Brumal

“I often find myself laying still in bed with the ceiling fan on and windows cracked. I’ll wait for the cold air to shrink the tissue in my joints, for my nerve endings to cool, and to feel the agony of hypothermia even though I am perturbed by all things cold; snow, door knobs, the hands of people with poor circulation. I am fazed by freezers; and those stainless steel stretchers that will latch the cold onto my body.

I don’t think I’ll mind dying as much as I’ll mind sleeping in a freezer—my brumal body boxed beside strangers.”

From Guest Contributor Shanique Carmichael

Graveyard Shift

There was an emptiness to everything. Even the space between the minutes lacked connective tissue, so that time no longer flowed with any regularity. Josey was left with nothing but her thoughts to fill the void that descended upon the convenience store after midnight.

She'd divide each 15-minute chunk into 91 cents. That's how much she made, after taxes and withholdings. It hardly seemed worth it, and she'd stare out at the empty highway and live an entire lifetime during every span, dreaming of a life where she'd never married, had never given birth.

Until even her imagination was empty.

Prom Night

She hung the dress on a hook and shoved it all the way back in her closet, past her pink winter coat and communion dress. This was where outfits went to die.

She took a tissue and wiped her tear-stained makeup off in the mirror. The rolled up wad joined a dozen others in the vicinity of her trash bin.

She crawled into bed in full surrender. She looked at her cell phone on the table and thought of calling Janet, but she likely wasn't home yet. The fact she hated that her friend was enjoying herself made everything worse.

A Stubborn Speck

The elevator doors close with a ding. Alone inside, she hums and checks the mirror. The speck on her cheek looks unsightly, like a coal mine bent forward and kissed her.

She pulls out a tissue from her bag, and dabs at it. No luck. Nagging speck, like someone spit tar on to her face. Two more tissues, nothing.

The skin around it is reddening. Three more tissues, one after another. She’s getting restless as her floor draws near.

The seventh tissue does the trick. Someone from behind was kind enough to hand it to her.

The elevator doors open.

From Guest Contributor, Indu Pillai

Indu is a commercial writer based in Bangalore. Her fiction has appeared in Mash Stories and 50-Word Stories. She delights in all kinds of stories, written and unwritten. Twitter: @InduPillai01