It could be Monday

· by · in flashfiction, Friday Fictioneers. ·


Genre: Experimental noir

Last night had been filled with stars, soft music from her lips. Promises.
This morning it is fog and mud. Mold and glass rings on my kitchen table. It could be Monday but it’s not.

A scribbled note: Goodbye. Unsigned.

Smell of cheap perfume and the drumbeat of a lost fly trying in vain escaping through the window-pane. I’m in decay.

In my fridge a half-filled can of beer, stained with lipstick, It’s the closest thing to a morning kiss I’ll get today. I sip it slowly recalling smell of rotting teeth. Hers.

It’s time to plan for night again. Hunt.

© Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

© Rochelle Wisoff-Fields


First I have to apologize to Rochelle for using her wonderful kitchen view to create something so filled with filth. I think my inspiration came more from the foggy fields outside. Secondly I try to be a little bit more experimental here, using single-word incomplete sentences, but I’m curious how it works to create an impression from a Nighthawk’s morning. Therefore I join the concrit subgroup this week. There is some intentional ambiguity here, and I see that several things could have happened, and will happen.

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Friday Fictioneers is a blog-group who every week try to capture a story in 100 words from the same image. The group is headed by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, and to learn more you can go visit her site.
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December 16, 2015

91 responses to “It could be Monday”

  1. Loved the line about the ‘closest thing to a morning kiss’ – powerful. The whole piece is powerfully moody, and yet vaguely distasteful at the same time. Excellent Bjorn!

  3. Dear Björn,

    Never apologize for where the photo took you. You followed your imagination and did it well. Your short clipped sentences work extremely well in this piece.

    Shalom,

    Rochelle

    PS I love Nighthawks.

  4. I liked what you did, and how you did it.
    But it did leave me confused, I confess.
    Note, rotting teeth, hunt?
    It might just be me, but I don’t know what went on.

  6. Damn, dude. This is flipping AWESOME. I love a good serial killer poem … at least, that’s how I read this. Also asylum poems, should you get in the mood later. 😉

  7. Great piece. Love the mystery behind it. He’s definitely not a fellow I’d be hanging around with. Sounds like a murder mystery to me. The rotten teeth would be from last night’s victim – I imagine some backwoods, uneducated woman (who never brushed her teeth) because perhaps she wouldn’t be noticed missing?

  10. Agree with some of the previous posters – the style of your writing is great in this; some gorgeous imagery and the whole thing is (clearly intentionally) grimy – it sets the reader on edge. “the drumbeat of a lost fly trying in vain escaping through the window-pane” is particularly powerful, although “to escape” would be more grammatically sound.

    What confused me a bit was the fact that your hooks seemed to contradict one another. Ambiguity is great but it’s always good to offer your readers a couple of plausible conclusions. The note implied she’d left, the rotting teeth perhaps that she was long-dead, murdered by him? This was backed up by the hunt, but if she was long-dead, he couldn’t have heard soft promises from her last night…

    I really did like this overall; I just wanted that spine-tingling inkling that something had gone wrong and we were on the verge of finding it out what it was.

  11. I really like the short sentences; I think they can be powerful in small doses. “Unsigned” is perfect. I didn’t get the ominous serial killer vibe that others did. Closer would be: the sadness of serial one-night stands. The night before seemed so lovely and magical, yet the morning light reveals the reality of the cheap perfume and rotted teeth and drinking last night’s stale beer. Ah well, back out tonight to search for a new dream…

  12. C – I’m in the camp with Joy; this felt more hopeless than wicked… the “serial one-night stands” as she said. The note was the surprise for me, as if one or the other of them had expectations of something more. Nicely done.

  13. C – I absolutely love, in a grisly way the image of the lipstick on the can being a kiss – wonderful. I also like how ambiguous it is, but I’m a bit confused (although maybe that doesn’t matter). He seems to have lured her back to his house, but she’s left him in the morning. The rotting teeth suggest to me that she might be a corpse (and that’s his thing), but then not sure why she would be leaving him. But, perhaps answers aren’t needed; the atmosphere and writing was spot on.

  14. This piece for me has a really grim, moody tone that is so well written. There are so many things I like about it, the imagery, the monday line, that “morning kiss”. Seriously, well done. The only thing for me is that I’m not a big fan of “hunt” on it’s own. It’s dramatic but maybe too ambiguous?

  16. Sounds like he has reanimated a moldy corpse, had some, err, fun and it left him again in the morning and returned to the grave. Fairly normal occurrence…lol.

  18. Oh, I love the noir in film and story. My fiction-mind took this is so many directions…serial killer, necrophiliac. I guess I watch too much “Criminal Minds.” Do you get that series?

    When my life settles down a bit, I really want to join this group. Good job, Bjorn!

  19. I liked this grimy tale. I read the comments and I never thought she was a corpse but that’s probably just me. Not a fan or believer in the undead. Reality is scary enough for me. Eww rotting teeth.
    No critism. Great work.
    Tracey

      • That’s how I read it too. It is strange how a window brought forth very similar stories for you and I. Maybe windows evoke loneliness because they isolate you from the world outside. I have to say that my character was a smoker but his teeth were good. ha ha I wouldn’t kiss either though.

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  21. The “drum beat of the lost fly” really grabbed me. I like the short, incomplete sentence style of this piece. It matches the mood of the day after and is great setup for the rest of whatever happens that day.
    Ω

  23. I like the moodiness of this piece very much. The bit about her rotting teeth, and his preparation for another “hunt” lead to believe that he hunts among meth and crack addicts for his devious desires. Very dark indeed.

  28. A perfect atmosphere of cheap, tawdry flings recreated here and some vivid imagery along the way. Maybe instead of revealing the message on the note it could just be “An unsigned scribbled note of farewell”.

  31. I like this – the words evoke a scene of a man who wants something out a relationship but doesn’t and continues to keep seeking it.
    C- the single word/incomplete sentences works for me.

  32. I like short abrupt sentences sometimes. If you want your reader to stop and take stock of what you just said, I think it’s a good technique. I also think they create the feeling of your character discovering things piece by piece.

  34. This is great. I love this line the most: “Smell of cheap perfume and the drumbeat of a lost fly trying in vain escaping through the window-pane. I’m in decay.” There’s something about a dead fly that just seems so hopeless. I was curious about her rotting teeth. The “hunt” puts a whole different chill into it.

  37. Loved it. That flip from sensual midnight memories to morning dirt is very well done here. The mud, the decay, the rotting teeth…paints a real picture. nice.

    I’m also a big fan of the single word sentences – particularly with the Fictioneers 100 word limit. You’ve used them well here – well placed, and not too many.

    Only thing I didnt get was the line about ‘it could be monday, but it’s not’. I suspect I’m missing something subtle here.
    Cheers
    KT

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