Flash fiction can (and will) run the gamut of human expression. In “Inconclusive,” Jack Smiles utilizes dry humor and sparse but surprising prose to keep the reader riveted until the very end. The overall mood is playfully noir—dark and twisty but also funny and, ultimately, hopeful. —Court Harler
My father always said he was a WASP, as in White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or so I thought. He had no family anyone knew of. He disappeared when I was sixteen, literally, poof, gone. I was curious as hell about him. For my twenty-first birthday my girlfriend gave me a DNA test kit. I learned I was fifty percent Irish, which I expected from my mother’s side, but the other fifty percent?
“Inconclusive.”
Inconclusive? I talked to cousins on my mother’s side who had done the test and none of them had ever heard of inconclusive. I called the 1-800 number, but ran out of patience after the fifth voice prompt. I sent emails, a web form and a letter, that’s right, paper, envelope and stamp.
I was seriously thinking about driving to Omaha and camping out in front of the office of the DNA company until someone gave me an answer. But it didn’t come to that. I got a text from a restricted number:
“Jane Reilly. Postum, New York. 611 Crandell Street. Inconclusive.”
611 Crandell was a six-story apartment building. I didn’t have an apartment number. I stepped into the foyer. The door to No. 1 opened. If this was Jane, I hoped to God we weren’t related. She was gorgeous. Tall. Blood red hair. Enormous green eyes. I had red hair and green eyes, too, but nothing like hers.
“Jane?”
“Inconclusive. Come in.”
We sat on stools at the counter bar in her kitchen. She poured wine.
“Are you drawn to strange things or have odd habits?” she asked.
I didn’t admit it, but yes. I liked aphids. I never knew why, but I collected them in a glass jar that I kept in the laundry room and watched their tiny black or green bodies shrivel as they died.
“Do you sleep outside?”
Again I couldn’t admit it, but again she was right. I did sleep outside a lot, sometimes in a hole.
“You are drawn to bright light, aren’t you, and deathly afraid of webs?”
“Well, we’re all unique.”
“Unique, indeed,” she said. “Follow me.”
I’d follow her anywhere.
We took an elevator to the roof. She walked to the back edge of the building. We stood side by side looking down at an empty alleyway.
“We have the same great grandfather,” she said. “He was from….”
I didn’t hear where he was from. She’d pushed me off.
So this is how I die, I thought as I fell, and I was so close to discovering my heritage. But my body orientated in midair. My fall slowed. I landed gently on my feet. I looked up. Jane gave me a come-here gesture. My arms went up from my sides. They quivered, faster and faster, making a buzzing sound. I lifted off the ground and flew, floated really, in a meandering pattern back to the roof.
My father, I realized, really was a WASP.
JACK SMILES is a former community newspaper feature writer collecting freelance rejections as a hobby in retirement.
Featured image by Ali Bakhtiari, courtesy of Unsplash.
Flash the Court 
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