“SHUT IT OFF! SHUT IT OFF!” Judy was yelling from her position curled up on the floor against the wall. Seth ran in, flipped the switch for the garbage disposal, and the unmistakable grinding sound of silverware against its blades wound down.
“What happened, Mom?”
“I thought I was finished with the dishes, but when I turned on the disposal something slipped off the counter and bounced in before I could catch it. Then I just freaked out.”
Seth went over and peeked down the drain. He could see a handle sticking up through the blades. He pulled the tongs out of the drawer and after a few minutes of Almost, nope. Almost, Son of a.... Almost... Yes! He wiggled out the mangled fork and described it as any thirteen year old would. "Awesome." The tongs were splayed out in different directions, the handle was twisted, and it looked like it had teeth marks everywhere the blades had whacked it.
Judy held the fork up in the light. “Son of a... my set is ruined”
“Mom mom mom mom mom! Can I take it outside and show Calvin?”
“Fine. It’s useless now.”
Seth grabbed the fork and ran outside to show his brother what the raw power of a garbage disposal could do to a fork.
“Dude! Calvin! Stop what you’re doin’ and come check this out!”
Calvin finished hanging what would be the welcome sign on the fort. For now it was a rusty sheet of metal he found under the shed.
He was squaring up the sign through his L shaped outstretched fingers “What do you think?”
“No. Dude! Check this out” Seth held out the fork for Calvin to inspect.
“Totally radical! What happened?” Calvin took the fork and ran his fingers over the edges, taking in every new bend and dent.
“Mom dropped it in the disposal, ‘bout wet herself. I saved the day of course.”
“This inspires me. I’ve been trying to come up with a name for our secret club. Mangled Forks, what do you think?” Calvin looked at his brother for a reaction. “Heh, nice. Not a bad name for a band either.” Calvin took the fork over and started scratching a big M.F. in the sign.
“Boys, we leave in thirty for basketball camp! Get your stuff ready!” Judy shouted from the porch.
They were headed back inside when Calvin noticed his brothers shoes. “Dude, are you wearing your court shoes out here? Coach is gonna kill you.”
“Oh,man! I forgot. Give me the fork and I’ll use it to clean the treads out in the car.”
Calvin was riding shotgun with his arm out the window beating with the baseline coming from the radio into the door panel. Seth was so focused on cleaning his shoes he never saw the car his mom swerved to miss that sent them through the guardrail and off the bridge. The airbags went off and everyone screamed. All the windows broke out as the car rolled down the embankment. Calvin was thrown from the car on the third or fourth roll but it had already rolled over his hand and severed it at the wrist. Judy was buckled in still gripping the steering wheel white knuckled and sobbing. Seth was in the back, nose and forehead bleeding from smashing into the front seat. Adrenaline powered Calvin as he gripped his wrist, walked toward the car, and collapsed with exhaustion against it.
A figure appeared from the shadows under the bridge. If there had been time to talk he would have said his name was Eric. He was a war vet and medic. He could have told them about each of his twenty three friends he had treated in combat for missing limbs, or about the daily chemical wash he treats his PTSD with and how neither will let him adjust to the speed of society. But there was no time to talk, so the transient pulled his bandana off his head and applied it as a tourniquet to Calvin’s arm. He tied in a fork that was on the ground next to him and turned it like the handle on a faucet shutting off the bleeding. The transient was gone again before the ambulance arrived.
This flash fiction was prompted by this meme. After a few days of thinking on it I have boiled it down to this. That fork had dozens of properties before it was bent. It has most of the same properties after, and a few new ones. Its failure as a fork only comes from our expectations of the word. You'd be wrong to simply call it a fork now but for sure its not useless.
