Fragments - Flash Anthology

Two

Anon gift arrive doorstep - teenager camouflage birch harmony rifle screen door wrinkle dive pick-up sticker

Seeing the rusted green pick-up drive past the rotting postbox, a teenager ran out into the birch-tree woods. The old man pulled up his gravel driveway, his truck bouncing through potholes, splashing muddy water up the dusty tires. With a long groan, he let gravity assist his fall out the driver's side, landing with a soft thump on the gravel as his hide-boots compressed and launched a few stray pebbles away with small pops.

The old man fished behind his seat for a metal cane, then set off for his porch. But when he arrived, there was a new decoration set out of place. No, not a decoration. It couldn't be. He knew every pot, painting, and sculpture because they were all shaped or drawn by his worn, calloused, and stubby hands. This out-of-place and not-a-decoration was too perfect like a machine had soullessly shaped it. He had tried his hand at sewing before, along with crocheting and knitting. There was even a similar jacket somewhere in his garage, carefully folded up in a cardboard box.

This jacket that sat neatly on his doorstep was without an error, without a crease, without a wrinkle. On the front was a plastic sticker with a brand name.

Someone had brought him a camouflage winter jacket from some big-city store. It ruined the harmony of his decorations, its perfection distracting his mind. The old man slumped down and picked up the strange gift, his weight carefully balanced across his cane and his awkwardly angled feet. Cautiously, he returned upright with the unwanted object grasped by half his grip and opened the screen door with his remaining two fingers.

And, after finally passing through and closing his front door, the old man tossed the pristine jacket in a pile of other strange presents in the corner of the foyer. He sighed as the pile shifted and slide, the newcomer skittering a foot away and in front of his rifle. Whoever was leaving such things should leave him be. Soon, he won't be able to enter his own home, he feared. And either way, the old man wasn't about to change. It was probably those nosey no-goods trying to get his land again, or his good-for-nothing sons looking to butter him up before he croaked.