Superficiality (what I made)
Fiction
The man put two coins on the table before his son who talked through the dead phone. “No tradition,” the man told him. Cut-off landline cables ran out of their house to the forgotten garden—forgotten only to keep the wires hidden.
The boy, his son, was intrigued and mistrustful when the man asked him to stack them up. He picked one up, saw if the emblem was different or if the lonely thumb had another hand, then he put it upon the other. The man took another out of his shirt pocket and told him to keep stacking. That pocket was tugging his shirt, and it seemed his skin was tensioned, anchored on his jaw.
It was a methodical ritual till the fifteenth. “Keep it to the side,” heard the son. There was a sudden spark of thought in those eyes. A rebellion suppressed deep in thought under those eyes. “Disgrace,” the man mumbled under his breath and proceeded to do it himself. “Now stack these.”
Another fifteen, another methodical ritual. The man had bought a chair but didn’t sit; instead, he leaned against it for support. “Put this stack on the other,” the man commanded. This time no sparking thoughts or sights of betrayal under those eyes.
The boy’s thin fingers were fat to go under the bottom coin. Two coins slipped under the curve made when his fingers were pressed against the table to grab it. He picked it from the bottom third and put the remaining two on top with his other hand. His heart stopped for the moment, not out of fear or anxiety but the place was so quiet that when one’s movements stopped, the world stopped. The man’s voice, “In order,” he said, then shook him as a gentle wind shook a still leaf floating by an invisible spider-web strand.
The betrayal and rebellion of those eyes finally spoke, “It had been random the whole time.” He fumbled at the first word with the dried saliva on his lips.
“Do as I said,” the man said. The boy picked the coins from the top and shoved them below the grip. Almost made it fall, almost lost his balance rushing to save the stack.
The man squinted his eyes trying to catch the touch of coins. The boy lowered the stack on the other then retarded as the fingers came in between. Every time a spike in the beats. The coins shone through his glasses to the man’s bare eyes, mesmerizing for the man to try an empty swallow but there wasn’t any saliva.
He waited for three tries and the standing man pulled his chair. A leg struck the table, the marvel of thirty coins fell bottom up. The stack was a bed, the sparkles of shine were a mirror, and the sun’s light was turned white.
The man kept standing and the boy stared at the coins. They would have preferred to be there for eternity than to commit the next action.
THE END
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