Short Story | Fred Aiken Writing

April 28, 2023

The Thoughts My Dad While Relaxing on the Porch

Daniel tried remembering. He tried remembering the name of his daughter, what he had been doing for the past seventy years, how many times he had made love, and why he was forgetting everything.

It all looked like an unstable slow-motion sequence of images embalmed in layers of scotch being captured on a closed-circuit television camera without his knowledge. He kept on scratching at a glimmer of constancy without any luck, pondering over why he had so many chins.

Daniel concluded that everything was written in invisible ink on a post-it note.

Come on, grandpa,” he heard. “We can’t stay here forever.

April 27, 2023

Creative Suicide, or The Real Evolutionary Reason for Mustaches

It was February when Darby killed himself. February 22. That date used to not mean anything to Cathleen, Darby’s sister. She found him hanging. She couldn’t believe it. Darby hung himself by tying a noose from his mustache. She doesn’t know how he did it. But she can’t get the image out of her head.

He wore a bright-red plaid collar shirt with his favorite corduroys—Who can kill themselves in their favorite corduroys? she thought—and he had grown out his mustache for fifteen years. Had he been planning it that long? Had he been miserable all those years?

April 26, 2023

The Murder that Took Place in an All-Red Room

Detective George Handell stood in the middle of an all-red room staring down at an unidentified man’s body wondering why anyone would kill anyone in an all-red room. Carpet, wallpaper, curtains, desk, couch, knick-knacks, lamp; someone went out of their way to decorate the room entirely in red.

Have you ever seen anything like this? an officer asked Detective Handell.

No, he responded. No, I haven’t.

It’s quite amazing.

It certainly is. It’s as if someone designed the room specifically so they could murder someone in it.

What do you mean?

You can’t tell who died: him or the room.