An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature
by: Amanda Pica
Mabel wished the window would open farther, to let in a better breeze. She tapped her fingers along her collarbone, feeling for the fabric there that stifled her skin, but when she found nothing to tug on, she let her arm fall back into her lap.
Evening light cut a line across the floor tile and bathed Cliff in marigold and amber. Mabel wished to embrace him. Wished for his arms to circle her waist again, carefree and weightless like those after-school days in the apple grove. She’d been slight and wispy, and he’d hoist her up with such ease she’d swear for a split second she’d taken flight. Mabel’s frame had filled itself out over the years, first through her baking skills and then through menopause, but had once again become slight. Had ground the life out of itself. Had once again become wispy, but this time, without the sun-kissed strength of youth.
A single butterfly squeezed into the room through the small gap where the window should have met the sill. It fluttered around Mabel’s face, patterns of lemon and butter laced with black webbing, and she giggled, then rubbed her nose where its wings had tickled her.
“She’s a sweetheart, isn’t she?” said the butterfly.
“That’s my Mabel.” Cliff patted her knee and she turned her face to him to warm herself in his glow.
The butterfly flapped, a papery sound followed by scratching. Mabel tilted her head but didn’t follow the sound.
“Can she bathe herself, Cliff?”
More scratching. Mabel furrowed her brow and let the smile on her face dip before pulling it back up. Inquisitive little insect. Cliff’s voice rumbled on in his beautiful butterscotch baritone, overlayed by a slight waver that had started a few years ago. She wished to talk to him about how some things should remain private, between a husband and a wife.
“How about toileting? Can she do that on her own?”
Mabel blinked a few times. Such an intrusive insect. The evening light shifted and the bright splotches on the butterfly’s wings shifted too, morphed with the light until they shimmered. Translucent now. Elongated.
Mabel froze, not that she’d been moving much before. The warmth of the evening sun had tricked her. The 5 o’clock angle had been wrong, wrong, wrong. 6 o’clock. That was the time of fact. Even more? 6:30. Once the sunline had crossed to the opposite wall, that was when the canary sun sang its truth. That had been no butterfly. All this time, flitting about their room, masquerading in a beauty that didn’t belong to it. It was a mosquito, with too many skinny lines and not enough color, and a proboscis the size of a garden hose. Two drinks and Mabel would dry up into one of those mummies Cliff had taken her to see in Chicago.
Sandpaper raked up the inside of Mabel’s throat and a dreadful noise filled the room. The mosquito in butterfly’s clothing focused its horrible eyes on her. Lens after lens after lens, layered like fish scales, glimmered a sickened chartreuse with the setting sun.
“Is this the beginning of one, Cliff?” asked the wretched mosquito.
The beginning of what?! Swat it, Cliff! Swat it before it bites!
The words stuck tight. Mabel shoved at those stone monoliths in her brain but they refused to slide toward her mouth where she could speak them. Instead, they slipped toward the ever-growing drain hole in her mind, where thoughts got eaten up and never came back. She threw herself at the immoveable words and her body trembled in response. The horrid noise infected the air, filled all the cracks and footholds between her and Cliff and left nowhere for her to grab on. She couldn’t get to him. Mabel flung her head back in a desperate try at dislodging the stubborn words, and when her head struck the back of the chair, golden sparks shot across her vision.
Cliff stood next to her now, one hand pressed to an ear and the other, somewhere else.
Where?
Missing. Missing.
Cliff’s arm was gone, melted into nothing, digesting in mosquito bile. Mabel twisted in her chair and her arms flapped up and down, left, right, left again. She had never been good at swatting insects. Cliff would laugh at her unseemly pliés and leaps, rolled newspaper in hand, until he’d finally take it from her and with one whack, splat the offending bug into a jaundiced smear of guts.
Her breath came in bursts and her own hands flitted about her head, sometimes bouncing off her own cheeks. How could he save her this time? One hand wasn’t enough. A newspaper wouldn’t be enough.
The mosquito flew close and Mabel struck out, missing it like always, the clumsy ballerina who never hit her mark. And then, through the screeching noise, something else.
Something doleful and sweet, a bite of mango sorbet that soothed her aching throat.
“…you make me happy, when skies are grey. You never know, dear, how much I love you…”
Cliff’s lovely voice didn’t waver, not even once through the song. He’d taken his hand off his ear and tugged her saffron dress back down over her knee. The terrible noise faded and when she felt Cliff’s other hand on her back, the screeching cut off entirely. He rubbed her spine with a light touch, just enough to know he was there. His arm was there. A miraculous touch, as he’d reattached it. He’d saved it. Saved them. Her Cliff could move mountains.
“…please don’t take my sunshine away.” Cliff’s voice hitched on the last phrase of her little song and Mabel smiled at him. A breeze outside blew through the black-eyed susans that covered the trellis just off the window, and with it, the mosquito had blown away.
Cliff met her eyes and her thoughts pooled together into a pot of warm honey.
“I love you, my dear. With all my heart. Excuse me for a moment? I need to attend to something, but I’ll be just outside the door.”
Mabel smiled at Cliff, and wished to say she loved him too, just as she had in the apple grove that first time, when the words had brought lightning with them. She turned her head again to the window, where the buttercups danced in the grass. Someone spoke outside the room, but the muffled words wove into straw and cornsilk and caught themselves in the doorway.
“I think she’ll be content with us, Cliff. We can manage her care, and she’ll grow to know our facility as home.”
“I’ll miss her.”
“Of course you will. You’re welcome to visit as often and for as long as you want.”
Cliff’s voice wavered, in bigger swoops than before. “Could I paint her room yellow? It’s always been her favorite, after all.”