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Category: micro fiction
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Upstairs with Ann Zandi — three micro fictions by Deena Lilygren
image courtesy of flip bunkens via unsplash to the hitchhiker who told me I shouldn’t pick up strangers
First of all, it was the polar vortex and you looked half-dead hunched there on the shoulder like an awkward walrus. You couldn’t even get your thumb out of your pocket. Secondly, you may feel large in your coat and scarf but how tiny you are from a distance, slow-moving and utterly unthreatening—certainly more vulnerable than I with two tons beneath me and the span of the steering wheel in my hands.
upstairs with Ann Zandi (last supper)
Spring cleaning always makes me tell this story, which takes place during the cold months and isn’t a story at all. It’s a decorated room, nothing more. The walls are stage-curtain red, lit by a gold-fringed lampshade and cable TV. Onscreen, iCarly and pals are having a hot dog eating contest. Someone has cheated at the contest but will shortly see the error of their ways. A joint lies ready on the coffee table, a crisp modern line against a plate of lumpy homemade mocha cupcakes. The window opens and the last few items are placed: lighter, decorative laugh track, and eventually, in the spirit of minimalism, a frosting bowl and two spoons licked clean.
late afternoon lecture
The kid in the fourth row is asleep. I say asleep rather than sleeping to imply a sort of cozy, lost agency; sleep is something that happened to him. He positioned his elbow to prop chin in hand, and then sipped at sleep in tiny drips until he was effectively drowned.
It’s not his fault. The room is quiet, just papers shuffling and my monologue about signal phrases. People pay for this kind of peace, of which he is an integral part, our pet spaniel curled at the hearth.
Somewhere in the world, this young man’s doppleganger is dressed for war, mindful of predators. Here, our safety is a marvel; we can leave our bodies and expect to find them intact when we return. He twitches; my warning about proper in-text citations is a sudden tug at his ankle, but not enough to bring him back.
Deena Lilygren lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she is an Associate Professor of English. You can find her work in LEO Weekly, Queer Kentucky, Huffington Post, 94 Creations, and Okay, Donkey.
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Time. Lost Ears. Pain. Three micro-fictions by Sarah Alderfer
Time
Do you think time can disappear without a trace, with no explanation? You’d think it’d be spun on wheels, but I think it has a mind and dance of its own. I approached my seat on the small plane, it didn’t feel right. I wasn’t supposed to be here, not yet. I sat down next to a man with every hair and seam in place. He had a flashy watch, too. As the plane took off, I clung to the view of the old country, determined to watch until she disappeared, swallowed by sky, or sheer grief. It’s strange, leaving a home that’s not your own. Maybe the minutes escaped through my feet, that’s where I feel it first, cold, numb. Maybe it’s through my stomach, sinking like a black hole. It started ticking again when I picked my head up from between my knees. I looked up from my hands. Glancing out the window, I asked the man why we were landing already, we had just taken off. “We’re in Frankfurt” he said, looking at his watch with a flick of his wrist. Time: it takes, taunting you in circles.
Lost Ears
One morning, I woke up and realized that I had lost my ears. I looked under my bed, I couldn’t find them. I waited a day or two, they didn’t come back to me. I looked down often. I’d kick rocks or hide my tears. When I think of that time, I think of the color black, a heavy one. One day, my mom gave me a note. It was a yellow, folded piece of paper. She said to open it on the bus as she rushed me out the door. The red ink told me to keep my head up. So I tried. I looked at lips as they spoke to me. I even saw hands come alive. I saw smiles and I saw heartbreaks. I didn’t lose that morning, I found eyes.
Pain
One night, three years ago, I wrote a poem, almost by accident. I remember the sheer grief, how it took my breath away. Time passed so slowly, each second was painstaking. Each inhale, and then the exhale, was work. So much work. All I did was watch Forensic Files in my bed and occasionally eat cold leftovers. Sometimes, I went to work. Sometimes, I turned around on the way there, unable to see through my tears. Sometimes, I didn’t even get out of bed.
I’m sorry, by the way. Air was so heavy. Blades and fire were release, the grip on my chest, gone. Fix. I came to a point where I refused to be ruled by something so little. I’m not even sure what spurred that resolve, it had still hurt so much. I remember that night, the wave was coming. I lay in my bed, the next episode of Forensic Files was on. The wave crashed, and I laid there, bracing. I made myself feel everything, each sliver of glass. I let myself wash away instead of reaching out. It was then that something happened. Words came swirling. Gasping for air, I wrote them down. It was the first time I felt relief without hurting myself. I was never the same after that. I had something to say, a voice. It was just the beginning that night, basking in the light.
Sarah Alderfer is a 26-year-old nanny and nutrition student. This is her first published fiction.
Why we chose it: Sometimes a voice reaches out to you. It has less to do with story than with feeling, a sense of something rising up from the interior of the writing that transcends subject. When this submission came in, I was intrigued by the cover letter, which stated simply, “This is new to me. Thank you for your time and consideration.” A one-line bio followed the signature: “I am a 26-year-old nanny and nutrition student.“
I opened the file and read “Lost Ears.” It was strange and beguiling. Before I’d had time to wrap my head around it, I was moving on to “Pain.” The sense of intimacy deepened–the raw despair followed by the discovery of writing as a way out of the darkness. And then on to “Time,” the unusual assertion that “you’d think it’d be spun on wheels.” I loved reading “Time” because it places us with a character in a place and time, in motion, contemplating one of the great mysteries in a new way.
I am excited to see what Sarah Alderfer writes next. I expect we’ll be hearing more from her.
Michelle Richmond, Editor / Fiction Attic Press
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