on stilts, body made of glass

balancing, holding

steady because

i can be strong.

yet

my reflection is scary.

the height is deep.

solidity is lonely.

the stilts do waver and i can be weary

and if i fall

if i let go, ten fingers released and so very

breakable,

will someone be at the bottom?

or,

better,

even if i break

even if i shatter and fragment, give in

(can i give in?)

will someone at least

hold

me

back together?

#poetry #personal

It was soporific.

The creak of the pines.

The creak of the pines, the scuff and scoot of her shoes over cracked blacktop, and pencil-thin shadows over the backs of her hands drawn in ballpoint — tracing veins, bored, pen stuck to her skin over the course of the two-hour lecture.

She was out now, traipsing and slipping over fissured sidewalk — putting as much space between herself and the sleepy, dull, monotonous lisp of Professor Brian as possible.

The creak of the pines shivered over the late-night air. Monotonous…

… like that shade of lipstick her mother wore. Always the same — too pink. Too glossy. Too everything, smudging on their cups and silverware, leaving sticky remnants on the cigarettes crushed outside in the crack between the driveway and the sidewalk.

It wasn’t only the lipstick.

These Friday nights were static. That classroom was stuck in place, lost in time.

All of it came together — stuck, glued, buried — like the hum of interference over a phone line. The pause before a word passed from between trembling lips. The dip in gravity before a fall.

The nasally breathing of Professor Brian. In and out, constant, never-changing.

God. She hated him.

She hated this time of night, when the streetlights flickered and bled and spilled yolk-yellow over the lines drawn on the backs of her hands… turned them dark and deep.

Roots spreading from the pines to her skin.

She hated having to take summer courses at the dinky community college out in the middle of nowhere. Hated returning home to the acridity of smoke, the loneliness of cold cigarettes stomped out on the driveway and saran-wrapped dinner in the fridge. Hated seeing the same faces, night after night, year after year since she had worn pigtails and cried over stupid things like spilt milk, a scraped knee, a lost doll.

Same seats, same eyes, same names, night after night, filed like records forgotten in a cabinet (by row, alphabetical, don’t forget the ones in the back). Twenty-six in total.

Except…

Tonight was the first time in a while that it had been twenty-five and the empty desk two rows up and one row over hadn’t escaped her attention. Little differences, insignificant, still caught her eye — a moth to a flame.

Not for long though. Inevitably it would be twenty-six again and that empty singularity would flicker and die and fall, paper-thin wings too close to the burning and then to the ground to dissolve into dust to make room for conformity and a twenty-sixth face once more.

Somniferous.

This town was killing her, putting her to sleep — burying her under the creak of the pines that never left, the sting of a pen dug too deep into the flex and pull of her fingers, the wheeze of a lisp and God she couldn’t breathe, not here under it all, not knowing what she was going back to, a smudge of pink to remind her of what she had but couldn’t touch, couldn’t see or hear or have, not truly and her backpack was so heavy between her shoulders, dragging her down farther until she was sure she’d disappear, a girl lost to the emptiness, the static, the hum and the creak and the distant sound of her mother’s voice between walls, behind doors.

She couldn’t escape it in the dark. The creak of the pines.

Her keys slipped in her fingers the way they always did, catching on her thumb, jangling and bouncing as she shoved one into the lock on the car. Her phone buzzed in her pocket at the same time that the door swung open, groaning, sticky hinges in the humidity.

She crawled in, tossed her backpack to the rear and it made a thump.

She paused.

It was different. Little and insignificant but… louder, that noise. An extra textbook then, shoved down into the pocket and zipped up and forgotten.

She jammed the seatbelt into place, turned the key.

Then she was sitting still on tattered upholstery, inhaling sugared perfume and hairspray left on the particles of air trapped within these windows. The stain on the passenger seat that caught on her peripheral was stashed away in her head like everything else in this town.

A filing system in the wrinkled creases of her brain — red wine, dry, spilt one year/six months/two days ago, result of a hard brake at the stop sign on 20th and 6th, tipped at 90 degrees from Ms. Amalia Flores’ hands (nails manicured with Beaty School Dropout pink, bandage wrapped around right index finger), spilled right between her legs (wearing lace stockings, Adidas sneakers, black skirt, blouse: color unknown), Driver’s Name: Nisha Peters *See Page 11 of report

God, she was such a cliche.

It was all so antiquated, the mere idea of it. Funny, almost. Something she may have laughed at playing on the screen at the drive-in when she was thirteen and so, so painfully aware of her body, the changes, the desperate scratch to grow up, grow up, come on, fit in.

She was that cliche. Now she saw it in the shape of her thighs and the damp of her lipstick and those damned, lace panties she had bought last week.

Now she knew and laughing had turned into an endless shriek trapped down in her lungs, clawing and begging and weeping, desperate to be let out but trapped behind the perfect smile.

Cliche.

Cliche and popular with a side of shitty home life, stuck in a small town and looking for that big break amongst the layers and layers of her life — deadbeat mom, parties on the weekend, summer school and fake nails and smoking amongst the cracks of the abandoned parking lot behind the Thai restaurant downtown.

Looking at the weeds in those cracks, wondering if that was what it felt like, growing up like that, choking.

Wine stains on the passenger seat.

The creak of the pines.

The car gear shifted to drive. Her hands wrapped around the wheel. The weight of the endless loop of infinity sat in the backseat, slowing her down, drip drip dripping with the hum of the engine, bleeding into the more to her backpack, such a little difference, insignificant…

Headlights flicked on, piercing and sharp and cutting through the shadows. It was a knife shaving through the thick trunks in front of the car, slicing the pines to ribbons. Ribbons and ribs and slivers of the moon — black and white, fuzzy gray in between.Green needles, lit up, each of them swaying in the sticky air.

The pines felt alive.

She stared at them and they seemed to tremble, shake, shiver and breathe up from their roots to the unfathomable tops, peaks lost in the dark where the headlights didn’t reach. Her heart shuddered in her chest in reply, answering with a spike of adrenaline, cortisol, glucose. Fight or flight.

Fly, the pines answered.

They creaked, groaned, whispered, told her to drive, drive home and then past that, keep going, past the ranch-style home/dead cigarettes/saran-wrap/pink lipstick and tv static at two in the morning, go home and keep going, go go go, don’t stop, just keep driving down that interstate, disappear, leave, run, go go go go go go -

Stop. What is that there, beneath the pine-

A hand.

A hand, so simple. So human.

