Category: ow

The hotel bar in the daytime had many empty seats. She sat and asked for an espresso. The bartender asked where she was from, and she forgot to lie. She could have said anywhere. She had practiced earlier, now that she belonged to no one, saying she was from Spain, Toronto, the Galapagos, Uzbekistan, Oklahoma.…

Some things got looser: Her pants. Her bra. Her watchband. And some things got tighter: Her budget. Her gait. Her arms wrapped around herself. Everything was changing. Skin peeled off. Hair fell out. Food vomited up. Changing, but not disappearing. Replacing. The word she kept coming back to was “molt.” Looking in the mirror she…

She asked for soup. The waiter told her they had chicken and tomato. She chose the chicken. The waiter came back and said he was sorry, they only had tomato left. She asked if it was creamy. The waiter said not really. But it was clear to her that he was lying. Or rather not…

The continued lack of sleep made her head hurt in the mornings, so when two people got out of their seats on the A train, she gladly slid into one of them. A slim man in a Panera Bread uniform sat down next to her. She took out her book, and he took out his…

They had to draw her blood. That was the only way to know for sure. While the vampiric tube ate hungrily from the vein in her arm, she thought of how strange it was that someone else could be in her blood, uninvited. When it was over, she went to her favorite coffee shop and…

The new consciousness brought something strange and painful into every cell of her body. People who loved her were inside of her, breaking every bone in her body at the same time. How long would the breaking take? She was annoyed, she had thing to do, places to be, uses for her body. All she…

What must the two delivery men smoking on the corner have thought when they saw her perish? Did they feel the shift in the atmosphere? Or bristle at the putrid scent of burning hair? One day, she would like to ask them, “What was it like when you watched the end?” But then she would…