Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash
by Claudia Monpere
He never thought of jumping off the roof in his Superman cape until his mother warned him not to. Or leaping into the quarry’s waters or riding his bike down Snaggletooth Hill without a helmet or any of those other things he had to do because he was ten and death was as far away as Neptune and his mother’s face when he was in the emergency room was a glorious sight, especially when his father winked at him. He made his father proud, crying only when alone, never for longer than five minutes. He timed himself. But when he and his little brother sneaked to the junkyard to play hide and seek and he hid inside an old latch style refrigerator which he was unable to open once inside, the darkness and his thudding heart and time—so much time—terrified him, and he peed his pants. But eventually his brother came and opened the door.
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Claudia Monpere’s flash appears or is forthcoming in Craft, Smokelong Quarterly, The Forge, Fictive Dream, Atticus Review, Gone Lawn and elsewhere. She tweets @ClaudiaMonpere.
