{"id":24023,"date":"2026-04-22T08:28:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=24023"},"modified":"2026-04-22T08:28:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T12:28:46","slug":"two-stories-59","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/flash-fiction\/two-stories-59\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Because it\u2019s Tradition, I am Troubled in My Heart<\/h5>\n<blockquote>\n<h5>Frances Klein<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Birthday candles forcefully kiss my cheeks. Frosting paints my eyes better than any natural-colored eyeshadow. Strawberry jam stands out more on my lips than the carrot orange lipstick I\u2019m wearing. The only way I can eat cake is with a bruise on my forehead and my ponytail in his hand. Everyone is putting more effort into laughing right now than they were singing \u201cHappy Birthday.\u201d I\u2019m almost glad I can\u2019t open my eyes right now. If I could see through the salty Swiss meringue, I\u2019d probably see a knife in my hand. Divorce papers on an ochre table. An IV drip stabbed into the back of my hand. A wedding ring surrounded by water rings on our coffee table. I see these images every year after my head breaches cake. I instinctively lick my lips and the images disappear with the smoke from the candles. I\u2019m left staring at the shape of my head on top of the candles shaped like a four and a zero, all the while he chuckles and tells me I should have seen it coming.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h5>A Girl Slides into My DMs Offering \u201cSweet GIFs or the Blood of Your Enemies\u201d<\/h5>\n<blockquote>\n<h5>S\u00e9amus Fey<\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>I choose the former<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s looked over my cookies. She knows how much reality TV I\u2019ve consumed since 2000. I don\u2019t know if she\u2019s pleased with that or is silently judging me. Tiffany \u201cNew York\u201d Pollard smiles with a knife in her hands. Mayhem Miller serves bulging eye choreography. That one girl from Bad Girl\u2019s Club says, \u201cMaybe so.\u201d A chuckle falls out of me like crumbs onto my shirt. I open the GIF bar to find something fitting to give back. But then I realize I don\u2019t know anything about her. I think we shared a class or worked together in the past. Her name eludes me. She sends me Tanya and Portia from The White Lotus sitting in silence when I don\u2019t respond. I think she\u2019s mad at me, but I don\u2019t know how to ask.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>I choose the latter<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She gives me their last names. It was easy to remember their first names. How they squinted their eyes when they mocked my voice. But I couldn\u2019t remember their full names in order to cyberstalk them. Not even the one who sent me a friend request years after he drove me out of Boy Scouts. I deleted it in response to his audacity, then never thought of him again. Until now. She probably wants me to feel some satisfaction for how my life turned out compared to theirs. Instead, I\u2019m sitting with Tanya and Portia in Sicily, unsure of what to do next.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The only way I can eat cake is with a bruise on my forehead and my ponytail in his hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":24999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[4865,863,4866,4867],"class_list":["post-24023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-alex-carrigan","tag-flash-fiction","tag-frances-klein","tag-seamus-fey","writer-alex-carrigan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24023"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25000,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023\/revisions\/25000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}