Photo by Austin Neill
Fragments of Bones
Flash Fiction
The stones, like sandpaper, file away the skin of my palms and scrape my fingers by their rough texture. The sun beats down, and the rocks radiate heat like a stove where the fire was set inside before the blaze swallowed the whole house. Fragments of bones and ashes, that’s all that is left. My hands are still colored, with black.
Dark clouds move in to tinge the ether. With her ashes condensed into a small coffee canister sitting on my lap, I peer toward the ocean but can no longer see the surging billows’ blueness. I can only imagine how the waves would reflect the cloudlessness of a hot summer day.
Wings flutter above, breaking the tranquil whispering of the wind. My eyes turn toward it, expecting a seagull, but it’s a white hawk. The bird lands near me, resting with clawed yellow feet gripping into the veins of the stone. His feathers like snow sparkle. The tips of his wings blackened like a night without the moon. If I reach out, I could touch his charcoal beak as if caressing her face, my wife.
“Is it you?” I ask, contemplating the hawk’s gaze of coal, yet seeing the green of her irises.
His beak turns into her plump red lips.
“I loved you,” my voice trembles.
The bird lifts into the air, and wings flapping, he hovers above me for a few moments. Then he flies, soaring high.
I place the can in the sand between my feet and stare down at my hands. A dark residue covers them both. Gunpowder. The ballistic report said these hands pulled the trigger. Can it be true? But I’d never fired a gun. I imagine a revolver in my hands, and I watch my index finger move inward. Then I picture my wife’s head with a vermillion-colored streak running down her left temple.
The makeup artist didn’t do a good job—the one hired by my sister—the hole gaped still visible near her left ear. Can I sue him for malpractice? Is that even a thing? My wife is dead, and a hefty settlement wouldn’t bring her back. It happened too long ago, anyway. The statute for that has probably run out. Time didn’t register while in the asylum, but I know they locked me away for five years.
She lay in the coffin, and I brushed my fingers over her cold, grayish hands.
“Don’t touch,” she said, her eyes still shut closed. Her lips didn’t move, but her voice cracked inside my ears as icicles, “Murderer!”
I pick up the coffee can again. They handed her to me in a fancy urn, fit for royalty, but I transferred her ashes because my wife loved coffee the most. More than she loved me. I open the canister. I can still detect the caramel scent as I examine the powdery substance and fragments of bones.
I picture her grabbing her silk robe. She covered her naked body and stood in front of him.
“Get out,” she shouted. Her voice reverberated in my tired ears, her glance, a poisonous spear, piercing between my ribcage, aiming for my heart.
I stood frozen. “This is my house,” I said, staring at her in disbelief. I worked hard to provide, and he claimed to be my friend. Why did she? My muscles tightened, my nails digging deep into my palms. How could he?
Rushing over to the nightstand, she grabbed the revolver I wasn’t aware we owned. I saw the glimmer of the black metal in her hands.
Bang! The sound erupted, and deafening darkness set in.
I stand and walk toward the waves to sprinkle her ashes on the glass sheet of the ocean. Spread it out like a blanket. Yet the gentle breeze proves too frail to scatter her remains—a frigid reminder of betrayal and guilt. But she must go. The time is now for me to live again. Each night, she had appeared, haunting me while I was locked away. No doubt for a valid reason—to torment and make me pay—but I figured she’d leave once I got out. Still, she’s here at every motel room, in every state, pointing her finger at me.
Asking, “Why?”
I can’t give her an answer. I don’t know.
First published by WOW! Women on Writing in November 2019.
The Author
E. Izabelle Kassandra Alexander was born and raised in a little village in Hungary. After immigrating to the US, she first lived in New York. There she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s in Information Systems from Monroe College before moving to Chicago, where she earned her MBA in Business from Webster University.
In 2013, Izabelle refocused to pursue her life-long dream of writing and began taking writing classes at Oakton Community College and online. Since then, she’s been a member of numerous writing and poetry groups, attending workshops and conferences, continuously updating her writing and editing skills. She’s a single mother. Nature and animal lover.
Izabelle writes short stories, creative nonfiction essays, flash fiction, plays, and poetry. Also, she’s currently working on a few novels and a series of children’s books along with illustrations.
Publications
Several of her fiction, creative nonfiction essays, and poetry have been published in Spark, a print literary journal, in 2016, 2018, and 2019, and forthcoming in 2020, as well as by The Scarlet Leaf Review on their website in 2018 and in their March 2020 issue. By the Illinois State Poetry Society (ISPS) on their website in 2017, 2018, and in the ISPS print anthology, Distilled Lives, Volume 4, 2018. Also, in Yearning to Breathe, a print anthology by Moonstone Art Center, 2019. By WOW! Women on Writing, 2019 & 2020, in The Book Smuggler’s Den, 2019, by Tint Journal, 2020, in Ariel's Dream Literary Journal, 2020, Unlimited Literature Magazine (UL-Mag), 2020, by Ariel Publishing on their website in 2020, and more.
Honorable Mentions, Runner Up, and Finalist
She won Runner Up status with her flash fiction “Fragments of Bones” in a contest by WOW! Women on Writing in 2019, and with her creative nonfiction essay "Why I Hate Yellow Peas" in April 2020. An interview was published by WOW in The Muffin on January 14, 2020, and another one forthcoming in June. Her creative nonfiction essays “Disciplined Discipline” (2017) and “My First Camel Ride” (2019), and her flash fiction “Invisible Love” (2018), “Drowning Under Pressure” (2020), and “Yellow Carnations” (2020) each received an Honorable Mention in contests by WOW! Women on Writing while they chose many of her flash and creative nonfiction pieces as finalists. In The New York City Midnight Challenge Flash Fiction Contest, she won the first round within her tier with her flash fiction titled “What Eyes Can’t See” in 2018. Several of her poems, fiction, creative nonfiction essays, and plays had been selected by Oakton Community College over the last six years as a finalist to represent them in the annual Skyway Competitions (eight community colleges competing).
To Reach Her
You can find Izabelle on her website: izabelle2012.wixsite.com/Izabelle
Connect with her on Facebook: fb.me/E.IzabelleAlexander andTwitter.com/IzabelleAlexan3
Support her work on Patreon atwww.patreon.com/IzabelleAlexander
E. Izabelle Kassandra Alexander, Des Plaines, IL