Issue 74 November 2019 Flash Fiction Online November 2019

September 2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of Jay’s decision to become a writer. His gift to you all this celebratory year is DO IT – Twelve hard lessons on learning by failing, succeeding by accident, never giving up and saying FXXK WRITING all at the same time. You’re welcome!

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What makes you a professional writer? It’s a dumb question, but a necessary one. Writers are not engineers, or lawyers, or doctors. The public’s trust is not formally vested in their professional expertise. While writers can do harm with shitty books and bad conduct, few will ruin lives like the world’s worst surgeon.

I used to care what being a professional writer meant. Initially, I believed it was some kind of badge of courage to make a living off your writing like the pulp writers of old. And it is possible. Sorta. But ask yourself why you want to? The dream is more about avoiding the day job you hate than the reality of your dream job you desire. For 99% of those who call themselves writers, the only ones who rest on their writing alone are wealthy, have a supportive spouse, or have success you can envy but not duplicate. Or you can become a small business in ebooks, pump out novellas for years, all while hoping to make it bigger than 30g a year (minus health care costs).

If you want that, dig in, but most people taking Master Classes with James Patterson or Margaret Atwood or David Mamet dream of being a writer as you would dream of being Bruce Wayne, with inherited wealth allowing you to Playboy by day, Play BatWriter by night. Hardly professional thinking, no?

So much of publishing is out of your control. But one thing you can control is submitting to markets that actually pay. Not for the love. Not in contributor copies. Writing is labor. And labor gets paid. Here’s an old-timey story on why that is the least of your requirements.

When I started in 1999, I had nothing on my cover letters. I had no sales, no contest wins, no MFA, no big named workshops to brag about. All I had was a story. And those got rejected at a brisk clip. But what if I submitted to mags that don’t pay? Just to get some publications on my cover letter that I could then send to PAYING mags? I’d pulled it off once with a literary journal, but I wanted a couple more so it looked like I wasn’t a one-trick pony. Wouldn’t I look like a real pro? Wouldn’t that help make me stand out

So, for a summer, I didn’t send to pro markets, or semi pros, or even paying markets. I submitted to anything with an email address. No payment. Just contributor copies. This included one of my best-worst-early-salad-days stories, “Flesh Flowers for Rachel,” a tale of love and racism based on my experience working as a cemetery groundskeeper. Fired it off in all directions. PING! An editor loved it! They wanted it for their magazine! DAMN!
I agreed, signed the contract, and waited for the next credit on my cover letter to show up-

And it did. Side stapled. Hard printer typed text. Cardboard cover. Like you’d make for a public school project. Best part? They typed another author’s name for my story. Their fix? Scratch it out and scrawl my name by hand! Which means the other dozen or so this guy printed likely did NOT have my name on the index at all!

After that minor screw job, I realized that there was tons I could never control. But I could at least sub to markets that had professional layout and paid. Noticed I said paid. There are many markers for being a professional market, but no standard. Hell, until this year many professional writers orgs were still using pay-rates as a measure, despite “professional” pay rates for short stories and novel advances being more reflective of the immediate post-war economy or the heyday of the midlist writer of the 1980s.

So, I try to get paid the best I can. I hit markets with good rates, and especially ones outside the norm (non-fiction, humor, weird blogs), and I harass everyone until I get paid. As many authors have noted, much of your life as a freelancer is hunting for what you are owed by people who would prefer you go away and just work for free. Worst payment? 5 bucks for a flash fiction story (and the check bounced so I got -10 bucks for the NSF charge!). The best? 500.00 for a serialized Halloween story in a local paper that I wrote strictly to pay my rent when I lost my job.

No one really remembers those stories but me. To the rest of the world, they never happened. But by turning my imagination into a cultural product, I was both hurt and helped by publishing. And it learned me on these four aspects of being a pro when it comes to finances in the writing life-

Writing is labor.

Labor gets paid.

Get paid as much as you can.

My pen name for erotica will be Pat Lestewka.

There is only one magic: the ritual of possession.

Did my mother teach me this? Did it spring from insecurity and need? I just knew, though only four years old. I started small, with my neighbour’s cow.

The beast blinked at me as I stumbled round it through dew-spangled grass. Once round, twice, three times anticlockwise and the cow was mine. It followed me home. The farmer said nothing. The cow had suddenly always been ours.

Mine.

