By Sarah Oechsle

So, I have this thing. 

A hot ball of plum-colored slime. It lives in a cage, in a box, on a shelf in my closet, but it still screams late at night. Other times, I can feel it sagging off my brain stem, compelling me to fulfill my body’s deepest—no—only desire. 

To fuck losers. 

See, I’m married to a winner. When I met Jack, he was a line cook at Texas Roadhouse, and we were soulmates. But he changed. It’s happened with every boyfriend. The death metal front man I dated for a year until SQUSSY’s album went double platinum. Then the divorced dad, packing an extra 40 pounds and a drinking problem. Two years later he was in Duke Med. It’s not always my doing. The geriatric biker I hooked up with in college told me he was in love with me after one night. Next day, clipped by an Amazon truck. $18 million in the settlement. Now he lives in Boca Raton and plays golf every day. 

I thought Jack would be different. He wasn’t just a loser; he was a loser and proud. He loved his shitty walk up studio. His crumb-covered futon. The weekends he would barely get off his Xbox. But after that first promotion, they just kept coming. New jobs and big wins. Great suits, better cars. Now, he works in one of those industries where you mention what you do at parties and everybody knows the Mercedes S-Class parked up the street is yours. 

But I loved him in spite of it all. For him, I thought I could push that part of myself down. Put it in a cage, put the cage in a box, and put that box on a shelf in the back of my closet. There’s something scrawled on it in a language I pretend I can’t read. And it worked, for a while, until one Christmas morning when I walked out to my own Mercedes in the driveway, big red bow on the hood.

“I just wanted to show you how important you are to me,” he’d said as I stared, slack-jawed, at my car commercial come to life. “I couldn’t have gotten here without you.”

That thing in the cage has been screaming ever since. 

So I taught myself to shape shift. If I couldn’t fuck losers, somebody else would have to. Used to be I could only manage it on the full moon, but now I can just picture the moon and find my body changing, twisting, shrinking. I can change the color of my hair, the shape of my nose. I can be a milf or jailbait depending on the vibe. Most women can shape shift, actually, if they picture the moon hard enough. 

So now, when that thing starts throttling the bars of its cage, I can slide off the sheets to it. Take it in my teeth and choke it down. My Benz starts up clean and quiet. I don’t want to wake Jack. I doubt he’d even recognize me. Tonight, I’ll be Sunday. 24, blonde. I change in the car behind Wendy’s. It used to hurt every time, now it only hurts when I make myself smaller. Watch the flash of new, blue eyes in the rear view, almost purple in the light of Wendy’s little braids. I go red instead of blonde, to match. 

The best place to find a loser is a bar with one pool table. It’s here I see him, baptized in the parking lot’s blue glow and ripping a line off the boot of his car. He looks like he used to play football. I wait ten minutes then follow him inside, where he spots me as he’s bent over the faded felt. His shirt’s riding up and I glimpse the pale, doughy flesh it probably used to hide. His hair’s gotten too long. It looks oily to the touch. He whiffs the shot and I walk straight up to him. Cut to the chase. 

“Want to buy me a drink?” 

He gives me a dumbfounded look. Glances around. He thinks it’s a con. A bit. But nobody’s laughing. “Really?”

“Yeah, I need a margarita.” 

That seems to snap him into it. “Yeah. Definitely. Let’s get you a marg.”

The drink is sickly sweet, the way dive bars always make them. Drinking it makes me feel a little gross. A little sick, in a good way, like sniffing the crotch of my leggings after a run. I sip off the half-salted rim and ask him, “So what do you do?” 

He tells the truth. “Um, I work for a moving company.” 

“That’s so hot. You must be really strong.”

He actually blushes, fat cheeks reddening under the Miller Time sign. I can see him trying to flex. It’s a rush I haven’t gotten at home in a long time: that “What is she doing with me?” feeling. A guy like this—broke, out of shape, a little past his prime and well aware of it. I bite my lip. 

“If you could buy anything in the world right now, what would you want?” 

He opens his mouth and closes it again twice before he answers. “A new car. A nice car. Like that Beamer in the parking lot.” 

I give it to him in the bathroom. I can tell he hasn’t done this in a while, and the out-of-breath way he gets when he’s inside me nearly gets me there. He’s hard and soft, dry and wet. Strong, yes, but way out of his depth. Fucking him makes me feel a little sick, in a good way. Like a dive bar margarita. And more than that, it makes me feel like God. 

