New Flash Fiction - Are you special?

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Back to flash fiction now with an intriguing apocalyptical tale from DeAnna Knippling, DeAnna says "I keep finding stuff in the fridge that's gone bad because I told myself to save it for a special occasion that never seems to arrive." She is a freelance writer and editor in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She has recently been published in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Crossed Genres, Penumbra, and of course, previously in Grievous Angel (with Midnight at the Sushi Pig Cafe). She has also received honorable mentions in Best Horror of the Year, Vols. 3 & 6 and her latest collection A Murder of Crows is available on Amazon now. www.amazon.com/Murder-Crows-Seventeen-Monsters-Macabre-ebook/dp/B00OC24PQ2


Special
by DeAnna Knippling


She calls you special. You used to know her from church. One of those women who almost always missed the last part of Mass because they were down in the basement setting up coffee and donuts or a Saturday night potluck or ham sandwiches for a funeral. An anonymous, reliable woman you associate with the scents of burnt coffee and Pine-Sol. She used to monitor the desserts to keep teenagers from taking more than their fair share. Feed the hungry but not too much. And she’d always tell you to save your dessert for last.  

When everything went apeshit you were in Mass on a hungover Sunday morning, promising without really promising to be a better person, to maybe for once not try to live life to the bloated, vomiting, oh-my-God-am-I-pregnant stage. You managed to get down the back stairs and into a cupboard in the second-grade classroom with a stack of press-out Christmas nativity decorations and ten plastic boxes of crayons, whispering curse words under your breath and trying not to pee.

Then she opened the cupboard door, face and chest covered in gore, and pulled you out.

“Oh God,” you said, and “are you going to eat me?”

She shook her head and spat out a mouthful of something you looked away from, and grunted, quite clearly, “Special.”

You think back, trying to remember what the hell you ever did for her that made you stand out, but you can’t. And yet she’s saved your ass a dozen times since then, fighting off attackers, leading them away from you, throwing them other victims in your place. You’ve learned not to get too close to anybody she brings down to your church basement hideout. They aren’t staying around long.

She brings you bottled water, canned tomatoes, jars of olives, spam. You wash her clothes and her purse and – very gently – her crusty, peeling face. Every morning you put foundation on her, careful to blend it well. She can still say a few words. Preash. Tanks. Peshial. Every day it’s harder for her to talk, there are fewer survivors, less bottled water.  

This morning she brought you six Hostess fruit pies.

While you were eating the chocolate fudge pie, your favorite, she locked the last door to the outside. It won’t open from the this side, either, not without a key – it’s just a stupid service door. Stupidly, you’ve worked hard to block the rest of the doors off, to keep the two of your safe. You’ve tried to explain that you want to go upstairs to pray but it’s so far gotten you nowhere. Now you’re down to one cherry and one lemon, not your favorites, your lips are sticky with sugary pasty flakes, and you can’t get off your mind that in front of the doorway to freedom – or something– is the kind of woman who used to tell little kids to always save their desserts for last.  

Your stomach growls. Maybe just the cherry, then.  

Just a couple of bites.