Making Small Things
When I was seven I had one sister and two brothers. When I was eight I had two brothers, but no sister. When I did have a sister people would always say that we didn't look alike at all. She had auburn hair and milk chocolate eyes and a hundred freckles scattered across her face and arms and chest. I had brown hair and blue eyes and only three small freckles behind my left shoulder (you can see them still when you are fucking me from behind).
We were the same and different. I was wild, wild, and she was calm. A pair of dolls we were. Holding hands in thin white dresses. Running through fields. Spying on boys. Making small things from grass and weed and wildflower. One day (it was a Tuesday) all those small things came to an end. My sister disappeared you see. She was eaten alive by a multi-headed dog. She was swallowed whole by an anaconda that was then swallowed by another bigger snake. She was raped and murdered by a 41-year-old man in the basement of his house at 816 Oak Grove Ave. She was swooped up by a giant condor and carried to his rocky nest.
Sometimes I dream about her. Torn into pink, bite-sized lumps and fed to ugly condor chicks. If I close my eyes I can imagine her as a chew toy between Cerebarian teeth. My small naked sister lying on a concrete floor with blood between her legs and lavender skin. There she goes into the unhinged jaws of a great jungle snake. Come back small one. (sometimes I say this in my sleep, silly, silly me). If I were seven and wearing a thin white dress I would still have a sister with freckles and auburn hair.
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Author's Note
Originally published in Rumble magazine, March 2008
Other stories by Siolo Thompson
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Damn, this is great. I just got something in Rumble and am even prouder of that now.
Siolo, esto está grande y muy triste.
"I had brown hair and blue eyes and only three small freckles behind my left shoulder (you can see them still when you are fucking me from behind)."
i love you.
when are you gonna send me some flashes:
www.dogzplot.com
please.
This works. And it continues to do something to the reader long after the fact of its words have become a calm surface again. Bravo!
Excellent, excellent. Great to see such powerful flash coming out of Seattle.
why is it called Making Small Things?
"when you are fucking me from behind." damn brutal
totally captures the pain and unreality of a violent crime and the debilitating casualities of the loved ones left behind.
resonates
Love love love the dreamy quality in this- the unreliable multi theories:
She was eaten alive by a multi-headed dog. She was swallowed whole by an anaconda that was then swallowed by another bigger snake. She was raped and murdered by a 41-year-old man in the basement of his house at 816 Oak Grove Ave. She was swooped up by a giant condor and carried to his rocky nest.
The contrast between lightness and brutality in this( and in the uexpectedness of freckles followed by fucking from behind) is stunning.
Still love this story.
Gorgeous, love the contrast in the first para especially.
I was pulled in by the strong visuals in this, the way that you show us the girls along with everything else. Beautiful and chilling.
love this, especially how you fold in the horrific truth with the fantastic, the suggestion of guilt -- she being "wild, wild" while the sister was calm -- really just gorgeous.
There are so many good lines here. My favourite has to be this:
"I had brown hair and blue eyes and only three small freckles behind my left shoulder (you can see them still when you are fucking me from behind)."
The shock it gives coming straight after the description of narrator as a child is really powerful.
This is excellent.
Oh, hey, good story. Thanks for writing this.
Lovely sad dark - all of it pieced together. I really like the way that first paragraph ends.
Ouch. Horrific. Great mix of self deception, lies, memory and sadness. Well done.
There is really so much going on here it's hard to know where to begin. The thing is, there is so much subtext for the reader to draw from, which can lead to chaos, but here it leads to order. Why the "fucking me from behind"? Why this submissive position? Is the sister feeling guilty because she, the "wild one" (the risk taker) survived, that the "calm" one fell victim and not her? The dark one surviI love the speculation about the sister's fate. Instead of saying "we never found her" you give us the language of unresolved loss.
Just discovering this now. Impressed by how strong something this short can be. Especially liked the last line of the first pp, the three freckles you can see from behind when you are fucking me. It adds years and years.
I cannot believe i missed this.
SUPER!
this piece has never left me. so happy to see great folks are still enjoying it. this story deserves and demands a lot of reads/faves. Also, I love Andy's comments above.
as much as i loved it the first time around, i even do more now.
thrilling read, really opens things up to me
a master flash
wow! really. wow. masterful. so glad to have read this gem. hope you'll be posting more?
A little door in this story gives out a woman a woman loses. It stays concrete (and speculative) and discovers both ways.
Just found this, and am blown away. Whoa.
Good lord this is great. Took the top of my head off.