Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash
by Mary Lynn Reed
The young paramedic leans against the table and whispers: we are ninjas, you and I – invisible – no one can see us at all. The stabilizing collar traps her white hair, holds her neck rigid. Trembling, she can’t see the hostess seating a family in the far booth, or the businessmen eating their steaks on the other side of the stretcher. She can feel the room spinning, though; can hear the squawking radio on the young paramedic’s hip. Ninjas, he says, we will spiral away – stealthily – into the moonlight. Slowly, everything moves so very slowly.
Mary Lynn Reed’s fiction has appeared in Colorado Review, Fourteen Hills, and many other places. Her debut short story collection, PHANTOM ADVANCES, was published by Split/Lip Press in 2023. She co-edits the online literary journal MoonPark Review with her wife.
