I Need a Refill by Pete Riebling, lemon-lime water

 A siren in the distance. What is it? An ambulance. There’s a hospital within a couple of miles of my house. Not a well-regarded hospital. JFK. Stands for Just Fucking Kill Me, the joke goes. Death. A siren in the distance. What is it? A police car. A fire truck. I don’t know. There are different sounds. There’s the wail, oscillating between low and high pitches or tones. There’s the yelp, faster and more urgent. There’s the air horn. I don’t remember which I heard a moment ago. It’s been about a half-hour, actually. And all I’ve been up to in the meanwhile is sipping a glass of lemon-lime water with ice cubes. And writing a few sentences. About whatever. No emergency to contend with, fortunately. Not tonight. I’m fine. I’m fine. There was a siren in the distance, though. An acute medical or traumatic incident. Disclosure of personally identifiable information is illegal. I’d name the patient, otherwise. Kevin or Devin. JFK was shot. Rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Commonly referred to as PMH. Stands for Providing Mediocre Healthcare.

About the author

  

Pete Riebling received a BA in English/Creative Writing from Emory University and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bookends Review, Cosmic Double, Flash Fiction Magazine, NiftyLit, Ocotillo Review and Quibble 

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The Monster by Pete Riebling, orange soda

 One day in July, we were flying a kite at a beach on the shore of Lake Lanier. There was a monster in the lake, according to my father. I half-believed him. He told me not to let go of the spool. I told him I wouldn’t.

My mother was on location in Idaho. She was the head of cinematography for Bottom Line Productions. I missed her.

‘Is it big?’

‘Bigger than you.’

‘Bigger than you?’

‘Bigger than me.’

‘Bigger than a dinosaur?’

‘About four feet high and twenty-five feet long, with a neck about twelve feet long.’

‘I want to see a picture,’ I said.

‘The only pictures are grainy,’ he said.

‘I have an idea,’ I said. I proposed we return to the lake with Mommy and her crew and capture video footage of the monster. Clear, irrefutable proof.

‘Don’t let go of the spool,” my father said. “And don’t tell your mother about the monster.’

The shore was sandy. Umbrellas were planted in the sand. A swimming area was demarcated by buoys on a rope. I wasn’t allowed to go in the water. There was a monster in the lake, after all.

   I was happy to fly the kite. It was designed to resemble a parrot with bright feathers and a tail. We’d bought it at a general store on the way to the beach. We also brought pails and shovels as well as a frisbee. My father assured me there were plenty of other things to do at the beach besides swim.

My father had launched the kite before handing the spool to me and telling me I was in charge. I was in charge, but he was watching me closely and warning me not to let out too much line. I was relieved when a local history buff approached and distracted my father by engaging him in a conversation about the construction of the lake, which apparently had necessitated the destruction of farms and the displacement of homes and businesses. ‘They even dug up graveyards and relocated the corpses elsewhere,’ the man said.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well,’ my father said. ‘A disturbance of the dead hypothetically might explain why there’s a monster in the lake.’

‘Come on,’ the man said and laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you put stock in such nonsense.’

‘A couple of decades ago, a zoologist found footprints that don’t match any known species in the Western Hemisphere.’

‘It was a hoax.’

‘Maybe,’ my father said. ‘Or maybe there’s a monster in the lake and the government is hiding the truth because otherwise tourism would grind to a halt and tax revenue would plummet and they know they’ll get away with it because people like you won’t dare to question the official narrative.’

That’s the moment I started to understand my father was half-crazy. I let go of the spool on purpose. The kite blew away, sailing higher and higher until it was invisible. My father wasn’t angry—it seemed to me this was the outcome he’d been expecting all along, and when it happened he felt validated and correct in his judgment. We built a castle.

 

About the author 

 

Pete Riebling received a BA in English/Creative Writing from Emory University and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. His work has appeared in BirdHouse Magazine, Bookends Review, CafeLit, Cosmic Double, Flash Fiction Magazine, NiftyLit, Ocotillo Review, and Quibble. 

