(Ed. Note: This story is the second place winner of Monkey Puzzle’s 3rd Annual Flash Fiction Contest, featured in Monkey Puzzle #11 –I’m posting it as an example for entrants to our other flash fiction contests. – NJ –)

Most folks go to the County Treasurer’s office with just a checkbook to pay their taxes, but Buck Simmons walked in with a freshly sharpened hatchet.

Buck had been standing in front of his mailbox on a sunny June afternoon with an envelope in his hands. He ran a pocket knife smartly through the seam. “The second installment of your property taxes is due in two weeks” it read. The timing couldn’t be better, he thought as he sighed through his nose, but it wasn’t until his eyes passed over the line “this is a reminder for your convenience” that he let the letter slip from his fingers and drift slowly to the ground.

He stood motionless for a time, staring at his empty hands. They were callused old hands, hands that weren’t what they used to be, hands that had a rough year. On any other day Buck wouldn’t have thought twice, but in that moment, in the street in front of his home, with the sun at his red ears, there was just something about the vicious tongue-in-cheek tenacity of that word “convenience”. It made him shudder; even against his better judgment the affront seemed naked and grisly.

Buck was a deliberate sort of man. If he was going to lose his cool, he was going to do it in a neatly bookended fashion, so he started sharpening his hatchet. After two weeks passed, he walked through the County Treasurer’s office doors.

He stepped up to the counter and smiled nervously at the clerk.

“Your parcel number?” she asked.

“It’s YUSW00037B.”

The keyboard clicked.

“Mr. Simmons? Is that you?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“What’ll it be today? Cash or Check?”

Buck hesitated for a moment.

“It’s gonna be this!” he shouted and slammed his hand on the counter and thrust the hatchet high over his head. With a grunt he brought it down hard onto his wrist. Blood splattered on the counter. The clerk’s face was freckled by a jet of red mist. The cut went straight through, leaving a half-inch portion of skin connecting his hand to his forearm, but with a few awkward chops he finished the amputation.

Looking up, lips quivering, he searched the clerk’s face. He met a cool and perfunctory expression, a professional grimace under tired eyes.

“There’s no need for theatrics. We accept hands. Usually people bag them at home and freeze them; it’s more hygienic that way. Now someone has to clean this mess up.”

“W-what? You take hands as payment?”

“No. Not payment,” she said, pulling a Ziploc bag out from behind the counter and gingerly placing the severed hand inside. “Deferment. It’s a week for a finger, a month for a hand, and three months for an arm.”

The keyboard clicked again.

“Okay, Mr. Simmons, one month’s deferment has been posted to your account. Is there anything else?”

“No,” he said softly.

“Next!”

Buck stepped aside and politely fainted.

Ian Gronau

Ian Gronau is a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s fiction writing program. He has several short fiction pieces published in fledgling lit journals along with reviews and editorial articles. He currently resides in the sleepy town of Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where he reads, writes, and quietly thinks.