The Nature of Relationships
This was from a flash fiction prompt of the following:
Your story this week will be about a god, goddess, or cosmic idol outside of such human notions. Anything else is completely in your hands as a creator. Your god may be a primordial entity shaping the whole of reality from the void. They may be a technological totem worshiped by cyberpunk missionaries. They could even be a celestial, urban fantasy mob boss, accepting tithes in the form of their cut of the numbers racket. Any genre and any setting are on the table. Your god does not have to be the protagonist of the story, they just need to be the crux of the narrative.
I took the flash challenge, which has the prompt-giver determine which deity from which pantheon for your writing to feature, doing so by using the random page feature on from https://www.godchecker.com/. The random god I got was:
Chibiabos, Wolf Lord of the Dead at Spirit Realm HQ
Researching this, I found there are many variations to this story with only a few things in common. Slowly a story, or at least a character and his journey, emerged. I might not have tied too closely to the prompt and my pacing is not my favorite as I ran into the word count limit before I had planned, which seems to be a common trait when I have firm time word count limits around my work. That said, there is much of this piece that I enjoy and desire to explore further.
Content Warning
This work explores tragedy, grief and death.
Stealing a car sounded so much more serious than what Gilbert did, it’s not like anyone was using it.
He pulled his bike offroad as the first stop light became visible at the edge of town. He relieved himself at a suitable patch of brush and got back on the road. Next was the gas station.
It’s not like anyone even got hurt. Or scared. Or were even bothered by him. He drove fine that night like he had done so–and with far more of a load on–many times before. The truck barely ran. Just sat in their neighbor’s lot collecting rust. He hadn’t been a minor for years, but felt like one when the neighbors spoke with his parents and agreed to forgive him and tell the police they’d asked him to run an errand, and he told them he swerved into that fence to avoid a deer.
Were it not for the recent tragedy, the neighbors might not have helpd him. That pissed him off, and made him feel even more like a child.
“Morning Gilbert,” said Jerry from behind the counter.
“Hey man.” For a white middle aged guy, Jerry was alright. A fat, balding man that owned the shop. “Can I get a pack of reds and, ahh, three scratchers.”
“Sure thing, chief. A few scratchers, and hnng!” Jerry grunted as he got off his seat and went to the wall of cigarettes behind him, continuing lyrically, “and some reds for the red.”
Jerry was still a wasichu asshole, but he was alright. He meant well, and didn’t overcharge or dick them around. Gilbert had a bic lighter from the counter smoothly concealed in his denim jacket before the man returned to face him. He paid for the other stuff and did his best to ignore the man’s kind words as he left.
Next was to hang out with his girlfriend, Debbie. They’d smoke up together, fool around a bit, and then when she had to go to work he’d go to a few places to look for a job before they closed.
While walking main street a patrol car came into view ahead. More importantly, he spotted Patrick before he or his partner saw him. He ducked into the nearest shop and feigned interest in the first things on the shelf he saw. Quilting supplies. He gently handled the fabrics and positioned himself to get a good look out the window without the passing car getting an equally good look in at him.
“C-can I help you, young man?” A frail old white lady approached him while staying far away. The question was not in the tone of a proprietor to a patron.
“Oh, just looking.” He smiled. She did not. He went back to the fabrics. Just then a flash in the corner of his eye confirmed the cop car passing by.
“The bolts on that display are quite pricey,” she said with nothing to follow up. She just stood near the till, watching him egregiously as he pretended to shop. Kenny Rogers serenaded them over the silence.
Another moment passed before staying would cause more trouble than going. “I liked the color of this one.” He handled the fabric he meant. It wasn’t a lie. “It caught my eye from outside.” That was.
“Gilbert!” Patrick shouted the moment Gilbert was back outside.
Shit. They’d parked streetside just past where he could see in the shop. Already out of their car, the cops approached. He gave a polite hello and a bland answer when asked how he was doing.
“How’s your mother?”
“Fine.”
“How’d you get into town this morning?” said Wayne, Patrick’s piece of shit partner. Wayne peered at him. Patrick he’d known since they were kids. Wayne on the other hand never heard of the word sympathy and always looked at Gilbert like he all he wanted was a reason to arrest him. Fascists.
“Rode my bike. I left it up at Jerry’s shop, you can ask him.”
“That’s ok,” said Patrick. “What brings you into town today?”
Debbie. “Looking for work.”
He nodded. “Any luck?”
“Nah, not yet.”
“Yeah, the economy is still in the shitter. Don’t worry.” He gestured to his partner. “We were just saying this morning, now that Reagan has the keys to this country things will turn around soon.”