So normal… like the anatomy diagrams in Professor Brian’s four-walled, yellowing, dullsville classroom. A hand… linked to the pronator quadratus… and then to the flexor digitorum, the flexor pollicis, the flexor carpi radialis and five fingers outstretched, below the pines…

Run, the pines offered up one more time.

So normal, her brain tried again, flat and shocked and numb and struggling to catch up. Human and flesh and bones and - and - wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wr ong wro ng w r o n g…

Suddenly her seatbelt was a noose around her neck. Adrenaline, cortisol, pumped through her veins. Fingertips went cold, mouth hung open in a silent scream.

Wrong.

Wrong place (in the dark, stretched and reaching out over a bed of pine needles) and wrong color (pale, bloodless, limp) and -

Dead.

Even from here — through a thick pane of glass, headlights scattering amongst the trees — she could tell.

The pines laughed.

Oh, they said, we told you to go. We told you, didn’t we? We told you to run. Then you wouldn’t have seen. You wouldn’t have seen. But you wanted different, right? You wanted your world to explode, shake, didn’t you? We told you to leave. We told you, we told you, we told -

It was too late now.

The air conditioning hummed and the car stayed in drive, stuck in place, and she was paralyzed and the weight in her chest, her stomach, her backpack kept her that way…

… until the nerve endings in her body popped and cracked, snapped like static, jolting her into a flurry of movement.

Flight, only backwards.

Curiosity killed the cat, the pines sang…

… but she couldn’t care. She was moving. Moving because that empty space — that singularity from that classroom stuck so still and perfect in space night after night — was back in her head. Two rows up, one row over.

Two rows up. One row over.

Two rows up…

… one row over… empty desk. Empty phone. No answer to the calls last night, at 10:26. No answer to the texts this afternoon, at 8:26.

She saw those messages she had typed written out behind her eyelids, written out in the dark ribcage hollows between the trees.

hey where are u?? srsly come on Lia.. you cant leave me alone with him. if u’re

skipping just bc I -

okay, Lia, you have officially lost all Best Friend rights to the snack drawer at

my place for leaving me alone with -

Amalia, just text me when you get this, okay? I’m worried and if you’re sick I’ll

come over with your favorite from -

She moved in snapshots.

Seatbelt off. Fingers scrabbling at the handle. Rusty hinges creaking, creaking. Then dark asphalt under her shoes… then pine needles… her knees were weak, knocking together… and then that hand - that hand - that hand was -

Beauty School Dropout pink.

A new file to add to her head — manicured nails (chipped on the right), bracelet around left wrist (sterling silver), two beauty marks an inch up from bracelet, Subject’s Name: Unknown *See Page 26 of report for possible victim profiles

She rounded the sliver of the pine blocking her view.

She stepped — one, two, three, inhale — out of the headlights, deeper into the creak of the pines…

… and the singularity from earlier didn’t die, didn’t crumble to dust. It expanded, a puzzle piece jammed into the wrong empty place.

It was the scream that left her throat, cutting through the mundane silence of a Friday night in that parking lot.

It was the empty desk two rows up, one row over.

It was the weight -

The creak of the pines continued on (despite it all, the blood and the slashes and the milky eyes and the rawness of her wail and the empty chair, that extra weight in her backpack in the backseat, different, significant)…

… and inescapable, infinite, soporific they whispered…

Run.

#shortstory #murdermystery #mystery #murder

Sometimes it’s like the dust of butterfly wings, melting sugar, dark soil and the hollow bones of birds.

Sometimes I’m so empty — so light and thin and numb, fading — that the sight of twilight fills me with dread, a certain loss, a flutter of my lashes as my eyes lower and beg the dark to stay away, to hold off, to relent in drowning me in all of its stickiness because I can’t take it.

Sometimes I’m the crash of breaking glass, the tremble of lips held together under the spray of a shower.

Sometimes I’m a stuttered inhale, of thin fingers curled into a pillow, of weak, aching knees and going in circles within my own head stained through with convenience-store fluorescents, spine bowed.

Sometimes I’m dark hair scraped back, violet circles under eyes and bloodstains and sinking firmly into the springs of a mattress.

But sometimes…

Sometimes it’s like crystal, marble, fire and the distant burn of the stars.

Sometimes I’m so anchored — so tall and towering and unafraid, blazing — that the sight of storm clouds fills me with excitement, a challenge, a tilt of my chin that begs the rain to come harder, faster, to drown me in all of its glory because I can take it.

Sometimes I’m the hiss and spark of a matchstick in a crepuscular night, the oily smudge of bloodied lipstick on the corner of a napkin.

Sometimes I’m a flash of bared teeth, of fingernail imprints in soft palms, of legs stretched out over a mattress and driving down a road melting under the yolk-yellow of streetlights, windows down.

Sometimes I’m long hair flying in the wind, dark eyes and coffee stains and boots planted firmly on concrete.

And sometimes… sometimes I am everything, all at once and completely.

#uncategorized #personal

Pretty.

Pretty with her full lips, soft and moist. Pretty with those feathery eyelashes, fluttering so lovely when she blinked.

Pretty when she stretched and arched on the mattress, her skin pulling thin over the wings of her ribcage and accentuating their curves.

She was dark and luminous at the same time. The shadows pooled in the dips of her clavicles. Her eyes on mine were liquid bright — wet and deep and a crepuscular copper gold behind the perfect, pretty up and down of those lashes.

She was beautiful.

Responsive and soft. So, so soft and pliant. Soft skin stretched tight over sharp bone and eyes I could drown in.

So perfect. So lovely.

Dark hair that spilled over the thin mattress like a spill of oil, gleaming. Long legs and a pouty mouth that I knew by heart. Pearlescent teeth dug deep into the meat of her lip. Cunning hands, long fingers, curled deep into the sheets.

Large, wet eyes narrowed and a mouth parted damp and breathless and God, I loved her.

I loved every pretty inch.

#shortstory #characterstudy

(follow me @ https://writingininkandstardust.wordpress.com/)

Diatribe was too gentle of a word.

Diatribes themselves meant nothing. They were a ghost of the feeling, a sliver of an eyelash. As weightless as the poisoned gown on her body, a venomous green made of silk and chiffon and lace and ribbons tied too tight at her pretty throat.

Diatribes were merely a whisper through her pale lips when what she really wanted was a storm — when what she really wanted was to curl back her lips, bare her teeth, bite down and taste and destroy.

Words meant nothing.

Words burned to ashes in the fire in the grate — in the blaze of her stomach. She choked on them in the damp, narrow hollow of her throat and she spat them up onto the pristine, bleached tablecloth and she watched His eyes curve and flicker and mock her and she was fury, darkening every doorstep from hell to the high heavens.

