Flash Fiction: Foreclosure

Wreck

The bank will have to claw every last penny out of my bitterness.

I take a sledgehammer to every wall that’s not facing the outside. I wrench out as many pipes as I can. The wall jacks I rip out with my bare hands. I hammer away at the kitchen sink, the one I renovated last year as the mortgage payments seemed to get steeper and steeper. Cement is cheap. I pour it down the bathroom drain, down the toilet, spill it all over the floors.

Putrefy

Meat stinks faster in the summer. I spend the five hundred dollars I have left on chicken, ribs, pork, veal, meat, meat, and more meat. They cut off my electricity a week ago, so it might be just as well to leave it all in the fridge.

But not as effective.

I stuff pieces into every nook and cranny I can find in every room in the house, inside the wall jacks I took out, into the holes I made in the walls. The rest I leave in the fridge, hoping for a fungal universe to flourish.

Decorate

On the one wall I spared, the wall in front of the bed I shared with my husband until a year ago, I use the last of my colors. I don’t have the time to create the kind of image that would end up in a museum, but I’ve got more zest now than I’ve had in years. I paint a dying sun, a flame collapsing in on itself and absorbing an entire world.  

Clean

Appearances are important.

The lawn has not been mowed in months, and that’s no way to greet important people. The flowers have all dried out, but the brown foliage remains. I uproot the weeds, clean the dirt stuck to the wall behind the small patch of flowers. If I had enough money left, I’d have bought a new coat of paint.

Shock

I thought long and hard about how to set this up just right. A gun would’ve been faster, probably painless, but the neighbors might have heard. Can’t have the police here before the bank, so it’s gonna have to be the rope. The living room’s ceiling fan lines up nice with the front door so if I play it right, my corpse will be the first thing the bastards see.

Hope my neck breaks instantly.


I was inspired to write this piece this article. Though I'm not entirely satisfied with it, I think it packs a bit of a punch.