Photo by Louella Lester
I’m wandering the woods before school and I smell it—damp and earthy—before I see it. A spot where some animal has dug down through the moss and into the soil below, as though trying to find a place to hide or maybe a way out. At one edge of the hole, like a grave memorial left behind, pink lady’s slippers bloom. Later, as I hurry the aisle to my desk, I see Chris, the quiet neighbour boy, slumped in his seat behind mine, tousled dusty hair unable to cover a fresh black eye. When the teacher sends a stack of papers down our row, I turn to pass them along and he clutches them away quickly, but not fast enough for me to miss the dried dirt rimming his cracked fingernails. After school I carefully follow his tattered T-shirt into the woods—a secret agent now on daily watch.
Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of the CNF book Glass Bricks (At Bay Press 2021), contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and is included in Best Microfiction 2024.
