HeatherTheSkelter

Leigh looked forward to Sunday all week. Mom always took Sunday off, because it was ‘Leigh’s Day’, when they would go out together. This Sunday, however, was particularly special. Leigh sat at her desk in kindergarten, filling in the dots to make the letter K. She hummed quietly and grinned as she finished the final K. Look, I did it way faster than you! She showed Kevin. Kevin didn’t seem to be in the best mood that day, though. He just frowned and looked back at his paper.    This weekend was Leigh’s birthday. Mom let her pick where she wanted to go this year, and Leigh had chosen the aquarium. She’d be

            The small apartment was crowded with piles of books and old newspapers. Little Leigh lay in the bed, stuffed into a corner surrounded by the important things. She had her own important things, in a small box wrapped with the paper she kept from her fourth birthday. She sat fingering through the items in the box. Her fourth birthday present was a beautiful merry-go-round horse on a golden chain. On the morning of her birthday, she had awoken to a letter and a package on the front doorstep. It was wrapped in simple, dull golden paper, and contained the necklace wrapped in a lace handkerchief. The letter had no sender name, yet Leigh

 Forgetting to turn on the hot water. The last drop of milk on a dry bowl of cereal. Running out just in time to miss the garbage truck. Spilling the whole coffee cup on the busy workroom floor. Leaving lunch to spoil on the counter at home. Dripping ketchup in your lap. Finding forgotten laundry in the snow on the balcony. She listed these in her head as she walked away. Then she stopped, turned back. He clicked through the ticket machine. A man in a frazzled suit bumped her roughly and she kept walking. Of all the things—

"There was never anyone quite like her." The thought was scrawled on a Post-It. The Post-It was stuck on his fridge, and there it stayed. When he came home from work. When he tried to make dinner. When he went to get milk for the macaroni. There it stayed. He did his best to remove it, he really did. But the thought lingered. And sometimes, he caught himself holding the fridge door open too long. The cold caught up with him and he shut it in a hurry. Post-it notes are frail things. The adhesive grew weak. One day, he opened the fridge, and the note fluttered to the floor. It slipped into a fluff of dust, in that area under the oven that's

 The train wasn't coming. She waited. It was a lonely station, just a little thing, out in the countryside. It had been busy at one time, but today the solitary platform was deserted. She sat. Small puffs of snow drifted across the tracks. It dusted the shoulders of her brown travel cloak like pale ash. There was somewhere she needed to be. She had a bad feeling about it and what might happen if she didn't get there soon. Something was happening, something was changing. The train would come. It would arrive any minute. She waited. She was ready to snatch up her bag the moment the train came into sight. Her hand yearned to reach out and gr

Emily saw the lights begin to flash red, and pulled the brake handle on her bike. As the gate lowered, her bike screeched but didn't stop. She pulled the brake again, but nothing happened. She was going downhill straight into the train crossing, pulling the brake handle frantically and attempting to  put her feet on the ground. The gate drew closer by the second, the train sped past, and a holographic red WARNING sign flashed in her vision. Yeah, I know, she grimaced as the bike hit the gate with full force. Emily flew over the gate towards the train, the red WARNING sign flashing against the clear blue sky. Oh well, she thought as she closed

 The sink of the hotel bathroom is buried under various makeup kits, razors and toothbrushes. Someone left a black wig on a styrofoam holder, with an eye patch thrown over it. There's stains all over the sink from the zombie makeup everyone was doing last night, and several bottles of hairspray. As I look for my own makeup bag, I accidentally step on someone's boxers. "Ew, can't the guys clean up after themselves?" I call into the room behind me. "I blame Key, he always leaves his shit everywhere," Nana calls back.  I lean into the mirror to fix my long blonde wig into place with a few more hairpins. I'm naturally blonde, but not blond

 This wasn't what I was expecting when they told me the terrarium was big. The human subjects were already walking around in their new home, their bare skin reflecting the bare walls that I could never cover with my tiny tube of sky-blue paint. A human approached me, offering me his harvest. "Turnips?" I declined.

 The girl with blonde pigtails shivered under her thin, patched coat. She rubbed her hands together. Here you go, the kind man said. He brought his face to her level as his eyes closed in a wrinkled smile. He handed her an ice cream cone and patter her head as he turned away.