So — with her blackened nails and bruised knuckles — she used that fire.

One matchstick after the other. She lit them with a cruel jerk of her wrist. She lit them with a twist and imagined her fingers around a neck and a pulse and skin slick with sweat and she saw a tongue — gone purple and bloated and hanging out from between sharp teeth — and she relished in it, reveled in it, gasped at the thought of bones breaking beneath her childlike-hands.

The matches danced. She flicked them, lighting them, one after the other. They tumbled through air that was so thick with the stench of blood she thought the smell of it would never leave her dark hair.

The matches flew. They tumbled from her fingers and they fell like angels cast from heaven, set ablaze… but they did not reach Him.

They landed instead, amongst the food. Amongst the spoils and the gluttonous extravaganza set before her.

Pomegranates, full to bursting — dripping, bleeding, smearing red over all of that white fabric. Oysters pried open to reveal fleshy, slimy, grotesque insides and the carcass of a deer, stretched out from antler to hoof with a glassy, dead eye turned her way. Cakes and sweets, covered in sugary floss, glistening and melting in front of the fire’s heat and oh, how she felt herself warping alongside them — how she felt her innocence on her tongue, tasted it sweet and soft before it was lost to the ash and the smell of blood, dribbling warm and saccharine down the wetness of her throat to her deep, dark stomach.

She was changing. With every match she felt something give. A tug, right beneath her breastbone, like she was being unwound.

Still He did not burn.

The empty matchbox dropped from her bloody fingers, crescent moons left in the soft flesh of her palm from eclipsing nails.

He raised a hand of his own. He gestured to the mulled wine, pools of darkness like His eyes, and He asked her to drink. Drink deeply. Eat too.

She would not. She refused. She crooked a foot up onto the table instead and she got on her knees and she crawled, spine bowed like an animal’s, towards Him over the table.

If she could not use matches, she would use her teeth.

She would use her teeth and she would win… with the smell of blood on her skin and the taste of it on her tongue, drowning with the sugary sweetness of her childhood.

Her gown rustled and whispered as she moved and that poisonous, venomous, sacrilegious green whispered to Him and it told Him her plan.

Her fingers caught and tangled in the deer’s fur. Her fingers clawed at its dead, glassy eyes and she was crawling over it — draped over its carcass — when other hands dragged her back.

Those hands — those hands, they pulled her back, away from Him, and they were rough and demanding. They were invasive. They threw her back in her chair and how she laughed then, eyes widened as she watched Him smile.

No fire. No teeth.

No escape.

Nothing to do but run, her bare feet sliding and slipping over a tile floor as cold as death.

Running to the doors, banging and shouting and screaming. Running to escape those hands and His smile and the sweetness on the table… to escape the dull, mauled eyes of a creature taken like her. Snatched from the flowers. Snatched from the sun.

Snatched from it all and dressed in green in blatant, horrible, disgusting mockery.

Back into the chair. Back she went into her destined throne and the edges of her spine caught so painfully on the wood she couldn’t breathe.

Those hands held her back down.

They held her down until the transformation was complete.

They held her down until her innocence was a memory, a fever dream lost in the haze, lost in the strands of her ebony hair hanging down over her face, shadowing her darkening eyes.

They held her down until her name was no longer her own and the screams of it up her tattered throat were replaced with something different, something new, and she grew silent and still — the calm before a storm.

And when they let go… when they let go, she was quiet. She was grace. She was power.

Her body fit her throne. Her tongue slid down over her blood-red lips to lick up the plump sweetness of pomegranate — so different from the thin sugar of cakes.

Her last match was thrown, not tossed.

Her last match soared over it all… over all of that death split open and bleeding over the white tablecloth… fire flickering, bursting, blooming to life under the heavy press of iron… and finally, finally, it came home…

… and He smiled as she looked on with narrowed, crepuscular, pleased eyes. He watched her with pride as the flames burst over His skin. He laughed as He burned… and then he grew still and silent.

He watched until the end.

He watched Her — Persephone, bringer of death.

Queen of the Underworld.

#shortstory #mythology #greekmythology #persephone #hades #anger #love #revenge

"That’s not really a fly you know."

The voice behind Ever is flat. Disinterested. A semi-leer.

She turns towards it anyway.

"What?"

The word comes out sharper than she had intended but she doesn’t care. The expression the girl behind her is wearing is irritating — green eyes narrowed ever so slightly, pretty mouth curved down with a lazy twist to her lips.

"I said," the girl repeats, tapping long nails against her arms folded over her chest, leaned up against the dirty bathroom wall, "that that’s not really a fly. If you kill it, they’ll just send two more."

Ever doesn’t move. She listens to the fly — the one she had been swatting at by the sinks — buzz by her ear and then quiet down. From her peripheral vision she can just make out its tiny, compact body resting on one of the streaked mirrors.

"Oh?" she says, curiosity peaked despite the change in circumstances. She really should be leaving, if this girl knows what she’s talking about.

But she still doesn’t like that curve to the other girl’s mouth — like she wants to sneer but she’s barely holding her disdain in check — and it keeps Ever in place.

"And, pray tell, how do you know that?"

The girl shrugs. She peels herself away from the stained tile and pushes past Ever, brushing against her with more force than’s necessary. Ever stands her ground.

Her fingers twitch at her sides. Her blood simmers. God, she’s tired.

"That’s none of your business. Just consider it a favor. Free of charge." The stranger’s voice grates on Ever’s ears but she turns again, staying.

Her eyes flick again from the girl fixing her long, dark hair in the mirror to the fly, still sitting there. Watching her.

God damn it, she thinks. She has to get better at this. It’s really starting to get annoying.

First it had been the little girl at the playground. Then the cat, lurking through alleys, watching her from the shadows.

If it hadn’t been for…

"I’ll make you a deal," she finally offers, shaking her bangs out with a swipe of her fingers. She needs a drink. She’s downed one shot since getting here and besides the subtle burn in her stomach, it’s not doing anything for her.

The other girl glances up from her reflection. She lets her hands drop from her hair, turns around, and Ever just catches a glimpse of an entire row of silver piercings in her right ear before her hair falls to cover them.

"I don’t think you want to do that," is the answer and Ever arches an eyebrow. Her tongue ring clacks against her teeth when she clicks her tongue. Goosebumps are beginning to rise along her skin under the draft coming from the ceiling. The cold whispers through her thin, thigh-high socks.

"And why not?"

The girl smirks. Finally, a real emotion. Finally something tangible. Ever grins back, cocking her head to the side.

