"Some Notes on the New Distraction Facility" by Nicholas Grider
Budget wisely; The Distraction Facility is here to stay, at least until the strip mall is razed, and no matter how much money or time you spend, you are never going to forget him.
Neither the needle nor the haystack nor the service fee to rent the opportunity to search (accruing hourly like flint-dry digital coins in the bank accounts of our understandably exhausted customer service reps) nor the "tip jar" in which you can deposit a sufficient handful of corporeal coins in exchanged for Helpful Haystack Hints from our Distraction Associates nor the nearby low-ceilinged approximations of bedrooms at the approximate border of town you sometimes purchase for almost a night in order to play house with a tired stranger bearing an almost name, a neighborhood of neon and of small brown-lawned homes in which dwell rally enthusiasts with Punisher bumper stickers on their pickups but who eye you in a way that is not entirely disgust, and who sometimes just nod at you and say "how much" more like a statement than a query, nor health care costs or services associated with Things Going Wrong Again are included in the annual membership fee.
Sometimes remorse is easier to accept when your morning prayers fail to smother it if you think of it as a double-sided mirror, reflecting not just what you did but whatever might have been done to you.
Accusing your husband of turning into a museum devoted to the display of a younger, less talkative version of the man you married is, in general, not a great idea, especially immediately prior to a visit to the Facility, which may or may not include clientele rubbernecking at bickering, nor does it fall under the purview of the Facility's Distraction Charter.
The Distraction Facility is not to be confused with lithe platonic room-temperature distraction itself, nor does the term "facility" imply any licensing processes that have not yet been codified, especially any tilting toward the fantastical and/or purple and/or picaresque, nor does the name of the facility guarantee successful, much less long-lasting, distraction from the sharp, brief, and seemingly arbitrary sparks of panic you experience during your day-to-day life when you catch yourself wondering what went wrong but are not able to name what "it" is.
Types, styles, and degrees of distraction are subject to change due to factors including but not limited to boredom, profit margin maximization, and the laws and/or unspoken agreements of you, your family, people whom you allow to believe are family, and the municipality in which your local Distraction Facility is located, out on the edge of town near the grass-covered landfills that look like massive ocean waves forever frozen under the midwestern suburban lawns you thought of, in your youth, both in terms of territory and permanence.
The ability of a haystack to hide a needle does not guarantee a given haystack does, in fact, include only one needle, or any needles at all.
Admission that you've come to prefer the company of men whose names you don't know over the man whose name you share does not fall under the purview of the Distraction Facility's Earned Ignorance Program.
The only way either of you will likely ever know the exact moment of each other's death or see the slow, halting rise and fall of the others' last breath is if one of you agrees to ask, the other agrees to stay, and you both pretend to forget as much as seems possible, given how often you're close enough to brush your fingers across each other's cheek but how seldom this happens anymore.
Membership at the Distraction Facility contains one (1) month of free introductory twilight, subject to membership approval as listed in Terms and Conditions.
No one is responsible when both the pursuit and the object of that pursuit cease to contain any warm gray hum of pleasure—not The Distraction Facility, not him, and not you, not even when he tells you it's you who's gone cold, not him, and that it's not his job to entertain you and never was.
No matter what you do, you will never be sure if he's prepared to abandon you.
Making quiet and polite requests for entertainment from Punisher strangers while you stare down at your scuffed boat shoes is permitted at the Distraction Facility, but the Facility is indemnified against the consequences of the same or similar requests made elsewhere, either in private or in public.
The Distraction Facility includes Empathy Consultants, subject to availability and seasonably variable, who will cross their evenly tanned arms and nod when you explain how even though he still shares a home with you when you catch him changing details while telling you stories he's already told, he has, more or less, already left.
For maximum enjoyment of the Facility, please note: the most reliable happy ending is no ending at all other than quiet descent into a valley of confidence that not only are happy endings possible but they are forever close at hand, and if any happy ending (instrumentalized or implied) has not yet been reached, it is entirely the result of a display of admirable stoicism on your part as you lie on your right side in bed at night facing away from him and wondering why you're getting more and more afraid of closing your eyes, why mornings feel more like a rehearsal of death than the onset of sleep.
Remember: There is no such thing as a "perfect opportunity" for anything, including distraction and/or catastrophe and/or letting Buck, at the gas station, run his finger over your braided leather belt and ask you whether self-possession is as costly as it seems.
Remember: Distract yourself at your own risk.
Nicholas Grider's first short story collection Misadventure (A Strange Object, 2014) was longlisted for the Frank O'Connor Prize and their stories have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes and the Best Microfiction anthology. Grider's work has appeared in Conjunctions, DIAGRAM, The Fanzine, Guernica, Midnight Breakfast, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere; Grider is an assistant fiction editor at Pithead Chapel and a music composition/pre-med student in the upper midwest.
Nicholas Grider's first story collection Misadventure (A Strange Object, 2014) was longlisted for the Frank O'Connor Prize, and their/her work has appeared in Conjunctions, Guernica, Okay Donkey, Queen Mob's Tea House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn and elsewhere. They live in the upper midwest and are an assistant fiction editor at Pithead Chapel; more information about Grider and their work can be found at www.nicholasgrider.com as of Sept. 1st.
Forest of Borders collects sixteen of Grider's flash stories written in the last five years, all fewer than 1500 words and all exploring, from a variety of angles, what happens when "average" American white men attempt to establish and police borders between each other and between themselves and the world. In the stories, as in life, things rarely go according to plan.
"Plagues and Obligations" (as Simon Henry Stein)
http://x-r-a-y.com/plagues-and-obligations-by-simon-henry-stein/fiction/
"Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)"
http://thefanzine.com/big-ideas-dont-get-any/
"Same Husband Twice"
https://queenmobs.com/2019/07/fiction-the-same-husband-twice/