 

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Trivia Night by Pete Riebling, hot chocolate with marshmallows

 Unbelievably, the newest place to see and be seen was a hot dog stand in the middle of nowhere. It was located on a back road off the highway, where there was a Christmas tree lot in the winter. Somebody had purchased or leased the undeveloped land and was cooking hot dogs and lobster rolls and white bean-based vegetable patties in a trailer. There were a few picnic tables in a shady area. Cash only.

I went alone. It was a Thursday afternoon. The line wasn’t long. There were reports of people waiting between forty-five and ninety minutes on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Which was crazy.

‘Vegetable patty,’ I said to the woman in the trailer when it was my turn to order. ‘Please.’

‘Butter on your bun?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘French fries?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Lemonade? Soda? Water?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Five dollars, honey.’

I’d been planning to sit in my Nissan Sentry with the windows down for ventilation and listen to a baseball game on the radio while eating. I bumped into Cora, though. Cora was my brother’s friend. She invited me to sit at a picnic table with her and a colleague from the animal hospital. Cora was a veterinary pharmacist.

The colleague was a receptionist, apparently. She took a picture of her hot dog and posted it to Instagram. She also took a picture of herself and Cora and posted it. I wasn’t included because I was sitting on the other side of the picnic table. She didn’t know me from a hole in the wall, besides which.

Cora knew me. Well. Fairly well, anyway. It had been a long, long time since we used to go to Sunset Grille for Trivia Night and pitchers of beer. We used to go with my brother, with whom Cora remained friendly.

‘I saw Matthew at a fundraiser for the theater,’ Cora said.  

‘Worthy cause,’ I said.

‘It’ll be demolished unless hundreds of thousands of dollars are raised to repair and restore it.’

‘Save the theater.’

‘It’s important to preserve our historical landmarks,’ Cora said.

‘Why?’

‘To maintain a connection to the past.’

‘Let’s handcuff ourselves to the doors,’ I said.

Cora understood my sense of humor. The receptionist likely would’ve preferred I hadn’t joined them. I wasn’t excellent company. To be fair, I’d been planning to sit alone. Cora had pleaded with me, though.

Why?

The reason became apparent. Cora had in mind a notion to mediate the falling-out between me and my brother. It wasn’t a falling-out. It was a drifting-apart. ‘Matthew told me he worries about you,’ Cora said.

‘Matthew doesn’t know anything,’ I said.

‘He knows you.’

‘His information is twenty-five years out of date. I barely speak with him anymore. He has no basis to worry or not worry about me.’

‘He loves you,’ Cora said.

‘I love my vegetable patty,’ I said. The receptionist at the animal hospital loved her hot dog. Cora loved her hot dog with chili and cheddar cheese. The online reviews had proven to be spot-on. The fare at the hot dog stand was delicious.

I listened to the baseball game on the radio while driving away and retreating to my cottage on the lake. The play-by-play announcer’s role was to describe the action, ideally in such vivid detail the audience felt they were witnessing the pitcher throw and the batter swing and the ball with the red stitches flying in the air and the fielder diving and catching the ball in his mitt and so forth. The analyst’s role was to offer opinions and commentary. Their voices were familiar, iconic within the region. There was a hokeyness to the proceedings. Life itself was a bit sentimental and silly. Our days were filled with minutiae of little gravity.

My route happened to pass by the animal hospital. I imagined Cora administering a pre-surgical sedative to an Alaskan terrier or whatever. The animal hospital was for dogs and cats and birds and more exotic pets with deep-pocketed owners. The receptionist would turn away a wild, uninsured turkey who showed up presenting with symptoms of lymphoproliferative viral disease. Tumors in multiple organs, loss of muscle coordination and profound lethargy.

 

About the author

Pete Riebling received a BA in English/Creative Writing from Emory University and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bookends Review, Cosmic Double, Flash Fiction Magazine, NiftyLit, Ocotillo Review, and Quibble. 

 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)