T, My Name is Tonya

by Kathryn Kulpa | Nov 27, 2023 | flash fiction

But not really. It’s a nickname, something my sister used to call me. You wouldn’t know my real name. He never did.

I wasn’t the first one he killed. I wasn’t the last. Not quite. I was part of the long fade but not the final coda. He was shooting for 100. I was #94.

He liked to brag about how smart he was, how dumb the cops were. Of course, he started in the seventies, before DNA evidence. He told me about #21, found in a hastily scooped-out roadside ditch. Pants pulled down to her ankles, like a candy wrapper ripped by an excited kid who can’t wait for the first bite.

Struck by lightning, police decided. He laughed for days.

He told me this while his hands were around my neck.

I got an eye for them, he said. The girls nobody misses.

* * *

When we were kids, my sister and I fell through ice in a February pond. We were skating—pretend skating, because we couldn’t afford real skates.

That might have saved our lives. Ice skates are heavy. They can’t be kicked off the way-too-big sneakers can. I kicked my feet free, grabbed my sister’s hood, and swam to the edge of the pond, where a tree root poked through feathery snow.

One hand holding that tree root. One holding my sister’s hood, a quilted white parka with fake fur trim like a half-drowned squirrel.

In so many nightmares after that, I felt the fabric slide from my hands, saw my sister’s face sink under black water.

But that didn’t happen. Hold on tight, she said. And I held on.

It was my fault the ice broke. We were playing Olympics, and I had to try the triple axel. My little sister watching me like she was taking notes on who to be. I jumped and twisted and saw her face fly by once, twice, saw her eyes get wide, and just for one moment, before the ice cracked, I was flying.

* * *

I could fill a book with them, he said. All my Jane Does.

His arms were around my neck and I grabbed his collar and he laughed and said it was cute that I fought back, but he had no idea who I was, no idea I could fly, no idea I was the one who’d finally take him down, the hair I pinched from his head held in my hand, my fist squeezed tight around it. He had no idea how hard I could hold on.

Landfall

by Jiksun Cheung | Nov 20, 2023 | flash fiction

In the time that my mother has been missing, the skies have turned a gray, roiling mass. The radio is calling it the most violent typhoon to make landfall in thirty-two years.

We’ve looked everywhere, and there’s nowhere else left except here, in the ruins of the abandoned Wah Fung housing estate, where my mother and I once lived in a tiny room on the sixth floor.

In the clearing outside, a squall tears at my flimsy raincoat and drags an old banyan tree snapping and splintering to the ground. A battered No Trespassing sign flits overhead and ricochets off the crumbling façade. I find an embroidered shoe near the entrance, swirling in the ankle-deep floodwater like a goldfish in the murk.

“Ma! Is that you in there?”

In response, there is only the whistling of the wind.

What on earth could she be doing here—and why now?

I try to recall the last time we were all together: Maggie, the boys, me, my mother, sitting around our dining table. The food getting cold. The nursing-home pamphlet opened to the page where an elderly couple beams at the camera, surrounded by family.

“If that is what you have decided,” she says. And then, after a pause, she adds: “You always choose what is best for your family.”

She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t pat my hand to reassure me that she understands. She doesn’t touch the fish cheek I place in her bowl. But her words slide between my ribs so that even after Maggie, and I clear the dishes and the boys are fast asleep, even after my mother quietly shuts the door to her room and turns off the light, all I can hear is: “You always choose what is best for you.”

* * *

I stumble through the flooded corridors, flashlight in hand, until I see the old provisions store, tucked beneath the stairwell, where my mother used to work.

The shutters on one side have collapsed, revealing a row of empty shelves. I think of my mother stacking tins of oily fried dace, her thick, black hair in a knot, the radio behind the counter crackling a Teresa Teng love song. She pauses in front of the radio before changing the channel and then tells me to finish my homework before she locks up.

I find the other shoe on a landing about halfway up, waterlogged and torn at the sole. The whistling continues unabated.

* * *

I step into my childhood home at the end of a long corridor on the sixth floor. The room is empty, save for the candle on the floor, painting the peeling walls a flickering orange, and the figure by the window struggling with the handle.

“Ma—are you hurt?” I say. “What are you doing?”

She is surprised to see me, but then her expression hardens. “It’s rusted shut,” she says. “Can’t get it open.”

“Come on, Ma.” I put an arm around her shoulder, but she pulls away.

“Just let me do this,” she says.

“Come on—we shouldn’t even be here.”

