Flash Fiction Scholastic Award Winner 2013

Jump The Shark

Scholastic Award Winner 2013 Flash Fiction

Marley Townsend, Age: 14, Grade: 9th 

Tamalpais High School
Mill Valley, CA 94941

On the day of your death, rain will fall in slanted, angry lines across your bedroom window. You will watch, from somewhere around the ceiling, as nobody cares to notice.
They will say you tripped. You tangled your cursed clumsy feet up and smashed into the posts of your cheap Ikea bed (förböveln!), leaving a murky pond of metallic blood on your landlord’s new carpet. It will be your final mission. He will curse you and your leaky cerebral matter later with a finger raised to the sky, his glasses askew. But you did not trip.

It is exceedingly important you don’t believe what they say.

At first, it’s the lack of sound that will bother you. It’s as if death has eaten all the noises, swallowed them whole. You can’t hear the couple downstairs arguing. You can’t hear your landlord as he mutters, disgusted at his dying mother. Because death, like theaters and libraries, is a silent beast, all teeth and nails.

But eventually you start to enjoy the newfound hush. You will start to subtitle things. Go ahead. Make children swear. Make a morose middle-aged banker tell his boss, quite solemnly, that he prefers bubble baths to the traditional scented candles. It will make you laugh silently, your translucent shoulders quaking with bored mirth. It will pass your time.

Do not attend your funeral. It will only make you angry. Your third-grade teacher, Mrs. Turnpike, will mouth embarrassing stories while the funeral home director eats all the free buffet food. You will notice he really likes champagne. Afterwards, you slash the tires of his new Hyundai. Whisper in his ear that he’s a cheap bastard as he stares at it in sweaty anger, rubbing his too-big ears anxiously with pancake palms.

They bury an empty coffin. Your body disappeared while in the morgue. A potbellied reporter will sigh. Nudge a female cop named Elsie with an elbow. Take a sip of his decaf, and say, “damn shame, that is. Damn shame. Can I have your number?”

Read the newspaper instead. You will find a neat, two-by-four article in the back, a picture of you, cropped accordingly, next to a column of nice things. You think it looks like ants. They call you a child prodigy, and a young, tragic victim. Again, they will say you tripped. “Such a sad thing, he jumped the shark at 21.” It will not mention your drinking problem. Or the twenty thousand in cash you lost, red-faced, in Vegas last year. Breathe. You sound wonderful.
Another article will brief the city on the business, and then you will slip away from their minds like failed reality TV show. You will notice it is smaller than your obituary, and it mentions the drinking. Don’t cry about it. Mourn your wandering corpse, then haunt a Goodwill. Doze off in an alleyway, and wake to find a homeless man crying into his coat, yelling at someone named Rachel through snot and sour tears. Throw things, have silent tantrums, and run on water. Go to France. Break the law, then remember, somewhat loathingly, that you are invisible. You start to feel the silence; it weighs on you, twenty-odd pounds of bored frustration.

They will never find your killer. You know it was murder. Someone shadowy who climbed in through an unlocked window, and smashed your face with a signed Sammy Sosa bat. Wonder, dryly, if it was corked. You never liked baseball much.

Your tongue will start to feel dry. Your feet, eternally wrapped in old Christmas socks, will start to fade, and your arms will cave in on themselves. You know your time is ticking. It’s been only a year since your death. You won’t want to go. But you are tired. Every floating, faltering step feels like a marathon in molasses to you.

Return to your apartment, small, dark, and occupied by an up-an-coming British DJ named Paul. Wander the halls, before coming to a stop in your old room. There is nothing but a faded purple stain, a flimsy reminder of a kid who died a clumsy fool.
Lay down. Paul will be beat-boxing lonely in the corner. Be glad you can’t hear him.
Give a last glance at the ceiling. It is speckled with age, a clump of fungus, and a tiny nest of spiders. You will feel suddenly warm.

Close your eyes.

It will be raining. Angry slants beat the window, and you can hear them, a final word in your aching ears. They are like delicate drums, simple, mindless rhymes to a strange poem. Probably spiritual. You don’t care.

Let it put you to sleep.

You will never wake up again.

Scholastic Winners 2013