The Chronicles of Jackie Flapjacks
by Erik Moyer
I. Jackie Flapjacks Goes to the Gym
Jackie Flapjacks stacks eight plates on each side of the barbell and drizzles them with custom syrup-colored spring collars. Some new gym-goers peek out of the corners of their eyeballs. Jackie has long stopped noticing. Jackie stretches wide, breathes deep. The bar floats like a balloon from his shins to up over his undercut. Jackie releases. The weight thunders, shuddering the earth. Again. Again. At the end of each set, a smattering of applause. Half shocked, half shook. When Jackie exits the locker room, there is a pulchritudinous starlet cradling tulips. Jackie politely declines and roars off on an amber two-stroke.
II. Jackie Flapjacks Goes to the Zoo
At home grilling chicken breasts, Jackie Flapjacks is haunted by his mother’s ghost. Cough up the grandchildren. What’s wrong with this one? Do you even like girls? At the zoo last weekend, Jackie spotted a heavenly muscle mommy kneading the doughy arm of a child. Jackie had the unthinkable urge to confess, but not before his friend cut in with an elbow and a grin. Gross. Jackie flexed his wince into a grin. So gross. As if she were another exhibit. As if she belonged under lock, and not museum glass.
III. Jackie Flapjacks Goes to the Hospital
Jackie Flapjacks forgives his friend, who knows not the mother’s daily sacrifice. What it takes to be big. What it costs. At the age of ten, Jackie contracted meningitis. His body shriveled to a leaf, fluttering from hospital bed to hospital bed. It was in the semi-Fowler’s position on New Year’s Eve when Jackie promised God that if He let him live, Jackie would grow to be the strongest man there ever was. Jackie kept his end of the bargain. Now Jackie wonders if God is more an evil genie, His every gift a curse. It is still the leaf boy who surrounds Jackie in the weight room’s many mirrors.
IV. Jackie Flapjacks Goes on Instagram
After another self-patented Bigger-Bigger Chicken Dinner, Jackie Flapjacks thumbs through his wheyfu burner account on Instagram, his loneliness the one weight he cannot lift. For the strongest man, the strongest woman. Jackie has only ever been with two of his kind. The first a dirty bulker, the second a lean lamb. Were his life so enchanted, the third should be just right. But the third has yet to come. Or Jackie has yet to find her. Jackie is crippled by what others might think. Even when an iron-blue moon does shine upon him, his tongue is crippled by the might of his dark attraction, and his body flattens back to a leaf.
V. Jackie Flapjacks Hates His Father
His phone purrs across the maple coffee table. It’s his father, inquiring about Thanksgiving. Whether to set one plate or two. The way I’ve been ballooning lately, you better make it eight. Jackie Flapjacks wishes to curl his father like the dumbbell he is, until he understands—that stacking eight plates is more satisfying than setting two; that more is more, and less is death; that if you hide a secret long enough, it just might disappear.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Erik Moyer is a creative writing PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the University of North Texas. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and a BS from the University of Virginia. His work appears in Arts & Letters, Epiphany, The New York Times, Oxford Poetry, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Outside of school, he works as a data engineer. In his free time, he enjoys writing songs and playing chess.
Website: erikjosephmoyer.com