But I wanted more. On my twenty-first birthday, I finished walking the coast of Scotland anticlockwise for the third time. I reached Aberdeen in the drizzle, feet blistered, with a grin I couldn’t hide. The soul of Scotland surged through me; the weight of mountains, rain, lochs, the people, architecture, and art. Mine. First I raised taxes on the rich. Then I claimed independence. It went down better than I had expected.

Planning my route around the Earth took time. Raising the money for the trip was easy, owning Scotland, but I would have to traverse each kilometre, with my desire firmly rooted, in one unbroken line. The exact route didn’t matter, I decided, but should roam equally above the equator as below. I bought the newest sat-phone, downloaded maps and translation apps, and began in Dover, England, taking the ferry to France, concentrating on every beat of the propellers.

I saw him first in a hostel in New Zealand, an intense, blue-eyed man with a backpack, handsome in a dirty, determined way. He stared at me with such unnerving interest I relinquished my bunk that night and journeyed on; Ecuador, Cuba…

But I saw him again three weeks later, my second time round the world, in an overpriced restaurant in Sidney harbour. Same grimy backpack, same curious stare. He pushed to his feet but I barged out and lost myself in the crowd. He made me nervous. My ritual demanded focus.

And there he was again in Iceland, trekking solo past me along a ridge of snow. On seeing him, I didn’t quite stop obsessing how the Earth would be mine, but it was close. His eyes widened. His mouth opened. I panicked and shoved him, hard. He tumbled down the snowfield, disappearing over a crest with a thin wail. Who was he? Was he following me? Twice in Australasia could be coincidence, but Iceland? Or maybe he really was that unlucky. I travelled onward; Ireland, France…

I avoided Australia the third time round, but he caught me in Papua New Guinea. Luckily I had an umbrella and stabbed him in the leg before running away.

I didn’t need a weapon in Houston. We were on separate sides of a pane of glass in George Bush Intercontinental, our walkways sliding in opposite directions.

“I see you,” he mouthed as he sailed past.

I hid in the toilets until departure.

On the train from London to Dover, I gritted my teeth and watched the countryside whip past the windows. Stepping from the train would complete the ritual. I took a deep breath. The loop was closing. I would own the Earth and then… Well, I would start with a deep, hot bath.

He waited on the platform. Gone were the stubble and the dirty backpack. He wore Bulgari sunglasses and a grey bespoke suit. As I stepped from the train, terror clenched my throat. The Earth was there. I could feel it, a frozen wave waiting to fall upon me, but as my feet touched dusty concrete I knew it wasn’t mine. Yet.

“Aft’noon,” he said.

“What have you done?” I hissed. “Who are you?”

He smiled and leaned in. “The rightful owner.” His accent–Australian? New Zealand maybe.

“It’s mine!” I knew it could be. I could feel it. “I circled it anticlockwise. Three times.”

“Ah,” he said. “And so did I.” He reached into a pocket, forcing harried passengers to swerve around us as he unfolded a large map.

It took me long seconds to see it, an instant to understand. “A South-up map. You went backwards.”

“That,” he said, “is a question of perspective.” He took off his sunglasses and his stare hit me like a blow.

There on platform number nine in Dover Station we fought, glare to glare, reality to reality, strength of will against strength of desire and… he really did have intense eyes. So blue.

In a blink the Earth was gone. I saw it fill him.

Exhaustion crested over me. I had lost, but I forced my back straight as I walked away. I would get home somehow. I would lock the door. I would–

“Hey.”

My heart lurched. My feet slowed. “What?”

“What would you do with it?”

“What?” I said again, turning back.

“If it was yours.”

I didn’t want this conversation. He had won. “I would have…” I had nothing to say. “It would have been mine. I would have been…” Safe, I thought. I would have been safe.

“Yes.” He nodded. “Nothing can get you from outside, if there is no outside.” He tried a smile that only half worked. “Not world peace, then?”

“I would have got there,” I said.

“Yes.” Seconds passed. “Here,” he said. “Take my hand.”

“Why?”

“I want to show you something.” He shrugged and tried another almost successful smile.

His palm was damp in mine, but his grip was steady. “Let’s walk,” he said but didn’t move. Instead he turned slowly, walking me around him. Once. Twice.

“What are you doing?” I pulled my hand away.

“Dunno.” He swallowed. “Am I going around you, or you going around me?”