I take her by the wrist, but even now, I’m surprised by her strength. She wrenches free and bangs a bony fist onto the rusty handle. A cry of frustration escapes her lips.

“Ma—have you lost your mind?” I shine the flashlight on her hand, where an ugly purple blotch is already pooling beneath the skin. “We can talk at home.”

“I didn’t ask you to come.”

This is what happens when we talk: words fly out of our mouths, but we never seem to understand each other. “What do you want, then, Ma?”

“Just—help me,” she says. “Please.”

Outside, the rain surges like waves on rock. The whistling is louder, too, coming from all directions, rising and falling, as if seeking harmony but never quite finding it. I realize she’ll never leave this place until she does whatever she’s here to do.

“Fine,” I say.

I raise the heavy flashlight and bring it down sharply on the handle. Once, twice. A crack, and then something gives way. The window explodes, ejected by a mighty pressure. The candle goes out. And I remember.

The day of the big typhoon, thirty-two years ago.

Ma says the store will be flooded, so I wait for her under the dinner table, wrapped in a thick blanket. The wind whistling all around. Suddenly, the window bursts open, and I’m engulfed by a sound that I can feel in the pit of my stomach, a deep thunderous drone: beautiful, like the long, solitary call of a blue whale, but also infinitely terrifying, like the howl of some unfathomable beast, so loud that even the floor shakes.

I curl up into a ball under the blanket and call for her, not realizing that she is already beside me.

“I’m here,” she says, pulling me deep into her arms. “It’s all right. I’m here.”

* * *

My mother listens now, silvery-white hair plastered to her face, enraptured by the haunting harmony of the typhoon barreling as it did a lifetime ago, along winding corridors, between cracks in the walls, and through the room on the sixth floor with the open window.

She finds my hand and clutches it, now and in the past. We listen for a while.

“I’m here, too,” I say.

“I know.”

*Originally published in And If That Mocking Bird don’t Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative

Love 1992: A Catechism*

by Deesha Philyaw | Nov 16, 2023 | flash fiction

Does Love exist?

Is fat meat greasy? Cuz ain’t no way I could’ve fallen so hard, so fast, so far, by myself.

Rewind that.

I didn’t fall in love. Like Toni Morrison said, I rose in it. If only for one night. I levitated for that brother with the high-top fade, tired eyes, and pretty smile. That first night, we worked it out, strangers on the club floor. Some Bobby Brown, some Chubb Rock, a little Jody Watley, the chaos and black steel of Public Enemy, and then Miss Jackson (cuz I’m nasty and he is too). We grinded, we Reeboked, and we Cabbage Patched until sweat plastered my hair to my face, plastered his shirt to his back. When he pulled me close and murmured, “Can you stand the rain, ma?” in my ear, I didn’t even mind his wet cheek on mine. My panties went damp, too. It was a wrap. You know how it is. And then back to life, back to reality. Lights up. You ain’t gotta go home, but you got to get the hell outta here.

Where shall we worship?

In his car, in the park, in his room when his mama was at work, on the stoop, always, always, in the shadows.

And when shall we worship?

Night and day. After the dance.

And how shall we worship?

However do you want me, however, do you need me, how…

How is Love manifest?

The way it always does: with a Running Man. Storms did come, and I became a Fly Girl. Chasing him, forgetting my mama’s wisdom that what’s for me will be for me.

Rewind that.

I didn’t forget a damn thing. That man’s honeyed tongue brought me to my knees, had me acting like I didn’t have the sense god (my mama) gave me.

Lisa, Angela, Pamela, Renee…he loved us all and not at all. His only consistency was looking at the front door.

Don’t walk away, boy….

So I cold bum rushed Lisa. I sliced Angela. Me and my girls jumped Renee. As if his was a love worth fighting for. As if.

(Pamela was pregnant––yeah, he had a baby on me.)

How can we speak about Love?

Besides calling his mama’s house and cussin’ him out? It took me a while before I could talk about it. Because really, what was there to say? Could I chalk it up to a teenage love if we were nineteen and knew better? Well, I knew better.

Who does Love love?

Nobody.

And what has changed since back in the day?

Not a damn thing. Love is like a bus you been waiting for. Feet tired, ankles swole after working all day. A few buses pass by, but they’re not yours. So you wait some more. Then your bus comes, and finally, you can sit down. Rest your weary. Relax your mental. Exhale. Drop your shoulders. Close your eyes and go anywhere your mind’s music takes you. But it seem like as soon as you settle down good, it’s your stop. Time to go, back to walking.