He finishes in 44 seconds. Apologizes, and I feel it from my pussy too my brain stem. I’ve got to get back. In a year he could be in the best shape of his life. Two more and his startup would IPO. Plus, I really have to get changed. 

The moon is high when I claw back into myself, sated again. I spit the thing out and grip it in my fist. Stare at it for a long moment and feel a twist of something close to grief. Then I stuff it back in the cage, the box, the shelf where it screams. 

*   *   *

Sarah Oechsle is a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in Weird Lit, After Happy Hour, and Thirteen Podcast, among others.  

By James C. Clar

The hammer came down again in my uncle’s arthritic hand as he attempted to straighten another crooked nail. Each blow was tentative, a mere suggestion of force rather than the real thing. The sound was dull and patient in the half-dark of the barn. He had found a small tin bucket full of bent and rusty square nails tucked behind a stack of scrap lumber. The lumber lay unused in the back of the dilapidated structure that served as a garage on his Lake Ontario home. The nails were relics from some earlier project, perhaps from the barn’s own construction. They looked as though they had been waiting decades to be remembered again.

He sat hunched over a scarred workbench, its surface stained with oil, paint, and the faint outlines of tools long since gone missing. A single dusty bulb hung overhead, casting more shadow than light. A vintage Lincoln Continental dominated most of the remaining space in the interior, its long black hood stretched forward like a sleeping leviathan. The car was immaculate despite the dust, polished and preserved with the same care the old man once brought to his writing. My uncle didn’t drive anymore. He was ninety-six and as his memory loss progressed, he had surrendered his license. 

As with many seniors, the real problem was his short-term memory. A newspaperman for over forty years, he could still recall nearly every interview he had ever conducted, along with most of the stories he had covered as far back as the thirties and forties. He remembered names and obscure details with unnerving clarity. It was just that he couldn’t remember what he had eaten for breakfast an hour earlier, or sometimes even where he lived. Like the dead, my uncle was gradually being confined to one tense … the past. 

“Hey Unk, how are you doing?” I asked as I stepped into the barn, my breath visible in the chilly air.

Looking up from the workbench at the sound of my voice, he turned toward me and smiled. 

“Hey yourself,” he said. “I was just straightening these old nails. You never know, we might be able to use them again for something.” Having lived through the Great Depression, my uncle believed in getting a “second use” out of everything.

I moved closer and leaned down to give him a light kiss on the forehead. It looked as though he had shaved earlier that morning, but unevenly. Small tufts of coarse white-gray hair clung stubbornly to his cheeks and jowls; islands missed in a sea he must have thought he had charted successfully.

He set the hammer down and let his eyes wander over the tools hanging in front of him. After a moment, he reached out and took hold of a chisel. Bony fingers traced pitted steel. They lingered there, as if the tool were a key to something he alone could intuit. I could almost feel his mind slipping into reverse.

“I remember a winter back in ‘47,” he began. “They sent me out to the train station because they found some damn fool frozen solid to the side of a boxcar. Seems he hopped the freight somewhere back East, maybe in Utica or Syracuse. Anyhow, he got soaked when the engine took on water. By the time the train rolled in, he was basically encased in ice.”

He paused, eyes unfocused now, seeing something far beyond the barn walls. 

“Turns out he was the son of a local politician, that’s what made it news. He’d run off a few years earlier. I guess his luck petered out and he decided to come back home with his tail between his legs, a regular prodigal son. Anyhow, the cops and the railroad men couldn’t decide whether to thaw him out somehow or chip him off the side of the train. They ended up using a chisel a lot like this one right here.”

I took an old windbreaker from the back of the barn door and draped it over his narrow shoulders. He didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he did and simply folded it away into the background like everything else that belonged to the present. He put the chisel back on its hook and picked up his hammer again. Holding another nail with his left hand, he set it carefully on the bench and brought the tool down with his right.

The truth was he didn’t have enough strength to actually straighten any of those nails. Even if he had, by later that afternoon he’d forget which pile was which and start to work all over again. Bent, straightened, bent again: the distinctions dissolved as easily as his sense of time. Time was, for him, a serpent devouring its own tail. 

