This week’s flash fiction is something I don’t write too much of: a kitchen-sink drama. Let me know what you think!
It’s a blizzard outside, the whole world has disappeared. Except, I think it means the whole world is there, except me. I’m in the static between television channels, waiting for the cathode-ray tubes to warm up and send me back to one channel or another.
There’s a knock at the door, in the middle of the blizzard. It’s nothing, really. All that talk about TVs and static is me being dramatic.
It’s a man outside. He’s not a neighbour, you understand. I don’t know him from Adam. But, when I opened my door he was backlit by the white blizzard, and it was only right to let him out of the storm.
He tells me it was like being stuck between TV channels out there, and that was my thought. I don’t like that a bit. It bothers me as we sit, each of us with a cup of tea that I made.
The storm has been going on for a long time, and I still have tea in front of me, even though I’m drinking it. Both of us sit side-on to the kitchen table, looking out the window for the world to appear.
He’s familiar, like someone who’s been on a show that you can’t quite recall the name of.
This feels like a dream. We sit in comfortable silence though we don’t know each other.
I’m waiting for the cathode-ray tubes to warm up. I think he is, too.
I see the grown-up versions of Tweedledum and Tweedledee thirty years after Alice forgot them and the magic of Wonderland drained away. What about you?
