We recently published Beth Sherman’s brilliant “Natural.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the interaction between the taxidermist and the boyfriend when the mother first appears. So much weight in these lines: ” The taxidermist thought she’d probably break up with him. She always dumped men before they did it first.” What, other than the obvious, makes the taxidermist think the boyfriend would be planning to break up with her?
“Natural” is part of a longer novella-in-flash about a fractured family and the fraught relationship this character has with her mother, who left when the narrator was young, and her father, who died young. At this point in the novella the father is gone, too, and the narrator seeks fleeting comfort in a series of unsuitable men. It’s always a bit dangerous to psychologize your characters, but in this case I think she’s trying to avoid getting hurt and losing anyone else. So she makes sure she’s always the one who ends the relationship. Her psyche is so fragile that she can’t imagine anyone would want to stick around!

2) Of course, the real relationship in this story is the fractured one between mother and daughter. Do you think the taxidermist has gotten (at least in some form) what she wanted from her mother now? Or has that ship long sailed?
This piece is part of a series of fabulist stories that the narrator in my NIF is writing to try and make sense of her life. As the “taxidermist,” I do believe she gets something from the interaction with her mother here. For one thing, she’s at least partially in control of her mother’s whereabouts (until the end, that is), and she’s able to care for her mother’s body — even if it’s weirdly after death. Interestingly enough, the mother is not actually dead while this is being written, but it feels that way to the “taxidermist.” Their relationship is strained to the breaking point because of the mother’s failings and the “taxidermist’s” unwillingness to understand or forgive. Although I haven’t finished the NIF yet, I’m hoping there can be some sort of reconciliation between them.

The taxidermist began stuffing her mother on a blindingly sunny morning in South Florida when the temperature was pushing triple digits. She knew it was all about looking natural. Erasing the sags and droopiness her mother had fretted over. The taxidermist had been choosy about her palette  – selecting flesh tones that harmonized with LED lighting. Careful to avoid the sallow complexion her mother would have hated. It was similar to sculpting. After a while, her fingers became part of the clay so it was easy to forget where she left off and her mother began.     

The taxidermist was sleeping with someone named Jason. When he walked into her apartment and saw her newest creation, he let out a yelp.  

“I didn’t know you had a mother,” he said.

Not surprising. They mostly talked about which movies he’d seen and which vacation spots he’d visited.

“What the hell?” he said. “She’s not a white-tail deer.”

The taxidermist thought she’d probably break up with him. She always dumped men before they did it first.  

The taxidermist and her mother had never been close. Her mother disappeared when she was twelve, relocating to California in an unsuccessful attempt to . . . what? Recreate a youth that never existed? Shed the constraints of motherhood with its endless dirty dishes and laundry, its relentless messy feelings? The taxidermist tried to ask but never got a straight answer. By the time her mother returned 15 years later, she wasn’t a kid and couldn’t hide her scars with Band-aids.

The taxidermist liked to position her mother near the kitchen table while she made dinner, describing how her day had gone. She knew her mother couldn’t move, yet sometimes when she came home from work a hand would be higher than it was before or the chin would tilt at a different angle.

The taxidermist made a list of how she and her mother were alike:

1. They both were stubborn.
2. They liked the color green.
3. They were persistent.
4. Regretful.
5. Rarely satisfied.
6. Quick to anger, slow to forgive.

The taxidermist brushed her mother’s hair to gently remove dust. Cleaned her mother’s eyes with a Q-tip dipped in Windex. When her mother’s nose began to crack, she dabbed on petroleum jelly. Kept the blinds drawn so the harsh Florida sun wouldn’t cause any damage. Caring for her mother softened the hollow place in her heart.  

The taxidermist talked to her mother all the time. Sometimes she thought she heard someone talking back. She studied her mother’s mouth – the teeth she’d crafted, the pink velvet tongue – and words tickled the air. No. Help. Escape. Gone. It was like watching a ventriloquist, the way she couldn’t be sure how sounds were produced, where exactly they came from. 

The taxidermist lay in bed at night and tried to forget how things used to be. How when her mother ran away, the taxidermist wrote her a letter each day describing what had happened in school. Tests she’d taken, boys she’d liked. Hundreds of letters tied with green ribbon, buried in a box in her closet because no one knew where to send them. Now, in the half-dark, she saw her mother had left the kitchen and was standing in the bedroom.

The taxidermist plucked one of the letters from the box and began reading aloud.

