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Early Recollections by Karen Schauber

 YOUR FINGERTIPS CARESS ITS AGING SPINE, traipsing over embossed gold lettering, faded now, the little flecks that remain still smooth to the touch. You lower your nose to take a whiff and your nostrils brush frayed threads trifling out from the seam, tickling, like fringes on a desert tapis, and you close your eyes when you fan the first few yellowed pages, the warm musty smell wafting stories you remember so well—living in the country, wet laundry sheets flapping out on the line in the backyard, the summer breeze filled with shrieks of children chasing Lulu, your black cocker spaniel around the yard, tufts of soap bubbles airborne as the mutt jumps ship overturning the washing bin, her fur full of soapy suds, still reeking of skunk, and she won’t be let back into the house tonight until the foul stench is gone. You three children chase and corral her back to the tub, cajoling her with promised biscuits, and father standing on the porch watching the melee, not smiling, while everyone else belly laughs at the hullabaloo, and as he chain smokes another pall mall, you hear his silver lighter flick open and closed, the sharp metallic clank of metal against metal booms over the commotion, and you know that he’s still at work even though he isn’t; the last deal on the table expires in twelve hours and he’s not your father until the papers are signed and the final handshake is proffered, so you don’t look up in his direction so as to not meet an absent gaze, and you make sure you get the god-damn job done, and pick up the scrub brush until there’s no more stink. 

Early Recollections" first appeared in BULL Literary Magazine, August 2024
           

About the writer:

Karen Schauber’s flash fiction appears in over 100 journals, magazines, and anthologies. Her stories have received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Wigleaf Top 50. Schauber is curator of 'Flash Fiction Writing Tips: Penned By Masterful Flash Writers From Around The Globe', and editor of the award-winning flash fiction anthology 'The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings'. In her spare time, she is a seasoned family therapist.  Read her here:


  





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