Flash Fiction 2020
Neoliberal kitchen
Smoke rises from the pan, where I try to fry the eggs in uneven pools of oil. The pot of rice, unsteady over the flame, cooks unevenly. I have to cook with that annoying click-clack of the metal spoons. But there’s no help for it, it’s the result of going out to bang pots and pans every day until lockdown. Life sometimes, and especially lately, puts us to the test.
Behind bars
I still hear the sound of footsteps and metal at night. I paid my debt to society, but not to God. As soon as I got out of prison, I was forced to lock myself up in quarantine for several more months.
Cats
After extensive and precise mathematical calculations, and considering the amount of fur I find on the bed, the chairs, behind the furniture and everywhere, I can say that at least 17 cats live in this house, and not the 2 they want me to believe.
The street market
On Saturdays I get up early. Between 7 and 8 in the morning you witness the backstage of the street market. The mushroom vendor whose stand was gorgeous for two months but never said why. The vendors who lost a daughter to cancer. The new pomegranate-juice vendor who split up with Albert - whom we affectionately call Einstein. The vendor who tells me each week whether she’s got passion fruit. And the vendor with a joke always on the tip of his tongue, an expert salesman shouting “Take the Kale, it’s got more virtues than Bachelet’s own kid”.
The birthday gift
It had always been amusing that everyone in the house - my parents, my sister and I - had birthdays in April. The first to be celebrated was my mom, and between us all we made the effort to buy her a big box of those fine chocolates. Days later lockdown caught us, with no way and no money to buy more gifts. The second birthday person, my sister, received the same box, but with less than half the chocolates. I just hope that on my turn, the very last of all, I’ll still find that white-chocolate-and-passion-fruit bonbon I so long for.