I was born in a flash.
Those words kept repeating themselves in her head. Every morning she woke up hearing them, waking up to them, their sound an alarm clock better than the phone sitting on her bedside table, now going off at the right time, long after her eyes had opened in the fading dark of her bedroom. She sighed and reached for it, hoping to hit the snooze button before it disappear into the jaws of her screen saver. When she grabbed and brought it closer to her, readying her eyes for the irritating glare, she was shocked to see that it was blotted out by a sticky note. A post-it square of paper with words written on it.
Her first thought was, am I still asleep? She refocused her eyes and blinked, but the note was really there. She peeled it off her phone screen, and read it and reread it, trying to remember if she had written it herself, and left it to be found by herself when she woke herself with her own words. No, she thought. That’s not what happened. Someone left this here for me to find and read. Someone who clearly has some difficulty writing, when they find none sneaking into my room at night, watch me sleep, and leave me a note that makes absolutely no sense.
She thought of calling the police, but instead reached for the gun she always kept under the pillow. She switched off the safety, and aimed it at nothing in particular. She felt both better and worse. She figured if someone had wanted to hurt her, they would have done it already; or they were simply waiting for her to find the note. Waiting for her to call the police, for example. Now she smirked at herself, and slowly left her bed. Never putting the gun down, nor aiming it, she made her rounds until she was sure there was no one else in the house. Back in her bedroom, she stashed the gun back under her pillow, and without making her bed, she picked up the note, and stared at it as she walked to the bathroom to take a shower.
Born in a flash. What does it mean? She pressed the sticky part of the note onto her medicine cabinet mirror, and stood by the shower stall, holding handfuls of her shirt in her hands, ready to peel it off her body, but not quite ready to make herself completely vulnerable. Images of that movie where the female character is stabbed through her shower curtain flooded her mind, and it was actually a relief to try to focus her attention back on that strange little note. Born quickly? Born while someone is taking a picture of the event, later to be shown as slides in every family reunion until you wither from shame like a mushroom in the sun? Minutes later, she still stood there, thinking. That’s when she heard the voice.
“I was born in a flash,” it said. It was soft, rising from the floor like heat, startling her into a yelp as she pivoted so fast and hard she almost fell into the tub. She grabbed her shower curtain, and unlike the one in the movie, it didn’t fail her. It maintained its position in space and she regained her balance, only to nearly lose it again when she saw the little man standing by the bathroom door, looking up at her with a fear and a plea in his eyes. How she could see his expression, she didn’t know. How she could hear him was another problem she decided to overlook in favor of being overtaken by the fact of his height. He couldn’t have measured more than a couple of inches in height.
She could have done eighteen different things; she could have screamed, or advanced enough steps to crush him like the bug anyone might have thought he was; she could have fainted, giving him an undefinable advantage; instead, she asked him, “What the hell does that mean?” He jumped as though the shard of her voice had hit him square in the chest, and said nothing. “Well?” She watched his little mouth open, and again that tiny voice whispered right into her ears. How’s he doing that?
“I don’t know.”
She realized she was again holding her shirt as though to remove it, and let go. When she did that, he jumped again, and she saw how scared he was. “OK, look. I don’t know what’s going on. For days I’ve heard your voice when I wake up, saying the same words: ‘I was born in a flash.’ And now you tell me you don’t know what those words mean?”
“I don’t. I- I was told to do that. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what’s going on!” That last set of words was unintelligible, because the little man collapsed in a heap, and appeared to start sobbing. She couldn’t tell because his face was now hidden from view behind his hands, but as bewildered as she was, he appeared to be more so. And he was defenseless. Her heart careened off fear and into something like compassion. Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she took very slow steps towards him, until she was close enough to kneel over him, and offer him a hand. He didn’t flinch at all, not even when she laid her palm next to him.
“Hey, little guy… easy now. Calm down. Look, I’ll help you. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but I’ll do my best to help you. Is there someone I can call for you? A wife? A mother?”
A full minute passed as she watched his body tremble with sobs, but she could tell they were slowing down. Finally he raised his head, and she heard him gasp. He’d known she was standing over him, but now he could see how she hid the world behind her enormous shape, and cast him in the geography of her shadow. He pushed himself off and away from her just a measure of a distance. His nostrils made an intermittent ragged sound as he stopped crying, and looked at her through tear lenses.