Something in my chest broke. “A question of perspective,” I said and couldn’t help smiling. I took his hand again and we orbited each other on the now empty platform. Once.

Twice.

Three times, and the ritual was complete.

A few months ago, we received a little story called “How to Win a Pulitzer.”

It percolated its way to the top of the slush pile and landed in our monthly winnowing discussion. As the term implies, winnowed stories are the choicest kernels of wheat left behind after the less-desirable chaff has been blown away. In our winnowing discussions, our entire staff is invited to read and comment on a handful of stories that represent a very small portion of all the stories submitted–about 2%.

“How to Win a Pulitzer” is a beautifully-written, sharply satirical look at some strange Western practices whose motivations have come to be called the “White Savior Complex,” the idea in the Western world that, according to Urban Dictionary, we can “’fix’ the problems of struggling nations or people of color without understanding their history, needs, or the region’s current state of affairs.” The main character in the story is a journalist set on saving Africa by writing the next Pulitzer Prize winning article on the plight of poor Africans.

Our publisher, Anna Yeatts, said of the story, “Does it make me a teensy bit uncomfortable sitting in my American white woman skin? Absolutely. Do I deserve it? Maybe. Maybe not.”

The issue came to very public awareness with the controversial release of the film, The Great Wall (2017), starring Matt Damon. Arguments went back and forth over whether the film actually was “whitewashing,” as it was labeled at the time. Whatever the truth may be, the controversy may have made us more aware of the problem in Hollywood, but it certainly hasn’t made it go away across the board.

A quick Internet search will reveal some alarming and heartbreaking examples of White Savior complex and the current problems it has created within the “voluntourism” industry.

I came across plenty of satire, like a short little article from The Onion, called 6-Day Visit to Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture. But a plentiful smattering of serious articles as well, like the tragic case of one American woman whose White Savior mentality cost lives:  “American With No Medical Training Ran Center for Malnourished Ugandan Kids.  105 Died.” Or this expose from The Atlantic, “The White-Savior Industrial Complex.”

As we discussed the story, we wondered about the value of adding another white voice (as are those of many of the available sources) to the discussion. We read and judge our stories blind–meaning we don’t know the identity of the author during our reading and discussion phases. So I decided to take a look at the person who wrote “How to Win a Pulitzer.”

Author name: Aishah Ojibara

Residence: Nigeria

Then I decided to do a little Internet stalking to see what I could find out about this Aishah Ojibara.

What I found was wonderful.

Not only is she well-qualified to write a story about a subject that impacts her much more directly than white housewives from New Jersey, she is ambitious, driven, brilliant–and young.  At 18, she is already a third-year University student, studying Health Education, and is one of 23 recipients of the inaugural Africave Fellowship.

I decided that what I had to do was get to know Aishah better.  So I requested an interview.  She agreed.

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SUZANNE: Tell me about the Africave Fellowship and the kinds of opportunities it has opened for you.

AISHAH:  The Africave mentorship programme aims to discover exceptional young minds in Africa and help make them into socially responsible leaders. I was picked along with 22 other young people from all parts of Africa for the 2019 edition.

[In the program, each Fellow is assigned to a mentor.] My mentor is an amazing woman.  It has been such a great privilege to work with her. I have also had the chance to meet several successful people, to surround myself in a space where people aren’t afraid to aim high, and my dreams, however far-fetched, would not be made fun of. This is a very important thing to me, because I grew up around people who were content to remain mediocre. It has also opened the door for a host of other opportunities, such as the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust and scholarships to study abroad, amongst other things.

[My mentor and I] communicate on platforms such as Slack, and from her I have learnt the value of discipline, and that if you don’t work hard enough for something the universe will not conspire to give it to you. She’s a very hardworking woman and great source of inspiration to me, especially because she’s doing so well, in spite of the enveloping stereotype that Muslim women only aspire to marriage.

SUZANNE:  I understand you’re soon to complete your degree in Public Health Education and Promotion. Tell me a little about your degree and what you hope to do with it?

AISHAH: It’s exciting because I get to study issues such as mental health, drug abuse and misuse, reproductive health, food and nutrition; issues I’m very interested in. In graduate school, I hope to specialize in the mental and reproductive health field and use my knowledge to help people, especially women, in communities. I’d also like to work with the World Health Organization someday.