Dear Mom,

It’s raining out. I had pizza for lunch. Soon April will be over. Do you miss me? I put a little of the perfume you left behind on my neck so I can remember what you smell like.

xo

The taxidermist watched her mother’s eyes gleam silver. Moonlight spilled onto the wood floor, like spoiled milk. She felt it would be a good time for her mother to apologize and imagined accepting the apology. Not right away, of course, but within a reasonable amount of time. After her mother explained she wished to God she’d never left. After the apology hug. After they traveled to Disney World, where they would spin in teacups until they got dizzy. Instead, her mother extended both arms, palms raised, fingers splayed, not to embrace her only daughter – to wave goodbye.

***

Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and she’s the winner of the Smokelong Quarterly 2024 Workshop prize. A multiple Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net nominee, she can be reached on X, Bluesky or Instagram @bsherm36. 

The safe word is that there is no safe word. The safe word is that you are not safe with this man and never have been. Even though you wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe you were different, special. Even though you heard him joke about his second wife going back to work at the cosmetics counter at Nordstrom because she was left high and dry. Prenup, baby! How at least she’d get a discount on wrinkle cream, and he laughed, and you laughed too, because you were younger. Prettier. You wouldn’t make her mistakes. Getting old. Getting fat. When he told you about locking her in the home gym, not letting her out until the Peloton showed 12 miles. About morning weigh-ins, and if she hadn’t lost she didn’t get to eat that day. Cry, cry, he mocked her, but he would never mock you. You’re not like her, or like his first wife, the one who died. Shot herself in the head and tried to frame him for it. Because he left her and she stalked him, so he had to take out a restraining order on her. Because she was a crazy bitch. Something was wrong with that story but you didn’t think too hard about what it was because you needed someone. Someone strong. Someone who would save you. Sad, he said, the first time you took him home. Sad, you having to live in a shithole like this. And he set you up in that parkside apartment, location, baby, location, and you wouldn’t have been able to afford it but he took care of that for you, and you wouldn’t have been able to move in anyway because the no pets policy but then your cat died, so sudden, so sad, and he held your hand, took you to the best vet, the very top vet, he said, and the vet said it was a congenital heart defect and you told yourself don’t obsess, don’t second guess, don’t look up poisonous plants, don’t think about the white lilies he gave you, what’s done is done, don’t be suspicious, don’t be a crazy bitch, he’d never do anything really wrong, he’d never hurt you, and when he ties your wrists to the headboard it’s just a kink, just a joke, and you can take a joke, can’t you? When he flushes your pills down the toilet because you don’t need that shit anymore. When he slams your head against the wall. When he puts his hands around your neck and dares you to say a word it’s just a joke, and you’re in on the joke. Aren’t you? When you want to speak but there’s no air, no voice to speak, and what was that word you wanted to say? You can get through this. You can take it. You will tamp yourself down and wait, holding your strength inside. You are a cold fuse, waiting to ignite.

***

KATHRYN KULPA is the author of A MAP OF LOST PLACES (Gold Line Press) and FOR EVERY TOWER, A PRINCESS (Porkbelly Press). Find her stories in Best Small Fictions, Boudin, Flash Frog, HAD, and Paragraph Planet. She is a 2025 writer-in-residence at Linden Place in Bristol, Rhode Island.

We recently published Mileva Anastasiadou’s glorious “Sunset Fatigue.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love that The Little Prince (now old enough to be a Little King!) is the protagonist if our story! What made you select the character for this piece?
I wanted to write a story about how loss accumulates as we grow older and turns into grief and guilt and bitterness. Then came the Little Prince in mind, it’s the only book I’ve read in three languages and it has always meant much to me, and I thought that the Little Prince has it easy because he never gets old, old enough to realize how much love costs, so let’s see what happens if he grows up too and starts losing all that he loves, will he become an adult who sees hats too?

2) And I love that this isn’t a story about things like sunsets and hats and parents. That it’s about the things we’ve lost – I mean, the things the Little Prince has lost, the things he misses. Do you think that he could articulate what he misses the most? Do you think it would be fair to ask him to?
I think that what the Little Prince misses the most as he grows old is the innocence, the certainty that he would never end up like all those grown-ups that see hats instead of swallowed elephants, he misses the love he couldn’t keep and all those things he took for granted but are now gone, the times when the world didn’t seem overwhelming and he was enough.

The Little Prince is tired of sunsets. He’d rather watch the sunrise instead, because he never appreciated the dawn or beginnings when he was young, but now he’s old, and endings frighten him, although this isn’t a story about endings. The Little Prince is now old enough to be a Little King, and sunsets bore him, he’s seen enough.