Those old nails were my uncle’s attempt to create order out of the quiet chaos of his mind, an effort to hammer memory back into submission, into usefulness. But there was too much rust, and he no longer had the energy. The nails, like his memory, were simply too far gone. Still, I hoped he would never stop trying.

“Listen, Unk,” I said as he continued to tap away, “I’m going to head out. I’ve got to go to work. Millie will be out when it’s time for lunch. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon to see how you’re doing.”

He looked over his shoulder at me as though seeing me now for the first time. His expression was open and polite, the way he used to look at strangers before an interview. “It’s really nice of you to take the time to visit with an old man,” he said. “What did you say your name was? You remind me of my nephew.”

He gestured toward the workbench. “Do me a favor, would you? If you run into him, tell him to stop over. I want to let him know about these nails. I think I’m pretty close to finishing.”

*   *   *

James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. Most recently his work has appeared in Flash Digest, The Yard Crime Blog, Sudden Flash Magazine, Flash Phantoms, Antipodean-SF, Freedom Fiction Journal and 365-Tomorrows.

By G.R. LeBlanc

After weeks and countless hours, it’s complete—my current miniature project: a two-story dollhouse trimmed with blue shutters. Every piece has been meticulously crafted, glued, and painted, and in the bright yellow kitchen, nothing is out of place. I admire the pristine black-and-white checkered tiles, a stark contrast to my muddy-paw-print covered floors.

What would it be like to live in this tiny, perfect world, where laundry and dirty dishes never get out of hand, and no one ever gets tired, angry, or frustrated? I imagine myself shrinking down and sitting at the tiny table, enjoying a wee cup of tea.

But then, Ollie’s barking snaps me back to reality. I glance up through my workshop window and see the kids’ bright orange school bus wind its way down our country road.

When I reach the front door and swing it open, Ollie launches down the steps. I can’t help but smile as he tears down the driveway to meet his favorite tiny humans.

Above me, our massive golden-leaved oak trees rustle in the breeze, and I hug myself against the chill. 

When the bus screeches to a halt, the kids hop off. Bethany leads, her wild blonde hair bouncing, with my youngest, Ethan, trailing behind her. They giggle as Ollie herds them toward the house.

In the kitchen, Ethan flops to the floor with his backpack and dives into it. He pulls out a piece of paper covered in bold, bright swirls of color and hands it to me.

“I made it for you,” he says through a gap-toothed grin. 

I kiss the top of his head and place his artwork on the fridge. Through the kitchen window, a warm ray of sun finds me, chasing away the fall chill.

                                                                    *     *     *

G.R. LeBlanc is an Atlantic Canadian haiku poet, fiction writer, and managing editor of The Hoolet’s Nook, an online publication dedicated to short-form writing. Learn more about her at https://sleek.bio/grleblanc.

By Toby Tucker Hecht

The morning tangle of the duvet between both our legs.

The oval depression in the sofa cushion where you used to sit.

The coffee mug with a rim chip that cut your lip, but you wouldn’t throw out.

The lineup of shirts in the closet, in different colors, all facing in the same direction.

The kalamata olives that you kept on the second shelf of the refrigerator.

The shoes lined up precisely inside the front door.

The laughing that started as a soft chuckle and ended in raucous hysterics.

The door that opened at seven o’clock with the shout, “I’m home.” 

*   *   *

Toby Tucker Hecht is a writer and scientist who lives and works in Bethesda, Maryland. At least forty of her stories have been published either in print or in online literary journals. A native New Yorker with a rather traditional life, she writes fiction to explore more exciting lives than her own. She is now working on a collection of short stories, and a series of linked short stories.

By Katelynn Humbles

The first home I ever knew smelled of oranges and salt.

My mother was a house of soft hands, of arms that wrapped around me like vines—steady, constant. She pressed cool palms to my forehead when I burned, shaped her love into something 

I could carry: peeled clementines, handed to me in bright, sweet sections, her fingers stained with citrus.

She was warmth, a sunlit kitchen, the hum of an old radio crackling through the morning. In the backyard, she coaxed life from the soil—clementines, lemons, figs—tending them with the same careful devotion she gave to me. In the summer, she sliced ripe nectarines over the sink, juice slipping down her wrists as she passed me half. Her love was something I could taste. When she brushed my hair, her fingers wove through it like roots threading deep into the earth. She was safe. The kind of love that asked for nothing, that simply was.

But the sky does not spare even the most patient garden.