SUZANNE: What will you do after you graduate, and what are some of your short- and long-term goals?

AISHAH:  Here in Nigeria, all university graduates (with the exception of individuals above age thirty) have to participate in a compulsory one year service to the nation, similar to how South Korean men have to serve in the military. My short term goal is to complete the service and hopefully pursue an MFA in creative writing.  My long-term goal is to develop myself as a writer of comely, poignant novels.

SUZANNE: What type of service do you hope to be able to do?

AISHAH:  I’d like to teach at a public school. Teachers have inspired and shaped my life in numerous ways. They have taught me to dream and work hard to achieve that dream. I would like the opportunity to help shape a young child’s path. I would also like to impart positive values–something most Nigerian parents trust teachers to do. I’d teach female students to be proud of their bodies and male students to be more conscionable. Where I live, there’s pressure on girls to live moral, proper lives, and that pressure isn’t on boys. I am of the opinion that everyone should be taught morality.

SUZANNE:  You mentioned the possible opportunity to study abroad. Where would you like to go and why?

AISHAH:  I would like to study in the United Kingdom or the United States. I have always wished to attend Harvard University or Oxford University. I feel the quality of education these two universities offer is superb. I would love to pursue a graduate degree at either of the two.

For my literary career, I’d like to attend the University of Iowa for an MFA in creative writing. I’ve been told it’s one of the best schools to study creative writing.

SUZANNE:  I’m always interested in the dynamics that shape a writer. Tell me a little about your development and the people/authors/stories that most influenced you.

AISHAH:  I have always thought of people as categorised into two groups: writers and non-writers. Of course there’s the argument that everybody writes, but not everyone is capable of writing fiction or undertaking in the robust appreciation of it. All my life I have wanted to write. I wasn’t raised in a household where people read books.  Neither of my parents read much, except for the occasional religious text.

The first fictional book I remember reading was a Nigerian book: The Gods Are Not To Blame by Ola Rotimi. It was about an irascible king who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and how the eventual awareness of his misdeeds spurred his ruin. It was a gift from my primary school principal, and my seven year old self loved it. It made such a great impression on me that I began to search for other books, books I borrowed from friends and adults, books which have helped sharpen my mind.

The more I read, the better I wrote. But the problem was, almost all the characters I wrote about were white or Asian (I’m a huge Naruto fan; I had a phone when I was eight years old, through which I read hundreds of Naruto fanfiction on the Internet and wrote several of my own). Most of the books at my disposal were written by white people–Enid Blyton, E. B. White, Dr. Seuss–so that reflected in my writing. Other than Ola Rotimi, the other Nigerian writer accessible to me was Chinua Achebe. He wrote about Nigerians who lived before and during the colonial regime, when the British occupied Nigeria.  He wrote about Nigeria post 1960 (our year of independence from colonial rule), so naturally, I wrote like that too.

In secondary school, someone lent me a copy of Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and that turned my life inside out. To see a Nigerian book that wasn’t so remote, characters that I could relate to, who could easily be my best friends or neighbors brought me so much joy. Her books revolutionized, or at the very least contributed to, contemporary writing in Nigeria today. She is something of a superstar here and deservingly so. Post-Purple Hibiscus, I learnt to write about Nigerians like me.

If I have read a book to completion, it has made an impact on me/influenced my writing. J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace showed me writing doesn’t always have to be complex. It can be smooth and caressing, like you’re being wooed. Zora Neale Hurston, Celeste Ng, Amy Tan, Sefi Atta, ElNathan John, Chika Unigwe, Zadie Smith, Vladimir Nabokov and a host of others.

SUZANNE:  “How to Win a Pulitzer” is a sharply satirical exposé of a Western white sub-culture that has been referred to as “White Savior complex.” It made us feel justifiably uncomfortable in all the right ways. At Flash Fiction Online, we prefer stories  with a clear story arc and resolution. While Ann doesn’t change in the story and the story itself isn’t entirely resolved, the resolution in the story, I feel, is the way it might change the reader. Tell me about “How to Win a Pulitzer.” Where did the seed of the story come from? What specifically do you hope a worldwide audience might take away from your story?

AISHAH:  There’s this blog a friend and I follow, run by an American man who occasionally publishes travel articles. We were very delighted to hear that he planned to travel to Nigeria, and excited to read the promised article on his experience in Nigeria.