But this isn’t a story about sunsets. It’s about a little boy who has grown up and sees hats like grown ups do, a story about roses, and joy and color red, about the warmth that rose once brought to his planet, inside him, the smell of spring and hope and happiness. It isn’t about that worm that looked like a leaf and made him throw away the rose, because the rose needed him, demanded his attention, his care, his time. The rose wanted too much of him and he couldn’t cope with such a burden.

This isn’t a story about his aging parents. It isn’t a tragedy that unfolds before his very eyes and he stands there, hands tied, the chorus that fills the silences in ancient plays, but nobody pays attention to the chorus, the plot is elsewhere, and everyone expects a happy end. He sings and sings to warn the audience, because he sees clearly now that he’s a Little King, because reality hit him and things aren’t as simple as he once thought, only nobody hears, and he’s dead tired, he gives up, he looks the other way, then he forgets time, the time they’ve wasted, the time he’s wasted. He misses the old times, back when the world was someone else’s business, oh, how he’d rather see swallowed elephants instead of plain hats.

But this isn’t a story about hats. Although trouble started after he saw them. This is a story about a fox who felt lucky she’d met the Little Prince, because after he was gone, she had the color of rye that would always remind her of him. It wouldn’t be just another color, it’d mean something to her forever. Now that the Little Prince has become a Little King, now that he’s grown up, everything reminds him of something he couldn’t keep, and nostalgia physically hurts, now that he feels like an unwilling vampire, old enough to miss too much, roses, people, places, seasons, worlds gone, and he now believes in the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, and he envies the Little Prince he once was, the clarity of the empty slate that was his mind.

But this isn’t a sad story. The Little Prince sees the hats, but he can paint them, color them, and make believe they’re hope. He can’t even be certain if he can blame the hats or if he saw them after all loss, but one thing he’s sure of is he doesn’t enjoy sunsets like he used to, the older he gets the more they bore him, and he runs away from sadness, he moves and moves and moves to catch the sunrise, because he isn’t defined by what he’s been robbed of, by the love he couldn’t keep, by that time he couldn’t take care of the rose or his parents. This is a story about the good times they had together, that keep his heart warm and his mind haunted. This isn’t about him at all, it’s about all the happiness he once held in his hands, about all the sunrises he’s witnessed, but now everything reminds him of something gone.

***

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of “Christmas People” and “We Fade With Time” by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work has been selected for the Best Mirofiction anthology 2024 and Wigleaf Top 50 and can be found in many journals, such as the Chestnut Review, Necessay Fiction, Passages North,and others.

We recently published Mandira Pattnaik’s brilliant “How to Lift Your Bottom.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) This story is told in reverse, revealing itself (and the narrator) in layers. When you conceived this story, did you always picture it being told in this way, or did you consider a more chronological sequence of events at any point?
I remember being tired, bored and hopeless on the day I wrote this piece. It was not the kind of mood I am usually in. Everyone has one of those days from time to time. I’m usually very diligent, and take pride in my adherence to my simple life and routine, nearly marvelling if a day goes without a hint of action or thrill. I am that kind of person–easily domesticated, so to say, haha! So that was the zone I was writing from: happy but tired, content but missing something. One does, as a thinking human, try to resolve this state of mind; ask oneself–what exactly is causing me to be this tired, and this hopeless? That is definitely a reverse engineering kind of process. So yes, the piece was in reverse from the very beginning–I never considered a chronological, linear sequence.

2) As the story unfolds, we see the narrator has options for her choices throughout the day. And yet — does she really? Or is she only offered the illusion of choice?
Um–I honestly did not consider this! This reminds me of thought experiments. Thought experiments can blur the lines between philosophy and critical thinking by forcing us to confront seemingly paradoxical scenarios, challenging what are our multiple options and, out of those, what was the choice one made? Ultimately this may lead to deeper philosophical inquiry. Does she have options? In going deeper into this, I think she’s only offered an illusion of options. She merely sticks to her basket, of what cards she has been dealt, without really feeling sorry about her situation, or repenting her choices. In any case, an abundance of options would make it more difficult to choose, particularly when the end-outcome cannot be substantially different.

Swear. 

Before that, roll over. Cover your bottom. Juggle your weight on all fours. Climb out of the creaky bed. Be irritated, or sad, or drained, or hungry—or all of these.

Before that, close your eyes. Those eyes, he fell for them, said they were pretty, he needn’t see them now. You don’t think yours are pretty. Or his are. Pretty is a word for damsels. In distress. Eyes aren’t pretty. They are, at best, calm, or solemn, or gentle. This time, you’ve decided to be gentle. He is above, you’re sprawled below.

