by Hugh Behm-Steinerg. Enjoy!

Written: on the floor

Powered by: electricity

Inspired by: lol, I have no idea

We were in that getting-to-know-you part of the relationship, so I was telling him how much I love surprises. 

He leaned in and locked his eyes on mine. “So,” he said, “Surprise me.” 

I still don’t know why I burped in his face.

But he asked me out again after.  

Written: all over the place

Powered by: pumpkin spice

Inspired by: an awe-inspiring friend of mine who once told me a story about her drug-dealing high school boyfriend (this is not that story, they only share the same first line)

One time in high school I dated this drug dealer named Solomon. He probably would like that I remember him that way because it makes him sound tough, but he had these kind brown eyes and believe it or not we met at a lock-in at the Jewish Community Center, so he couldn’t have been that bad. 

Anyway, we started dating in our senior year. He took me to prom and everything. I didn’t do drugs, but I was around when he sold them sometimes, mostly weed, mostly to his friends but sometimes to the kids at the private school who had more money than we did. 

So a few months before graduation Solomon decides he’s going to start selling coke too. He’s more discrete about this, more elusive, but when all there is to do in town on a Friday night is go to the football game, rumors spread. It wasn’t more than a few weeks before one of his friends got caught and pegged Solomon as his dealer. They both got expelled.

We had always known I would be going away to college and he wouldn’t, but my high school diploma and his criminal record sort of put this wedge between us, and the miles apart didn’t help. We stayed together, but by the time he came to visit me on campus it felt like we were completely different people. I didn’t have any pictures of him up in my dorm the way other girls with long distance boyfriends did. I asked him to please not wear the same hoodie he used to wear in high school when he came. My friends smiled when they met him, but ran out of things to say. 

It wasn’t like it was unclear to us that this wasn’t going to work, it just wasn’t clear what other alternatives we had either. We sort of went into hibernation with each other, fighting but not quite breaking up, seeing other people but not quite cheating. I don’t remember when it actually ended, or how. It just did.

Did I mention that after Solomon and that kid got expelled, they found out that it was just pummeled concrete in that bag passing itself off as coke? They still charged him for selling drugs. 

I remember watching a lot of movies in high school. That’s what he and I would do together, we’d huddle up on the couch in my basement and rent all kinds of movies. And I remember, like, being impacted by them. Like if we watched a sad movie, I would feel kind of moody and try to find some reason to cry and have him comfort me. Or if we watched a movie with a real badass, I would act more tough. I remember not really knowing who I was, but thinking I had plenty of time to figure it out. Now I wish I had tried harder to figure it out, who I really was I mean. I wish instead of spending all of my time copying those movies I had actually lived more of my life. 

Because now I think I might know who I am, but I think it might be too late to really do anything about it. 

I guess I’m trying to figure out how other people manage to keep people in their lives forever but I can’t seem to keep them for more than a year or two. Despite everything, I thought I loved Solomon. Now I don’t even think I would recognize him. And I wonder, how many people think that about me? How many old friends or neighbors or hook ups or coworkers see me on Facebook or something and think, that’s her? Really? 

How could I keep anyone when I can’t even stick to one version of myself? 

Written: en la sofa

Powered by: my dogs constant sighs of frustration and impatience for me to stop writing and take him on a walk

Inspired by: observations from said walk

He stopped and read the sign displayed in the home window again. MAKE RACISM WRONG AGAIN, written in black on a piece of cardboard. 

He thinks, but that’s the thing, it never has been. 

He can picture the family that lives there: white most definitely, young and of liberal lineage. Maybe they have a kid, or one on the way, or just the dog for now. He is a budding political writer and she works in operations at a non-profit. They met in the Peace Corps. They would have attended the protests, they probably carried that sign with them when they did. They would have voted for Obama, defended DACA, have never used the “n word” but are uncomfortable with the big black family that lives across the street, the men who gather on the stoop to smoke most days and the cars blasting rap music that park illegally. They will have had conversations with one another about this discomfort, will have “recognized their bias” will still feel proud for choosing to live on a not-yet-but-soon-to-be gentrified street. 

He knows these are the people who view themselves as allies, and he knows he needs all of them he can get. But it’s hard to find comfort in a well-intentioned and ignorant cardboard sign left on display in a window. 

When a news alert flashes across the phone screen in his hand he can’t bring himself to read it because he doesn’t want to deal with the possibility of another black man murdered. He just wanted to go on a walk. 

Written: back in my at-home office!

Powered by: Monday mojo

Inspired by: a story idea I wrote in one of my old journals: emotional weight carried by women – portrayed as unworthy when the weight causes them to do something wrong

Betty knew what she needed. A few good lemons, a carton of milk and baking soda would make the simple recipe she had been making on this day for the past eight years. Jane didn’t need to be picked up from her father’s house for another twenty minutes, so Betty swung into a parking spot in front of the grocery store and hurried in. 

The lemons were all too green but she did the best she could, then hurried over to the baking aisle, squeezing her way between slow-moving carts and clusters of families studying breakfast cereal options. Of course there was a line of people as she reached the checkout lane, each with their own stockade of items. 

It had been going well so far. Her father was accommodating about having his weekend cut short in order for Betty to spend time with Jane on her actual birthday, and Jane was excited about having a special celebration with each of them. So Betty couldn’t understand why waiting in this line was making her so agitated, why she found herself habitually squeezing the lemons in her fists like they were stress balls. 

