Lipstick

He couldn't believe her.
He just couldn't.

Introduction to "Lipstick"

Lipstick is a piece of micro-fiction. Micro-fiction is a sub-genre of flash fiction, where as flash fiction stories are generally 1000 words or shorter, micro-fiction stories are generally 250 words or shorter.
This piece in particular is 7 words long.
I wrote this piece when I was 19 or 20, I can't remember now. At the time I was writing in a journal: a lot of bad poetry, sketches, and lines that happened to float into my head. This story comes from one of those college journals. Originally I thought it could be a poem, but as a poem, I believed it seemed too deliberate, too direct, too "look at me I'm a poem with deep meaning". I decided recently that it could stand alone however as a piece of micro-fiction.

The title of the piece stems from a need to not want to be too deliberate, too heavy-handed. I have an idea of what I believe is being discussed, or perceived, but I don't want my interpretation to interfere with anything else, especially when the words used are so open to suggestion. I toyed with the idea of calling the piece Trust but that eliminates a lot of non-fidelity issues, and infers what it could be about. I wanted the title of the piece to be as abstract as the piece itself. I didn't want the title to portend that it could be a heavy piece: it is only seven words after all. I like the idea that the characters are not defined by age, by culture, by class, by race, by relationship. by anything other than one is male, the other is female. It doesn't take sides either, at least not explicity, although it is definietely from one person's point of view.
THe title Lipstick comes from my own idea of what the story is about, the issue at hand, but I don't want to get into why I decided to call it that. I don't want my own perception of the story to interfere with the reader's interpretation of it.

So, now that I have written a piece infinitely longer than the story itself, I hope all you hypothetical readers out there enjoy this story.

Thanks

Calligraphy

Here is a story I wrote a couple of years ago. I might revise it slightly based on some past feedback I have received.

On the first day Haruki didn’t think much of it.
On the second day he started getting a little worried but figured if his wife had meant to send the letter, she would have before she left.
On the third day, the letter still sat on the dining room table, and his wife had also still not contacted him. He picked up the letter, examining it. It was written in calligraphy, which she had undertaken years earlier during one of the trying periods of their marriage. She had become quite accomplished at it but usually only reserved her calligraphy for invitations to important events or for her journal.
Her mother had taken ill months before. Osuka had gone to visit her in Orono when she had first taken ill but returned to Osaka days later. Haruki could not make it to see Osuka’s mother because he could not get the time to leave the school; he was the head of the International Government and Politics department at the university. It also was easier for him to not visit; his mother-in-law never approved of their marriage, as he was not from Japan. Osuka had contacted him daily during this last trip to inform him of her progress.
As her condition worsened over the next few months, Osuka decided to go see her before it became too late. She wrote letters feverishly to all her family back in Japan. The calligraphy indicated how grave her condition was, and took all the letters with her, except this one, which she must have accidentally left behind.
On the fourth day, his curiosity got the best of him, and he decided he would open the letter that day if he did not hear from Osuka. He went about his normal routine: tea, porridge, university, lunch. That afternoon he would go to the gym and then the steam room, and would return home to make himself the leftover tempura, sake, and tea. During the afternoon he frequently checked his emails, or would check the messages on their home phone. He had not heard from her all day.
During dinner he pawed at the letter, twirling and turning it behind his thumb and fingers, careful not to bend the edges. Upon finishing his second glass of sake, he left the table decidedly and retrieved the letter opener from his office desk. He came back and hesitated for a moment before ripping the sealed part of the envelope open, almost ripping the letter as he pulled it out of the envelope ravenously.
He unfolded the letter and in his wife’s calligraphic script, he read the following sentence:

I knew you couldn’t resist

Osuka

Moments later the telephone rang:
“Hello, Osuka”
“Is this Mr. Myamoto?”
“Yes”
“This is Orono Regional Hospital. We’re calling about your wife Osuka.”
At that Haruki, dropped the phone and collapsed onto the floor, weeping.

The Day the Robots Came to Town

“Hush up, boy!” implored Uncle Varnish. “Ah’m trine t’listen!”

Uncle Varnish guarded the door, rifle in hand, eyes having not blinked for days. He skittered over to the window, thrust the rifle into the jagged hole in the window he had made two days before, and pulled off two cracking shots. With each shot, he screamed, “Take that, y’ mettle sunovabitches. Goddamn robots,” his voice cracking with effort with the last word.

All the electricity had gone out in the town three days before. At first we thought the outage would last an hour or so, as they usually did. When it sustained to a half a day, our sense of novelty turned to concern, then to worry as Uncle Varnish started pacing, then to panic when he went to the attic and found the rifle. Three days on, with Uncle Varnish holding my dad, sister and I captive in our own house, we were down to near curdled milk and dried pasta.

Over the past three days, after firing, he would call us over to the window, finger jabbing out the window hole, trying to point to his victims and assailants, but all we saw were the clouded shapes of felled trees and the darting footprints of flashlights. We’d congratulate him, pat him gingerly on the back and wait for his chest to stop heaving and for him to sit in the folding chair propped against the door. Trina or I would bring him a beer, and go back to making dinner or playing cards, a holding pattern until Uncle Varnish’s next outburst.

This time after firing, though, Uncle Varnish slouched against the wall with a timbering thud. Trina and I jolted at the sound and saw Uncle Varnish staring at his shadow in front of him and the light blaring down at the table, lips fluttering in murmur, creaking sounds coming from his mouth. Dad, who was playing this hand with us, stood up and pulled the light string off over the table. He started turning off the lights as he slowly made his way to his fallen brother.

Dad sat down and put his meaty arm around Uncle Varnish’s brittle shoulders. He gently turned my uncle’s face towards his so they could look at each other. Calling him by his real name, my dad then said, “You did it, Vern. You got ‘em.”

Uncle Varnish stretched his arm around my dad’s shoulders like the scrawniest yoke, and creaked, “Goddamn robots.”

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