Put your toothbrush in the toothbrush holder, your underwear in this left-side drawer. Slip your mud-soaked boots next to my blue Birkenstocks, right here, on the welcome mat.
Ignore my bloody mother Mary in the mirrors, her old demons, swept under Aunt Christa’s ikat rug. These ghosts — they’re scary, but they’re not trying to scare you, Bubbie. They’re mostly trying to clear their throats.
You used to say that the difference between falling in love and loving was paint. If you fall into a giant tub of paint, you’re covered in it — everything you touch will get an imprint of that color. But love is also an action: it is more akin to painting someone’s skin. If you’ve fallen into the tub of paint, any time you reach out to that person and touch them, you’ll be loving them. It’s inevitable. But if you’re outside of the tub, it becomes more of a conscious decision. You have to reach back into the tub to paint.
Long before the children would shed their gender conforming names and escape their provincial village, the two siblings endured a tortuous childhood of stifling convention. The children’s mother called her son Hansel, a ‘healthy eater’ and her daughter, Gretel, a ‘little piggy.’ Their father clapped Hansel on his meaty back and offered him a stein of the family pilsner, while their mother showed Gretel how to polish the silver and iron the wrinkles out of lederhosen.
They can only be found at low tide on a full moon. Don’t cross the tide line, as their nesting holes are large and sparse feeding periods make encounters with this scavenger dangerous, if not […]
We haven’t seen each other in weeks. We haven’t ever seen each other without layers of material and HUD light over our faces, but we have laughed together. Just us. Now, we bump into each […]
The grand piano lays discarded by the mossy path.
She sits on the frayed velvet of the wooden stool long rooted into the ground.
She slowly runs her finger up and down the black and white ivory.
“Lowest Ebb” is one of the short stories featured in 100neHundred, an upcoming collection of micro fiction by Laura Besley (Arachne Press)
I spot the sign in the shop window and tentatively open the door.
‘Yes, my dear?’ asks the old man behind the counter.
‘I… I’d like a new soul, please.’
First date
The wind comes in fast, raising clouds of sand, burning their eyes as they run. They hide under an overturned rowing boat. They kiss, the first and last time.