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Flash Fiction Essay

She was always threatening to punch someone in the face, but this time she meant it. I really don't know why. She displayed the rancor and the demeanor of a tyrant that would make Kate Gosselin look saintly.

"What the hell are you all worked up about this time?" slurred Mack, as he reached across the table for the bottle of whiskey to refill his glass.

"Shut up! Don't you dare talk to me!" wailed Maureen.

The rage in her face was blinding, and the temples on the sides of her face were visibly pulsing. She grabbed Mack's keys and started toward the door.

"Hey, wait a minute, honey, don't leave me all alone." said Mack, his face looking forlorn, yet hazy at the same time. "I love you."

"No! Don't tell me what to do! You don't have the right to tell me to do or feel anything!" Maureen's voice was screechy and harsh.

She looked around the room, seeing it for what it was. A dumpy kitchen, in a dumpy two bedroom tennemant, in the seedier side of town. Peeling paint gave the room its only appreciable decor... well except for the dirt, and the general squalor scattered about.

"I hate her! I despise her! I want to scratch her eyes out!" she said as tears started to brim over her eyelinds down her cheeks, smearing her pancake makeup in rather garish ways.

"Here, have a drink with me." said Mack, as he poured his glass full again of the amber fluid. He reached across the table and pulled toward him a second glass, this one from earlier in the day, that Maureen had poured Mack a glass of milk.

The milk had not been touched since it was originally poured early that morning. Having sat at the table for 6 hours, it had warmed to room temperature and had a bit of a skim across it. Floating in the center of the glass was an ash that had accidently fallen from one of Mack's cigarettes he had smoked since the morning.

Mack was too wobbly to want to stand to get another glass, and he was too drunk to really care a whole helluva lot about what was in the glass anyhow. He brought the glass to his mouth and drank the milk down in a few gulps, then poured it full to the brim with whiskey. The thickness of the milk that had clung to the inside of the glass clouded the whiskey and gave it a murky appearance with slightly opaque swirls in it.

Eyeing both glasses before him, he looked gingerly toward Marueen, and back to the glasses. Drinking about a finger's worth from the top of his original glass, which looked cleaner, he then slid it towards Maureen, keeping the less appealing milky whiskey for himself. To him that showed her how much he cared.

"No! I don't want a damn drink! Just shut up! Leave me alone!" she wailed hysterically.

Mack looked hurt.

"Then hit me! Go ahead, give me a f*ck*n good pop in the face!" he said gruffly. "You can't hit her, so you might as well go ahead and hit me instead, so you can get it out of you!"

"F*ck you!" she screamed! "I'm not going to hit you! You didn't do it!" she raged with the vehemence that hurt her voice.

With that, she ran back towards Mack and started to hit him, quietly at first, but quickly with blows as hard as she could muster. First she hit him in in the chest, the shoulders, and even his face. He sat there and did not react, did not respond.

Every few blows caused Marueen to sit down in the chair at the table and begin to sob. Mack would take a drink or two while she gathered more energy. Within a minute or so, her rage would reassert itself and she would begin throwing more blows at him. Mack did not care about himself, he only knew he loved her, and she needed to get this out of her system.

After about thirty minutes of this, Marueen had no more energy left to hit him anymore. In fact she had no energy left at all, and she slowly slid from the chair to the floor in exhaustion. With soft whimpers she eventually drifted off, the shear effort of pummeling Mack having taken her beyond her emotion, and simply resulted in her collapsing into deep sleep.

Mack looked at her laying on the floor. Reaching with his hand, he pulled on the collar of the old flannel shirt he had hanging on the chair next to him. He gently attempted to lay the shirt over Maureen's torso to keep her warm as she slept.

Still seated, he reached over and brought back the glass he had filled for Maureen and brought it back to drink himself, the milky glass having been drained.

"Sh*t." he muttered quietly, bringing the glass to his lips and looking down at the letter on the table in front of him. It was a letter from Maureen's sister. She had scrawlled on a piece of notebook paper the words, "I did it.... on purpose!"

Mack sat the glass down after draining it, and reached again for the mostly empty fifth in front of him.

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This is a very spur of the moment piece of writing, as I was already late. I hope it is at least somewhat interesting.

PipeTobacco