Short Stories by Taflin
An Average Day
Today is an average day.
It starts in the flower shop down the street, one bouquet of lilies, a few purple hyacinths. Each little vase left quietly on the porch of a mourning family. I hate seeing people like that.
I go to the store to get ingredients for my casserole. I don’t know why people always make casseroles for people after someone dies, but here I am, doing it almost every day. While I’m at the store I recognize the daughter of a man I once knew. She has the same crying eyes people always do. I tell the cashier I’d like to pay for her groceries as well and her crying eyes brighten for a moment.
I make the casserole and deliver it to a widow. She pats my cheek and almost cries, just like they all do. She invites me in and we chat for a few moments about her late husband. She asks me about my work but I keep the conversation on her. Nobody wants to know what I do all day.
I leave an anonymous check in a mailbox on my walk back home from the widow’s house. The man in the house doesn’t know he’ll need it yet, but his wife won’t be coming home today, and funerals are expensive. It’s a real shame, his wife is lovely. But she’s on the list, and when someone is on the list it means they have to go.
I go into a small bakery and buy one of almost everything. The baker tries to hide behind long hair, but I can see his eyes are the same as all the others I’ve seen today, that I see every day. The eyes that I create.
I see the woman in the park, standing on a bridge, watching ducks nibble at scraps of bread. It’s almost too perfect. Beneath her are rocks and slippery moss and fast-moving water. Such a convenient place for an accident. That’s how I always make it look.
When I get home for the night, I make a note to buy extra flowers tomorrow.
Today was an average day.
Body Count
The fifth or sixth wave of ships came rolling in across the filthy waters. Soldiers got seasick over the sides of the boat and into their helmets; packed in so tight they didn’t have time to reach the edge. Ships either barely made it to shore or were torn apart by the hedgehogs and destroyed by the artillery rounds coming from the German batteries. Machine gun nests and pill boxes spilled infinite .50 calibers into the red earth below the cliffs. Soldiers fell all across the beach, most never get up.
One soldier sprints up the beach, racing Nazi-fire to the weak cover of the shrubs. His race is cut short; shrapnel from an exploded Higgins shredded his back, neck, and arms. His helmet flew off with the blast and he was thrown to the ground as even more shrapnel ripped into his skull. Bloody sand mixed with the soldier’s involuntary tears and flowed into his gasping mouth. The butt of his rifle dug into his ribs, but it was a pain he never noticed.
Warm blood oozed from his broken body and flowed into the red river that was already running out to sea. He could hear shouts, screams, grenade blasts, and rapid fire from both sides. He smelled cordite, wet sand, and sweat. The ocean sucked at his boots and his rendezvous seemed miles across the hellish beach though it was merely a few yards up.
The soldier’s mother stood before him, beside his father, little brother, and older sister. His girlfriend smiled at him, like she had before the war.
High tide stole the soldier from his memories and yanked him out to sea. He floated among mines, barbed wire, and hedgehogs as his pained moans began to fade. Salt seeped into his wounds as the ocean’s wreckage tore them open even more and burned his raw flesh. The soldier didn’t bother to notice.
Unforgiving waves sailed the soldier up under an abandoned jeep that was stuck where wet sand met dry. The soldier’s body became lodged under the back tires where he would stay until the corpsmen made their rounds across the quiet beach for a body count.
The soldier let himself be rocked to sleep by the frothy waves, so calm and soft in his failing mind. His girlfriend stood before him again, saying goodbye like she had when his unit had been shipped out. She continued to smile at him until he was as lifeless as the diamond ring he had bought for her and carried in his shirt pocket.