Linda McMullen
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Banner Days
Prom night, aged 17: the surreptitious banner, half-crouching behind a fake fig tree, read “Enchanted Garden”. I was The Lady in Red. You blushed, and asked me to dance – and I cocked my head to the side, scrambling to recollect. Were you the scullion who authored my lab reports? My backpack bearer? No, you had “revised” my essay on The Scarlet Letter for me. The melody unchained itself from your plaintive gaze and I slid my eyes back toward pretty boy Josh instead. He had his father’s plush-seated Lexus, and I had no curfew. When I lay on my back, the gleam from my mirrored crucifix necklace danced through the moon roof.
My sister’s wedding, aged 27: the kinky gold banner branching over the VFW double doors, spelling Congratulations! I couldn’t wait to shuck off my burgundy bridesmaid’s dress. I thought you would ask me to dance, but instead you offered monologues about literature and science. The music and the champagne drowned racing thoughts, blotting out the date. Then I saw – Josh. He’d taken over his father’s car dealership, had never had to worry about taking a year away, losing scholarships, dropping out, taking a nowhere second-shift job. When I gazed into your eyes, I saw an unbroken stretch of backyard barbeques looking back.
Tonight, aged 37: the rainbow-tinted birthday banner, and gift bags made from dead trees. My cerise sweater too bright for the occasion. You did a jokey dance to make me smile, as I shook my head. A new scarf, a bottle of wine, a 23andMe kit. The kids are singing the “you live in a zoo” version and the room swirls. Next month our son Joseph will open my DNA results and demand, Mom, why does this say I have a 19-year-old half-sister? You will turn to me, and I will stare at my reflection in a wine bottle Josh sent.
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The Life of the Mind
Monsters under the bed folded themselves into dust bunnies and my pimples sublimed
into the sunset and I squeaked a passing grade even though I showed up to the exam an hour late, and naked. The man chasing me tripped on a giggling sidewalk ledge and his knife sprawled across the gutter grate before the crocodile rose up and devoured it. My fallen teeth arranged themselves into a pearl necklace and my dead grandmother clasped it behind my neck. I thought it would protect me against the black-bordered page taped across the door of my childhood home, but the grass still wept and the old sycamore bowed a hoary head. The worms xylophoned across my father’s ribs but my mother couldn’t hear the song; instead she chased the albums fluttering toward the moon. One day I woke with a start and the nurse asked me my name, and I didn’t know how to answer her, I merely passed on.
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Linda McMullen is a wife, mother, diplomat, and homesick Wisconsinite. She has published two hundred short stories and is delighted to return to writing after a bit of an absence.
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Posted in Kaleidoscopes, Sep '25 and tagged in #boudin, #fiction, #flashfiction, #microfiction, Fiction