Doctor: How are you led, my dear, by rope?
Girl: By road signs, sir. They tell me, the road signs, that you are working on a technique to separate mother from prenatal child.
Doctor: Well, it is quite difficult, you know, to separate the best mothers from the best children because they never even meet. Sometimes living thousands of miles apart. At this point I’m devising a maneuver to prevent any mother from ever coming in to contact with a child, hers or otherwise.
Mother: Then why not remark?
Father: I’m afraid I’ve no ink.
Girl: Won’t it be brilliant to have babies one never even has to see!
Father: That reminds me. I had a telephone call today from Eugene Ionesco.
Doctor: Indeed, and what did he say?
Father: I’m really not quite sure.
Mother: Oh, darling, but you speak French quite well.
Father: Yes, I speak French, but I cannot hear it. So to me it was just as a dead line… nothing at all.
Doctor: What a thing! What a sad loss.
Father: Oh, I don’t know about that. Now I am aware that all these years when I thought the line was dead, no one there, it was really Eugene Ionesco calling with his words of encouragement, or derision, or indifference. One of the three, I suspect.
Doctor: And you can’t tell us anything about what he had to say?
Father: He was wearing a derby hat.
Doctor: Why do you suppose that?
Father: You just now asked me to.
Mother: His favorite fish is herring.
Girl: Eugene Ionesco’s favorite fish is herring!
Mother: No, your older brother Thomas’ favorite fish is herring. I didn’t realize we were still talking about Eugene Ionesco.
Doctor: (To Daughter) I’m going to have to hit you in the face. Don’t blame me. Blame my methods and the men who invented them.
Daughter: Oh! Isn’t it so exciting to take part in medicine!
Doctor: (Approaches Daughter and punches her in the face, knocking her from her tuffet). I think we have once again proven the science always works.
Daughter: (Weeping) I’m glad I was subjected to that.
Mother: Equal and opposite. I saw it all, right there.
Doctor: (Writing something on clipboard) I was about to renounce the calling entirely.
Mother: What changed your mind?
Doctor: I couldn’t figure out how to get my lab coat off.
Father: Oh, yes! I had another telephone call from Eugene Ionesco today.
Daughter: (Rising, rubbing face, sitting back on tuffet) If you can’t hear his words, it can’t have been interesting.
Mother: Well, that sounds just like something Ionesco would say.
Doctor: Did he have an accent?
Daughter: You put all my drawings on the door of the refrigerator.
Father: But our walls are full.
Mother: What else are we to do?
Father: There is just too much art to fit it all on our walls. I’ve had the hardest time getting the Sistine Chapel ceiling on our own meager ceiling.
Doctor: But if it is on the ceiling, is it art?
Daughter: (Considers question with finger over lips) It’s not on the wall.
Mother: Nor is it on the refrigerator. Oh, Husband, I’m scared!
Father: (Rises and embraces mother) Why does Ionesco put us through this, time after time? Hasn’t our faith been shaken sufficiently?
Doctor: Which reminds me. Mother, I’m going to have to hit you in face.
Doctor: They are in there, my friends. My friends are in there.
Doctor: I have a phantom womb where I am letting them stay for the weekend.
Father: Are your friends phantoms as well?
Doctor: As well as what?
Father: As well as being your friends, are they phantoms?
Doctor: Shall I ask them?
Sally: (Writes a quick note on a paper tablet and tears it out, begins folding the paper) Swallow this. They can respond at their leisure.
Mother: I worry that this type of paper won’t taste so very good. Pepper it first and wash it down with punch.
Doctor: I have pepper in my pocket of course, but where might I acquire the punch?
Sally: (Grinning) I’ll take care of that part.
Mother: Looks as though it has gone down.
Father: Did the punch work, Doctor?
Doctor: (Rises, rubbing his belly) Yes. But it went down the wrong way.
Father: So your enemies will be getting the message instead of your friends?
Doctor: Probably. I’ve been letting my enemies stay in my spleen.
Mother: (Changes subject) It’s getting late. It is almost no longer my birthday.
Sally: You shall have to call him, Father.
Father: No, it was him. But he refuses to attend any birthday parties where there are an incorrect number of candles on the birthday cake.
Father: (Ominously) It’s too late. He knows.
G. Arthur Brown is a jerk who publishes his own work, but it’s his birthday, so please forgive him. The three acts of A Phone Call from Ionesco appear in his flash fiction collection I Like Turtles. He will spend the majority of 2015 as a 38-year-old. God help him.
This entry was posted on January 30, 2015 by G. Arthur Brown. It was filed under Flash Fiction Friday and was tagged with g. arthur brown.