Lacuna

This story is a current favorite of mine. In August 2021, it was published in Reflex Fiction Magazine (now defunct) and just missed the longlist for the Summer 2021 Reflex Flash Fiction Competition.

In Geometry class, when Mrs. Hurston isn’t looking, Emily rolls her body out across the cold linoleum. She wants to eclipse everything: the harsh dazzle of overhead lights, the spongy scuffle of sneakers, the chemical Pine-Sol cleaner smell. Mrs. Hurston tells the class parallel lines go on forever, yet never meet.

She lounges at the park after school, near a blooming jacaranda tree, leaning back into thick grass. Sunlight splinters through purple leaves. She tries to pay no mind to the heat on her face, orange neon painting her eyelids. She imagines sinking down, a perfume of wet earth invading her nostrils, grit under her tongue, fading, fading, until she becomes one with the soil. But it’s only an idea. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t disregard the desperate hiss in the treetops, like the breeze has mislaid a treasure and must hurry on its way. She wants to know: how can this ever come to an end?

In her bed at night, under a wool blanket, she tries to touch the darkness, to climb inside a hollow lack of being, to understand this mystery like a hole in the world. Rigid as a two-by-four, she stays still, not moving a muscle. Just like Cody.

Momma says her older brother is in a coffin, two miles away at the Goodwin Funeral Home. On the Saturday of the funeral, Emily wears her plum dress. Momma brushes and braids her hair. At the funeral parlor, after the service, the adults converse amongst themselves with hushed voices, then migrate away to the reception room. In the chapel, Emily lies down on the stale faded carpet next to Cody’s coffin.

She closes her eyes, holds her breath. For the first time, Emily hears only absence, hears only the beating of her own heart.