Nothing Left to Show

Flash fiction about a horrible situation.

“Someone, no one gives a shit who, gave the parts of an ax the same names as human body parts. Now, I want you to learn them, so pay attention.”

The ax eye never sees the whole.

Pay attention.

His father’s voice is all he ever hears.

It slams around in his skull always. It narrates his dreams. When he sits listening to his physical father both voices chant in wood and steel harmony.

A harmony of severing.

The ax eye sees a cleaved thing. It sees a head with no rabbit. It sees a boy with no mother.

“Show me the eye, son.”

The boy holds up the ax and points to the oval of the wood handle that’s driven through the top of the ax head. Soft wood within cold steel. Living flesh within a hard lie. His father places a cool hand on his head, “this boy has no mother. This boy is living flesh within a hard lie.”

Pay attention.

The boy’s eyes are brown. His father’s eyes are not. The mother he doesn’t have does not have brown eyes either. Brown eyes are soft flesh within a hard lie. Every Sunday, with her green eyes wrinkled at the edges the no mother says, “I made your favorite breakfast, my sweet little man.” His favorite is the ax, but she thinks it’s strawberry pancakes.

This boy is soft flesh within a hard lie.

Cheek to beard. Soft cheek to rough beard.

“Show me the cheek.”

The boy lays the ax on his father’s work bench. The garage smells like gasoline and cut grass. His father is wearing a blue button up shirt, top button undone and sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His father smells like sweat and the stuff he drinks. The boy runs his fingers along the smooth, flat part of the ax head. Its cheek. It shines hard in the blare of the workbench light. The ax is clean. The boy always cleans it after the rabbits. His father taught him to. His father taught him that he had no mother.

The no mother likes beards.

“She wanted me to grow a beard, but I wouldn’t. Beards are for hippies and lazy fucking bums. She laughed when I said no.” His father lays a cold hand on his forehead, “this boy has no mother. Now show me the beard.”

The boy slides his fingers down the cheek to the smooth angle where it slopes into the cutting edge. Cheek then beard then cutting.

Pay attention.

This boy has no mother. The no mother’s cheek is smooth when she kisses him goodbye for school and she smells like flowers. Sometimes he spends a moment and inhales.

Pay attention.

This boy has no mother.

The father rubs his hands along his own smooth cheeks, they’re calloused on pale. Not pink on pale like the no mother’s. The father shows the boy a mirror.

“What do you see in the mirror?” He asks the boy who sees skin the color of dirt. Sun-kissed, the no mother says, because he spends so much time outside with Daddy. His father says his dirt skin will grow a beard one day.

Soft cheek to rough beard.

A shoulder to carry the heavy head.

The garage door is closed. On the other side of it the boy can hear kids playing. He tells his father he sees dirt in the mirror. His father puts a cold hand on his forehead, “this boy is dirt.”

This boy has no mother.

Pay attention.

The father puts the mirror away and brings the boy back to the ax, “show me the shoulder.” The boy slides his fingers to the handle, to the swelling just under the heavy blade.

“We all carry a weight on our shoulders.” The father tells him that his weight is living within a lie. He presses a cold hand to the boy’s forehead, “this boy has no mother.” When he slouches at the dinner table the no mother tells him to throw his shoulders back, to sit with pride and confidence.

“You’re something special,” the no mother says.

This boy is dirt.

The no mother put the weight of a lie on him. Lies are heavy. Lies can be wielded.

Pay attention.

“Where are the belly and the back?”

The boy closes his palm around the center of the handle where the convex side curves out with the blade. It curves out like the soft belly the no mother holds him to when she cries. His fingers curve around the belly of the handle, his palm rests on the back. The blade scrapes along the wooden work bench as the boy picks up the ax.

This boy has no mother.

This boy is a lie.

Lies can be wielded.

Pay attention.

“Show me the throat,” the father scrapes a match along the rough work bench and lights a cigarette. He sucks hard, then in his tight voice, “the throat. Show me.” He says it.

The boy swings. The father’s throat opens up like a watermelon. Before the rabbits he made the boy split watermelons. The father falls. The boy spends a moment watching the blood spread and snuff out the cigarette. He waits until the smoke disappears. The voice doesn’t.

This boy has no mother.

Pay attention.

He steps over the father and into the house. The no mother is cooking. She is bent over a pot and singing and doesn’t see him coming. He shows the no mother’s head to the ax head. She brings the pot and soup down with her when she falls. The boy spends a moment watching potato soup and blood curl into each other. With nothing left to show, he lays down on the floor next to the no mother, and cradles the ax.