“You know I’m not going to hurt you. I think there’s a reason you’re here. Dry your eyes and tell me what you know.” Her voice didn’t regain sharp edges, but there was no mistaking her tone of command. He let it absorb him, and after a deep breath, he spoke again.
“All I know is that I opened my eyes, and a white-haired lady was placing a basket with me in it by your front door. All I could see in the basket was this note, the clothes I’m wearing, and a piece of bread. All she said before she left was, ‘Ask her for help. Give her the note,’ and then she walked away. By then I was already screaming, but for what or whom, I didn’t know. I don’t remember anything else besides the seven days I’ve been here, whispering to you before you wake up, hiding from you, scavenging food from the floor because a bird descended into the basket and decided to eat my bread.”
“I suppose I should be glad I’m a slob. So, a woman. And that’s all she said. That’s all you remember? What about your name? Family? Phone number?” At all that he shook his head slightly, his cheeks still wet, but his eyes now alert. She sighed.
“I wish I didn’t have to go to work now. I have two important meetings, and I can’t believe I’m saying that to a man the size of my pinky finger! You’re reason enough to stay home the rest of my life!” She wanted to take back the words as soon as she said them, and she didn’t know why. But her sensible brain knew she’d be out of a job if she didn’t show up on a day like today. He still looked at her without blinking, as though waiting to be told what to do. That’s exactly what she would do.
“You’re to wait for me until I come back. I’ll leave you my own phone, and I’ll show you how to call my work phone if you need me for any reason. I’ll leave you some food and water and the TV remote control on my bed, and you’re to stay there at all times. You can use the bathroom when I come back, so try not to drink too much. I’ll come back as soon as I can. Now climb into my palm so I can move you.” He did, and she had to concentrate on keeping her hand still, because her heart, which had already been racing, went into overdrive. The feeling of his feet, descending knees and then hands as he dropped into a crawl to the center of her hand, cause a torrent of emotions she couldn’t decipher.
Work was a nightmare. She breezed through her meetings because she had them down cold, but her mind was on that little man waiting for her at home. When she finally unlocked her front door and rushed to her bedroom, she found him where she had left him. He sat smiling, the huge remote propped in front of him, and the stupidest game show blaring on. When he saw her, he jumped to his feet, and turned off the TV with one leap to the right button. She stopped on her tracks and had to laugh at such a feat.
“I see you still remember how to work some things.”
“I do, but that’s all I remember.”
“Well, I have to call you something, and it might as well be ‘Flash’ for now. Don’t make that face unless you have a better idea.”
“I do, but not about my name. Can I ask you for something to write with? And some paper too.” She knew what he was after. “You want to see if your writing matches that one on the note.” Soon she sat at the kitchen table, and on it there was a sheet of paper, and on it stood Flash, wielding a stubby pencil length. He struggled to make the words while she held the initial note and immediately realized they matched, shape by shape.
“Look.” She held her hand to him so he could climb it again. She held him over the page at a vantage point that allowed him to see what she meant. “I wrote the note.”
“Maybe. Perhaps you spent the last few days looking at it so intently, now you can’t help but reproduce those shapes.”
“That’s possible too. I don’t know what else to do.”
“I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do. We’re not taking you to the police, or any government agency. We’re not plastering your face anywhere. We’re not even looking you up, in any way. You came to me for a reason, and I don’t know what it is, but I think I’m meant to help you, and in an unordinary fashion.”
“What does that mean?”
“‘Born in a flash.’ That means something; I know it. I know the words.”
“Maybe you think you do because I spent the last few days saying them to you shortly before your phone alarm would go off.”
She smiled at his retort. “Everything’s wrong with your mind, but there’s nothing wrong with your brain. I promise you this: I won’t stop until we have all the answers to your questions.”
“Hm.”
“What?”
“That’s funny. I don’t have any more questions.”
“What?”
“Right now, right here, at this moment, I have no questions. You’ve given me a name, and you’re going to keep me. It feels like all I need.”
She said nothing as her heart filled with joy. In a flash, she felt she was born.