I ran into him the other day outside the grocery store. He still look good, about the same but with salt and pepper in what’s left of that fade––a b-boy with a round middle in middle age, eyes still heavy like he’s seen too much. Both a survivor and someone you’re lucky to survive. Smile still pretty. He hugged me, his fingers tap-dancing on the small of my back, like old times. Asked me if I got a man, grabbed my phone before I could answer and put his number in it. I ain’t deleted it yet.

And when shall we Love?

On and on til the break of dawn.

*after “The Petoskey Catechism, 1958” by Elizabeth Kerlikowske, and Mahogany Browne’s “A Hip-Hop Story in Lyrics”

Malia

by Hannah Olabosibe Eko | Nov 13, 2023 | flash fiction

One day Neela will run inside and steal me away.

The other wigs roll their eyes. They smell the hope on me—a sticky sweet decay like garbage abandoned in the sun. They believe in Second Girls, not fairy tales.

They did not hear the story I did: how one of us (miracle of miracles!) was returned to her rightful owner and her still warm scalp. My heart recycles the same fantasy like a mad carousel: reunion, coconut oil, the nape of Neela’s slender neck.

The glittering tingle of entry sings a new arrival, and I meet the new customer.

This girl is black, curves of breasts and hips where Neela was one straight line.

Her hair strangled tight into a ponytail under a baseball cap pulled low.

She darts towards the back wall, littered with barrettes and scrunchies.

The owner of the store yells at her back.

All purses to the front!

The girl surely saw the many signs, fat black marker on discarded cardboard.

I know just enough English to understand:

No Returns. No Loud Talking. No Big Bags.

No Children. No Exchanges. No Gum.

The owners of Beauty 123 may as well as next write: No You.

The girl makes her way to the register, a tornado.

Brown eyes flash, shoulders set in proud perches.

Only skin color connects Neela and this girl: darkest of brown like pregnant soil or the cave of a womb. Neela was gifted an inconspicuous nose, hazel eyes, and me dripping down her back in thick ropes of shine. Her skin; her main demerit. She dreamed of Fair & Lovely lotion raining from the sky. She dreamed of different parents and baths of bleach.

This girl holds her darkness with something close to pride.

She dumps her bag onto the counter, and the owner stuffs it underneath alongside leftover receipts, rolls of pennies, inventory slips gone bad.

Her jaw juts upward, and the diamond stud beneath her lower lip shines like an angel wing,

I am not a thief, she says.

They christened me Malia in an Italian warehouse.

Dyed me a milky purple and sewed me to gauze.

In this store, we are all renamed with tropical breeziness.

Leeana. Cristina. Kaylani and Jade.

Sweet names that kiss the edge of tongues.

These names betray us, here we are: dying under the dead glare of fluorescent light and Cellophane.

No one cares for the names we left behind.

I am the chosen one with heat-pliable waves lifted high onto a peeling Styrofoam head. Center stage. No customer fails to notice my beauty.

They gaze at me with longing, run their hands over my curves when the owner glances away. They pant like children after a lolly. I sense their desire the minute they enter. Then they learn of my price, sulk away as if duped.

No money, no honey, I would say if I had a mouth they could hear.

People think we are free for their taking.

I am even on television now, a black and white recording of the shop’s every move.

Neela would be proud.

She wanted to be an actress, practiced flipping me so I fell in one shy curtain over one eye, but her father laughed.

They are no better than prostitutes, he said, and besides, look in the mirror.

What kind of actress does not shine?

Beauty 123 has four monitors watching the store. As if one day the aisles of hair dyes, shampoos, and paddle brushes will descend from their shelves and flee.

The owner’s eyes track the girl’s every movement with the searing eyes of a hunter.

Even the owner’s hair, a short black bob streaked with grey, is alert.

Like a bodyguard wishing for near-death and glory.

I wonder why this girl, now pondering a wall of relaxers, has not looked at me, not even once. Is she selectively blind? Deliberately stupid?

How can she not desire to know my new name?

Days ago, one tiny girl tried to slip a butterfly barrette into her panties.

Her mother protested the charge, but the owner rewound the tape.

Finally, the girl pushed the yellow plastic forward onto the counter.

The owner used an envelope to skate the butterfly into a trash can, took out her camera as the

girl stood silent. The mother quieted.

The shame, thick as cooking oil.

Outside the door, the mother yanked the barrette girl along.

The owner retold the story to her own daughter, pantomined the barrette girl’s hiding place, the mother’s dramatic arguing.

