Author: Monica McHenney

Monica lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two foster dogs. She taught parents how to raise their toddlers for twenty-five years before retiring in 2015 to write. The secret to toddlers is to make sure you get enough sleep. Monica hasn't found the secret to writing, yet, but is diligently working at it. See links to her on-line stories on the publications page.

Dragonfly

Dragonfly Photo credit: Peter B. Kessler

The latticed wings resembled a ladder. Like a red-orange crayon they drew a line in the sky, a purposeful gash that attracted attention to the one broken stem in a field of reeds where it landed. The dragonfly held its position the way that top predators dominate a food chain. I snapped one picture after another, directing the lens towards its complex eyes. Imagine one insect seen through the lens of a camera and hundreds of moving human beings seen through a multifaceted instrument like the one the dragonfly projects from the slim taper of its body. Would you stay?

Daily Prompt: Flaunt

via Daily Prompt: Flaunt

Sitting with scientists? Flaunt your feelings. Punting with potentates? Cave. Believe it when zombie sightings are confirmed. Catch them and eat their brains. Take an extra scoop of grey matter. Enjoy the taste of apocalypse.

The dystopian realm of the upside down is an awesome place. Best ever buffet. A horde of shambolic goons roam untethered, contravening the will of large bureaucracies run by corrupted corpses. The politicians promise radical change. Hah, the place is showy and shallow.  It’s constituents swim into a swamp of post-truth pronouncements. They’re stabbed in the heart. Eat or be eaten.

Survivor

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My grandfather hijacks every conversation. Maybe World War II was the biggest thing that happened to him. The last time I wanted to borrow money, he told me that when he was nineteen his ship sunk in the Mediterranean. The water was red with blood. Many people were killed. I always thought that he exaggerated, but now I’ve read about that battle. I’m nineteen and I think, maybe if I’d been there, I’d have to keep telling that story about people I’d saved. Swimming, hypothermia, explosions, smoke. Video games, but real. Survivor’s guilt on steroids. Maybe he’s always had P.T.S.D.

Bezerkely Buzz

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There’s a buzz in Bezerkeley. Just a fly. Not a contact high. Swatting the pest, I cross campus. The fly follows me.

I took a shower. I say it out loud. That gets a few looks.

Embarrassed, I wave it away with my copy of The Daily. Sprinting through Sather Gate, breathing hard, I slow. Gliding ahead of me across a wide swath of grass, an owl skims the air just inches above my head. The fly tumbles in the jet stream of the bird’s wings.

Psst, a pesky whisper. It’s back. A streak of grey, a flycatcher. No more fly.

Daily Prompt: Tantrum

Tantrum
A tantrum is the bottom layer. Mostly, tantrums stay buried beneath a careful scaffolding of socialization. You hide, grateful for the conventions that gradually encase you, the interwoven vines like a strangler fig, supportive and unyielding at the same time.

A tantrum is the unfiltered id that is at best embarrassing and at worst criminal. It’s the way you express yourself when no one else matters. It’s the steel edge of selfish disregard.

On occasion, a tantrum can be a lifesaver. There are people who deserve to experience your tantrum. You know the ones. The rules don’t apply to them. When you’ve had it, with the best of intentions, you can let them have it. Sometimes they listen and even if they don’t, you’ve put them on notice.

Library

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He could not sleep. Padding to the kitchen in pajamas, he heated milk. Needing a cozy spot to sip it sent him from room to room, landing him in an overstuffed chair. Children’s illustrated books jumbled together with thick tomes, Pooh next to Jung, a shelf up from Wittgenstein, a shelf down from a huddle of keepsakes. He touched their textures, wound up a song. A tiny bowl, a Nutcracker ballerina, a music box, a rabbit tail.

A last ounce of milk. He rubbed his eyes and paged through his wife’s last drawings. Their life together. Now he might sleep.

 

 

Expectations

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Imagine an elevator on Thanksgiving. You are hurtling into a conflagration of turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and post-modern politics. Your mother, the feminist, stands left. Taking the middle, you and your school chum play at Cockney rhyming slang. Your Uncle Uncle embraces the Madmen Era. He never suspects that your friend, whose ass he pinches, is an expert kick boxer. He expects that gender rules. But it doesn’t. In the hall, she will enlighten him and he will nurse his bruised balls with one highball after another, reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the library.

Observe. You, too, will exceed his expectations.

Gypsy

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A woman worked the aisles of the train, singing a minor key Middle Eastern version of the blues in a guttural language. She wore primary colors in ancient patterns, suggesting crystal balls and gypsy caravans. You could tell she wanted money. Her stooped shoulders and broken teeth said she deserved it. At the end of the car, she pulled a metal bar from her skirts. Twisting it to jimmie the door, she took a breath in before crossing to the next car. Her scarves wrapped around her hand, she skipped across the swiftly moving gap of light above the tracks.

The President Bombs

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When the president declared war, he united the country. Cities of all sizes came out in force to demonstrate. There were signs that read, “The Achilles heel that made America great,” and, “Heel no, we won’t go.”

Three days on, the generals traded the nuclear codes for a military parade. The president tweeted he was joking. Like Reagan saying he’d bomb Iran. No one corrected the president. Reagan said Russia.

Some people remembered. Putin remembered. McCain wanted credit since he’d said, “Bomb, bomb, Iran.” Someone quipped about rockin’ and rollin’ without a plan. Most people agreed. The president bombed again.

 

Four Years Later

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If you laid a transparency of then across now, there’d be no difference. The oak tree was infinitesimally taller. Knee high corn still grew in the muddy fields. The white house, with green slatted shutters, slept on a rise beside an identical lilac. Yellow pig stench choked the air. Even the girl smoking a ciggie with him was the same. College had not really happened. The demonstrations, and the wild blue moons, and the nights up until dawn accumulating debt. None of that was true. The shutters, the tree, the girl, the ciggie. Those were the facts. The other was fiction.