Sherrie Flick
Autumn House Press ($19.95) 

by Wes Blake

As co-editor of the anthology Flash Fiction America (Norton, 2023) and author of two previous short (sometimes very short) story collections, Sherrie Flick has distinguished herself as one of the foremost voices in flash fiction. Flick’s latest collection, I Have Not Considered Consequences, may be her most powerful work yet. The lead story, “Breaking,” opens with a startling image—“The bear holds his heart in his paws”—that resonates throughout. In the stories that follow, Flick chronicles the lives of restless characters, from bears questioning their life path to humans navigating the responsibilities and relationships of middle age amid family rifts and a pandemic—all haunted by a wild moment from their past.

Past and present collide in fascinating ways throughout I Have Not Considered Consequences. “Chlorophyll and Oxidation” revisits the opening story, allowing the characters to reflect on their histories (as well as the book’s key trope):

I’m in my kitchen, but also in Italy, 1991. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     Now I call up one of the men I traveled with all those years ago . . . We reminisce about it all. The mistakes we made. Our disregard for the future, for consequences. We should have lived together forever, we both say. Single and happy in a city, we say. “But I was feral then,” I say. “I was a bear then, remember?” . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
     We both laugh.
     Eventually, we both cry a little.       

Another tale of maturation, “Lost in Time,” features Matt and Trudy, a Generation X couple navigating pandemic boredom while trying to reconcile who they’ve been with who they are. To break up the monotony, they go on a date night to a new arcade in town: “The building smelled like electronics, the same smell that once wafted out of the arcade in Trudy’s hometown mall. It made her heart pitter-patter. She loved the grease and the wires behind it all. The mechanics. It was so much better than AI or code. Fuck Zoom, she thought.” As they walk home through misty rain holding hands, Trudy recalls the one gig her band (“The Lickers”) played in London: “You didn’t know me in the ‘90s,” she says; “I never cried then.” Rejuvenated by the nostalgia their date provokes, and feeling a renewed sense of connection, they each consider a wilder version of themselves from the past—as well as what they’ve lost and gained by settling down.

Flick’s stories masterfully mine both past and present to recover what has been lost, but the outcome isn’t always rosy: In “Progress,” for example, Martha attempts to quell family dysfunction while circling around the uncomfortable truth that for her and her brother, the present is marred by the hurt in their past. And alas, even bears can lose touch with the feral parts of themselves. In “Arnie and the Bear Think About Risk,” a middle-aged corporate manager bear gives his employee Arnold an extended leave of absence so that he can recover his mojo; he has “become a Ringo kind of guy,” as Arnie himself tells us, “but back then, man, I was Lennon. Lennon!” This causes the manager bear to reflect on his own life and whether he wants to pursue his dream of becoming a piano sensation. Conventional wisdom prevails, however, and the bear admits with a sense of defeat that “there are only so many changes one can make in a lifetime.”

The passage of time is a formidable foil throughout I Have Not Considered Consequences, but there are moments when Flick suggests it can be transcended. “Trench Coat” illuminates such a moment, as a middle-aged woman named Natalie finds a long-lost favorite piece of clothing (the titular coat) and thinks back on when she last wore it. Back then, in the prime of her high school experience, she is oblivious to what the future holds: “this night she’s here to support her friend Christie and to feel, she doesn’t know, a kind of freedom. Just leaving her home and clicking her seatbelt and driving to the school, making that decision. Natalie feels amazing.” Flick deftly writes the entire story in present tense, collapsing the distance between the adult and teen versions of Natalie.

Whether readers wince with recognition or fondly remember the people they have been is largely up to them, but one thing is certain: I Have Not Considered Consequences will have readers pondering how the actions of their own lives have led them to the present moment.