Before that, eyes open, your breaths heavy, jaws clenched, coupled until we part, you count. Count what? Something countless. Like minutes? Breaths? Laps in a pool? Waves hitting the shore? He reminds you of a shark in an aquarium. Sharks have brilliant night vision and hunt only at night. Backs of their eyeballs have a reflective layer of tissue called a tapetum, which helps them to see in low light. But only the docile ones can be tamed in an aquarium.

Before that, scrape the bottom of the urn that has the remaining boiled rice your in-laws saved for you. Eat clumsily because you haven’t all day, with bits sticking on the sides of your mouth and bits on the floor. Observe seven large black ants queuing up towards the rice grain near your toe. He has been fed well by his mother—fish head curry and pulse soup, a smattering of crisp thinly-sliced pointed gourd. He must be sleepy. You must eat the leftovers, too meagre to support your growing body, and then clean the dishes.

Before that, wonder if the bullying you were subjected to at the Amazon store where you work, and in which your supervisor flew off the handle, was brought about by bowel. They say bowel movements affect moods.

Before that, as the barrage of insults continued, be patient. Patience like the bottom of the sea, where, at the lowest levels, waves don’t exist, and the seabed is a sanatorium of marine beings long lost. Remember lost things: your childhood, your youth. Remember that in the depths, even a murmur is a shout.

Before that, early the previous morning, pre-dawn, before the sparrows are yet to begin bickering perched on the clotheslines stretched between two bamboo poles, read your life like a closed book because you have reached the end. Hear his snores. Watch him sleep like a lumber dog, because he’s not going early to work as you do. Read the room for mutual stakes—what’s in this bargain for you? Smell the moisture hanging about—a concoction of sweaty work-clothes, fermented beer stored under the bed and a bottomless garbage pit at the back of the house. Clasp knuckles together, lift your arms above your head, notice the stiffened peaks showing up from underneath your tee. Stare into the full-size wall mirror, and feel tired thinking why your face looks so dull even though the mini plums you had last night didn’t cause you indigestion and why the garden outside looks so full of life like it has turned round from the bottom of a discolored deep wintery sleep.

***

Mandira Pattnaik is the author of “Glass/Fire” (2024, Querencia Press). She serves as Contributing Editor, Vestal Review and Columnist, trampset. Her body of work can be found at mandirapattnaik.com

I take off my clothes for him. Imagine what he will tell his brother. The one I dated. Am I pretty? My body asks. I am 19. I suck in my stomach, slip into the water. A hot tub at a hotel on the edge of the sea. Santa Cruz. Waves slam against the shore. Moon ablaze overhead. I take off my
clothes for him. Later, we will tear through the hotel hallways in nothing but towels. I will eat a
rib from a tray outside someone’s door. I will hurl myself into a juniper bush, claiming it can
hold me. I will sink all the way down to the hard dirt earth. I take off my clothes for him. He
doesn’t look at my body at all. Just my face. He stares at me, and everything about him makes
me want to curl inside myself. My ex-boyfriend’s brother. My ex-boyfriend’s twin. On a Friday
night in Santa Cruz. I am 19. I take off my clothes for him. My problem is: I know I want him.
Not want but want. I take off my clothes for him. But I don’t really want to. I want to watch him
take off his clothes. I want to curl inside myself. Or maybe I want to run. Leave him here while I
climb back over the hotel wall. Dig my toes into sand. Feel the salt waves lick my shins. I don’t
run. I slip into the water. Santa Cruz. 19. Waves slam against the shore. I take off my clothes for
him. Am I pretty? Later we will tear through the hotel hallways. Later, I will eat a rib from a tray.
Later, the juniper bush. Later still, we will sleep together. Not sleep, but sleep. I will not sleep the
whole night. Staring at the ceiling. Thinking of my body and what it’s capable of. My ex-
boyfriend’s brother. My ex-boyfriend’s twin. Moon ablaze overhead. I take off my clothes for
him. Maybe I want to run. Dig toes into sand, feel salt waves lick shins. I take off my clothes for
him. Santa Cruz. 19. My body asks. I will not sleep. I take off my clothes for him. I take off my
clothes for him. I take off my clothes for him.

