The Black of Ash and Smell of Smoke

La cucaracha

Its nothing but smashing a bug, she said to him. Its been done more times than breaths in the world.

But why would I be so average, so boring. If everyone has gotten a time at smashing a bug, why should I?

You’re not going to do it, not for me. Of course.

I’m not going to do it, for that bug.

It crawled six legs on a wall and two wings folded like the dead man’s arms in his last rest.

She stood, kinetic energy marrow deep in her. The bug tapered in the air, its wings testing little licks at the taste of the kitchen open. On the stove is where it stopped.

She backed her back to the wall, pushing a finger there----THERE----kill it! Oh please!

He watched her soul stir like a current made by children in the day of summer and the pool of a neighbor. Her face quivered and body shook. The bug did not move. Still it stood on the legs of six. Insect, the little beast should be paranoid but is the only life that is not.  To live and meet a thumb and be dead and more so than dead, be flattened, that is life in the single moments. Single moment life: fly, move, eat, sex.

            Single moment: Dead, tissue paper trash.

He took her fingers in a closed palm. You’ll have it then. I will for you, and the bug.

            Close, he put his face to the stove top. The bug under him with grace neither distrusted. Close, like the feeling of a kiss interrupted.

            Smash it! What in God’s bowels you doing!

            Shh.

            Shh?

            His lips made the gestures of secrets, quiet short stories. He spoke to a friend on the stove. As a friend asks a favor in the privacy of loud music and others’ drunkenness is the manner he spoke to the insect.

            The lips stopped for a sad smile, a smile for the joy of agreement alone. He lifted his head.  As a man burns wood, and as a child throws frogs at car windows, he dialed the stove knob to HI. Red the stove platter lit like a cigar among a starless night’s black.

Hot, HOT HOT.

The insect projected up, wings flashing dust of pin needles. Over the stove platter, wings stopped, recoiled in, shut casket doors. The insect fell into the red and became black of ash and memory like smoke.

            You could have just smashed the thing you know? Always the dramatics. Talking bugs into suicide and s**t, Jesus.

            He put a pot on the stove and boiled tea.

Author's Note

Thats hot.

Reviews

[Chadvonswan]

This should've gotten Perfect.

[Chadvonswan]

Im really digging your prose style in this one, man..!!
At first i didn't know what was going on from the lack of quotation marks, but then I figured it out...Cormac .McCarthy style..Nice bromaestro!!

[ZackOfBridge]

Hey thanks bud, this one was a bit of experimentation. Thanks for the reads and the comment.

[Crusty Pizza Stain]

That was a nice piece. Sometimes it takes a stove to kill an insect.