Laurie Blauner: BATS • Cleaver Magazine

Flash by Laurie Blauner
BATS

The best I could manage was a high whistle while trying to tell the bats, Stay away. When they first arrived I wanted to speak to them but they were busy echolocating.

At night, in my old house in the country, I could hear their claws brushing against a wall during their quick, diagonal flying. I discovered one hanging upside down in my kitchen closet, its head hidden beneath its wings. Once I forgot to close that door. In the window behind me fields spread out, beckoning. In the bat’s trajectory I was a disturbance in its way as it aimed outdoors. The bats liked their darkness, distrusting light.

I was already old when the bat in my pantry first bit me, dotting my hand with puncture marks from the swarm of its sharp teeth. I washed and bled, washed and bled, reminding me of a religious ritual. But the bat in my food closet was nonplussed as the weather turned cold and my grandchildren began to play inside my beige kitchen. When the bat nipped at a small, visiting dog that was tugging on a stuffed toy in my grandson’s hands I chased it back into the pantry with a broom.

Mammals, I screamed at it.

More appeared. They were strange phantoms, gathering in my dresser drawers, curled inside shirts or underwear. Sometimes they appeared suddenly from my empty, stacked boxes or swooped down from the top of a bookshelf. At night I began to hear them in the walls scratching, squeaking, chirping. I wondered what they were saying and doing. Then one day I imagined us pleasantly coexisting, how they would help me in my old age, keeping me company, entertaining me with their antics, keeping insects away, and fertilizing my gardens. These were daydreams. What did they really think of me?

I began to feel very weak, like a deer falling in a fallow field rehearsing its death, unable to rise. My bad heart was described by the doctor as a dark, winged, erratically pulsing thing huddled in my chest, waiting for a chance to skim towards night. I found solace in living with bats. My life was small too and growing smaller. We were on the threshold of something.

When the bats were most active inside the wall I began explaining to them what I’ve loved, my dead husband, overseas trips, my daughter and her family, puzzles, and also what made me angry, certain insults, bad food, neglected children, crazy neighbors, inherent meanness. I received their chattering in return. Occasionally several bats dove into my bedroom or into a room nearby as though they understood and were commenting. In this way we grew comfortable and familiar with one another. At twilight my eyes focused on the shift between light and dark in a corner or fluttering curtains near a window or some odd movement near my laundry. I found myself seeking their company.

One day my heart sputtered painfully while trying to leave my body behind. It was early in the morning and I was reaching for my coffee cup in my pale, untidy kitchen. I fell backwards onto the floor. My worn, flowered robe fell open. I felt something like wings and tiny bites covering parts of my body and I believed I could hear something like singing.

Laurie Blauner’s flash fiction has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Laurel Review, LIT magazine, Gone Lawn (forthcoming), The Best Small Fictions, Moon City Review (forthcoming) and New World Writing, among other magazines. Her second hybrid nonfiction book, called Swerve, was just released from Rain Mountain Press. She’s the author of The Solace of Monsters and a recent novel is available from Spuyten Duyvil Press. Her latest poetry book, Come Closer, won the Library of Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander Press. Her website is laurieblauner.com. She lives in Seattle, Washington.