Flash Fiction, Liz Rosen
Because I told you when I got back that morning.
…how Inez and her mother’s shouts clashed with the shock of a mountain sheep battle.
…how Inez beckoned me to follow as she climbed out her bedroom window, and about her apologetic shrug when I wouldn’t because I was the kind of girl who followed rules, not friends.
…how her mother discovered me, alone in the bedroom, and the rage that grew, furnace-like, in her face when she realized the object of her anger had slipped away into the night.
…how she dragged me by the wrist into the living room and shoved me down on the couch where I shrank and shrank as she paced before me like a snarling red-haired hyena and accused me of being vile, a word I’d only ever seen in romance novels before then.
…how I made myself small among the cushions as she ranted, saying nobody liked me, which was why I was never invited to parties, how fat I was, which was why no boy ever looked at me.
I was thirteen. This was the whole world.
…how she screamed that I was a loser, a failure, a disappointment.
…how I finally left my body to sit under siege, watching from outside myself.
Her eyes were unnaturally blue, but clear. I thought, she understands what she is doing.
…how when I whispered that I wanted to call my parents to come pick me up, please, she stared down at me, calculating, and went into the next room, took the receiver off the hook, and came back out, locking the door behind her.
For hours like that.
If I’d had more words, I might have told you better, but I told you the best I could.
Because you never did anything about it, and in that absence grew the thing between us that throws off blue sparks and still scrapes at the back of my throat, raw with not asking why.
Liz Rosen is a former Nickelodeon TV writer and a current short story writer with a love of YouTube ghost-hunting shows. Color-wise, she’s an autumn. Music-wise, she’s an MTV-baby. She is a native New Orleanian and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses gulf oysters and eouffee, but is appreciative of snow and colorful scarves. Her stories have appeared in or are forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Ascent, Atticus Review, Pithead Chapel, Writer’s Digest, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and numerous others. Learn more at www.thewritelifeliz.com.
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