House of Brightness, Sleeping in the Tub, Story with a Limp, and Human Sparks
House of Brightness
I live in a house that is so bright I have to wear shades to see or close my eyes tightly and feel my way from room to room. Without shades, the brightness stings my eyes, which are always bloodshot. With shades on, my eyes still strain to see, and the rooms fill with an orangish gold light as if filtered through fall foliage. Now, no one else lives here but me. No one else could stand the constant brightness. Those who have tried turned to shadows. I can still hear their voices fading into soundlessness. At night, I open the blinds to let the darkness in, but there is never enough.
***
Sleeping in the Tub
He sank lower in the tub, his mouth and nose barely above the water. His eyes slowly closed while he was thinking about the rest of the day. He would float, just float. The water kept running, and pretty soon, it was pouring over the side of the tub. Still he didn't open his eyes, even though he felt his body being tugged in the steady stream. He floated out of the bathroom, through the hallway and down the steps into the basement. The river of water lifted him higher and higher. When he finally opened his eyes, his nose scraped the ceiling. He began to claw his way along the ceiling until he got to the steps where he swam upward. When he made it to the bathroom, he plunged into the tub and with great effort, pulled out the stopper, holding onto the hand railing while all the water was sucked down the drain. Then, exhausted, he lay in the empty tub for hours.
***
Story With a Limp
The young woman in front of me, lugging a saxophone case, limps toward the stoplight ahead. The bulky man in a t-shirt that barely covers his belly limps toward me with a smirk on his face. Folding his towel in the alley, the Asian cook limps into the back door of the Noodle Shop. Holding her bag of poop, the pet store owner limps toward the metal waste basket on the corner, her terrier limping beneath her. A robin limps to the edge of the oak branch leaning out over Main Street, and the pigeons are limping beneath the high curbs. Geese honk their horns in the dark crowded skies, their flight pattern too tight. The clouds too seem to limp across the sky. I'm also limping so I slow up to see if my limp will slow up or disappear. Everyone and everything slows up with me. And now we're all limping in place, afraid to go forward.
***
Human Sparks
Shoshana turned on the light and sparks shot out of the toggle switch. She turned it off immediately. When I touched her arm, I got a shock of static electricity. I touched her again to see what would happen and the shock was more forceful. The third time, it knocked me off my feet. She looked at me on the floor and then reached out her hand to help me up, but she sent a jolt of electricity through me that left me jerking spasmodically for a long moment. "What's happened to you?" I asked. "Maybe it's epigenetics. Maybe the wrong or right gene got turned on, and now I’ve got a secret power." She moved her hand in a circle, and lightning cut a hole in the wood floor. "We’re going to lose our deposit," I said—the whole place smoking.
Author Bio
Jeff Friedman’s eleventh book, Broken Signals was published by Bamboo Dart Press in 2024. Friedman’s poems and microfictions have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Fiction International, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Funny, Cafe Irreal, Wigleaf, 100-word Story, Plume, Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Anthology, Cast-Iron Aeroplanes That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poetry, New England Review, Hotel Amerika, Rattle, Antioch Review, Best Microfiction 2021 2022, 2023,2024,and 2025, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards. His stories have appeared six other times in our pages, and his book Floating Tales was one of the works featured in our series "Reading at The Irreal Cafe."