My Stepfather’s Shorts

by James McCachren

I’m attracted to my stepfather when he wears his shorts. You’d understand if you could see these shorts. They’re like swim trunks except the elastic band is on the outside. The band wraps twice around the waist until gradually becoming a mustard-yellow blob, from which yellow droplets of paint fall on a peace sign the color of onion skin, which matches a small dolphin—also the color of onion skin—stitched into the cuff.

The peace sign is above a waterfall. The waterfall is between the peace sign and the dolphin. From most angles the waterfall splashes the dolphin’s back, but from some angles (if you’re to the right of the pant leg, for example) the water just misses the dolphin, and the dolphin looks scared. When the water falls to the right of the dolphin, more water gushes from the falls than when the water pours directly on the dolphin, a phenomenon that breaks Lavoisier’s Law of Creation, Destruction, and Conservation of Mass.

Moreover, near the bottom of the left leg, a patch made from threedimensional cloth creates the illusion of a block of marble into which a panoramic view of the Sierra Nevada is etched. To the right of the patch, a pair of test tubes are stitched in an alternating gray/blue/gray/blue pattern. Above these test tubes are the eyes of a beagle, and above these eyes, barely touching the dog’s brow: the word athlete. The right leg features a tiny ironon of Marilyn Monroe drinking from a wine glass into which a trio of redlipped, green-hatted gnomes dive from a platform, to the right of which a happy kitten rides a cannonball. Just beneath the wine glass are the words Annie’s Box, onto which a pit bull sneezes. Diagonal to the pit bull, a giraffe is laughing at a TV that sits sideways so you can’t see what he’s laughing at. 

The masterstroke here is my stepfather’s austere boredom.

James McCachren holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Florida, and his work has appeared in Manoa, The New Orleans Review, The Portland Review, The Hawai’i Review, The Northwest Review, and others. His story, “I Heard It from the Times That—” finished second in the Writer’s Digest 2023 Short Short Story Competition. He lives in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, where he teaches English at Halifax Community College.