‘You should try so-so!’ we typed in the comment section. ‘And this food here (insert photo).  You’ll love it!’

When the article came out, we were disappointed to find it filled with the usual trope: photos of shirtless, dirtied children, slum areas with no electricity, uneducated people, etc.

‘Why,’ my friend asked, exasperated, ‘do they always have to go to the absolute worst places? Is this all there is to Nigeria?’

I asked myself the same question. So I went home and wrote a story. After several edits, I had “How to Win a Pulitzer.”

What I want the audience to take away from “How to Win a Pulitzer” is an idea that is best explained in this quote from Chimamanda Adichie’s viral TED talk: “The single story creates stereotype and the problem with stereotype is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete, they make one story become the only story.”

The recurring image of Africa is one that panders to the hypocrisy of foreigners who refuse to see us as anything other than a reminder of their good fortune. You don’t get that with other continents.

SUZANNE:  Anything else you’d like our readers to know about you?

AISHAH:  I hope to become a novelist someday, as well as someone who helps inculcate positive values in fellow Africans and the world alike.

[I expect she most certainly will!]

Ms. Ann Foster, journalist and Africa’s imminent saviour, stands outside the hotel, sweltering in the hot sun. If history books are to say anything about her–and they definitely will when she succeeds–it will be that she, a brave soul, left the comfort of sweet Australia and its ravishing air for Africa’s toiling heat, moved by the urge to save the African people. Ms. Ann Smith, they’ll say, Discoverer, Savior of the African People; Creator of the New World, modern-day version of Christopher Columbus.

In her hands, a camera and a handbag. Weary from the journey and eager for a bed to sleep in, her eyes roam the surrounding area impatiently. She feels like a splash of red on a plain white sheet, sticking out from everyone else. She is grateful for the gated parking lot, without which she would be subject to stares and murmurs.

Waiting for James, she thinks. Here I am in Africa waiting for James. James Appleson. James Briar Appleson. It’s an odd name. She imagines a stocky man with a receding hairline. She imagines that he has a British accent and a nice voice, too, something to mitigate the effect of his ugliness. A talented journalist praised by all and sundry. She is sure that he’ll like her.

If things go well, she will be back in Australia in four days’ time. How hard is it to take a photo? A click or two from a nice angle and her job is done. Days fewer than this have made history, so why not? But of course, this time it will be different. This trip will sap her energies. It will put her right in the middle of the horror that is Africa. Of starving kids and war-torn areas and young girls being sold into marriages. It will tear her soul apart, suck up her emotions into a vacuum of depression and leave her empty. In the best-case scenario, she’s richer and hence can afford the multiple therapy sessions. In the worst case scenario? She can’t bear to think about it.

The hotel, a surprise. She did not expect to see high-rise architectural designs. Mud houses with roofs made of raffia, but not this tall building, sturdy and magnificent, with circular balconies, air conditioning, and tiled floors. She did not expect to see rich Africans, communicating in fluent English, dressed in expensive designer clothing. Africans who don’t point at her or stare wide-eyed. Africans who look past her like she is a part of the furniture. There are Africans richer than she is. It’s a surprising discovery.

The calm before the storm, she thinks. All of this is an illusion. The real Africa is out there. Right in the heart of Kenya. The Africa she has read about in newspapers back in Australia. The Africa of hunger, HIV, and death. She will take photos of that Africa only. She will find the most gruesome details and write long, detailed articles with the aim of stirring pity, with the aim of appealing to the merciful side of benevolent rich people. And for herself, she hopes to win a Pulitzer. For the emotional torture she will experience, she deserves the recognition.

A tap, slightly, on her shoulder. She turns. It’s James Briar Appleson. How she knows this is a mystery. Yet there’s a solid conviction, a certainty that she is right.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting. I’m James,” he says. His face, sweaty like hers. Two journalists in a foreign country, different in every way except this. For example, she would never have thought it appropriate, tapping a stranger on the shoulder. She considers it intrusive, an evasion of personal space. Here in Africa, she will have to make do.

“Nice to meet you, James. My name is Ann. Looking forward to the moments spent with you.”

A lie, but this is Africa.

* * *

For more information on the author, please read our exclusive interview with her.

Mary dangles, letting seawater leap over her boots. She’d happily hang here forever, where the ocean and the stars touch. A tangle of fishing net and kelp flops onto her foot and carries on falling, dragging her leg downwards. Tutting, she wriggles, but the net’s stuck fast, and in the end she has to use her pocket knife to slice through the frayed nylon lines.

