Hundred Word Sleep
three micro fictions by Crockett Doob
Hundred Word Sleep
I sent her my spam: “Hundred Word Writing Contest.” (This was early on in the relationship.) Instead of submitting something, she sent me a hundred word story about how easily she slept beside me.
She wrote about sleepovers as a kid, watching scary movies then staring at the walls all night; or as an adult, when in strange, new places, running away and taking a cab home. But with me, she said, she fell fast asleep to the sound of my heart.
This terrified me. I stopped sleeping. I’d lie there, stiff, scared to move, scared to break the spell.
Federer
My ex-girlfriend was furious that I didn’t know who Federer was. It was a bad fight. Because I was equally mad at her for being so mad at me. Who cared? She did. A lot.
“I’ll ask ten people and I bet you over half of them don’t know who Federer is!”
I was wrong. Most of them knew. Only two didn’t. And those two were telling, like they proved her point: man-child(ren) going through life not knowing basic shit like who Federer is.
When she dumped me, it was a year or two later, so I definitely couldn’t say it was about the Federer thing, but maybe my not knowing represented a deficit she knew I’d always have. She was probably right. Some things you can’t change.
Star Wars
My therapist told me I should tell my girlfriend I was depressed. Tell her about the crying jags. About my heroin-addicted friend—whom my girlfriend didn’t like—plotting his suicide, and how, for the first time, I understood what it felt like to be on the receiving end of someone you love telling you they want to die. My therapist was adamant I tell my girlfriend all this.
“She’s the woman you love. Tell her how you feel.”
So I called and we arranged to meet in Central Park after she got off work.
It was dark as we walked through the park.
After, she was silent.
Then she asked, “Are you going to see the new Star Wars?”
Crockett Doob’s work has been published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Does It Have Pockets, Free Flash Fiction, Literally Stories, and HiLoBrow. He lives in Rockaway Beach, NY, and doesn’t surf.