Nightmare Fuel, Day the Eighth - Regrets

Before we launch into today's flash fiction, a bit of serious business: a member of my community needs help. Brianna Ebinger is a classmate of my daughter, her mother the leader of a local girlscout troop. You can read the details here, but the short version is that Brianna is seriously ill, her parents unable to work as their place is at her side in the hospital, caring for her. I hate having to share these things - I hate living in a world in which we need to share these things, yet here we are. Anything you can do to help is appreciated, be it a few dollars or even boosting the signal so others can help. THank you.


Now, back to our regularly-scheduled program:

Welcome to the eighth day of this, and something completely different.

Yesterday and the day before Chloe and I each wrote a story from the prompt. Today we wrote one together, each writing a few lines and passing the paper to the other. What we came up with is something that neither of us would have written on our own.

This was another sparse set of entries, perhaps because it's the weekend and perhaps because the prompt was a difficult one. We did get a nice bit of poetry from Kary Gaul, more horror from Jenny Perrson, and a really nice piece from Samantha Dunaway Bryant which - like the best flash pieces - hints at more than it shows.

Here follows Chloe and my contribution. If you're sharp-eyed you can see where we passed the pen between us, and the gleeful mischievousness in leaving a challenging place at which to continue.

Regrets

by Leonard and Chloe Suskin

You're walking down the street not really doing much of anything when suddenly you notice a child's

Image by Lyndsey Clements

toy - or so you think. It's night and as the red toy (for it cannot otherwise be described) starts moving toward you you take in your surroundings. You're on a nice street with a sidewalk and amazing houses.

You realize that this is probably somebody's pet in a costume. As you relax, it begins to talk. Its voice is faint, but clearly a voice. You bend down to listen, creaky kneebones complaining, bringing your face close to this shabby thing with redrubber skin worn smooth by years of loving touch. It's breath is dry and smells of rubber and plastic.

"What do you regret" it asks, enunciating each word in the irritated tone of anyone having to repeat themselves. The way one always has to do when one is a rubber toy too low to the ground for passersby to properly hear. You kneel beside it in the yellow glow of the sodium lamp and are surprised to find yourself pondering the question posed by this discarded child's plaything.

What do you regret?

Then it hits you. You regret ever going into space, not knowing what your family was doing. Not being there for your daughter's first day of school. You tell it, "I regret being here, and not home with my family." 

"Well," it tells you, "I once thought that way before I was transported here and you know the answer I came up with? Travel"

"Travel?" I repeated.

"Yes. Travel."

You stare at the thing through eyes welling with tears. You've lived a good life, are in a good place, here among the manicured lawns and perfect houses under this alien sky.

You've lived a good life, but for your regrets.

Somehow the thing is bigger now, or you're smaller. Big enough to climb atop, gently bouncing crosswise to the world yielding rubber beneath your 

                                                                                        legs tight around your rubber flanks as you carry your rider back to before they left, before you were abandoned here on this stretch of sidewalk a million miles from home.

You travel, you go back.

You wait.

You listen, you collect regrets.