It wasn’t always possible to drop off the edge of the earth. Once there was a barrier that let water flow through, but stopped anything bigger than a lobster from falling. It messed with the ecosystem, though, so it was removed during a previous administration, and now the tourists are warned about the drop by big, red, triangular signs showing a stick figure in a boat tumbling over a waterfall.

Thrill seekers are not deterred by the signs. Just this morning, Mary saw a boat full of adrenaline junkies heading out with one of the Edge tour operators. They boat out. They leap. No tether ropes, no climbing back. They drop from the flat edge of the world, arms and legs spread like starfish. Somewhere shy of 50% blink back into existence, dripping wet and exhilarated, outside a crowded shrine in the Sea of Okhotsk. What becomes of the other half is outside of current scientific understanding, she tells her students.

The rope creaks by her ear, barely audible above the rush of the falls. There’s water dribbling inside her mask, so she takes a breath and pulls it off, emptying it away from the flow of seawater with one hand.

“What’s taking so long?” Frank’s voice comes over the radio, bracketed by an electronic click.

“One more sample.” She barely masks her annoyance. If this is to be her last trip over the Edge, she doesn’t want to listen to Frank’s monotone. She wants to enjoy her time on the edge of oblivion.

“Timetable says we need to be finished by five o’clock if we want to make our connecting flight,” he grumbles.

Her colleague is meticulous, but he never takes pleasure in their fieldwork. In their ten years on the same research team, she’s never heard him talk in any language other than sieverts and chemical levels. Once, after a conference, Mary had tried to engage him in a more esoteric discussion. The delegates had decanted to the Teppanyaki place over from the research department, and there’d been more than a few splashes of sake. A group of undergrads in orange monk’s robes were trying to scale the bar’s giant bronze buddha statue to take selfies. Their robes were emblazoned with Bummit To The Edge 2018. No doubt they’d be round with a bucket in a minute, asking for change.

“Looking down, it’s, like, a religious experience, you know? It does something to you on a spiritual level. It’s primeval,” Mary slurred, poking herself in the cheek with the end of a chopstick. “You ever wonder what would happen if you Just. Let. Go?” She balled her fist and knocked herself loosely in the chest with each word of Just. Let. Go.

Frank hadn’t wondered, or maybe he wasn’t letting on because he stared at her with his round, glassy eyes and then switched back to talking about elevated arsenic levels in samples from the Edge near Japan.

Then there was karaoke. More sake. And she’d forgotten most of the night in a haze of alcohol fumes and dancing. She’d never really clicked with Frank after that.

* * *

Mary screws the lid onto the last sample bottle, trapping icy water inside. Something big, a tuna by the looks of its dark dorsal stripe, swooshes past mere metres away and disappears into the purple-blue. She holds in a breath and counts her heartbeats. Good thing she wasn’t right underneath it. That could have taken her down into the nether zone. Good. Thing.

“Pull me up,” she says into the radio.

“Copy that,” Frank says. All business. All the time.

Her rope winds upward, the motorised crank pulling her inch by inch to the flat surface of the world. One more climb to the boat hired by their research department. Long-haul home. The new teaching job starts in two weeks. She will be Assistant Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, UK. About as far from the Edge as you can get. Churn out the book for which she’s already spent the advance. Get tenure. A professorship. Retirement. That’s the plan.

She looks at the stars, so many, without the light pollution and ozone that block them from view in the world above. The moon’s just started its ascent.

That’s the plan, and it’s a decent one. A plan to be proud of. Yet, the thought of it seems to tighten, tentacle-like, around her throat. Tighter with every inch she climbs. Her life outlined and timetabled from now until death. No surprises. No adventures.

Frank’s waiting to haul her into the bottom of the boat. She passes him the sample bottles first. He stows them and then reaches back to help her in.

She ignores his hand and pushes her feet against the side of the boat.

She floats backwards, eyes filled with the billowing sky.

She slices through the tether rope with her knife.

“What’re you doing?” Frank calls. “Mary! This is not on the timetable!”

“Meet me in Okhotsk,” she shouts. Her stomach lurches as her head breaks the edge of the falls.

Previously published in 600 Second Saga, February 2019. Reprinted here by permission of the author.