Over the years, the softness in my mother hardened. Her hands, once gentle, grew rough with calluses, her touch no longer lingering but brisk. Efficient. She pruned too much, cut things back until nothing was left to grow. Her voice sharpened, edged with words I couldn’t swallow without them splintering. Some losses are slow, creeping things, measured not in sudden disasters but in the quiet erosion of tenderness.

One winter, she stopped peeling my clementines. Left them whole in the fruit bowl, untouched until they caved in on themselves. Inevitably, the rot crept in. I watched, stomach twisting, but never reached for them either. Golden mornings faded, leaving only the hush of a dim and empty kitchen. The scent of oranges was replaced by something bitter, something I didn’t have a name for. She was still the roots I had grown from, but now she twisted, strangling. And I—who had once been held so gently—became something shrinking, something withered.

And so I left—slowly, not in a single step, but in the quiet disintegration of belonging. I took what I could: the habit of peeling clementines in neat sections, the memory of her humming, the shape of her love before it changed.

The second home I knew smelled of fresh-tilled earth.

She grew things, too, but not the kind I had known. No fruit trees in her yard, no citrus scent on her hands. She planted vegetables—strong, practical things. Carrots yielded to her touch, torn from the soil with practiced hands. Her lips tasted of roasted squash and rosemary. Her touch was that of late summer corn and hands dusted with flour. With her, I became something more than I had been before. I was known, wholly and without question.

But some people are never meant to grow together.

It started with the smallest shifts—words unsaid, spaces widening between us like weeds creeping in. I ignored the way she never reached for the clementines I kept in the fruit bowl, the way she wrinkled her nose at their sharp scent. She preferred things that took time, things that could be preserved and stored away. I craved something immediate, something bright and bursting.

The cracks in our soil widened, slow and patient, until one night, they became an earthquake.

Love, I learned, is not always enough to keep something standing. The words between us grew heavier, thick with things unsaid. The house we built in each other began to splinter, cracks running through the foundation. I saw it in the way she turned away first, the way the space between us became a chasm neither of us could cross. The way her hands, once so sure on my skin, hesitated.

I left carrying the scent of turned earth on my clothes, the imprint of her touch on my bones.

The house I inhabit now is quiet.

It does not hum with the murmur of voices in the next room, the rustling of sheets, or the breath of someone sleeping beside me. It is silent in a way that presses against my ribs, in a way that makes my own breath feel too loud in the stillness. For a long time, I moved through it without really being in it. I do not cook. I do not plant. I let dishes pile in the sink, let the air go stale, let the bed remain unmade. There are no arms to pull me close, no steady presence to anchor me.

But the world does not wait for grief to subside.

Outside, the seasons shift. The trees, unconcerned with my sorrow, stretch their limbs toward the sky, their leaves unfurling in the hush of early spring. The days grow longer, spilling gold through my windows, laying warmth across the floorboards. The wind carries the scent of damp earth, of something stirring, something alive.

I do not stir. Not at first.

But one morning, without thinking, I buy a bag of clementines. I place them in the empty bowl, their brightness startling against the dark wood. Their scent seeps into the air, poisoning it with something sharp and sweet. Something familiar. I stand in the kitchen, staring at them, the weight of them too much and not enough all at once.

I do not touch them.

Days pass, and the sun stretches further into my home, into me. It fills the spaces I have left empty, pressing light into the cracks I have ignored. And something in me—small, quiet, half forgotten—reaches back.

I peel one open.

The skin splits beneath my fingers, releasing its citrus-sharp scent into the still air. Juice runs down my wrist, sticky and golden. I eat it in slow sections, the way I once had when love was something tangible, something shaped by hands other than my own. The taste is bright, tart, sun-warmed, and sweet.

The next day, I buy more fruit. I salt my tomatoes. I sweep the floor, run my hands over the rough grain of the table, let the light touch me where I have been untouched for so long. I do not fill the space with noise. I do not search for arms to hold me. Instead, I let the silence settle. I let the warmth spread. I let myself take up room.

And finally, I am home.

*   *   *

Katelynn Humbles is a writer whose work appears in Broken Antler Quarterly, Black Hare Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Eunoia Review, Five on the Fifth, Welter, Literally Stories, Wingless Dreamer, and Tiny Molecules. In 2025, she was awarded the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania Raymond W. Ford Award in Poetry for “Emmaus Community Garden” and the Bennett Harris Humorous Writing Award for “Can Vending Machines be Nihilistic?” She is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art, specializing in ceramics.

