Rhubarb Wine

Flash Fiction

Photo by Anthony A on Unsplash

I can play Tic Tac Toe on the scars on my forearm.

I did it once with a Sharpie.

Passed out from some peach wine Olin Torgert made in his attic.

Woke up while Jeff Cybulski was tattooing one of the X’s on me.

Freaked, punched him and he quit.

It’s just a line, soft blue and splotchy. But makes it seem like that square should always be an X.

Two of the scars I did myself. I was mad, was gonna kill myself, throw myself off the Outer Drive bridge on to the freeway, but then I remembered Annie Torgert, Olin’s older sister hit a stray dog on that stretch of the freeway and couldn’t stop crying for like two months. They made her get help at the community health place where you go when you get syphilis.

I always thought she’d be walking in there to cry about the dog to a counselor and someone would see her and think maybe she had syphilis.

Instead of killing myself I cut my arm.

Didn’t go to the hospital.

Erik Wagner made me a tourniquet type thing and held my arm straight up in the air for hours.

He was stoned, Crystal T, I think, before dabs came around.

That fall, I crashed Erik’s dirtbike into the fence at Holloway’s going to the liquor store.

Them scars made the Tic Tac Toe board.

Annie Torgert said I cut myself for attention.

I didn’t.

I did it because I was mad.

Told Annie Torgert she’s the reason I didn’t throw myself off the Outer Drive bridge.

She took it wrong, said I was just saying it to make her like me.

I told her it was the truth.

Told her if she beat me at Tic Tac Toe on my arm I’d get the whole game tattooed.

She said she didn’t play dumb games like that.

She played RPGs.

Sounded like something they cure at the community health place.

Sounded dumb.

She said I needed to go see a counselor or at least I needed to get out of my own head.

Olin Torgert said he was gonna make rhubarb wine in the attic.

Annie Torgert said if I played a game with her and her friends I could be a wizard.

I thought she meant like I would move a little plastic wizard around a square board, but she explained that I had to really be the wizard and make decisions and shit.

I don’t think she knew how good that made me feel.

I don’t think I know how to tell her.

She made me promise not to drink none of Olin’s rhubarb wine when it was ready.

I promised.

Probably won’t keep the promise.

But I might.

That’s how good.

***

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