Her own daughter, a timid thing with bitten-down fingernails, was busily stocking nail polishes on the front counter.

Tiny prizes like keychains and toy-sized lotions arranged to flirt with impulse buyer whims.

The daughter sighed.

C’mon, mom. A barrette? she said before turning back to her task.

The owner jabbed at her daughter’s shoulder.

The surprise of the stab made a polish fall to the floor and shatter in a blue blob of glass.

I understand little of their language, but every lace knows a mother’s disappointment, weighty like a rain-soaked roof.

We all had a First Girl who had a mother.

The owner pointed to the floor, brushed by her daughter so that the girl flinched.

Do you know the sorrow of hair that wishes to cry and cannot?

A sob of fury shoved into each lock?

Some women, like the owner, are just born that way.

The daughter knelt, rubbed at the polish already congealing like a crater.

There is still a stain there, an aftermath of blue.

Barrette girl’s photograph has joined the other shoplifters on a blank space of wall near the entrance. The picture is blurry. She is looking down, the baubles in her hair heavy like anchors.

I try not to feel sorry for her. Fail, try again.

She would learn the lesson elsewhere, probably more harshly.

A girl should never desire more than what she has.

Longing on the Journey to Proxima B

by Amina Kayani | Nov 9, 2023 | flash fiction

The traveler isn’t lonely. The ghosts of dead oceans joined the ship soon after the first onion sprouted in the tin of soil the traveler built in their quarters. The ghosts of dead oceans tell the traveler things like, “That light is giving me a headache,” and “Is it the onions making you cry?” and  “You’re so boring, lost in the past. Bring us the old future.”

The ghosts of the oceans never want to talk about heartbreak. It was too often on their minds. They floated with each other, remembering the feeling of mollusks on their floor, of smooth skin displacing their salt, their first caresses. When the oceans sing, the traveler goes into their room and shuts the door. That kind of longing can be unbearable.

The thing about a voyage to Proxima B is that it will take them 6,500 years. The thing about Proxima B is that only one person is making the voyage. This means that their lover no longer visits them in the evening, but the traveler likes to put their tongue beneath her imagined jaw—the place she directed them on the first night spent.

Even so, they are no good at calculating time zones and often neglect calculating the distance between galaxies. There’s never a good time to call and mend.

“Relationships are all about timing,” the dead oceans tell them, wistful for their old planets. The traveler looks in the mirror at an unaging face. Lost love is more haunting than the ghosts.

In space, stars still look distant. In space, the traveler still extends their fingertips as though they might touch one.  In space, stars still look distant. In space, the traveler still extends their fingertips as though they might touch one. The dead oceans tell them, “It’s too late to retrieve the other timeline. Even we are seeking water on this ship.”

The traveler realized too late that when physicists said time was an illusion, they just thought it was interesting to talk about. None of them really believed one could perceive it differently. The traveler felt fooled. They thought, with the right angle on the universe, they might crack open their past from any point in the future, like roots under a sidewalk, rebirthing ancestral seeds.

But they couldn’t crack anything open, not during this drift.

There was a day when the traveler woke up in her bed and kissed her before breakfast. They sang Barry White in the kitchen over pancakes. The day was gray but mostly green.

Looking out the window at Proxima B’s already dead light, the traveler reached out to the ghosts, and for once, the ghosts didn’t say anything. When the star flared, the traveler could have sworn they felt, finally, the moisture of her sigh as they kissed her neck. Her coarse curls against their ears.

Gentlemen Callers

by Avitus B. Carle | Nov 6, 2023 | flash fiction

I find my boyfriend’s car parked in front of the Hillside Motel and consider shattering the windows or, at least, peeing on the windshield. But that’s bad for business. Not my business because, technically, he’s my ex-boyfriend and, fortunately, it’s my grandmother’s 80th birthday.

She deserves a granddaughter who can behave, who can do as she’s told, even though I’m neither of those things. Instead of being here at 5 pm like she asked, I’m in front of her usual room at 4.

Instead of Carrot Cake in a white box, I have a Red Velvet in a pink box because I don’t like Carrot Cake, and she knows I don’t, just like she probably knows that my ex shouldn’t be one of her gentlemen callers.

That’s what my mother calls them. Ever since “sperm donor” was revealed to be an inappropriate way for me to introduce my grandfather to my second-grade class.

Her gentlemen callers used to come to the house until my 12-year-old self caught one climbing through my window. My grandmother would later describe him as a man who had “a thing for breaking and entering,” with a wink that haunts me to this day. Then came the motels, though she’s settled on room 28 at the Hillside Motel 5 miles from our house.

