Uncle Liam’s Ashes - Flash Fiction by J.S. O’Keefe

 

Uncle Liam’s Ashes

Flash Fiction

by J.S. O’Keefe

When the doctor announced Uncle Liam had died on the operating table, I didn’t believe him. Not for a second. And I’d tell anyone willing to listen that he was still alive.

Everyone said I was crazy. “C’mon, Old Liam’s good for good, of course he did. Remember, you were right there when the doctor came out and told us. Anyway, why do you care? He hated us and despised you especially.”

Our uncle was a misanthrope, a professional same-day lender. Not only the townspeople but even we, his own family, couldn’t take him.

I’ll never forget, once I borrowed money from him and when I couldn’t pay him back he took my tricycle.

Frank McCourt’s masterpiece, Angela’s Ashes was Liam’s favorite reading. “I love that book,” he would tell us, “even though it’s very depressing. A real tear jerker.” It was Mrs. Finucane’s untimely death that depressed him.

A week passed and the hospital called that, please send somebody to collect the body and arrange the funeral.

Cost was not an issue—the local undertaker gave us an offer we could not refuse. “I’ll do it for free, funeral, cremation, wake, the works. I even throw in a reception, all you can eat, unlimited drinks. You name it, you’ll get it.”

Soon, however, we received a most startling news. The undertaker called from the hospital that they couldn’t find the corpse in the morgue.

Then it got worse. Several of Liam’s borrowers reported that he showed up in their houses at night, demanding payment. He was not a ghost but Liam himself. Alive, wrapped in a hospital bedsheet.

Till then, most of my family had pretty low opinion of me, rightfully so concerning my mental abilities, but that suddenly changed. “How did you know Liam wasn’t dead? The doctor was completely positive that he’d died. What are you, some kind of a seer, a psychic?”

“No, but I do keep my eyes open,” I said. “The doctor is old, needs a magnifying glass to read the news. I also noticed his hands tremble like dry leaves. He obviously couldn’t get the job done right.”

J.S. O’Keefe has published several short stories, creative essays and poems in print and online literary magazines. More at his website: https://www.szjohnny.net

Four Poems by Janet E. Irvin

 

Artist and Mermaid on the Beach 

 

He casts from the riverbank, 

brow furrowed, sensual lips drawn 

taut against the possibility of a bite. 

 

It is his lunch hour. He is hungry. 

                                            Later, there will be a handful of crackers, 

but, oh, his mouth waters for something more. 

 

She watches from the dock, pale arms 

already sunburned in the noonday heat, 

admiring how expertly he reels in a catch. 

 

She has escaped the secretarial pool, wandered 

down the rabbit hole of solitude, except 

she likes the way he looks in jeans. 

 

His line is free, while she, hopelessly tangled, 

considers how to lure him to her side,  

how to offer bait too delicious to resist,  

 

He is expected in the tattoo parlor by one, 

his ink in thrall to patrons with less 

imagination, no insight, and more money. 

 

or perhaps issue a siren call to echo 

the flash of scales, the swallowed  

hook, the promise of the fleshy feast  

 

A breeze lifts her blouse, the curve 

of a breast inviting, a waist small 

enough for his hands to encircle. 

 

they might clean and share 

when the day’s spell is done.

 

 

 

Graveside  

 

In that glimmer time  

between dusk and dark 

when the light lies quiet 

  

upon the land, two deer  

stroll from the trees  

to graze the cemetery, 

 

one with the departed  

souls that rise in the mist, 

shifting, voiceless, content  

 

to wander from rock to rocky  

headstone, the names 

as faceless as the souls  

 

buried there. While I, watcher,  

from a distant grove, gaze ever 

inward toward my own fading day. 

 

The doe lifts ears to catch the sound  

of yesterday, those faint, final gasps 

of a world slipping into yesterday.

 

 

 

At the Yellow Cab Tavern  

 

The sun slants low across the threshold  

of the old garage repurposed to welcome  

 

our separate bodies, equal hearts, the walls  

redolent with whiskey drinks, beer breath,  

 

and pizza slices big enough to share…  

the air sizzles with word pollen, poems  

 

lifting to the turbulent snap of fingers, 

the measured calls of amen and right 

 

on the stage that is an altar for the melancholy 

and the brave, the lost and the found, 

 

the abused and the used, once empty, full  

now, sated by honoring the work that flows 

 

like motor oil, greasing every soul just 

enough to piston into iambic heaven.

 

 

 

Inside the Labyrinth 

 

Step into the circle with intention. 

Open hands, ears, mind, heart. 

Count the steps to the first turning. 

 

Do you know what the wind 

calls? What the cicada hums? 

 

Turn, and turn again, an unbalanced 

rounding from one point to the next.  

What if you step too fast and lose the  

 

thread? A raven scolds, a trifold caw 

of regret. Segue to the breakfast table… 

 

you hold of mug of sadness, raise eyebrows,  

adjust the volume of complaints to low. I 

fold a napkin into a roadmap, read 

 

the tea leaves in my cup. That 

was yesterday. This morning 

 

I am halfway along the winding path 

listening for a secret word, a revelation 

from the center of this spiral universe 

 

that will open the way 

to reconciliation.

Janet E. Irvin is an educator, poet, and the author of eight mystery/thriller novels under the name J.E. Irvin. Her poems have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Creosote, The Raven’s Perch, Sky Island Journal, Flying Island Journal, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal, as well as various anthologies. A member of the Greenville Poets, Sisters in Crime, Central Ohio Fiction Writers, and Buckeye Crime Writers, Irvin resides in southwest Ohio on the edge of a nature park, which serves as inspiration for her work.