A 21 word story.

elimae

Once, long ago, Hendy thought she’d found the perfect candidates—long, red rubber bands designed for toy guns. She stole a handful from her nephew, snuck them out of her brother’s house by rolling them up her wrists and onto the heft above her elbow. When three days later the indentation was still there—a strawberry licorice twist tattoo—she decided they’d do. One by one, she placed each rubber band on her tongue. They tasted sour and dirty, like the lid of a pickle jar dug out of a garden. With the help of two diet cokes, she swallowed them. But they passed. Each and every one of them passed.

Redivider

Justin only knew his father by the sound of his voice. He'd heard rumors of a photograph, taken right before his parents got married, but he'd never seen it. Their relationship was limited to phone calls that came a day or two after his father had been released from jail, prison, or rehab, and was looking to make a fresh start. And no matter how much time passed between calls, Justin always recognized his voice. Hyper, a tad girlish, completely fake.

Tom's Voice

...I backed away because you looked like shit, the way your pupils dilated and your tongue gummed up your mouth like it was too thick for you to talk though you managed to tell me you’d gotten that girl pregnant, that you weren’t seeing her anymore but still planned on being a father to her child...

3:AM Magazine

"The last item is tucked in tissue paper inside a glossy black bag. I peek, see a company coffee mug. Folded into its center is a pair of green flowered panties with the word Wednesday stitched across the front. In the bathroom, I fling back the shower curtain, hold them up. She looks at them, at me, her eyes folding, unfolding, diurnal flowers in bloom."

Vestal Review
Smokelong Quarterly Review by Katrina Denza
Pushcart Prize Nomination

“We learned about portfolios from Miss Rainey. Miss Rainey had brownie-batter hair and turquoise earrings. Most days she wore ankle length skirts from India or Mexico, but never America, and her shirt-sleeves hung white and loose around her wrists like cartoon ghosts.”

NOÖ Journal

Eyes lock on her best friend, but Casey remains silent, afraid that saying the word no would be just as embarrassing as snorting something she’d never done before. And she doesn’t want to be embarrassed, not tonight, not in front of J.D, who’s the reason she’s here at all, the reason any of them are here at all, she imagines.

Outsider Ink

There was still something wrong with the head. I’d tried almost everything to fix it: clay, wax, dental fixative. That only left plaster of paris. It had to work. Four hours and counting until the Angelo funeral and the old lady’s face looked like the moon.

Monkeybicycle

In the car, Indian boy sat middle-back, gripping head-rests and yelling “shoot the moon” in my ear until the speedometer neared eighty. We sailed past red lights and street signs and kids on bikes and he said from the backseat “all the way to Tijuana, baby,” in a comfortable voice while my head pulsed with fear.

Outsider Ink

In the bathroom, she locks the door, pulls a mirror from her purse and pops it out of the sleeve. She cuts a line, and as the drips trickle down the back of her throat she pictures the stall in her high school bathroom where she hid after the popular girls convinced her first boyfriend to dump her.

Muse Apprentice Guild - Spring 2002

The first one was the hardest. Do it. Don’t do it. How to do it. The second one more of necessity-- to silence the screams that echoed against the windows, to still the eyes that bled tears, to get the fuck out of the back seat.

Muse Apprentice Guild - Spring 2002

I run a finger over the raised tissue, remember how I couldn’t bring any friends over to my house because of where I lived and my drunk mother who’d scream and lock herself in the bathroom and pound on the dryer so it’d make this horrible thumping hollow sound like distant drums.

Word Riot
Muse Apprentice Guild - Spring 2002