After

Fictive Dream/Micro Monday

“After” is perfect for this last week of October because the micro doesn’t scare me as much as a few of the published potential triggers hanging out in my archives.

These days, I’ve learned to lower the boom a bit more gently.

“After” was published by Fictive Dream here as part of Micro Monday #1, April 7, 2025.

Thank you, editors.

As November approaches - a traditional month for all writers’ writing - my goal is to lean into this softer side of speculative writing. What All Writers Can Learn from Speculative Fiction with Amy Shearn (The Forever Workshop) caught my attention when offered this past September, but life had other ideas for my creative output.

Therein lies the beauty of The Forever Workshop subscription. Once a workshop posts, I have forever to participate.

After reading After, check out the work of fellow Micro Monday #1 writers Ani King and Kathryn Kulpa. :) Thank you for reading.

Be safe out there.

Photo by Raff Liu on Unsplash

After

The dead girl, she’s packed her clothes. In the front room, grieving family and friends sit at a seance table. The spiritualist arrived in a smudged red Camaro. The lights go out. The girl sees herself materialize at eighteen and then older, thirty maybe, an age she will never be.

In the dark, she departs. A single naked bulb illuminates casseroles left in the hall by the neighbors. A stranger passes her on the street. She taps his shoulder, asks him for a light. He looks straight through her. Children scream bloody murder on the sidewalk, the three kids she will never birth. She shadows a man waving down a taxi and climbs in with him and the kids hanging on her hem. The two boys and a girl play with a ouija board left in the back seat. M-O-M, the planchette spells.

W-E-A-R-E-H-U-N-G-R-Y.

She tears plastic wrap off the apple cake baked by the man in the apartment with the fuzzy red toile wallpaper. A red shirt collar poked out the neck of his red sweater. He liked red, he told her.

She breaks off chunks for the kids to snack. They gobble like they’ve never eaten before. Later, they will eat dinner on the train. She settles back and examines the red fibers beneath her fingernails.