I told my ex all this in the car that’s now parked outside my grandmother’s room. Same car he parked outside of our house, when he first met my mother and Ethel. I didn’t feel anything when my grandmother and him talked about football all night, him sitting next to her and across from me at dinner. Her reapplying her lipstick in the mirror, him licking his lips and talking about her delicious pie. How excited he was to dive in, to taste, already ready for seconds and thirds.

I didn’t start feeling anything until I walked him back to his car, expecting to be invited somewhere, but he starts talking about my grandma and how she “gets” him like I don’t, but, just in case, I tell him I do. I do get him, and he says something about needing space and things will be better this way and something about meeting someone else.

“Oh,” and this he says after braking too hard, after I start thinking he’s changed his mind, “let Ethel know, if she needs anyone to taste test her pies, I’m free.”

Maybe this shit-covered bench and melting Red Velvet cake and I all deserve each other. A man, not my ex, walks out of room 28. Between him zipping his pants and the cool air that escapes from the room, I can see my grandmother’s legs rocking. The mole on my ex’s ass like a dab of ink.

“Oh,” the man stares at me. His lip twitches as the door closes. “You must be—”

“Don’t.” It’s weird when they acknowledge me. Worse when they say I look just like Ethel, them smelling like Vicks, my grandmother’s cure-all.

I’m not sure how much time passes. Only that I can see my grandmother’s hand between the curtains. The fog of her breath. She’s really into whatever my ex is doing to her, and I try not to be jealous, but Ethel doesn’t work up a fog for just anyone, and I can’t help but wonder why he never did anything, like he’s doing to her, to me.

A jeep pulls into the lot and parks in front of my grandmother’s room. A not hideous guy with red curls and freckles crossing his crooked nose almost falls out, pauses, and climbs back in to turn off the engine. He almost trips as he walks over, eyes the empty spot next to me on the bench before passing. I watch him, because my viewing options are limited, trace the numbers on the doors.

“Good day for 22,” he says, and, at first, I don’t realize he’s talking to me. Why would he? All any guy around here wants is Ethel. Until he’s sitting next to me, our knees touching, and he makes the same comment again.

“We don’t have to talk.”

His thumbs go to war with each other. “You here to see Ethel too?”

Gross.

But maybe it’s because he knows my grandmother’s name instead of asking for mine or saying we look alike, or I remind him of her, or that he moves slightly closer for my answer like he’s interested in what I have to say that I cough and almost drop the red velvet cake and sputter,

“No—yes, it’s not—”

“Are you okay?”

He takes the cake because I’m choking on my spit. He pats my back, and I shake my head, which he must think means no, no, I’m not okay, which is true because my ex, the suppose to marry and have kids with ex, is one of my grandmother’s gentlemen callers.

“I should ruin his car.”

“Seems like a waste of cake.” The red-haired guy smiles, stretching his freckles and it’s almost sweet that he thinks I mean to use the cake as my weapon of destruction.

And, rather than think about how unfair all this is, I remove the lid from the cake. I sink my hand into its center and am surprised that the guy remains still, balancing the cake on his lap.

And I eat. I shovel red velvet chunks into my mouth until it’s full. Until I’m pushing red velvet chunks into his mouth, and he’s shy at first, pulling away until he tastes my fingers and begs for more. His face and neck turn red with cake, or blush, I don’t know, and I don’t care because, on that shit-covered bench, we feed each other and lick the leftovers from each other’s fingers, and through it all, I can see his lips move, and the sound of a door opening escapes and someone asks, “How does it taste?”

“Delicious.”

First Impressions

by Nico M. | Nov 2, 2023 | flash fiction

Step into the Mexican restaurant together, you beautiful protagonists. Shake the drops off your umbrellas.

Wouldn’t’ve guessed it from the Spanish-mission-style façade, but it’s a sprawling interior.

Though it looks like you’re the only patrons there tonight.

The white lights are hospital-bright.

There’s no mariachi music. No burble of conversation. No crunching of tortilla chips.

Just the weather outside.

A lank older woman with a chic black pixie cut asks if you two cutie pies have a seating preference?

Look at each other, at the expanse of empty tables, at each other again. Shrug.

Secretly, sure, you’d both prefer a booth. Cozy, private, off to the side. But you don’t want to assert such a trivial preference on a first date.

No, show that you’re low maintenance. Like it says in your dating profiles. You’ll take whatever.

