Ficlets

I must be remembering it all wrong.

We were on a vanishing road, and even inside the car there was was more sky than car. My wife was sunburned and kept talking about avocadoes and paint.

At once a man stepped into the road and then men were everywhere. He was almost a freight box on one end, with customs markings painted on his side in stencil.

But then this has to be the same day. Because that is when my wife said, “Why don’t they call it all where? It’s the same thing. You know: everywhere, every single where, each and every last where. All where.”

This is when a gang came up behind the man and attacked him: the freight box, still in the road. Two of them held him while another stripped him naked. Then they were all around, like wasps, beating him. I could see the cut above his eye from there.

But that was Arizona, and my wife and I fought about this in upstate New York, fought because I didn’t do anything, not even from the car. I didn’t say a word. Yes, I must be remembering it wrong.