Her satisfaction is short-lived.

"Because, princess, I’ve also been sent to watch you."

The amusement — the fucking contentment — on the stranger’s face sets Ever’s simmering temper to a boil. Her grin drops. A scowl claws its way onto her face in its place.

She doesn’t move. She stays where she is and leans back against the wall, all pretenses dropped. Bass from the bar beyond this bathroom pounds through the closed door and the thin walls. It shivers into her bones and pushes her next words from her throat with a heavy hand.

"Then why the fuck are you telling me?"

That, at least, seems to take the other girl back a bit. She doesn’t answer for a moment. Instead, she pushes herself up to sit on the sinks. Ever watches her through narrowed eyes — watches as she kicks her long legs, black boots swinging back and forth.

The girl shrugs again.

"I guess I felt bad. You know. Seeing you trying to get away but still being kept on such a tight leash."

Ever blinks.

That had not been what she had been expecting either. She’s not sure what to say now.

For a few moments, they stare at each other. Then, "Oh," Ever finally says. Her voice sounds flat. "Thanks. I guess."

The stranger sighs and then hops down. She comes closer, holds out a hand. There’s an unreadable expression in her green eyes.

Ever stares and then takes her outstretched fingers reluctantly, wrinkling her nose. They’re cool and firm. The other girl is wearing enough rings to knock someone’s tooth out with a well-placed punch. It can’t compare to Ever’s own pair of butterfly knives hidden under her shirt and strapped to her back, but it’s a good start.

"I’m Kingsley," the stranger offers. "Your parents hired me and now I’m obviously fired but something tells me it’s gonna be worth it."

Ever can’t help it. She laughs, still holding Kingsley’s hand, and looks up into her face.

"Yeah," she hears herself saying. The fly on the mirror buzzes and flits around the lights and then lands again. "I guess it could be."

And then, to her own surprise, Ever asks, "Do you wanna grab a drink? I need one after this past week."

Kingsley smiles and it’s nothing like her leer from earlier, so sharp-tipped and glass-like. It’s softer at the edges. It makes Ever feel a little less on edge, like alcohol burning through her — like it’s smoothing out all of her sharp edges, polishing her bones to something pliant.

"Yeah," Kingsley answers after a pause. Ever watches her fish down into her jeans pocket for something, letting go of her hand. "Just let me do something first."

Ever leans back again, the cool tile pushing imprints between her shoulder blades, as Kingsley produces a ticking, pill-shaped object, drops it to the grungy floor, and crushes it beneath a boot.

"Wow, they went all out, didn’t they?" Ever murmurs out loud, eyeing the broken, crushed tracing device. It’s some new-level shit, based on what she’s seen before.

Kingsley only shrugs, something she seems to do often.

Then she turns and in one swift move, the fly on the mirror is nothing but a smear of guts and papery wings. Ever barely blinks. She just waits for Kingsley to wash her hand off in the sink and turn back to face her.

"Okay, now I’m ready," the other says, green eyes dull in the sickly fluorescent lights. Ever smirks and peels herself away from the tile.

"Great. Let’s go before the other two get here then."

#shortstory #lgbtq #scifi #sciencefiction #dystopianuniverse #eventualromance #bodyguard #princess

There’s a diner and its light draws Ai to it like a moth to a flame.

She’s tired. Her feet ache. Her stomach is pinched and empty and tight.

All Ai wants is a place to sit. Something small to eat. Maybe some water.

So she follows that light. She tightens her ponytail and she shifts her feet in her running shoes and she heads for the diner, leaving the black stretch of beach behind her.

A neon sign declaring the business open flickers and buzzes out front. Bugs bounce off of the hot glass, zipping around dazed and confused and then coming back to do it again.

Ai watches them for a moment, standing on the concrete sidewalk, inhaling sea-salt air. Her lungs feel sticky.

They never learn, she thinks. A moth hits the neon sign and then falls, its paper-thin wings barely keeping it upright before it drops again and then lies still at Ai’s feet.

She watches a moment longer. Then she goes inside.

Inside smells like bleach. Inside smells like sugar and oil. Inside is an odd combination of sterile and messy — the linoleum floor has been mopped, but someone has dropped a donut right in front of the door and the cherry-red jelly is leaking, oozing, spilling out from between broken, frosted dough to stain the tiles.

Ai looks around. It’s empty besides a couple in the back, sitting on the same side of the booth with their heads bowed over their plates.

Her stomach rumbles. So she keeps going and takes a seat at the front bar. A little silver bell rests near her fingertips.

It only takes a second to reach out and tap it.

It only takes a second for a waitress to appear from the back.

She looks as sugar-sweet as anything in here. It’s an odd thought to have, Ai admits. But it’s true.

The waitress is wearing a spotless, white apron over a yellow dress and her dark hair is pulled up immaculately. But its her lips that look sugar-sweet. Glossed over and shining.

“What can I get you?”

Ai startles from her staring. She grabs a menu and flushes behind it and then orders a cup of coffee and a chocolate éclair without thinking. The waitress leaves with a twirl of her dress.

She doesn’t really need the pastry. But who cares at this point? Ai is on vacation for God’s sake. She needs the break. Who cares about calories?

She leans back in her stool before remembering it has no back and then sways, balancing herself again on the slippery plastic. Her heart leaps into her throat at the brief sensation of falling.

God, of all people to have an issue with foresight. Sighing, Ai readjusts herself, fitting her sandy tennis shoes under the metal bar at the foot of the stool to secure her weight in case she decides to do that again.

What a dump, is her next thought. She glances around curiously all the same.

The place is clean enough. The paint is peeling though. And the lights buzz obnoxiously from the ceiling. An ancient-looking jukebox hums quietly in a corner, the faint music drowned out by the flickering fluorescents.

And that jelly donut still lies, broken and forlorn on the floor behind her.

The coffee though, when the waitress reappears with it in hand, smells amazing. The chocolate éclair doesn’t look half-bad either — of course, anything would probably look appetizing after spending the entire afternoon jogging down the beach.

“Can I get you anything else?”

Ai looks up, right into honey-gold eyes. She blinks. “Um, I don’t – I mean -,” she stutters. Her eyes are drawn inevitably to pink gloss, dropping against her will, and Ai flushes ferociously.

Jesus, pull yourself together.

“No,” she chokes out, gripping her coffee mug tightly and smiling past her humiliation. “Thank you.”

The waitress — Teagan, it says on her little, plastic name-tag — smiles and then she’s off again. Ai hadn’t imagined the amusement on her face either.

