By Paul Beckman
My Aunt Edith called me and said her brother, my Uncle Lou, was dead and I should help pay for his funeral since he jumped out of his hotel window a couple of days after we met for the first time and she knows I must’ve said something to cause it. Neither of us spoke again but listened to the other’s silence. Finally I hung up the phone and thought back to my conversation with Uncle Lou and think I figured out what I’d said to cause him to jump but I never told my Aunt or sent any money.
Paul Beckman’s new flash and micro collection, Kiss Kiss, will be out in March 2018 from Truth Serum Press.
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I’m obviously missing something because this all seems so dissatisfying. So what caused him to jump? Why did the Aunt suspect the niece of having said something so powerful it would drive a person to suicide? Yes, sometimes you end a story leaving questions behind to tease the reader, but only when the mystery is its own reward. Sorry. Not trying to be difficult. I just don’t get it.
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James, I get what you mean, but I read it as the sort of indifferent response such an absurd accusation merits. (The story being more about aunt Edith’s relationship with the narrator than anything else.)
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There’s a real darkness to this, I relish in it. There’s also some underlying humor somewhere.
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I like it. Blame when it belongs to the jumper. Maybe there’s guilt but the act was all him.
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Still want to know how the narrator felt about his own actions.
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