Flash Fiction #1

The sun was too bright. It filled every corner in the house, somehow highlighting the stink of dampness and age.

Wandering from the kitchen to the living, and peering with squinting eyes out the window, Jody hugged her robe tighter about her shoulders. There was no draft in the house. The warmth from outside had permeated the walls and made the temperature miserable. Jody felt like she should take a shower and leave.

But she hadn't left in so long, not really. What did that mean? She had gone yesterday for a few groceries -- a couple of cans of corn and some oatmeal. But she didn't really leave yesterday. She didn't see who she handed money to, or even care whether they took it or handed her change. There were so many automatic motions for her, it was easy to disregard the details involved in making them. That was her routine for most of the past decade.

Meanwhile, the house had gone untended. Weeds rolled up the exterior walls, at first hiding behind the bushes, and then all at once up to the banister, practically shouting their existence to the world. The porches hadn't been swept of pollen for several years, so this year's explosion could settle undisturbed on last years blanket. Wisteria climbed up every tree in the yard, and all across the little plot of land.

Jody yawned and closed the blinds in the living room, and dropped herself down into an armchair. There were memories here. They were embedded into the fabric of the chair as surely as if it had been made that way. Jody had trained herself not to remember them, not to react to them or to anything else. If that was the only way that she could go on living, then she would. A steady heartbeat came at the price of what was once a bursting capacity for living. She held on to her steady heartbeat, because it was the only thing she knew she had.