Among Their Skin
by Tommy Dean
Before the cigarettes and sex, a ring of ash surrounded by the lopped off legs of trees where the children used to meet, swallowing a communion of grape soda. Begging the girls to belch, echoes tipping off chapped, blueberry-swatched lips. We wanted them to be just like us, mosquito bites and busted knuckles, torn out jean knees, and sagging pockets. Instead, they hid their bruises in hoodies the pastel colors of Easter flowers. We’d snarl at each other and spit, walking circles around those logs, feral pretensions, while they grasped each other’s heels and pulled out long splinters the forest tried to hide among their skin, attempting to leave this place for good.
Come with us, we demanded, we begged, we hedged, but they loped off together, arm in arm, looking back with cruel smiles, knowing at once that we were too afraid to follow. We sat around the fire, the one they started, and whittled at sticks, trying to keep our hands busier than out minds, the girl’s laughter grown stale, and hidden like fairies among the gathering purple dusk.
And what had been our plans, anyway? A kiss, a glimpse of skin around their belt lines, goose-bumped and sun-dappled, a flick of a thumb across an outie-belly button, the brush of cheek across our nose, the touch of the soft hair that lingered around a sea-shelled ear?
Dark. The fire, a sharp corona of light around an eclipse, as the dew settled around us. Fuck this, you said, each word working its way out of your mouth like a bubble you wanted me to pop.
Give me the knife, I said. And then just go.
I need the keys, you said, stomping your foot, and I remembered the way you were in preschool. Always demanding, never getting.
I traded them for a kiss. I threw a whittled stick into the fire, watched it catch and light. I thought it was a joke.
Your knees buckled and you kicked dirt on the fire. It flared and your chin quivered. You’ll regret this, you called over your shoulder, your shoes squeaking through the wetted grass.
After, the knife blade — a muted star — I dragged across the lifeline of my palm, blood freed from its tunneling, calling out to whomever was stalking in the mist of the night.
Tommy Dean lives in Indiana with his wife and two children. He is the author of a flash fiction chapbook entitled Special Like the People on TV from Redbird Chapbooks. He is the Editor at Fractured Lit. He has been previously published in the BULL Magazine, The MacGuffin, The Lascaux Review, New World Writing, Pithead Chapel, and New Flash Fiction Review. His story “You’ve Stopped” was included in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020 and Best Small Fictions 2019. He won the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction. His interviews have been previously published in New Flash Fiction Review, The Rumpus, CRAFT Literary, and The Town Crier (The Puritan). He has led writing workshops for the Barrelhouse Conversations and Connections conference, The Lafayette Writer’s Workshop, Bending Genres, and for Kathy Fish’s Fast Flash. Find him @TommyDeanWriter.