She jogged across the parking lot and tossed her bag into the passenger seat, glancing into her rearview mirror as she switched gears and pressed the gas. Maybe if she got there early, Jane would still be finishing her breakfast. Maybe he would invite her in, and she could see how he was living. Maybe they could sit together for a few minutes at his new dining room table. She heard he had a dog now—

The bump was light, but noticeable. Like going over a speedbump with her trunk instead of her tires. Her foot hit the break, she looked again into her rearview mirror and saw a horrified woman staring at her. Beside her was a little girl in a soccer uniform holding her elbow. 

“I’m so sorry, are you both alright? I didn’t see you when I looked-” Betty searched for explanations and apologies. The girl is looking forlornly at a popsicle in pieces on the pavement, she must have dropped it when the car hit her. Betty can’t seem to think the words, when the car hit her. 

“I didn’t see you,” she says again, “I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t you dare,” the woman’s face is red, “You didn’t see us? What is wrong with you? You just hit my daughter with your car!” 

“I know, I’m so sorry, is she-” people in the parking lot stop loading up their grocery bags, some moving towards them. 

“No she is not alright, what is wrong with you? You just ran into us! You just hit a child! How dare you? How could you be so careless?” she tucks her daughter in closer to her, grabbing onto the elbow she had been nursing earlier. The girl begins to cry, watching her popsicle melt in the morning heat. 

“It was an accident, is she hurt?” Betty leaned in towards the girl, but her mother jerked her away as if Betty were a wild anima. She began to back away, from the screaming woman, the crying daughter, the murmuring crowd. 

“Of course she’s hurt, you hit her! Wait, what are you…? Where are you going? Someone stop her, she’s leaving!” 

Betty closed the door and pulled through her parking spot to the other lane, passing the people who motioned for her to stop, the hysterical woman who abandoned her child to run after her. She did not look into her rearview mirror as she pulled away. 

At his house, Jane is playing soccer in the front yard. He has placed her backpack on the front steps of the porch, and waves to her from the closed glass door as she picks it up. She helps Jane buckle in and drives her home. 

“Mom,” she says as they pull into the driveway, “Can we make a chocolate cake this year? Dad made lemon blueberry pancakes.” 

Betty looks at the bag in the seat next to her, the unripe lemons, the carton of milk beginning to sweat, the small box of baking soda. “No,” she says, not looking at her daughter as she gets out of the car, “This is our tradition.”  

Written: in college, with a few edits in present day – it’s been really fun to look back on the writer I once was

Powered by: a morning run

Inspired by: I think I originally wrote this about an influencer couple I followed on Instagram

On a beach manufactured to look like paradise, he waits for someone to watch before he licks the sand and saltwater from her hip bone. Squinting down at the sun glaring off her skin he says This is how you taste, and kisses her again. This is how everything should taste. She bites down on his bottom lip shriveled from sunburn and saltwater, and somewhere they can hear the synthetic snapping of a picture being taken. 

She demands fluffy white sheets because of how it look against her, how it softens the harshness of her bony neck and ribs and knees in the photos they post. The cleaning lady is beginning to complain. They never keep the window shut, letting out the air conditioning and letting in the bugs. They smirk as she insists that they follow corporate policy, explain to her that they are like flowers, they need sunlight. Grow up, she mutters as she pushes her cart down the hallway. Die, he screams back. 

They are so young, everywhere they go people look for their parents. Sometimes they give the truth, sometimes they live in lies. I’m conducting fieldwork for my senior thesis in cultural anthropology, she says somberly, dripping pool water onto the marble floors. I’m here for a photo shoot with Surfer Magazine, he reminds the bartender who questions his ID. 

And anytime their world can’t be crafted to meet their satisfaction, no edit or filter or highlight reel can make things seem good enough, she will ask for something new, gazing up with her baby monkey eyes while he pushes the curls from his face and they feel they can everything anyone has ever wanted. 

Written: on the couch

Powered by: BURGERS!!!

Inspired by: watching a lot of trailers for scary movies involving cave diving and sharks that live in lakes

After the accident, Jim started cave diving in Indian Springs. It cost thousands of dollars, the equipment and the medical bills, they kept both in the spare bedroom where he now slept. He said it was better for his back. 

Sometimes Izzy would go with him, to help with the equipment and make sure he stayed safe. She would watch him saddle the mask over his eyes and nose and submerge. Then, she would wait in the car, listening to country music and smoking cigarettes until he came back, when she would try to see if he was still the same as he once was. 

Written: by the window

Powered by: sauvignon blanc

Inspired by: my real life mystery flower box plant (pictured above)

It grew from the flowerbox outside the window that she never had planted, must have been left by the people before her, she didn’t expect it would last long in the heat. Light green, like it had been developed in a laboratory, synthetic in its vibrancy, over weeks the stalk continued to thicken and the leaves drooped off of it like a floppy-eared puppy, twittering excitedly in the rare moments of breeze. Occasionally she would take a break from writing and stretch, twisting in her chair to face the window and jump at the sight of it, watching her. Then she would smile and reassure herself, oh it’s just her little flowerbox buddy, it’s just her muse, reminding her that no matter where her writing takes her she is never alone. 

Written: with difficulty – today has been an uninspired day

Powered by: Honey Nut Cherrios

Inspired by: The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman

He read about it in an article assigned for his business class, the art of reciprocity. Prospective car buyers were significantly more likely to purchase a vehicle, add optional accessories, and agree to less attractive financing terms after accepting an offer of a small gift: a bottle of water, a packet of cookies. He figured the can of soda in his fridge would do, placed it on the reception desk where she was working and smiled as she took it in her hands. 

“Thanks?” she said.

“Wait,” he reached for her as she turned away, “So, we’ll go out sometime?”