Photo by Mark Farías on Unsplash
by Gary Fincke
This is your reminder, Alexa says, that Carrie has a disappointment today, and the morning goes as dark as rapidly thickening clouds sweeping in from a winter’s cold-front invasion. For Carrie, the first question is When, but Alexa declines, saying, “That time has never been available.” No matter how Carrie rephrases, Alexa stays as adamant as her relative named STALL, the cousin who answers only in terror, the fundamental language that shrieks in the frequency that reaches all of the passengers farthest back in coach. Silent at last, Carrie understands that disappointment has already begun, Alexa about to turn a page, a phrase she was taught to retrieve whenever she overhears common discontents. The merely turbulent flight is a red-eye, midnight rearranged by the hour. “Alexa,” she cries, “say again,” raising that objection as if she claims witness to Carrie’s secret self, the one expunged like a childhood felony, as redacted as faith, love, and inevitably, safety.
Gary Fincke’s latest flash collection is The History of the Baker’s Dozen (Pelekinesis 2024). He is co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction.