She groans under her breath. You’re a real fucking, hot mess.

“Shut up,” Ai mutters to herself. She takes a sip of coffee. It’s good, hot and strong. It pushes a bit of the exhaustion from her run out of her head.

A strand of hair from her bangs slips from her bobby pin and she pushes it back behind her ear. Sweat still dries cold and sticky along her spine, under her sports bra. Ai sips more of her coffee, pokes at the éclair with a finger.

After this she thinks she’ll grab a cab back to her room. She had been planning on walking back the way she’d come — the ocean at night has always drawn her, so dark but undeniably there, breathing up against the land — but this coffee makes Ai think of a hot shower.

Hot water to wash away the sand sprinkled up along her calves and in the bends of her knees. Hot water running through her hair and down over her aching shoulders. The sooner the better.

Then she’ll crawl back between the soap-smelling sheets of the hotel in her underwear and drift off, warm from the water and pleasantly limp from the exercise. She has the rest of the weekend after all.

Take a break, her boss had told her, tapping her pen on the edge of her lip and barely glancing up from her tablet. God knows you need it.

So Ai had gone. She had booked plane tickets, a hotel room, that night. She’d been gone the next day.

She had flown out here, to the beach. To the sea.

The sea is constant, despite its tumult and its ebbs and flows. The sea is always there, breathing wetly up onto the land, following the pull of the moon.

The sea didn’t change the way Ai’s life did, forever swapping between lines and threads — forever jumping between different people and their fragile, fragile wings.

She sips at her coffee. She doesn’t let herself think of the cards tucked down in her shorts pocket. It had just been an extra precaution, shoving them into her suitcase, nothing more. A last minute decision.

The chocolate éclair is worth all of the calories. It’s gone in an embarrassingly short amount of time, lost to Ai’s grumbling stomach. She finishes her coffee quickly too, watching the couple in the back laugh and whisper to themselves.

If only her life wasn’t so filled with work, she muses. With running around, flying to different cities and different continents, spending late nights on assignments.

Then maybe she’d have time for more than just the half-dead plants she keeps in her apartment in the city.

Ai dismisses the thought. There’s really no use agonizing over it. This is her calling.

Outside the diner, the moon rises full and bloated into a dark sky. The sea crashes and breaks down on the shore. Ai’s cards burn in her pocket.

A sudden, irrelevant, quiet thought flaps its way into her head. It comes unexpectedly. It comes unbidden, without permission.

Why did I come in here?

For coffee, Ai tells herself firmly. For a place to sit. You’re tired.

The moths buzz and hit and bounce off of the neon sign outside. Ai can hear them through the windows.

They flap and burn and fall and then return, moths drawn to a light.

Ai had come in here like a moth drawn to a flame.

Oh God, she thinks. Not now. I’m on vacation, God damn it.

But it’s too late. She can feel it.

And it all comes at once.

The moths buzz in her ears. The sea is a roar in her blood. The neon light outside flares and flares and burns, too bright, and it hurts Ai’s eyes but she turns and looks anyway.

And there, there it is. Why she’s really here.

As the jukebox continues to moan low and quiet — as the moths outside continue to fall lifeless to the ground — Ai sees the red. She hears a different sound. Ragged breathing, mixing wetly with the buzz of the lights above her head.

The red spreads. It seeps out from the brokenness and it coats the tiled floor, so clean and bleached before. Sticky and dark and thick it keeps going. And going and going and going until it’s under Ai’s stool, a sticky, cherry-red puddle.

There she is. The waitress, Teagan.

She’s the one making that noise. That wet, whistling inhale and exhale as she tries to breathe through the holes punched into her lungs.

They must be in her lungs, Ai thinks, watching Teagan crawl over the floor, slipping and sliding in her own mess.

The knife lies on the ground behind her but Ai can see where it’s slashed her yellow dress and the holes are right there, in her back, right where her fluttering, flapping lungs lie under skin and bone and muscle.

The donut is still there too. Broken, bleeding, red and red and red.

But why? The voice in Ai’s head is as cool and flat as it always is when this happens. She doesn’t have much time left so Ai tears her eyes away from Teagan’s struggling form and turns around, looking.

The couple in the back is gone now. All of the booths are empty.

Ai’s own coffee mug and plate are gone, cleared away. So she’s left then, before this. She’s called that cab and she’s gone back to her room and she’s probably asleep in her bed.

Come on. Find the why.

She’s looking, looking — Teagan’s breathing is shallower, wheezing in and out of her pierced, deflating lungs — and the smell of iron is so strong. It coats Ai’s throat, makes it hard to think.

Even after all of this time and she still isn’t used to this. Not all of it.

There.

The cash register. It’s drawer is unhinged. Ai peers over the counter and dropped change — pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters — lay all over the floor, glinting in the harsh lights. The cash register is broken.

Like the girl behind her.

Turning back around, Ai looks down from her stool. Teagan is barely moving now. Her lips are stained red, covering that sugary lipgloss. The side of her face is too. Those beautiful honey-gold eyes don’t look at Ai but sideways, like she can see through plaster and concrete out to the sea outside.

The blood is everywhere. In Teagan’s dark hair. All over her dress. Coating her hands.

Ai wants to look away but she can’t.

They never learn, she thinks but she doesn’t know who “they” is.

The seconds tick by. The urge to stick her fingers in her ears, to squeeze her eyes shut, is long gone — drowned away by habit and repetition.

It’ll be over soon.

Moths continue to fall outside. Paper-thin wings that stop flapping. Paper-thin lungs that stop breathing.

And eventually, Teagan’s do the same. Her breathing stops. Her fingers stop twitching.

The jukebox is alone in its low wail, the fluorescent lights continue to buzz overhead.

Ai shuts her eyes now. She counts to three.

One. Two. Now.

With a pop in her ears, like she’s just descended from a great height, Ai’s eyes flutter open. She looks down.

A clean, bleached floor. A donut, split open and melting over linoleum tiles. Nothing more.

She turns around. The couple is back. One of the guys rests his head on the other’s shoulder, says something too low for Ai to hear but her eyes drift to her empty cup, the plate with the éclair crumbs left behind.

The cash register is intact.

Teagan appears from the back. Ai watches her.

Her cards burn in her pocket. Guess she’ll have to use them after all.

Biting her lip, Ai swirls the dregs of caffeine in the bottom of her cracked mug.

God, she had just wanted a vacation. She should’ve known that coffee and chocolate éclairs couldn’t explain her sudden urge to walk off the beaten path and head up here. Stupid diner and stupid neon lights, drawing her in.

