The Meaning of Old Tattered Flag Bags

A 1,600-word short story

This morning my letter had been read. Finally. But who cares? And to what good? My letter had been received and “deliberated over” at a huge sighing table of thick-necked, broad-shouldered, shadow-faced men who glanced and glared and spoke sharply through sighs and whose mouths were shielded by clasped-fingered, fat, ring-adorned hands.

They commenced to speaking in noises like “hrm” and “tsk”.

Herman Fisk sat at the head of the table, just a head in a jar for all to see, metaphorically.

30 feet from me.

I sat in this very bored room at one end of the exaggeratingly long boardroom table, he at the other. A cadre aligning both sides.

Rings shining, gleaming, golden. Masking faces. Golden glares flared, dancing off the dim room’s walls.

They dismissed me with no words. A wave of a golden hand flashing through the shadow.

I cleared my throat. Not to speak, just as a nervous tick to avoid awkward silence as I gathered my papers, tapping them on the table to straighten them up. I scooted (with 3x the force I assumed would be necessary) my heavy chair back with a loud screech and walked out the door. The oversized dress shoes I found rat-nibbled behind a dumpster click click clicked down the dark hallway and down the twisting back staircase to re-renter the chilly night.

The sort of chilly night whose winds howled through narrow alleyways unseen but heard (and very very most definitely felt).

As I clinched my coat collar around my chin, sharp winds in spurting gusts made flags snap, ripple, and clap.

Back in my youth, I would be comfortably in doors. In a heated home where mother would make this type of chilly night a chili night! Ground beef! What a thing to be readily available to any consumer with a $5 bill in their new blue denim pocket. A dream life...

I looked both ways and crossed the street. Pulleys clinked arrhythmically on metal poles.

***

I could have received dozens of dollars for my tattered flag bag but I was—again—floundered by the company’s co-founder. With no oversight who’s to stop the top from churning, whisking, and grinding to emulsify those vulnerable to the emulsification below.

Sheer will, determination, and a taste for goods of the old world were my motive, motif, or motivation to will (ikigai). A singular Rice Krispy Treat would suffice… oh my… the sizzle, crackle, and pop (or whatever their slogan had been).

My will was harmed and unbothered simultaneously on a daily basis at this point.

I kicked a can down the sidewalk for ages, considering my luck and station. I kicked the can and walked until it was nearly time for Herman to be off work. I had been meandering the blocks in a spiraling square that grew larger and larger, then turned back. Reducing the spiral back inward, imagining my walking path as a cinnamon roll being unraveled and eaten from one end. A square cinnamon roll. Oh, cinnamon rolls, how I remember you and yearn. That doughy nugget in the very center was Herman’s apartment home.

I arrived at the doughy nugget just as he was pulling in. Of course, we did not make eye contact and pretended not to notice each other.

Skulking around the side of the building with my hands in my jacket pockets I found the fire escape and ran up the narrow stairs with both hands on each side rail, pattering hollow tinny echoes ricocheted around the narrow alleyway. When I reached the 4^th floor, I slithered through the window which was left unlocked just for me.

***

Sitting with one ankle on my knee, I twiddled my foot up and down anxiously. However, I was not anxious. I just needed to flitter my foot in this way after doing a lot of walking. I fingered the rat-nibbles and pulled the laces taught.

I turned to my side and jumped in surprise. I had not seen Herman’s young daughter standing in the corner of the room, how long had she been there? But she wasn’t paying any attention to me, she was just bobbing along and dancing to something in her head, something unheard. Then I realized the rhythm of her movements... It was directly synced with the song that had been stuck in my own head as I walked along my cinnamon roll.

“Dear,” I said. “What is it that you are dancing to?”

Her eyes shot towards me and she stopped moving. Herman came in with two cups of hot water tea and the young girl ran out of the room the same direction in which he had entered.

