DAN CARDOZA - FLASH FICTION

Dan has a MS Degree in Education from UC, Sacramento, Calif.  He is the author of four poetry Chapbooks, and a new book of fiction, Second Stories. 
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Recent Credits: 101 Words, Adelaide, California Quarterly, Chaleur, Cleaver, Confluence, UK, Dissections, Door=Jar, Drabble, Entropy, Esthetic Apostle, Fiction Pool, Foxglove, Frogmore, UK, High Shelf Press, New Flash Fiction Review, Riggwelter, Rue Scribe, Runcible Spoon, Skylight 47, Spelk, Spillwords, Stray Branch, Urban Arts, Zen Space, Tulpa, White Wall Review and Zeroflash.

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Electric Hedge Trimmer And My Missing Fingers                           
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​It’s late October, my favorite time of year. I can smell the damp rust of autumn leaves in the crisp air. I vow to take my sweet time on this beautiful Saturday morning.  After mowing the lawn, I stand in my tool shed, staring at my Echo HC-152, 20" electric hedge trimmer hanging high on the redwood wall, on its designated yellow hook. The trigger-happy, 20” jagged blade reciprocal trimmer, with silver sharks' teeth I now wish I never purchased.  Even if it was nearly 30 percent off at Lowes. The steam from my 190 degrees Starbuck’s latte escapes its to-go Calderon like a caffeinated ghost.  
 
I snap-out of my foggy gaze and feel a slight pang of guilt. The disheveled hedges and shrubs must be annoyed from waiting, puffing their faces blue in the chill of a breeze. I can almost hear their green teeth chatter. I have good cause to make them wait. Fear. Maybe if I would have been a little more careful, or just kept using the manual clippers, the tragic accident would have never happened. After all, the manual clippers required the use of two hands, making it all but impossible to cut my hands. But no, I just had to take advantage of the sale.
 
There on the concrete floor, beneath the electric hedge trimmer, I see two fingers and a right thumb, thatched in a small bloody pile. The thumb still oozing, the metacarpal bone dull white and jagged.  The wound gapes like the gills of a dead fish. Next to my thumb, the phalanx index finger bone is splintered and the nail nearly black.
 
I wish my thumb had been spared. That haunts me the most.
From now on, it’s strictly air guitar for me. I am going to sell my Fender guitar.
 
 But I also mourn not being able to point out the brightest star in the sky to my young daughter, with my index finger. Now neither exists.  The singular event I won’t miss is walking Tiffney down the aisle someday.  I imagine it clearly, everyone staring at my narcissistic missing fingers and thumb with me getting more eyes than Tiff, all dressed up in her beautiful white wedding gown.
 
It’s early Saturday morning, long before I’ve made peace with the Photinia and Rosemary shrubs, now warming in the early morning sun. I dream that eternity is an itch I will never quite be able to scratch.  At exactly 3:00 A.M., I abruptly wake in the pitch black of dark, in a teeth-chattering cold sweat. Someone is in my bed, panting and gasping for air, as I frantically finger my eleven digits like a litter of newborn puppies. Somewhere, a Lowe’s night shift team member is hanging sales tags on brand new Echo Hedge Trimmers.
 

Sweet Poison
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1

​My computer faces the window. So if there is any activity, I am always assigned a front row seat. Two sheriff patrol cars pull into the driveway across the street; Harry and Sharon’s house. The officer’s casually exit their respective vehicles, enter the home. So, I automatically assume nobody is shot in the gizzard. I continue surfing Google, paying intermittent attention to my daytime soap opera. 
 
Todd and Samantha live together, at his parent home. Todd 17, Sam is 14. Sam was recently kicked out of her parent’s home because they designated her a handful. Sharon convinces Harry to let Sam move in. Sharon rescues lost puppies, stray cats, and baby birds that stumble out of nests and teens apparently.
 
Todd and Samantha, not puppies, quickly learn the nuances of puppy love. Anytime you ferment a teenage Calderon of burgoo, and spice it with hormones and estrogen, you get an amalgamation yielding rocket fuel and sexy-time shenanigan. Sex under covers, behind hedges, in cars and sheds, and damn near anywhere shadows block light.  Today, as they march Todd down the stairs and into the back seat of a squad car, my interest level percolates. Yours would too, don’t act so sanctimonious and judgmental.
2
Where was I? Within 20 minutes, the back window of the squad car is bulging, from the mule like kicks of an out of control teenage boy. Thankfully, the glass is a one way, ballistic hybrid, apparently mule proof. After a stern lecture, from both officers, more patient than me, they take the handcuffs off and place him back in the squad car, drive him away. I suspect the officers have teenagers. I never hear what happened from Harry, who loves to get buzzed over Sangria, chips, and cheese.
 
One week later, Todd moves to his grandfather’s dairy, on the Smith River, near the redwoods in Northern California, a paradise on earth.  Sam stays with Harry and his wife, two more years, and then graduates with honors from high school.  She and her young son then join Todd at the dairy he now runs. Harry and Sharon divorce, and move far away, from here, and each other.
 
Much of the time, there is room for compassion, and tough love, but not both.
 
A few years after they move, my 36 year old stepson is murdered in Reno Nevada, by a Swat team, after his girlfriend calls the Washoe County Sheriffs’ office; not her first time.  After a two hour standoff, they smash in the front door, and the lead fires two shots. David dies instantly, from one of the .223 rounds, piercing his spinal cord. Hearing this, I am relieved no one else is injured. My Ex and her Ex-husband later meet at the Washoe County sheriff’s office, and all concur suicide by cop. 
 
 
3
I filed for divorce one year prior, because I was sick and tired of drinking someone else’s poison and expecting them to die.