The pastry hadn’t even been that good.

Well, at least now she has an excuse to talk to her. Yeah, what a shitty excuse. Hey, I know how you’re going to die. You wanna grab dinner later?

Ignoring her thoughts, Ai slips her cold fingers down into her pocket and grabs the cards that feel like a second skin from it. She lays them out on the countertop with a flourish. She can feel Teagan’s eyes on her.

Draw her in, she thinks.

She spreads them out. Tarot cards. Useless and necessary at the same time.

It’s the only way Teagan will believe her. It’s the only way anyone ever believes her.

And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they don’t believe. Sometimes Ai fails.

They never learn.

She feels Teagan growing closer. She sees that flash of yellow in her peripheral vision. She traces her cards and she waits, steadying her fingers. Clearing her head.

From the countertop, a skull and a white horse grin up at her grimly. Black armor. White mane.

Ai had chosen the card. She doesn’t fool herself. There is no such thing as fate in this world. Only chance meetings, like this one. Luck maybe.

“Do you read fortunes?”

Like clockwork, Teagan’s voice drifts to Ai’s ears. Ai inhales once more, exhales. The sea screams outside the window, a banshee’s warning.

Time to do your thing, her brain murmurs. Time to save her.

Ai looks up. She grins.

And with the beat of moth wings in her ears, the balance of life held so delicately in her hands, and the heat of neon lights illuminating red on a tile floor, she asks one question.

“Would you like to know your future?”

#shortstory #lgbtq #murder #premonitions #scifi #sciencefiction #diners

She wakes up on the ground. She wakes up with a jerk.

She wakes up with a cry on her chapped lips.

And she doesn’t remember.

Jae doesn’t remember coming down here — a concrete floor, flickering lights. Damp walls and a cold draft. She doesn’t remember falling down those stairs. She must have, right? There’s a horrible ache inside her… but not in her head.

It’s in her ribs, crawling up her throat, beating and beating and beating and beating -

She doesn’t remember taking the drug. A perfect circle. A perfect cherry-red. A perfect drug placed in her imperfect hand, bitten-down nails and shaking fingers and she hadn’t taken it, right?

Had she?

She doesn’t remember getting here.

Is that what this is? A side effect?

A hallucination of walls dark with damp. The smell of iron. A cold, dirty floor. Something scurries in the corner and disappears.

Jae gets up. It hurts. It beats and beats and beats and Jae wishes it would stop, God why won’t it stop -

The stairs. Those stairs. She can go back up. She can go back to where she had been.

She steps, one foot in front of the other.

Thump thump thump goes the pain under her ribs, one after the other.

The drug. Had she taken it? She had, hadn’t she?

She had slipped that perfect red circle on her tongue and she had swallowed. She had swallowed it down and it had dissolved and disintegrated and bled in the dark wetness of her stomach and it had dissolved, spreading out through her body. It had dissolved and it had crept into every corner, every crevice, every joint and muscle and into her skin, under her skin — so thin, so vulnerable — her bones — hollow — the oily, dark depths of her eyes.

It had gone everywhere, deeper and deeper and deeper, beating and beating and beating and beating and beating in her veins.

Cherry-red. A perfect circle. Perfect.

It brought her here. It’s taken her here. It’s blinded her, bound her, dragged her down here, pushed her down those stairs to this long, dark tunnel where there is no air.

There is no air.

Only rot and cold and damp.

There is no air. Jae cannot fly.

She can only climb. She climbs, she crawls, she pushes herself up the stairs… until she realizes they are going down not up.

They are going down and she is upside down. Her hair hangs down over her ears, over her face, a perfect circle. She is blind and the sugar is on her tastebuds and the drug is in her veins and it’s muffling her, trapping her, sedating her.

She is going deeper, farther. Until she is right-side up again. Right-side up in another tunnel. A tunnel like the last. Fluorescent lights beating, flickering, beating, flapping, birds with no air, beating against the ceiling.

Jae remembers now. That drug being slipped into her hand, her imperfect fingers and grasping nails… by a hand much more steady.

A hand. A palm and lines that criss-crossed, overlapping, a maze of lines, pipeline dreams. A hand with polished, unbroken nails. A hand steady and warm.

A mouth warm and sweet, curved up against hers. Candy-coated words, candy-coated smiles, candy-coated promises. Arms to hold her.

A palm with a cherry-red pill in the middle. A voice.

It won’t hurt you. It won’t hurt you. It won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you.

Jae drops to her knees. The concrete is hard and cold and dirty and the cold seeps through her clothes, it crawls up her skin and it plucks at her until she feels laid bare, naked. Exposed under the fluorescent lights, trapped in this maze of tunnels.

She doesn’t remember coming here.

She covers her ears with her hands. She bows her head. She curves, the straight line of her body bending, bending, bending, knees to chest, an infinite loop of hollow bones and thin skin and oily eyes and a tongue stained cherry-red.

I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you. It won’t hurt you. Swallow it.

Beating, beating, beating in her chest. Horrible pain. Horrible, sickening, mind-bending pain and Jae wants to reach down her throat with her shaking, imperfect, bitten-down nails and she wants to grab that beating, beating, beating thing and she wants to rip it up, she wants to squeeze it between her fingers until it bursts, until it sprays these dark, damp walls with cherry-red.

Then maybe she’ll be light enough. She’ll fly back up, past those flapping fluorescent lights, through that dark cage of a ceiling, to the air. She’ll find the air. Her tongue will no longer be red. Her fingers will be.

But it’ll be okay.

Her chest will be hollow enough to fly. Empty and bare and invaluable, nothing to steal there, nothing to take.

And no matter how many perfect, red circles are held out to her, Jae won’t swallow. She won’t place that cherry-red, perfect circle drug back on her tongue and let it dissolve in the dark damp of her stomach. She won’t make such a tragic mistake again.

So she does what she has to do.

Jae reaches down, down, down, down to that beating trapped in the cage of her ribs and she curls her bitten-down fingernails around it and she pulls it up and she chokes it up and she gags on it and then it’s there in front of her — red and beating and pulsing and bleeding.

And she crushes it.

#shortstory #angst #love #toxicrelationship

It’s easier to do than Joanne had ever dared to believe.

And when It’s done, it’s even easier to walk down the stairs from Apartment 9 and out onto the dark street. She feels light.

A single breeze could blow me away, Jo thinks and it’s true.

She’s insubstantial, a shadow drifting between the sickly yellow of the streetlights. No one who passes by looks her direction and it’s better that way, she decides.

That way no one can look down into her through her eyes.