A Memoir by Stephen Niedzwiecki

We walked in hand-me-down suits through the parking lot. I stood below waist height to my father as he stopped and bent down before us to look us in the eye. “This might be a little scary,” he said. Hand in hand, he led us through the room full of people. From between their legs I saw an old man’s face in a box, his head resting on a white pillow. He was there, but he was not. Uncle Earl, I heard him called. My brothers knew him, but I did not. 

The women bent down and pinched our cheeks then turned to our father and mother. They talked in front of the box like he was there but wasn’t. My family approached the box, lined with cloth that reminded me of my blanket. I wondered what it was like to be in Uncle Earl’s place. 

The rain had started when we got back to the car. I stared out the window and imagined myself underground, talking to the others around me. It was a new idea to me, and I wasn’t sure if that’s how it worked. “What’s it like to be dead?” I asked. “Nothing. You’re just dead,” my mother replied. 

Still I imagined lying there in the dark, to be here and not here. I watched the raindrops stream along the glass and disappear.

*   *   *

Stephen Niedzwiecki is a writer whose work spans fiction, journalism, and technical writing. He’s been featured in Written in Arlington and Macabre Magazine.

By Brigitta Scheib

The steeple sprouted over the hills and reached skyward, the only part of the church visible from the highway. Its tall side glowed, advertising “Jesus” in unwavering neon letters as Lulu pulled forward.

She turned her car down the narrow, overgrown drive and followed the winding path, circling around the church until she noticed the smooth, pale tombstones and found the entrance to the cemetery. 

She breathed in, counted to six and blew out. “Lulu, you can do this,” she whispered, getting out of her car and slamming the door. “It’s time. This is for you.”

She trudged through the tall, damp grass and found the grave, knelt down and ran her palms over the indentations marking his name on the stone, then traced each one with her index finger.

The man who silenced her with threats was gone now. “Nobody would believe you,” he once hissed, and so she accepted that not one person would listen to her.  

She lived with that, but no longer. She is here for forgiveness. For herself. Crouched in the moist earth, listening to the buzz of the illuminated sign fade into background noise, Lulu allowed her anger to gush out and seep into the ground, shedding it like a skin that no longer fit.

“JESUS,” the letters hummed, the harshness catching her attention. Standing, she brushed off her knees and shielded her eyes, squinting as the top of the spire disappeared into the clouds. Lulu walked back to her car with ease; her body relaxed for the first time in years.

She left town that night to forge a fresh path. Feeling lighter, she flew down the deserted highway past the old church; the steeple hidden in the darkness. Only the bright fluorescent “Jesus” was visible, flickering then fading before burning out for good.

*   *   *

Brigitta Scheib lives in Harrisburg, PA with her husband, daughter and three orange cats. Her work appears in Temple in a City and Flash Phantoms.

By Alex Treuber

When I finally gave up and pulled off the highway it was snowing so hard that my wipers had given up. The lines on the road had long since disappeared, so I used the blue glow from an overhead billboard to navigate the exit ramp. Big piles of snow had been plowed to the shoulder to form a wall, narrowing the road. I turned down the radio to better focus. Up ahead, the lights of the travel center looked like a string of pearls submerged in dishwater.

After the last doctor’s visit I’d sat down at my dinner table with a pot of coffee and run the numbers. Another bonus like last year’s and I’d be able to afford the medicine, but one more late delivery would disqualify me. According to the man on the radio, the blizzard was expected to peak overnight and fade to flurries by early morning, but temperatures would remain sub-zero for a few more days. I’d felt a buzzing in my chest when I heard that, and soon fell into a coughing fit that left my green handkerchief spotted with red. The storm had already left me behind schedule, and I hadn’t planned to turn in for another two hundred miles. I would need to leave before dawn if I had any chance of making it on time. 

The lot was nearly full, so I parked at the far end. The twirling snow through the windshield made me feel like I was still moving. I grabbed my overnight bag and pulled on my wool jacket and switched to boots. Wind whistled into the cab when I opened the door, throwing white flakes onto the dashboard like vanilla sprinkles. I slammed the door shut and made my way to the travel center.

