Three Short Stories by Kyle Hemmings

Three Short Stories by Kyle Hemmings

Manga Girls Need Love: Snitch & Forget You Are

What you lost was the girl who sold her story to the ears of city night, cheap despair under wigs, tattoos under Peking pink panties w/ indigenous ruffles. The night was all stereotyped sky of ink & erasure fluid, trace of clouds whispering behind cracked walls, peeling walls, walls that were squeezing your suburban rage-lust. Your past was all blur & lingering on deceptive tweets was bushy-eyed girls from Jersey who turned you into dust into a man-broom into a star-struck eunich with poor reach. Your royal loyalties sucked. The girl you lost in Tokyo took your money & said like a true fan that you have superhero bones, great cheeks, man, they won't sag when you're 40, then she flattened you w/ pale horse whiny sex-scapes. When you saw her photo in the paper, read in 8 pt. print w/ generous leading that she ratted on some Chinese gangster nicknamed Mustard Gas, owner of 17 stairways to immigrant-raided heavens, an allergy to metal trachs, you clenched you boyish hands your retched you swore to the demons of your inner gut that this would never happen again not love not obsessions w/ runaway slum-goddesses w/ one perfect pimple but the wind swept you up & into its empty charge into its amnesia of beautiful girls too real for this Pantone-smudged life.

Manga Girls Need Love: He Drops Over with All his Baggage & Your Old Wounds

Mr. Portable Suicide drops over today with his black leather suitcase & unfashionably slicked back hair. He wants to know if you, the girl of a thousand painful caterpillars in her sleep, is ready. You smile you tilt your head you think of ten songs that end in E-minor you ask Mr. Portable Suicide if he would like some tea. No, he says, sitting uncomfortably on your Lazy-Boy, clipping his nails. Over the apartment complex, you hear strange humming. Have you thought of a method? Asks Mr. Portable Suicide. A method, you say. Yes, he says, the ones we discussed last time on the phone—pincer poison, noose of dreams, dog-day drowning, crumble under rubble, the stop-dead-heart-pills in choice of colors.  The humming is getting louder. You rise & walk over to the outdoor patio. You hope it’s not another helicopter about to crash. Your boyfriend, Daichi, is always crashing his. Look, you yell to Mr. Portable Suicide, it’s a flying saucer. His laughter is sharp & dry. Really, he says. Is it green? Yes, you say. Does it have 14 portholes? Uh-huh, you say. Does it have soft blue rays of light shining from its bottom? Yes, you say. It’s the one I have dreams about after every contracted suicide, he says. You tell him to check it out himself. He does. Where, he says, I don’t see it. On the outdoor patio, he slips & falls over the brass rail. From so many stories up, you shout down, ARE YOU ALRIGHT? The flying saucer was playing hide and seek behind a cloud. You know Mr. Portable Suicide will be back next week with more foolproof methods.

Manga Girls Need Love: Rina, a Tall Buzz-fly Girl Who Never Goes Short in the City

When Black Friday hits, Rina will stand along Koen Dori in Shibuya & play old love songs on a ukulele. She will sing for free. She will laugh at the taxis running out of gas, the stocky four-eyed businessmen crashing their bicycles into department stores. The world as a flat tire, ruined rim. Or, donning white gloves, she’ll direct traffic. Towards afternoon, she will post herself in front of the Haichiko statue, named after the dog that waited faithfully for its dead master. She will give fake tours through Spain Slope or the Tobacco & Salt Museum. Someone towards the rear will suppress a painted girl giggle. In Mark City, she will lose all the old women who have mistaken her for the daughter they once gave away. By the end of the day, she will be alone again. She will take the cheapest room at a love hotel & wait for her married lover, a man who has lost everything.

Author's Bio: Kyle Hemmings is the author of three chapbooks of poems: Avenue C (Scars Publications), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and Amsterdam & Other Broken Love Songs (Flutter Press). He has been published at Gold Wake Press, Thunderclap Press, Blue Fifth Review, Step Away, and The Other Room. He can be reached at: dwruss@gmail.com or hemming06@hotmail.com.