Dan Ramos Lay: Flash Fiction and Poetry

V-Day in the Afterworld

Overnight, we’d fallen into another world, one where the Earth wasn’t in space anymore, but in a man’s house, a house with wide beautiful windows and a mirror over the kitchen table. He cooks for his wife every day, luscious meals of every colour you could hope for, juicy purple ripe figs and buttered corn tucked into salad leaves, pancakes big as your whole body, bigger even. He wakes up at six in the morning and skips through his garden, marvelling at everything he sees, checking in on his chickens and kissing their small feathered heads, chuckling when they cluck out in surprise. They have the best eggs in the town: outrageously big and brown, with bright orange yolks that you could eat up in a single slurp. See, this man, Mr. Hartson, always wins the village competitions for best cakes, and all the judges cover their mouths and ask him, well how did you manage that taste? That rich taste? What do you put in it? Oh It’s Just The Eggs, he smiles, and afterwards goes back home to continue cooking, waiting for his wife to come downstairs and breathe in deep and say George, You Are Fantastic, This Is Great, Just Great... and he kisses her all lovely and dramatic like that picture of the soldier and the nurse after the war.

Mrs. Hartson is the most lovely looking woman in the town, the country maybe, look at her with her perfect smile with every tooth a person needs, a healthy tummy and a nice big house she takes care of all day. She doesn’t work, Mrs. Hartson, not anymore, nobody knows what she did before she met her husband but it doesn’t much matter at least not to her. And her bedroom–for her and Mr. Hartson don’t share bedrooms, which works better than the alternative if you can believe!–has a massive pink canopy that she knit in one sitting, it took her three years but her wonderful husband fed her through it all, put his fingers in her mouth said Here Comes The Airplane Nyooooom and she opened her mouth obedient like a frog trying to catch a fly. Mrs. Hartson’s bedroom is bigger than most, probably bigger than your room, and she prides herself in her closet which stores her precious jewels and flouncy dresses that Mr. Hartson zips her into when it’s date night. Date night, the best night of the month! Mr. Hartson is such a fun husband, he never warns her beforehand because he wants everything to be a surprise, so sometimes it’s date night and she hasn’t showered or slept much so she feels embarrassed to go outside and lovely Mr. Hartson has to pry her off the bedroom floor where she’s weeping and heavy as a corpse. Silly Mrs. Hartson, doesn’t she know all the women in town would kill her for the chance to live with George Hartson? George Hartson who loves his wife so much, he does everything for her? And the meals he cooks, my goodness. He climbs on his step stool to reach the paprika, that’s how much stuff he has in his kitchen, and while he’s on that shelf he grabs the spinach and the garlic butter to stuff the chicken with.

Me and you and everyone in the world all lived in the doorknob leading to the kitchen, and the world was a sphere just as it is now, but we all were in the doorknob, which was wooden and gave us all splinters when we fell down. We liked to crowd near the middle of it, because we could hear everything going on in the house and would watch Mrs. Hartson hide behind cupboards and choke on her own tears when Mr. Hartson harrumphed around the house shouting Where Are You, Eleanor? Where Are You? I’m Going To Find You! and we all fell over ourselves laughing (careful not to trip over the edge and go rolling all the way back to where we came) because he sounded so silly, it was like he was playing a game with her. And she didn’t respond, probably because she didn’t understand the game, which we all thought made sense, she didn’t understand lots of things, Mrs. Hartson. But we still liked to watch and talk about her, and the breakfasts that she didn’t eat.

fun fun fun

blondes have more fun, they say, and we do!
yes we do, we dance all night, smoke fags and
brag about how fast the butter on our toast melts
and clink clink smack goes the undoing belt of
someone we think might fancy us back. we are
loud and girly, with big mouths and a pink pillow
that pulls up and away when we speak. we stay up
clutching each other yes heads pressed together
and teeth knocking, clumsy, ringing like bells,
echoing in our faces when we kiss. clang bang wham
thank you ma’am! we like to laugh and use our
nails to scratch up walls and climb into corners
so we can jump down and frighten you all. we have
so much fun, there is no time for anything else
but that, and we sing together la la with our fingers
braided like flower crowns all wilting away from the sun.
we are having so much fun, and floating, all
as one. we walk into each other’s hearts and tuck
ourselves into warm meaty folds, make veins our new
home, arms covered in a thick gloopy red, so tender,
so comfortable, a new place, a new bed,
and we can even feel its pitter patter as it beats! and repeats!
listen here, come, stand near! mild and wild. and
lovely, and together and into our hearts, yes,
and our soul, and our love, as we burrow into bloodbeds
and dream big and dream blonde.

Dan is a Spanish writer and student currently living in London who enjoys writing increasingly strange poetry about relationships, and how conflict informs our perception of codependency. On Substack, Dan often discusses television, the ineffability of art, and Bruce Springsteen. A lot of Bruce Springsteen.