Mono-syllabic Words

by Karen Schauber

When I get home from school the police are already parked in front of my house, amber lights screaming. My brother has pulled a knife on the housekeeper. This time she has found girlie magazines hidden under his mattress and outed him to our mother. It’s a revolving joust of humiliation and retribution. Orthodox Christian revulsion vs nonchalant pubescent privacy. She thinks she’s winning. He’s going to kill her.

When the police interview me thirty years later I flash back to that day those times and Zora; my mother in her quilted housecoat and bunny-ear slippers running interference, flirting with the officers insisting it was a silly misunderstanding. Her giggles zippering up my spine. I go silent with an imperceptible moan, knowing then what was going to happen at some point down the line. I didn’t think it would take this long for them to nail him. I reply with a sober blank stare mono-syllabic words and fidget with my aching hand rubbing the space where he took my two digits. 

Karen Schauber’s flash fiction appears in eighty-five international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. including Bending Genres, Cabinet of Heed, Cease Cows, Ekphrastic Review, Fiction Southeast, New World Writing, Spelk; with three ‘Best Microfiction’ nominations. She is editor of the award-winning flash fiction anthology ‘The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings’ (Heritage House, 2019). Schauber curates Vancouver Flash Fiction, an online resource hub, and Miramichi Flash, a monthly literary column. In her spare time, she is a seasoned family therapist. Visit her online at KarenSchauberCreative.weebly.com.