***

Allison Field Bell is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. She is the author of the poetry collection, ALL THAT BLUE, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is also the author of two chapbooks, WITHOUT WOMAN OR BODY (Poetry, Finishing Line Press) and EDGE OF THE SEA (Creative Nonfiction, CutBank Books). Allison’s prose appears in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, DIAGRAM, The Gettysburg Review, The Adroit Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Smartish Pace, Passages North, THRUSH Poetry Journal, RHINO Poetry, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Find her at allisonfieldbell.com

Her last year of high school, the thought of someone wanting Gabrielle made the image of her own body, naked and golden, rise up inside her mind’s eye. Her handful-sized breasts, the slope of her thighs—once shameful, now a pride—and then between her thighs, waiting darkly, her soft, thrumming prize. 

Everyone wanted her. She was famous at the high school, her name looped across the bathroom stalls. She generously gave forth in bedrooms and on sofas, once in a tent, once under the bleachers, another time in the light booth of the high school theater while rehearsal was going on. That’s when people said she crossed a line. That’s enough, Gabrielle, they said. People have work to do. People have to sit there. What about “Our Town?” they whined. We don’t want to think about you naked, they said. Or even partially disrobed. We don’t want to think about your fingers on the lightboard, your hair lashed over the guardrail. We don’t want to smell the smells, we don’t want to hear you sigh. 

From that point on, school was off limits. It was decided. That part of her life was done. Other students went on about whatever it was they went on about, lockers and exams and letter grades that went home to parents who would congratulate or else ground them, and all the while Gabrielle felt herself walking out into the depths of an ocean. An ocean of her own accord. Somewhere deep and fascinating and beyond. An ocean filled with phosphorescent eels and glittering, winking schools of fish and also the mysteries of the dark, the misshapen globes of the deep dangling their own tiny lights before their eyes. Gabrielle smoked imported cigarettes and wore silk robes, even when she was alone. The golden body dangled somewhere just behind her eyebrows. The golden body spun like a helix in her mind. 

***

Melissa Benton Barker’s fiction appears in Longleaf Review, Citron Review, Best Small Fictions, and other publications. She has edited fiction at Lunch Ticket and CRAFT. Melissa’s debut flash fiction chapbook, Beauty Queen, is available at Bottlecap Press. She lives in Ohio with her family. 

In Alice’s stories the mother always dies. Or is dead already. Or is absent in a way that suggests, to the perceptive reader, that she is likely dead. There are mother figures, maybe a step-mother or a grandmother or an aunt or a motherly neighbor, but no actual live mothers by the end of her stories.

In one story, the mother, an old woman, dies in a plane crash, and the tragedy is that when the list of victims is published, they misspell the old woman’s name and her daughter, who is estranged, reads the names while waiting for a haircut and abstractly mourns all the losses before asking her stylist for bangs like that French actress in the movie about the war.

In another, the mother, who is young and beautiful, dies of brain cancer, and the death is quick, painless mostly, and the family, all four kids and the father and the extended family and the neighbors, gather around her in the hospital and one at a time they name a thing they hope is in heaven, only the youngest daughter, who is just eight years old, can’t help but list two things she hopes are waiting for her mom: olives and meerkats.

Alice has a soft spot for the story about the taxi driver, the one where a daughter is on her way to the airport and the taxi driver asks where she’s going and she decides to lie and say she is going to visit her mother, even though her mother is dead, and then the driver says his mother is dead too, and the narrator says she’s sorry for his loss and they sing a song together as the snow falls outside.

The mothers in Alice’s stories die in many ways. There are the sudden deaths–the plane crash, two car crashes, a wrong-place-wrong-time murder, an escalator accident, a choking death. There are the illness related deaths–four types of cancer, a heart attack, an undiagnosed syndrome following an insect bite in the islands off South Carolina, kidney failure, dementia. There are the assumed deaths, absences that have gone on so long that the family or the lover or the parents or the spouse or the daughter can no longer cling to hope, can no longer hear the sound of her voice or imagine the way she looks when she’s sleeping or when she steps through the front door carrying too many grocery bags for one trip.

And then there’s the story where there’s just no mother at all. No death, no loss, no estrangement, no grief, no searching, no longing, no anger, no questions, no memories. Just a general absence so inconspicuous that even Alice sometimes forgets what the story is really about.

***

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont, USA. Her writing has most recently appeared in X-R-A-Y, Variant Lit, Flash Frog, and Mudroom Magazine, and she has stories in the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Bath Flash, and Oxford Flash anthologies. She won the 2024 Cambridge Prize and the 2024 Lascaux Prize for flash fiction. You can read her work on her website (https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site) or follow her on X, BS, or IG (@emilyrinkema)