Local 451

BY Cheryl Anne Gardner

I'd worked a decade at the circus, so I'd had to cope with the nasty little feckers all my life it seemed. They don't have boundary issues like we do. Always wanting a raise and more vacation days -- the itchy little buggers -- always with the hidden agenda. I'd thought I trained em up right, all jazz hands and flirty antennae, but I was overworked, too harried, and next thing you know, there were too many of them, walking all over me, urinating on my skinny ass. I shouldn't have brought them home with me after the carnival shut down, but what kind of severance package do you give to a flea? There's mouths to feed and binge drinking to do down at the local lint ball. Somehow, somewhere, I'd let it all get outta control. I admit it. Two-hundred miles of recall signs and those got damned sea monkeys. That's what did us in: the em-effin sea monkeys. I felt responsible ... and then the dogs started scritch, scratch, scratchin. That's when the neighbors went nuclear and called the exterminator. Next thing I know, the big top is over my house, and there I am, gassed up, lying naked on the lawn with swizzle sticks up my ass and a mouthful of toxic dust.

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Cheryl Anne Gardner is a writer of dark, disturbing art-house novellas and abstract flash fiction. She is an Indie advocate, and prefers to read out-of-the-mainstream Indie published works, foreign translations, and a bit of philosophy. She lives with her husband and ferrets on the east coast USA, and she likes to eat lint and play with sharp objects. You can find more of her work at Twisted Knickers Publications and at various online flash journals.

 

Alternative Bio

When she isn't writing, Cheryl Anne Gardner likes to chase marbles on a glass floor, eat lint, play with sharp objects, and make taxidermy dioramas with dead flies. She writes art-house novellas and abstract flash fiction, some published, some not.