Guest post: flash fiction "The Latest Model" by Craig Rodgers

"Shelves are lined with contraptions. Housings of oiled wood with tweed patched speakers. Cabinets inside cabinets. Dials and knobs and tubes." - Craig Rodgers

Photograph by Aleksandr Popov

Occasionally on “when hope writes” I’ll publish guest posts by brilliant artists and writers. If you want to be a guest blogger on my Substack, please connect with me on LinkedIn or my website.

Today I’m sharing a surreal, atmospheric, transporting flash fiction piece titled “The Latest Model” by the imaginative storyteller Craig Rodgers.

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The Latest Model

A cheap printed sign reads ANTIQUES, ELECTRONICS, ODDITIES. Another says OPEN in neon blue hum. Each window is caged in twined wire mesh. Behind it lies a room cluttered with rows of assorted miscellany and each open space bathed in feeble yellow glow.

A man enters the shop under a bing bong of artificial chime and the jaundiced illumination washes across his being. The insistent dim obscures his features such that in catching a glimpse of his own image in a series of mirrors leaned against one wall they each contain the face of a stranger.

A counter divides the room. A display case packed with shelves of no one thing. Guns, watches, rings, arranged as if scattered with a toss. Nothing is labeled, nothing is priced. The front of the case is lined with the same chicken cage as the shop’s front. Large padlocks hang.

The proprietor smiles. He stands leaning against this display of collected wares. The proprietor is a small man, a square one. He wears an old suit coat sewn from a cloth thick and checkered. Time has worn stitching loose in places. His hair is the color of straw. It is thin and stands in strings combed away from his face. He is speaking before the customer is at the counter.

“We’ve got what it is you’re after.”

“I don’t know what I’m after.”

“Even better.”

“I need a gift.”

“Wife? Mom?”

“My brother’s birthday.”

“We’ve got that.”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a look, you’ll find it, but even if you don’t, narrow your search, give me a few days and I’ll turn it up.”

The proprietor pulls a card from a tray of them and slides it in front of the customer. It reads CONSTANCE SALT and SALES. A phone number is printed at the bottom.

“What kind of name is that?”

“An old one.”

The customer again looks at the card. He puts it away in a pocket. The proprietor watches. He goes on smiling.

“Tell me about the brother.”

“What about him?”

“What does he like?”

“He likes gadgets. Electronics. I saw your sign.”

The proprietor nods.

“He used to collect old video games.”

“What does he collect now?”

“Not those. They took up the whole garage. Racks floor to ceiling. His wife made him clean house.”

“What now?”

“Radios. TVs. Sometimes he gets them and they’re all beat to hell, but he keeps the nameplates, you know? The brand label.”

“A real connoisseur then.”

“He would say so.”

The proprietor taps his fingers on his thumb, one, two, three, four. He makes a noise like a word, hmmm. He pulls a ring of keys from his belt where it connects to an expanding length of chain.

“I have just the thing.”

He puts the key into a lock set in the countertop and turns it and lifts a bridge section back to open a walkway into the shop’s other half. He waves the customer on and the customer steps through and he shuts and locks the section back in place.

“We keep the exotics back here, away from the riffraff.”

He pulls the same ring of keys and sorts until he finds one in particular and he opens a cabinet, and he sorts again and he opens another, and a third. He unsnaps a padlock and opens a gate made from still more chicken wire.

“What do you think?”

“They’re TVs.”

“And radios.”

“They’re nice.”

“Each piece is unique.”

“I don’t know which ones he has.”

“Friend, he doesn’t have any of these.”

“He’s got a good collection.”

“Not these. Turn it on.”

“Which one?”

“Any one.”

Shelves are lined with contraptions. Housings of oiled wood with tweed patched speakers. Cabinets inside cabinets. Dials and knobs and tubes. All manner of size and configuration. The customer makes a choice and he turns a knob on a boxy wooden piece and a song begins to play.

“What is that?”

“Duke Ellington.”

“No, I mean like a tape deck?”

“Nope.”

“Is it an MP3?”

“It is not.”

And.

“Try another.”

A smaller one now, plastic and teal. Static and then song.

“Is that Frankie Valli?”

“There you go.”

Another, arched and gothic. The proprietor smiles.

“Ah, Cole Porter. I love Cole Porter.”

“What is this?”

“It’s the radio.”

“But what’s the trick? Nobody’s playing these songs.”

“These are antiques. They’re set in their ways. Do you want to try a TV?”

The customer’s eyes widen.

“No I do not.”

The proprietor shrugs. He turns the radio off.

“If I buy one will you tell me?”

“Jesus. If it rains do you ask the clouds how they got there? It’s a radio. It plays what it knows. Now are you buying or are we gonna keep flirting?”

“What’s that?”

He points to a square of grey metal. The tubes and dials are gone, the little orange diodes are all stripped away. It has a single button on its top.

“That’s the latest model.”

The proprietor presses the button. He looks from the grey box to the customer’s face. He waits. The customer looks only at the box. The absence of sound is more than silence. It is a profound void where the background hum of being should be. He hears the void. He knows this silence.

“Turn it off.”

The proprietor smiles. He presses the button again. The presence of that silence vanishes.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will,” says the proprietor. “But not today. This item is not for sale.”

The customer laughs and the proprietor stares and the customer stops. He grows quiet. The proprietor speaks.

“So. What’ll it be?”

“Can I think about it? Come back tomorrow?”

The proprietor’s eyes narrow. His nostrils flare and then contract.

“You can do anything you want, friend.”

He moves close and then past the customer and he raises the counter’s gate and waits. The customer returns to the other side of the counter. He turns, and the proprietor is shutting cabinets, and he is snapping padlocks closed. He sees the customer watching and offers a mock salute. The customer steps into the night.

The street is damp with a rain that has only just ended or is about to start. The customer stands. He touches the card in his pocket. The lettering. He drops it in the gutter, where it drifts along and disappears into a storm drain. The neon blue of the open sign blinks out, and some moments later Cole Porter begins to play.

Craig Rodgers is the name appearing on several books ghostwritten by a gaggle of long dead Victorian spirits.

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Craig Rodgers is a wordsmith of the surreal, the dreamy, and the uncanny. If you enjoyed “The Latest Model,” then you must absolutely check out his book The Mountain Is Burning Down, which you can purchase here.

Synopsis

The Mountain Is Burning Down is a set of shorts all taking place on the same mountain during a wildfire. Some are grit noir, some are fables, one might be a children’s story if you squint just right. 

Please leave a comment of appreciation for Craig Rodgers’ dreamlike, evocative work and share the post widely with others.

Thank you!

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