She enters my isolation, travels on beams of interrogating light, a slender silhouette. I don’t have to see the flashing of steel to know the cuts of her knife. They amaze, confound, seduce me. Everything I have is hers, ripe for the taking. She is the master of dissection Soon I lose all doubt, as her supple blade slices free the bones of a flea and opens an infectious agent’s corrupted heart. She blanches, trembles, retreats into a window of mist and hostile silence. Leaves me alone, unwanted, waiting, waiting in the icy vacuum until her weary body bleeds out.
J.R. Salling is a happy camper, intoxicated by citronella. His stories have also appeared in Word Riot, The Green Tricycle, Facsimilation, Insolent Rudder, Opium Magazine, Canopic Jar, Skive Magazine, mitochondria, Subterranean Quarterly, and The Iconoclast.