The Marigold Suite
The bird was dead, all right. Frozen stiff. Hanging upside down from the porch lantern like a gutted cuckoo clock. I knocked again, breath fogging the air. Was I at the right place? Shadows from the forest clawed the overhang, and the wind moaned through the floorboards. The poor thing’s eyes seemed to reanimate beneath the flickering bulb. I cinched my scarf. The brochure failed to mention such charming décor.
Rachel FikesPublished 3 months ago in Fiction
The Plight of Pursuit
I was born doused in darkness, and in it, I shall die if I don’t find The Light. Green, ethereal, like bioluminescent jellies pirouetting my mind, it beckons me. Imbues me with urgency, with purpose. At seven thousand feet below the Arctic, I have millions of square miles to cover before Time swaddles me in her uncompromising womb. My greatest ally and adversary, this quest is all-consuming, filling me with dread heavier than a glacier. But a life without meaning is no life at all. So, with this truth, I dive on.
Rachel FikesPublished 3 months ago in Fiction
The Cerulean Strain
“Maldita sea la madre—” “Hey.” I tugged up my dangling chum, averting a drop that would’ve sated every sense of his title with the circling sharks. “Leave my dead mom outa this.”
Rachel FikesPublished 3 months ago in Fiction
Fallen
“You’re late,” my husband said behind his newspaper, not bothering to look up. With the sun glaring through the glass dome, splashing the kitchen with prisms, the dust motes around him shimmered as though he were a saint.
Rachel FikesPublished 3 months ago in Fiction
When Pigs Fly
Being different is a blessing. For a human, that is. For livestock, it’s a curse. At least, that’s what Granny always says. But she ain’t right about everything. One summer, every question I asked her, e.g. if women would ever be able to vote, if we’d eventually have a woman president (I was convinced I’d be the first), she’d respond with, “when pigs fly.” She ended up eating that adynaton faster than I gobble fried green tomatoes, cuz I seen in the paper that a Lord Brabazon o’er yonder in England done took up a piglet in his airplane. Not that a highfalutin aristocrat had a bleeding heart for making Piggy’s dream come true. He done it for the same reason I showed Granny—to prove his friends wrong.
Rachel FikesPublished 3 months ago in Fiction
