Flash Fiction – Ariella Ruby

Ghost

For good or for bad, I am done with this cherry-wood dance. So I go to her grave—to tell her I must turn to the birches.

The walk there is misty and gray; my jeans are ragged, and I am alone.

“Why?” she asks me through the grave plot.

I remember the digging and the pain: the small bent shovel and my aching elbows. Three months ago, under the cherry grove. My visits and the laudanum; treks through the forest, missing Florence’s birthday, my six-year-old sister.

“You’ve trapped me.”

“No…” she says.

“Unhook me.” Only the whistle in the dark wood, the hum of nearby electrical wires. “Your voice doesn’t sound the same.”

“Huh.”

She died in the hallway: my girlfriend. Hospital gown and the intravenous pumping.

I was at work, I was at school, I was standing in the cherry grove, holding the bent-in shovel. I was sixteen; now I’m not.

She pushes up through the spongy ground; some mass remaining; an earthly core. Finally, I see her: searching eyes and curling smile. Is she white or gray or yellow yellow yellow like the light?

“Let’s play card games, drink Pabst Blue, skip class and sip slushies on the shoulder of the road.” Let’s. She’s pacing, grips my shoulder, smoking fingers sinking into my bones.

“It’s almost Florence’s birthday,” she quips. “What should I get her?”

Our names, carved on the trunk of a birch tree with my switchblade. I’ll leave us there, and not come back tomorrow.

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Six-Word-Story – Maia Harris

Nothing good on tap. I knock.

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