I deleted my texts to her, canceled the bouquet I’d ordered, altered my online profile, double‑locked the door, and waited.
David Galef’s latest book is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook (Columbia University Press).
He gave his creature the pseudonym he was using when I met him. A little joke, that name. Men of our sort are always hiding.
I called him my angel once, and he shuddered. Later I understood that he counted me among the temptations of which he longed to be rid.
You ask if I saw him transform—I who saw him cross the street to avoid the eyes he had kissed the night before. No. Not in the way you mean.
Hyde came to me only once. Thank God I feared scandal less than I feared his odious person. I suspect he should have killed me afterward.
But Henry Jekyll loved me, and that monster, the vessel of his sins, did not. I submit that it was not made to hold a sinless thing.
R. Gatwood (@iwantanewhead) is a strange case.
We keep saying accident. We keep not saying suicide. Both words keep getting louder and louder.
R. Gatwood is concise.
For months, whenever you hear the word “boundaries,” your ears get hot (I’m not a stalker) and you try not to remember how nice she was.
R. Gatwood’s work has appeared in Wigleaf and Contrary Magazine.
He seemed so happy. And he had been unhappy for so long. And I was so tired of taking care of him.
R. Gatwood is concise.
“Eurydice?” he says for the third time.
Behind him, she waits.
R. Gatwood never looks back.
I say, “It’s good, but it’s not like it’ll change my life or anything.”
She says, “I think maybe you misunderstand what a burrito is.”
Ben Roth teaches for the Harvard College Writing Program. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy.
The BMW was going too fast, and I was behind you on the crosswalk, and you whispered, “Fuck it, pay for my college,” and “shit, shit, shit.”
Colin Lubner is a senior at Villanova, where he writes less than he should.
She wrapped her arms around me. It was a function of her programming—I knew that—and yet, it had awakened something real.
S. Patrick Gallagher writes from New Jersey. He tweets @TightFiction and @spatgallagher.
Everything they upvoted became true.
Davian Aw is hungry.