No one will stare into the oily black of her irises and then farther still, back through her eye sockets and down the wet hollow of her throat. Past her fluttering, flapping lungs — a bird trapped inside a cage of bones — to her deep, dark stomach.

Because there — there in the heat and the dark — is a seed.

A seed she had felt for the first time tonight, in Apartment 9, watching those egg yolks crack and split and bleed all over the floor.

And that seed may grow. It probably won’t.

Because Jo isn’t afraid of it… of it sprouting, growing, pushing up up up until it blooms and chokes her.

Jo isn’t afraid.

She feels light.

------------

Her house is quiet when she gets back.

Jo takes off her shoes and walks into the kitchen, flips on the light.

She’s left the milk out so she puts it up. Then puts the kettle on to boil.

Then it’s down the narrow hall to peel out of her coat, gloves, hat, scarf — to turn on the tap and wash her hands in the sink, scrub at the beds of her nails, change into something more comfortable.

Her clothes whisper up and off of her body like the memory of a touch against her skin. She drops them to the floor in a rustle of chiffon, kicks them to a corner. They’re like wings she no longer needs, discarded as if she’s plucked the feathers out herself, one by one.

Down in her belly, the seed sits. Tiny, compact, hard.

And Jo doesn’t look in the mirror. Not tonight.

------------

By the time she returns to the stove, the kettle is whistling, building itself up to a stiff shriek of fury. She takes it off before it can reach its swan song, killing the scream in one swift jerk.

Outside the night is beginning to bleed from the sky. The dawn light crests blue and milky — runny like yolk splattering from a broken egg.

She’ll sleep a little before packing, Jo decides, as she sips her tea and stares out of the tiny pane of glass above the sink.

And as she watches the magpies outside flutter and flap in the yard, her mind wonders who’ll find the broken things she’s left behind tonight.

Just who will walk through Apartment 9 with its peeling paint and well-oiled hinges? Who will clean up the mess? The mess and that carton of broken eggs, seven of them cracked and leaking into the grooves of the linoleum floor.

Jo hadn’t meant to knock them off of the countertop. But she had slipped in all of that mess and her elbow had caught the edge of the styrofoam and the yellow of the yolks had turned crimson on the floor.

But someone will clean it up.

Someone else will deal with it.

Seven magpies, Jo counts.

"Mummy?"

Jo tears her eyes away from the window. Alec, her son, stands in the kitchen doorway, one chubby hand raised to rub at his eyes, the other clutching the threadbare teddy he never sleeps without. There are faint lines along one rosy cheek from his pillow.

Jo puts her tea down, crouches. "Come here, darling. Did I wake you? I’m so sorry."

Alec walks to his mother. He reminds her of a bee in summer, bleary and hot, buzzing sleepily around the flowers until he comes to rest in her arms, his soft body firm and warm against her.

She hums and stands, strokes the silken strands of his bangs from his piercing dark eyes.

"Mummy," Alec says again.

"Mmhm? What is it, sweetheart?" Jo reaches for her mug again, balancing his weight in one arm and against her hip.

"Were you painting?"

Jo laughs and shifts. She loves him so much. "Painting? Why would I have been painting, silly?"

But Alec only reaches out, his hand wiping clear any space between them like the sun is clearing the dark outside. Warm, innocent fingers touch her right cheek.

"You have red paint," Alec says, little forehead crinkling in concentration. "Red on your face."

Jo goes back to the washroom, carrying Alec with her. She looks in the mirror.

Red.

A single streak along her skin, more brown than red now and crusted and dried, flaking when she reaches up to touch it. She hadn’t noticed.

She sets Alec down, rinses it off, and watches it swirl down the drain to join the rest. Proof of getting rid of the wings she no longer needs to fly.

"Alec," she says, crouching once more. "Do you like the ocean?"

Alec removes his thumb from his mouth and nods. Jo’s smile grows larger. The seed inside her moves, writhes, buries deeper — down down down and away from the light that it must be able to see between Jo’s parted lips, suffocating itself.

And Jo knows then, in that moment, that soon even she won’t be able to see it through the deep black of her irises, down the wetness of her throat to the cavern of her stomach — and she laughs because then she will be truly weightless.

"Good boy. We’re going to be living near the ocean soon, and then you can swim all day and play in the sand. Would you like that?"

Alec nods again, smiling now at the excitement in his mother’s voice.

Jo feels light. She picks up her son and he feels light.

So she keeps talking about the house they’ll live in and the places they’ll play, telling Alec all about the candy-colored beach huts and the sweet treats he can eat on the pier of Southwold. She lays down in her bed with him held to her and she keeps talking until his breathing slows and evens… until his cheek rests on her shoulder and his eyes flicker with dreams of the future behind his thin, pink eyelids and his small, wet mouth parts damp against her skin.

And then she stares up at her ceiling and she thinks of their new home silently.

A new beginning. Finally, a fresh start. A small place by the sea, just for them, where they can both float on the breeze with their new lightness.

And Jo thinks she’ll grow a garden in the backyard.

#mystery #shortstory

Trapped here, I think as I run a finger absentmindedly along the edge of a thick pane of glass, frosted over with ice and snow - a thick crust of impenetrability.

Trapped within these walls, like Rapunzel in her tower of bones.

I’m being dramatic. Even I know that.

Rapunzel’s castle had been made of stones and ivy, not bones.

But my thoughts can’t help but keep chugging along a track towards despair.

I am trapped.

In a way.

The walls here are also made of stone, and ivy crawls and crawls and crawls over them, getting tighter every day until sometimes I imagine the ropes of green giving one last squeeze and crushing the house to matchsticks. Crushing me to merely memory.

But it stays standing. And every day the sun rises and I look outside and imagine leaving.

I’ve brought myself to the edge of trying many times — I’ll walk carefully over cold floorboards, avoiding the ones that creak as if afraid I might wake the manor. I’ll whisper down the many winding, narrow, dark staircases built into the back of the house, probably once used for maids and kitchen staff. And then I’ll pass the drawing room, the library, the dining hall as quickly as I can, until I stand in front of the elegant front doors.

There are no locks on them.

There is no other person here with me, keeping me confined or a prisoner.

No. I am my own jailer.

I am afraid — terrified of the world outside.

I am safe here. I know these rooms and these halls because I had grown up here.

And I am still here.

The others — Kate and Danny and Therese — they’ve all gone, whisked away into the sunlight to live existences free of worrying about what comes next.

I am too scared to follow in their footsteps.

So, despite the loneliness here and the crushing nostalgia of memories, I stay. Alone.

