Settle and Slake by Mikki Aronoff

Image is a color photograph of a cluster of purple grapes on a granite surface; title card for the flash fiction story "Settle and Slake" by Mikki Aronoff.

In “Settle and Slake,” author Mikki Aronoff tackles anxieties radiating from our modern conceptions and images of “the slippery slope” of aging. In her author’s note, she confides that when given a writing prompt, her brain “runs out and feels its way into a story.” This sense of speed is palpable in her masterfully crafted descriptions and quick turns of phrase. They crash, collide, and slide into each other throughout the micro, creating a sense of movement. Rather than fading into its golden years, Aronoff’s communal voice thrashes against the frightening limitations of an aging body and a correspondingly shrinking and challenging world. Aronoff peppers her lament with pop culture references, exaggerations, and a layering of evocative images, creating a sense of spiral and crescendo. “Settle and Slake” posits a philosophy that refuses to get old because, as Aronoff explains, “humor, to me, means hope.” —CRAFT

We strive to slide and glide but list from side to side, bob up, bob down, settle for a sec or a minute. We shake our balding heads in minute arcs, lest we fall and fracture. We slake worries, thirst, we’d settle for a coke. We cock our heads, all the better to hear, cock finger-pistols at foreheads as we watch the news, cackle at the design of cocks, gobble chicken fingers—plucked if we’re lucky. We squint and lour at our powdered eggs, scrambled like brains. We applesauce, we gum. We whimper for dinner, scowl when we see it. We bank crackers and sugar while our darlings crack open our safes, plunder our savings. We watch orderlies shrink as nurses bark orders. We cower in corners, drop bibles on toes that bark our shoes, flirt with drivers and cooks, wonder where we’ve left rings, except in the tub. We can’t see our chin hairs, beg aides to yank them when we die. If. We play rummy with five, then four, then three, watch Golden Girls instead, try to stay awake while the sighted play Scrabble. “Scab” is only one letter away from “scar,” they smirk at us. Good health! we croak back to them and to all those in our wake as they wheel us off to the garden, to physical therapy, to urgent care, to the morgue, to our wakes, our skin glaucous. Like grapes under a loured sky.

MIKKI ARONOFF writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. Her work has been longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction. Mikki has stories in Best Microfiction 2024 and in Best Small Fictions 2024 and forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2025. She lives in New Mexico. She can be found on Facebook @mikki.aronoff.

Featured Image by Tijana Drndarski, courtesy of Unsplash.

By Mikki Aronoff | Flash Fiction, Fiction | July 18, 2025

Tagged: Aging, Collective Voice, Humor, Lyricism

Author’s Note

I envy fellow writers who think about stories on their own, mull over the bones of them, and then put pen to paper. There doesn’t seem to be space for story seeds to sprout in the crowd of my head. From time to time, something might surprise me and knock at my door, unbidden and unplotted. But something magic happens when I’m spoon-fed a prompt—a theme, a form, a word count, some random words. The trap springs open and my wild animal mind runs out and feels its way into a story, bumbling as it goes. I try to make sense of it later, when I obsessively revise.

I wrote “Settle and Slake” in a SmokeLong workshop—a story a day for three weeks. The day I wrote it, we were asked to use a crescendo, to repeat phrases, to use “a line that surprises,” and to circle back to a previous important image. I’d just learned and loved the word “lour” and was driven to use it. Twice. The second time, I dared to make an adjective of it.

Surely, I wobbled during my morning stretches that morning. Extrapolating my concerns about my balance to an unlikely conclusion gave me something to write about. I intertwined pop culture references to aging like Golden Girls with images of how I personally might respond to my decline (flirting with assisted living staff, fear of croaking with chin hairs sprouting Medusa-like, cocking a finger-pistol at my forehead…).

A while back, I stumbled and fractured a vertebra. It was excruciatingly painful and disabling for months, but not enough for me to relinquish my independence. The anxiety over that happening again, with more disastrous results, magnifies as I age. My brain easily rushes to a perceived inevitable dark side, (I can go from a hangnail to gasping on my death bed in a split second!), but after I have a story to share, there is some relief, although my psyche’s splayed out for all to see—horror!

“We” seems to be my default POV when dealing with difficult topics. I think by engaging the first-person-plural vantage point, I’m guaranteeing myself company when or should I ever find myself in a certain situation! The “We” point of view also provides a protective distancing when I write fiction that contains elements of CNF. But life is sneaky and insinuates itself into my work often. The older I get, the more this theme of the slippery slope shows up in my writing. I deal with that by using humor, because humor, to me, means hope.

Settle and Slake by Mikki Aronoff

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Author’s Note