5 Minute Short Stories

The Need of All Needs.

It’s been 40 minutes since his mom told him he couldn’t come back home. But he knows where to go. His younger sister Stacy always has room for him. Maybe it’s her nature of taking in any stray animal and feeding it until it was strong enough to live on its own. Maybe it’s her impulsiveness in being the listening ear to all their siblings' problems since they were kids. Maybe it’s her attention to detail in knowing exactly how many packets of sugar to add to his coffee every morning. He knows exactly where to go. Stacy never turns her back on him. And neither would he, if she ever needed him that is. 

Jeff’s been on this side of town ten times too long, so he doesn’t need to drive slowly to realize that avoiding potholes is a sport worth winning. For every crumb in his backseat there are ten ants carrying it. They play an important role in the ecosystem, so they need easy access to food. The black smoke from his exhaust pipe covers his rearview, but at least he has a car. And he is only four plastic bottles away from beating his fifty-pile record in the passenger seat. He collects and sells them to the rusty dude across his street every week so he can keep an excuse to be a stay-at-home son. His mom did ask him to get a job, well at least he got one. 

Stacy’s house is on a hill that oversees the whole city. It’s pink, that’s why she chose it. Jeff did not wait to honk loudly. He sped his way up there blasting “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred body rolling in the driver seat, and making fierce eye contact with anyone who dared to look his direction. He needed to let everyone know he arrived. The neighbors outside covered their ears and coughed as his car was blastic music too loud and was too unbreathable from his exhaust smoke to ignore. As he pulled up to her front porch, one of her swinging lanterns kept flickering on and off while dead flies lay beside it. The gray cat lounging in her rocking chair sat up. 

Jeff honked again before getting out of the car and yelling, “Stacy, mom kicked me out again!” He got his bags out of his trunk coughing as the black smoke from his exhaust pipe kept blowing in his face. He runs back to the driver seat and honks one more time then decides to turn off his car, to stop the smoke from filling his lungs. His loud car took up so much space in the air, that when he turned it off, it was oddly quiet. The jazz music she usually played wasn’t playing, he didn’t smell the sweet bread from outside, and her lights were not on besides the lantern on the front porch. 

He called her name again, “Stacy!” Confused, he grabbed his bags and walked to the front door. To his surprise, he could see straight inside without putting his face on the window as there were no curtains. The gray cat jumped off the rocking chair and looked up at him. Although There was a black crust in its eyes, the eyes were strikingly brown with highlights of blue-green like a supernova. This alarmed Jeff because Stacy never left her cat dirty, nonetheless to fend for itself. 

As always the door was unlocked. He left his bags at the front door, and his footsteps echoed throughout the living room with each step. The house was colder inside than it was outside. The glare from the full moon illuminated the dust that floated away from her furniture. “Stacy?” He asked as he slowly stepped into the kitchen. He tried flicking the lights on to no avail. He was hungry.  Upon opening the greasy fridge, the repugnant smell wafted onto him. He slammed that fridge door so fast it tipped over as ice from the freezer fell onto the hard floor. For sure that would wake Stacy up. But nothing. Not giving it a second thought, he tip-toed through the kitchen to avoid slipping on passing piles of hard crusty poop and sticky piss all over the floor assuming it was the fault of the cat. 

As he made his way down the hallway, he walked into her room. As dark as it was, he could see the outline of her unfinished clay sculptures standing in the shadows. He heard a distant radio playing. His eyebrows propped up, where was it coming from? Each door in the hallway was cracked open into darkness, except for the last room positioned in the middle of the hallway. A dim light was on. He yells, “Stacy finally!” He bursts in to see her on the floor, her gray skin and bones doubled over with her forearm between her head and the toilet. He immediately crouches down to her level and she turns her head to him. She asks with a weak voice, “Where were you six months ago?” 

Jeff needed clarification. He didn’t remember. A little louder, Stacy asks again, “Where were you six months ago, Jeff?”

Jeff is a trembling tomato, “Well, I think I was…uh”

“I needed you, Jeff. The last time you left, I told you I was terminal and you promised to get a job to help me and that you would be back.”

“I did get a job, that’s what I wanted to tell you actually” He pulls out a wrinkled twenty-dollar bill and tries to hand it to her. “Here, I made this with my last bottle collection. I can pay you again soon, I’m only 4 bottles away.” 

“You fucking asshole. You really thought this will help me?” Stacy says as she musters the little strength she has to ball and crunch that twenty and throw it across the bathroom tiles. She sits up a little. “You never came back. I waited for you. They turned my lights and water off a while ago. I haven’t eaten shit in almost 2 weeks and I can’t go to my doctor appointments anymore. I’m literally dying, Jeff.” 

Jeff panics, “Don’t say that Stacy!” 

Stacy tries to sit up and look him straight in the face, “What choice do I have? Look at me”. He holds her hands in his. And Stacy cries, “ I don’t care anymore. Nobody in this family ever asked if I was ok. I told mom, dad, 3 of my siblings, and 2 of my closest friends I had literal stomach cancer. Everyone acted so, so sorry for me.”

She paused, “ Yet, I went to all my doctor’s appointments alone.”

Jeff tries to interrupt, but she shushes him swiftly. “You were the only one who actually promised to visit me. Your first excuse I forgave. The second one I understood. The third one I started feeling sorry for you. But one day I woke up and you stopped checking in on me, you ignored my texts and calls. I went through all 11 of my chemotherapy appointments alone. All of my follow-up appointments. Every. Single. One.”

As he examines her body, her chest rises and falls and she struggles to breathe, her shirt is so cheap you can see her bones through it. So skeleton-like if she fell down she could break her hips. His eyes welled up with tears but nothing fell. He stands up, and says “Bye, Stacy!” 

As he walks out of the restroom Stacy calls his name one more time, “Jeff, please stay. I’m almost there.”

“Sorry Stacy, I have another house to get to. You don’t even have food and I am starving.” His footprints on the concrete floors lead him out of the house. As he starts the loud car, he remembers his other sister Irene who lives one city over.