We sat in silence with our arms folded across our bellies. The hot water was too hot to sip. The only sounds were crackles from the burning fire.

“Well, Herman…” I said, tapping my knuckles together and staring at the fire. “Why didn’t they accept my letter? My flag bag is as good as anyone’s.”

“They don’t believe the letter, I think. They don’t believe you actually have all those flags.”

As I looked at him (his back to the fire) flames protruded from the sides of his head, around and up. A red glow ovaled oblongly around him, the face unseen. Just a smooth shadow. A face shaped silhouette in the center of the red orange glow. Another head-in-a-jar look. This rendition was Space Kook esque. Oh Scoob…dear Scoob. Television used to be such a great thing when electricity was still purchasable in large quantities by a standard citizen. Simply tell the company where you live and they would turn on the power for your unfettered consumption, and then charge you for it later! What an ingenious and generous society. Companies! Companies whose best interest was to get you what you want, not need. As we have found, our needs are quite low, a few bugs a day and a jug of water for the week and we survive.

A society steam-rolled by flags.

“Well… I’ll just have to show them then.”

Herman stood up and rung his hair with his hands and opened his mouth as if silently screaming.

“Don’t.” he said. Then settled back down into his patched-up flannel-covered arm chair.

I then noticed Herman’s young daughter had snuck back into the room at some point. She was silently peeling apart a dandelion from the stem, periodically glancing up at us, taking in who-knows-what from the conversation, as kids do.

And what I would not give for a nice dandelion brew.

I took to my closet and shut myself in for the night’s rest.

***

When I woke, Herman was gone, and the child was off to her “school”.

Herman had—very kindly—left half a hardboiled egg for me, boiled in last week’s bathwater, and a nice little hunk of asiago, one of the last bits from his 4-inch diameter government issued birthday wheel. There was a note on the table where I generally sat for my morning hot water tea and grits.

I unfolded the single, thin, nearly translucent, sheet of recycled-paper-paper. It read: “Don’t”.

A sharp cleat of morning sun poked through a broken window blind.

I walked to the window and raised the blinds. Clouds seemed to hang around, lingering in wispy vestiges. Pulling themselves apart slowly like cotton candy—a mix of the old worlds three most popular cotton candy colors—in the morning sun. The beautiful hue was deepened, or embellished, by the smog. The beauty of this world will continue to astonish even as it’s choked out.

My brain began to coalesce into what was necessary. No one will hold my hand in the morning and tell me what needs to be done with this life. I downed the dregs of my hot water tea, slung my coat around myself like a cape, and tucked my flag bag in the crook of my arm. Then quickly out the window and down the fire escape.

***

Life became visible under our smog filtered sunlight. Things visible which were unseen under moons night. I looked around the street, cans creeped through the day, here and there. Seemingly everywhere. You could never make dozens of dollars from them. Just loose rattling coins for loose rattling conjoined twins scooping aluminum and tin. I gave them good mornings greetings to lift the spirits they were in. We are told it makes sense since they’re the model of sin. Afterall, we live at hope’s end.

I would be right there along beside them, had it not been for good Herman’s grace. Today I had a small hunk of asiago’s taste, even that must be relished in this place.

A good friend, a mentor, a pillar to lean on, hope of having my own 1-bedroom apartment with receiving room and 2 closets some day soon. If only he could get them to receive me again today, this flag bag was undoubtedly worth dozens of dollars.

I turned a corner and looked both ways then proceeded to cross the street. Just then, a slender black car shot out of from the place it had been idling on the curb. Herman’s slender black car. I attempted to dodge but the gas pedal had been floored. Things went black.

I opened my eyes to the wide sprawling candy sky. Pinned under the bumper I tilted my head back, peering upside down through blurred vision to see Herman gathering the flags that had sprawled across the reflectively wet pavement. He got back into his car and carefully reversed, to not run me over. Then puttered off with grey smoke, towards the location the power lines seemed to be stretching to.

.