A Second Chance to Live & Breathe: Flypaper & Pickle Jars by Renee Coloman

The deeper Farrell walked into the house, the stronger the stench of putrid flesh. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand, removing it only to call out for his wife.

When I discovered the online literary magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, urgency surged through my veins to the tips of my fingers. I couldn't help myself. I couldn't stop the visuals in my mind from seeping into words dancing on the screen of my laptop. I wrote Flypaper & Pickle Jars knowing it belongs in Crow & Cross Keys. Knowing my speculative short story belonged where the wonderful and bizarre, beautiful and dark, could live and breathe a life it deserved.

Now, I have a second opportunity with another online literary magazine seeking to expand the presence of previously published work. Fingers-crossed. If the stars align, Flypaper & Pickle Jars will settle into a second home.

Below is the published flash fiction for your reading pleasure. Enjoy, my friends!

Flypaper & Pickle Jars

The last of the southern wind shimmied across the open fields, swirling and rustling leaves from the old oak tree. Crack. Another branch snapped and tumbled down, thudding against the unpaved road. A soft cloud of dirt whispered into the air, floated knee-high, then settled again. Restful, until Farrell walked its path, stirring another round of scattered dust ahead of the dying wind.

Farrell retrieved the broken branch, held it up and inspected it against the setting sun. Three feet, perhaps, in length. A diameter ‘bout the size of a fifty-cent piece.

“This will do fine,” he said. The husky man, bearded and thick-haired, didn’t seem like a man in his late fifties. He got along without a hitch. Without aches or pain, as he hammered the branch flat and horizontal against the topside of the wooden chair he started to build earlier in the morning, when the wind had whipped stronger and cracked more limbs from the old resilient oak tree. “This will do,” he said again, and sat on the DIY chair. It held up fine, holding the man’s weight. Two hundred ten pounds, give or take.

But Farrell didn’t construct the chair for himself. He built it for his wife, Evelyn. He called out to her, sweet and caring. The way he always did. The way his Southern family had taught him: generations of Buckley history carried on his back for years. Passed from this ancestral house. This sweet potato farm. These ten acres of flat land.

“Evelyn,” he called out. “Wind’s died down. Come sit in your new chair and enjoy the sunset with me.”

When Mrs. Buckley didn’t answer, he understood his wife needed a helping hand. Evelyn didn’t keep as fit as he did. Often kept inside, away from the wind, the dirt, the dust. She had turned inside out, too fragile to handle the farm like he did. Farrell sighed, hard and brusk. He tried not to think that his wife didn’t appreciate his efforts to keep her comfortable. But he was a man’s man, and sometimes his fury blew hard when he didn’t mean for it—in the end—to cause damage and pain. “I’m coming, Evelyn,” he said. And he tightened his lips, rolling up the corners into a practiced smile.

Inside the rebuilt farmhouse, Farrell took precaution. He felt pride that nothing much had changed over the last few decades. Low lighting, blanket-covered sofa, cabinetry hand-forged from the days when Farrell’s great-grandparents landed here from the eastern side of the country. Land. The family wanted, needed, their own private land. They’ve collected things. Dead treasures to feed the earth that other folks may not appreciate. Farrell kept up with the family’s intimate business. He’d dedicated a few areas inside the house for these treasures. He walked alongside them, calling for Evelyn. Did his best to ignore the rotting flesh of sweet potatoes hibernating in most of the rooms.

There were flies. Too many of them, and Farrell blamed himself for keeping too many windows open. Unlike his parents and their parents during the time they harvested the sweet potato farm, flypaper hadn’t been needed. But Farrell took an usual liking to the stickiness and hung the contraptions near the open, uncurtained windows and above the loose piles of rotting sweet potatoes spilling from the chairs and beds in each of the three back rooms. The deeper Farrell walked into the house, the stronger the stench of putrid flesh. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand, removing it only to call out for his wife.

“Which room are you in, Evelyn? These flies are buzzing thick back here. Seems I need to hang more sticky paper.”

Something stirred in the dankness of room number three, what once was his childhood bedroom. In there, he hadn’t bothered to open the window or spread wide the curtains. But he did hang at least thirteen strips of flypaper. Good thing, too. A swarm of them insects followed him inside. He found Evelyn there. No longer sitting on the bed, the way he left her earlier in the day. Her body had slid to the side, curled and prone-like. Her fingers, clawed. Her toes, worse. Could have been the hungry flies had knocked her over. Farrell dropped his hands from his mouth, hurried to his wife. He waved his arms, propeller-like, shooing the flies away as best he could. But they had already caused damage. Feeding on Evelyn’s open eyes, her open mouth, the festering bedsores crackling upon her skin, up and down her unclothed body. 

Farrell cursed the flies, and himself, too. He thought the rotting sweet potatoes would have distracted the insects and given him more time with Evelyn—to enjoy the sunset before he needed to dig deep in the soil and plant her. A treasure of nourishment for next season’s batch of them starchy, sweet-tasting roots springing up into a nice, fleshy purple. One limb at a time, he would have cracked Evelyn into fertilizing pieces. Arms. Legs. Torso. Head. Same way he did with his parents, his older siblings, his grandmother and grandfather. Lessons he learned from the special book his great grandma carried west from Salem. But Farrell’s no unappreciative brute. He saved the hearts. Kept them in pickle jars around the house, adding to the collection Great Grandma started after her fourth husband had turned inside out and died. Best of all, Farrell Stuckley’s sweet potatoes won first place every year at the county fair. Best tastin’ root in the entire state.

Now that Evelyn’s gone and done rotted, Farrell knew he had limited years before the soil beneath his old oak tree, and across his ten acres of land, would dry up, ruining his sweet potato farm, and leaving him with nothing but dirt and dust. He wasted no time. He cracked open Evelyn’s ribs and bit a piece of her heart. Enough to fit in a pickle jar.

Farrell’s no unappreciative brute. He saved the hearts. Kept them in pickle jars around the house ...

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