She has a very special table for Mr. and Mrs. Follow her.

Ha, no, not Mrs., just Ms., you’ve really only just met and—

¡Ay, qué lindo! Young love. She was in love once, too.

Well, um, you’re not in love, ha, you just met on the apps, but—

Oh? Lust, then? Dios mio.

She makes the sign of the cross and seats you at a four-top high-top in the middle of the dining room, smack dab. Here are your menus—bam, bam—Rico’s your waiter, he’ll be with you shortly. Cuties.

She winks, walks back to the host stand.

Your table is directly beneath a papier-mâché catfish, dachshund-sized, with googly eyes and a wispy Fu Manchu that appears to be made of real hair? The thing is suspended by nylon fishing line looped over a ceiling hook.

Don’t say you hate it. Be positive. Smile at each other. Pick up the menus. Hear nothing but the muffled storm.

Would you like tequila?

Who said that?

Look around. Look up.

It’s the ugly catfish.

He seems bigger somehow. Not dachshund but maybe dalmatian-sized now?

His piscine countenance nevertheless betrays his impatience.

Would you like tequila please?

Look at each other. Hope the other will answer first.

Um, sure? Yeah. What does Rico recommend?

Rico recommends the Clase Azul Reposado.

Uh, that sounds good to you, you guess, right? Right. Not that either of you knows shit about tequila. You’ll take two shots of that, please.

Rico thanks you, closes his googly eyes and continues to hang overhead.

Look at each other. Wonder how this works. Like, is Rico going to go and get you the shots somehow or…?

A flash outside and then thunder.

And then, here inside, there’s a sound like something stretching. It seems to be coming from above. Look up. Rico seems to have ballooned to the size of a Rottweiler.

Look over at the host stand. Your hostess is just smiling out at the glass entrance doors, spackled and blurred with droplets.

The ceiling is starting to crack where the hook is anchored.

Scoot your chairs back a bit. You can guess what’s coming.

Boom!

Rico, now the size of a mastiff, has fallen onto your table in a shower of plaster.

You’ve inhaled some dust, gotten some in your eyes.

Cough it out, wave it away, wipe your eyes.

Rico is moaning as he flops and thrashes on the table. His wispy ‘stache is filled with bits of rubble and dust.

¡Ay, pinche…!

Wonder if he’s real enough to ask him if he’s okay, is there anything you two can do to help?

He continues to flop, to gasp, to swear in Spanish.

Look to the oblivious hostess again. Try to flag her down.

No luck.

Get up off your asses, walk over there, tap her on the shoulder.

Yes? Can she help you?

Hi, yes, um, Rico—

She looks over at where she’d seated you two cutie pies. Rico has flopped himself onto the floor now.

Ay, pinche pez.

For a moment, she closes her eyes, bites her lips. Then she crosses herself, opens her eyes.

There’s a tall stack of plastic red buckets by the host stand. She grabs the top two and hands one to each of you. Here, hold these, please. She pulls out a box of latex gloves, tugs one over each of her hands with a stretch and a rubbery slap. She takes a deep breath, grabs a colorful stick that’s leaning against the wall, and leads you back to your table.

The three of you stand around poor Rico as he coughs and struggles on the tile.

The hostess makes the sign of the cross again, raises the stick over her head, and then begins to smash it down on Rico’s bloated belly.

¡Deténgase, por favor!

But she continues. Bam, bam, bam.

¡No, señora, por favor!

She continues until the light goes out from Rico’s googly eyes and his side splits open and it’s quiet and still again, except for the storm outside.

Look on, both of you, in complicit horror as the deed is done. Look on at what you didn’t prevent. Look on at what—it could be argued—you have caused. Realize how tightly you’re holding the handles of your buckets.

The hostess kneels down on the hard floor, grabs each side of the gash in Rico’s flank.

Watch the muscles on her thin arms tense and contract beneath her loose skin as she tears Rico in two with a loud r-r-r-r-rip. Watch a hundred tiny paper fishes spill from his belly onto the floor and begin to flop around. It sounds a little like the rain.

And aren’t you supposed to be the protagonists? Aren’t you supposed to be driving the story instead of watching it? Why are you just standing there, holding those buckets as the hostess scoops up and dumps squirming handfuls of paper into them? Can your consciences hide behind the anonymity of plurality?

The hostess grumbles as her latex hands corral and capture the slippery paper fish.

Ay, so many. Go get her another couple of buckets, cuties. You saw where they’re stacked, yes?