“Lots of messes to clean up,” his partner said, with a tone that implied what side of the mess he thought Gilbert was on.
“Yessir-ee, but good things are happening, it just needs time.”
Mercifully, they left him alone. He went straight to Debbie’s apartment. She was wearing one of his Led Zeppelin shirts, some curlers in her bangs, and not much else.
“Hi hon! I’ve just been puttering around all morning, sorry the place is a mess.”
Debbie was more than alright for a white person, she was cool. She had natives in her family, some by blood. They met at a bus station, both trying to join the Longest Walk as it entered the midwest. The first thing he noticed besides her looking good was the AIM flag stitched into her denim jacket. They didn’t join the full walk, but did a stretch of it before heading home to their respective towns as a tentative new couple.
She was dear to him, and had helped a lot these past months. The shirt she wore meant a lot to him, too. Charlie bought it for him years ago, in Milwaukee, when all four brothers drove to see Zep in concert. Being the youngest and sixteen at the time, it was a magical trip for him.
With Charlie gone now, special moments like that were elevated to mythology in his mind. He couldn’t think of anything that looked better on his girl than Icarus in all his glory.
He prepared a bowl while talking about the pigs hassling him earlier. She declined to partake, saying something about her shift starting later, fussing with her hair in the bathroom.
He came up behind her and checked himself in the mirror. His look was sharp. A shock of bangs with a professional cut around it, and the back went long with flowing hair below his shoulders. He put his arms around her. The first few puffs hit him and his hands began to wander along the body under that loose-fitting shirt.
“Sorry hon, I just got out of the shower, I need to get ready.”
He got flustered, said something barbed and flopped on her couch to take another hit.
“Don’t throw a tantrum over it, I can’t right now!”
“This ain’t a fucking tantrum!”
An hour later he was on his bike in the reservation and nearly home.
They talked on the phone that night and made up, and he found himself apologizing and meaning it over and over regarding a whole number of things. She told him it was grief. That the loss of his brother was still antagonizing him in different ways. He disagreed. The better part of a year had gone by. Well, the worst part. Anyway he had been back to his normal life for months now.
Next week she mentioned a trip to Canada to visit family and invited him. They were the Ojibwe her aunt married into and he was Bodéwademi there was a relation, at least culturally, she pointed out, along the Anishinaabe or Algonquin peoples. They were excited at the prospect of meeting him.
It was a full day’s drive just to get there, and whether or not their cultural link had anything to do with it, Gilbert found himself in a warm home full of good people who welcomed him.
Debbie’s uncle was named Azaadi. Though the man was older than his father, after dinner and two beers in they felt like they were old pals. One of them even noted that out loud.
“Gil, come walk with me”
They left the others and walked outside. The nighttime air was cold up north.
“I wanted to say Debbie told us about your brother, and I’m very sorry.”
Gilbert grimaced. “Thanks man. It’s been hard, but I’ve managed to get through it.”
“Is that so?” Azaadi lit up a cigarette as they walked in the small moonlight neighborhood. “No, you’re still grieving.”
“Sure, of course I’m still sad.”
“Not what I mean,” he said and tapped some ash off his cigarette. They walked slowly along the quiet homes, with the brushy clamor of their small houseparty winding down behind them like a setting sun. The cold wind picked up, and the chimes on the porches sang that soft melody recognized by everyone, though only they knew how it went.
“I lost a sister to cancer. Brother to Vietnam. I’ll tell ya somethin.” He took a quick drag. “Grief is not the same as sadness. Grief is its own thing, and not usually felt by itself. It binds with things,” he said and clasped his hands firmly. “It binds with sadness of course, but also with joy, with humor, excitement, annoyance, rage…”
He trailed off.
“It’s just there, with you. With that relationship with your brother, which is still continuing by the way.” He punctuated himself by poking Gilbert. “Until you die. But now grief is part of it.”
Gilbert didn’t respond. Grief was at his door.
“... Debbie said it was an ice fishing accident?”
He swallowed. “That’s right. The hole he made fissured and took him. They say there was an earthquake that day which coulda caused it, but nobody I know felt anything.”
The old man clicked his tongue in dismay. “I was wondering about that.”
“About my brother?”
“Sort of.” He smiled. “You know the story of Chibiabos? Doesn’t matter. My point I was getting to is: we all die. Ice fishing or old age or anything else, something gets all of us one day. Your brother, and two of my siblings, we now know what day and what it was that got them. For the rest of us, that story will be told one day, to others. Take heart. You lived with them, you each had your last days here, and then you rejoin with your stories completed.”
