| Chaitanya Cheke | October 2026 | Flash Fiction |
The hound across the fence was a ragged terrier-mix named Barnaby, though Janice called it The Pestilence. It barked at wind, gravel, delivery vans, God, and the idea of daylight.
“Take the meat,” Janice said on a Sunday, slapping three thawed patties onto the counter. “A little radiator fluid. He laps it, he sleeps. God, Leo. My head is split in two. Are you a husband or an ornament?
Leo took the patties because he was fifty-two, and Janice’s migraines felt like house fires everyone was responsible for containing. “He’s just loud,” Leo muttered.
“He’s ruining my domestic peace,” she said, her voice dropping into that icy register reserved for underperforming appliances and him.
Downstairs, Janice’s mother sat in the sunroom wrapping hard candies in foil. Maura’s brain was becoming a colander—names fell through, dates dissolved, but the ledger of small sacrifices remained calcified. That afternoon, Maura summoned Janice. From beneath a pile of floral cardigans, she produced an envelope taped with yellowing Scotch.
“For your bright future,” Maura whispered, trembling. “Four thousand, two hundred. Cash money, Janey. I didn’t take the Florida trips. I mended the slips. For you.”
Janice looked at the stack. Four thousand two hundred dollars. In 1974, perhaps an empire; in the present climate, hardly three mortgage cycles. Still, Janice slipped it into her pocket with a sharp intake of air. A change came over her posture instantly—a crisp, executive spine. When Maura asked for tea ten minutes later, Janice snapped: “Mother, please. You have feet. I’ve got to get back to work.”
Maura watched her daughter’s back recede down the hallway. The sacrifice, she realized with a cold sinking behind her ribs, had not bought reverence. She had surrendered her only shield, and Janice now regarded her as a vacant tenant whose lease had expired.
Behind the cedar hedge, Leo knelt in the dusk. He had mixed the sweet green coolant into the ground chuck using an old wooden spoon he later snapped in two. Barnaby came to the chain link, tail whipping like a metronome. The dog did not growl. It made a small, wet chuff of gratitude, took the patty from Leo’s gloved hand, and bolted it in three gulps.
“Good boy,” Leo whispered, his stomach dropping out. “Go on now.”
The yard went quiet by midnight.
At three in the morning, the silence was louder than the barking had ever been. Leo lay rigid under the floral quilt, staring at the textured plaster ceiling. A phantom pressure settled on his chest, warm and heavy.
Toto.
Toto had been an ear-flopped spaniel mix who smelled of swamp reeds and corn chips. When Leo had the measles, Toto had curled right into the crook of his knees, refusing kibble until the boy’s fever broke. When Toto had grown old, his hips clicking like cheap castanets, Leo’s father had driven the dog to the vet alone, sparing the boy. A mercy, his father had called it. We don’t let things suffer, Leo.
The Miller kid next door was away at junior college. Mrs. Miller was eighty, deaf as a post, living off canned peaches. Barnaby was her only bell.
By Thursday, the rot had entered Leo’s throat. Every swallow tasted like antifreeze—sickly, chemical sweet. He could not look at meat. When Janice fried sausages, he fled to the garage and sat on an upturned paint bucket, weeping into his sleeves. He watched the Miller driveway. On Friday morning, he saw the yellow van from the animal removal service pull away, Mrs. Miller standing on her stoop in her housecoat, one hand pressed flat against her mouth like she was trying to keep her teeth from falling out.
Inside the house, Janice’s tyranny flourished. The four thousand dollars sat on the bureau.
“She’s declining fast,” Janice announced on Saturday, scraping burnt toast into the sink. “She forgot the oven. She’s wandering into the yard asking if the banks are open. It’s unsafe, Leo. The Shady Pines place has an intake slot. Monday.
“Janice,” Leo whispered. “She just gave you everything.”
“And it will pay the intake deposit,” Janice said coldly, tapping the envelope. “Don’t moralize at me. You don’t do the laundry. You don’t change the bed-pads.”
On Monday morning, the rain came down like one of Janice’s tantrums. Maura did not fight. She wore her beige Sunday coat and held the purse empty of everything except three peppermint lozenges. When Janice guided her toward the passenger seat, Maura looked back at the house once—not with anger, but with the blankness of a woman who knows she has been traded away.
“You’re doing very well, Mom,” Janice said loudly, enunciating as if to a foreigner. “Very modern facility. Crafts. Puzzles. TV.”
Maura said nothing. She simply folded her hands in her lap.
Leo did not wave from the window. As the taillights vanished down the slick asphalt, he walked into the kitchen, picked up his slicker, and walked out the front door.
He crossed the soggy turf between the properties. The rain beat against his neck. He stepped onto Mrs. Miller’s porch, where a single rubber squeak-toy sat waterlogged by the doormat. His chest felt hollowed out, as if Toto were inside him, pawing desperately at his ribs to be let loose.
He lifted his fist. He knocked three times against the aluminium screen.
“Mrs. Miller,” he said into the mesh, his voice breaking into something small, ruined, and true. “It’s Leo. From next door. I need to tell you something.”
Three miles away, Janice signed the clipboard at the reception desk. She pocketed the carbon receipt, walked past the rows of vinyl armchairs where silent elders sat watching a muted television, and drove home through the downpour, feeling strangely unburdened, like an account neatly closed.
She unlocked her back door, shaking the water from her umbrella.
“Leo?” she called.
The house was entirely still. Leo was sitting at the kitchen table, his hands flat on the yellow Formica, waiting.
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Chaitanya Cheke is a writer and English teacher based in Pune, India. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Muse India, In Parentheses, 3Elements Literary Review, Open Door Review, Five Minutes, and Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag. The stories he writes are largely influenced by what he sees and experiences around him and often explore themes of solitude, memory, and the strangeness of ordinary life. You can connect with him on Instagram @chai.tan.yay.
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Photo by Arun Anoop on Unsplash
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