It’s not so bad. I have the entire place to myself.

Oftentimes I sit in the library, legs curled up to my chest in a dusty armchair, staring out the grand windows that reveal a sprawl of green lawn in summer and an intimidating crust of flat-grey frost in the colder months.

From here I can see a sliver of the sea on the horizon. Or, at least, I think I can.

Usually my mind will drift on these long and slow afternoons. Days like today when the snow falls quietly and lazily, slow as if someone has poured honey into the clocks of time just for fun.

I’ll think about how I used to run up and down that lawn, Danny chasing me and Therese watching from her spot in the shade, nose tucked down into a book.

Kate would often sunbathe out there while us younger two screamed and giggled. She’d spread out one of Mum’s fancy towels and stretch out over it like some kind of cat, all golden long legs and arms, dark hair pulled up on top of her head, yellow bikini on.

I remember growing older, awkwarder as my limbs got as long as Kate’s, longer even. I had been all bones and clumsy feet for a time, no good for tag anymore in the backyard.

Instead, I turned to my favorite room in the whole house, the one I spend most of my time in now. The library.

Therese had set spark to my intense love for books, her serious green eyes oftentimes crinkling at the corners with a smile whenever I came running to her for another one.

And then she would reach up, grab a new one, and place it into my grabbing hands. She’d pat my head, smile once more, and then whisk away in a cloud of lilac perfume, off to her fancy college I suppose, or to visit that girl she was always with. The one with the loud laugh and the funny drawings all over her skin.

(I later found out that those “funny drawings” are called tattoos.)

And when I wasn’t reading, I was running with Kate along the coastal road, or playing pranks on Danny at our shared school.

We had been close. All of us. Closer than any of my friends seemed to be with their own brothers and sisters.

Until one day we hadn’t been. One day that stretched into two and then seven and sixty and seven-hundred and thirty.

We broke apart, almost as if the ivy had reached into our hearts and wrapped them away from the others. Crushed them to dust.

I stayed. I stayed here at our house while the rest of them left, suitcases piling up at the foot of the staircase in the foyer.

Kate had cried so hard the day they’d gone she’d gotten sick. I remember that.

Therese had wrapped shaking, blue-veined arms around our sister, had whispered to her, words I could hear as clearly as the sharp pattern of rain on the roof.

“We’ll come back. I promise.”

And then she’d looked straight at me, those green eyes no longer crinkling with amusement, with happiness, but heavy with sadness, bright with pain.

I’d looked away.

I regret it even now, so many years later. Because they hadn’t come back.

Not once.

I no longer let Kate do my hair with cold, steady fingers, or had Therese to cry to or Danny to tease.

All of it faded to memory.

And now I wonder if I were to leave this house, would I see them? Would I find them again?

Would they be different, changed?

Or the same? All dark hair and long eyelashes and easy smiles, freckles along the curve of a nose and that silvery-white scar along Danny’s right knee.

So on days like today, when the hours drip by slowly, when the seconds feel like a countless flap of bird wings against my skin, I go to the front door and I put my palm against the cold knob and I think about turning it, about stepping away and leaving this place.

But today I’m tired. Today I’ll rest here, knees drawn up to my chest in a dusty armchair, eyes fixed outside on that sliver of sea I think I can see.

And I’ll try tomorrow.

---------

It’s the noise that wakes me.

It’s the sound of the front doors opening and immediately I sit bolt upright and listen.

Voices! And footsteps!

The sun has risen high above the horizon outside, turning the snow and ice and hoarfrost to fire, blazing white, and joy explodes in my chest in the same measure.

They’ve come back.

I run. I fly down the hall towards the sounds, tears welling at the corners of my eyes, relief and happiness and questions all welling up inside me until I’m afraid I’ll burst.

“Kate!” I cry out. “Therese! Danny!”

I run, hair billowing out behind me, feet barely touching the cold ground -

And I see him.

He can’t be more than five. A little boy, with cream skin and dark eyes, dressed in a down coat for winter.

He stands in the foyer, looking around curiously... until his eyes land on me.

I suck in a breath.

For a moment we hang suspended in time, looking at each other as the clocks stop completely.

For a moment I feel how lonely I’ve been in one, gut-wrenching tug as the ropes of ivy tighten one last time to break my heart completely.

For a moment I think the boy will reach for me.

But as soon as I think that, the spell breaks. A woman in heels and a green dress and coat appears behind him, cooing and picking him up, her face shadowed by the brim of her hat.

“Don’t go running off,” she scolds, but with no real discipline. “This house is old, very old. We have to make sure it’s safe before you can run around, okay?”

The boy nods but then points, one chubby hand rising, and I feel what remains of my heart give a little start when I realize he’s pointing at me.

The woman looks up then, her face revealed in a patch of sunlight that suddenly streams through the windows. Her green eyes crinkle at the corners with amusement.

“Girl,” the boy speaks.

“Therese,” I plead.

“No,” Therese whispers, the amusement bleeding from her face in a heartbeat, and I see then that her face is lined with age even as the crinkles around her eyes disappear.

And I think she’s talking to me, telling me no the way she used to when I wanted candy before dinner, when she caught me with cigarettes in the second year, when -

But my sister turns to the child, who looks strikingly, heartbreakingly like Kate, pushes his hand down gently.

“No,” she repeats, face bone-pale and blue-veined arms trembling around him. “No, Jo, no girl. You’re just thinking of the stories we told you, about your other aunt, yeah? Don’t go saying that when your mum gets in here, alright? You’ll upset her, and we both don’t want Mummy to be upset, right?”

I sink to my knees, watching as Therese’s eyes flick back towards where I’ve been standing and then over me, like sunlight through water. The old wings of grief flit over her face, crinkle the corners of her eyes much the same way laughter once had.

But nothing is the same.

Jo, the baby Jo, has even looked away, nodding seriously at his aunt’s words.

And I know then, as Therese talks gently to the child, as her eyes linger slowly on dust-lined railings and the cracking plaster and dirt-rimed windows, that it had never been my siblings who had really left.

It had been me.

I remember now. The crash of the ocean. The storm. The waves of a sliver of the sea closing down over my head and stealing me away, locking me in an upside-down tower of drowned lungs and blue lips and the crushing walls of water.

I know. I remember.

I am memory.

I take comfort in one thing and one thing only as I turn slowly and drift back the way I came, back to curl with my knees to my chest in a dusty armchair, my eyes fixed on a sliver of sea I know is there.

My family — Therese, Kate, Danny — they still have a piece of me.

My name.

Jo.

#angst #shortstory