Magnum Ali

realized I've been posting a lot of poetry lately so here's a flash fiction I did for creative writing class. based somewhat loosely off of Asimov's "Rain, Rain, Go Away"

“So, Ali. Tell me, you got the dirt on him yet?” Ezra barged through our apartment’s door, the way he always does: his left shoulder banging the poor thing open like he was a linebacker, his right foot already working off his left shoe. One day, the door will fall off its hinges, but not today. Fortunately. I don’t think the landlord of these almost too-nice apartments would be too thrilled about that- nor would he like the cloud of dust that always hung around us and no one else.

“No, Ezra, I haven’t.” A sharp click as I closed my laptop. “I’m working, though.”

“Well, I mean, you are a private eye. Magnum Ali. Hah.” He laughed at his own awful joke, funny the first time only. Sometimes, I regretted the events which had led me to my employment, but Ezra was a jokester by nature and would have come up with different puns regardless.

“Really? I hadn’t figured that out, Ezra.” I rose from the dingy couch, placing my laptop on the table more often used as a footrest than anything else. “You thirsty? It’s hot out, but nothing a glass of ice water couldn’t help.”

“Sure.” His brow furrowed. “Hold the ice, though. And be careful. ”

“I know, Ezra.” I walked into the kitchen, pulled a glass from the cabinet, filled it slowly with cool water. Holding the glass with my arm outstretched, I returned to the living room. “See, I’m not totally incapable-”

At that moment, I tripped over my own two feet, spilling the water all over me and the already-ruined Persian carpet. My body began to dissolve, and the last thing I heard before I turned back into a runny pile of lifeless mud: Ezra muttering about “how you can’t trust a golem to do anything nowadays, they don’t make them like they used to.”