Inside I found a locker, setting the combination as my daughter’s birthday. I took a long hot shower, letting the water beat my sore muscles into submission. The grill was closing up for the night, but I convinced the kid at the counter to make me two cheeseburgers in exchange for a hefty tip. While they cooked I visited the convenience store where I bought a pack of smokes and a cup of coffee. I ate the burgers and sipped the coffee at a long yellow formica table, looking at the handful of other truckers, their beards the color of asphalt under the pale light.

A voice announced the cafeteria would close in thirty minutes, so I refilled my coffee and stepped outside for a cigarette under the covered area. I coughed in between every other drag, the smoke irritating something deep inside of me. The snow seemed to spiral around the floodlights, similar to how I imagined whirlpools in the ocean. I’d never seen the ocean, and as the smoke tumbled out of my lungs into the wild night air I wondered if I ever would.

Back in the truck, I flipped the latch behind the seat and slid the door to the side and reached around the corner for the switch. Christmas lights jumped to life around the edges of a twin bed. I was removing my boots and sweater when I heard a knock on the door.

I redressed and looked through the driver’s side window, eyes adjusting to the dark. Outside was a woman, arms wrapped around herself. She was wearing an oversized canvas jacket and a miniskirt and boots. I saw her see me and she stamped her feet and waved. I looked around the cabin as if trying to find something and then opened the door.

“Can I help you?” I yelled over the wind.

“Do you need any company tonight?”

From the light from the cabin I could tell she was young. She had bangs and shoulder-length hair that looked black against the howling blizzard. Her mascara was smeared in the corners and her smile spoke of desperation.

“What are you doing out there on a night like this? You’re going to freeze to death.”

She ran her hands over her arms and looked out into the lot. “I’m just trying to find someone to keep me warm.”

I sighed and chewed the inside of my cheek. Eventually I told her to come around the passenger’s side and opened the door for her.

I turned the heat on and put the radio on low. She shivered next to me in silence. I reached back and handed her a blanket from behind the seat. She wrapped it around her shoulders. When she turned to me she looked like a little girl.

“So,” she said, “what are you into?”

“Cut that out,” I told her. “I’m not interested in what you’re selling.”

“But you let me in. You must want something.”

I ran a hand over my mouth and down my neck, resting it over my Adam’s apple. The dashboard clock said 10:27pm. Drifts of snow in the parking lot outside gathered and curled in waves.

“You can sleep in the bed,” I said. I felt a sharp pain rattle along one of my ribs and failed to stifle a coughing fit.

“You sick or something?” she said, brows knitted.

I shook my head, settling myself. “I’ll take the front cab.”

She hesitated, and from her eyes I could tell she was wary of a catch. “Why are you doing this?”

I took a long breath, feeling the warm dry air fill my lungs, letting it swirl around the shriveled alveoli which in six month’s time would leave me suffocating on the cement floor of a gas station restroom.

“You take the bed,” I said, and turned out the light.

*

When I woke the next day she was gone. I blinked hard and ran a hand through my hair. The sun was high in the sky, peaking between wispy clouds that rushed together and apart like children at play. I coughed twice, pulled my coat over my head and dreamed of the ocean.

*   *   *

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Alex now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured in literary journals such as The Los Angeles Review and The Raven Review and he has been nominated for the PEN America/Robert J. Dau Literary Award for Emerging Writers. He spends his free time writing, traveling, and fending off surprise attacks from his cat, Napoleon.

        

            

By Marla Krauss

Don’t raise short hands in short anger towards short gods who don’t give a flying short about short lives with short ambitions to stake claims on short worlds that grow shorter and shorter as days get longer and leaner. 

Go take a large number. Someone won’t be with you shortly.

*  *   *

Marla Krauss is a writer who lives in Massachusetts. Her work can also be found in 50-Word Stories.

By Sarai Mannolini-Winwood

My fingers touched hers and felt a spark. What a cliché. 

It was liquid lightning through my veins. A bullet train to my heart.

I looked up with a wry smile to meet her unsmiling eyes.

She rubbed her fingers on her jeans. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you.”

*   *   *

Sarai Mannolini-Winwood (she/her) is an avid creative writer as well as a literary theorist and academic. I am intrigued by how we make sense of ourselves through our writing. My work is available academically in TEXT, Creatio Fantastica, and Dissection, professionally in The Artifice, and creatively in Eunoia Review, Emerging Possibilities, and Creature.