They said she was important, but only called when they wanted help. Their first thought in a crisis, their last for fun. Sometimes she wondered if she was invisible, a phantom floating through life. If ghosts were real, she might have acknowledged the wayward image. Instead, she batted it away, mind flitting to the next thought. If she vanished into the night, how long before they realized she was gone? She double-tapped their party photos to appease them, but her…
He couldn’t remember being this cold before. Not as a child playing outside in the snow, or hours spent at hockey games. The polar bear plunge was frigid, but a temporary chill before warming up again. He knew the freezing chill of a pond after falling through its thin ice one winter. Remembered waking to chattering teeth the year he’d gone camping and woke to his tent covered in ice and snow. It had taken five minutes to break out…
“Although we claim it began with coffee, in truth, it started with the alarm. It’s shrill insistence I drag myself from bed came an hour too late. I subjected myself to dry shampoo and a slightly wrinkled navy pant suit before running out the door, and reached the corner just in time to watch the bus pull away; the air filled with the stench of its putrid exhaust.” Mandy’s engagement ring sparkled in the sun. “She looked so bedraggled, I…
Unanswered Questions Out on the jetty, the wet rocks were slick when she lowered herself, feet dangling over the ledge, her tormented face a fractured reflection in the surging water. Gulls overhead shrieked, and she longed to join them. Icy waves crashed into the rocks as she assaulted him with questions he failed to answer. The spray of the ocean stung her cheeks and mingled with her tears like a ghost’s chilling whisper. “Answer me,” she begged, desperate to hear his…