- Forever by Wilhite
- PTSD by MacLeod
- No More Than a Battered Tennis Ball by Haigh
- Interior Redesign by Connaughton
- The Plates by Heartz
- A Haunting Feeling by Stephenson
Interior Redesign
By Sue Ann Connaughton
A desire to scream, to pummel somebody or something. That's how Claire felt after her husband was gone. The unfairness, the lost chance to grow old with someone.
Instead.
She redesigned her bedroom.
So spiritual, such a composed color, she picked. White. She never liked the dark green walls. Her husband had hated white walls.
"Monotonous."
Claire bared the windows, ripping down the heavy velvet drapes. Her husband had insisted upon them to block out all light.
She patched primed, primed, primed, to cover soda bottle green. Everything white: walls, mahogany furniture, oak floor. The old drapes worked as dropcloths; the drips recast them into something abstract and distant.
A thick white area rug to cushion her bare feet when she skipped rope—98, 99, 100 jumps every day.
Conventional advice: When you lose a partner, discard the bed.
Save the bed! Fashion a decompression haven with pale Belgian linens, 400 count, a matching duvet and down-filled pillows. She tossed out the old allergy-free, husband-free foam rubber pillows.
Something wasn't quite right. The wall across from the bed appeared too blank, mockingly stark. A spot of color. Something bright. Unexpected. Red.
Cover the wall with red.
She moved the bureau to that wall and cloaked it in the same color. The bureau bled into the wall. Paint splashed about, bloodstaining the white rug. She flicked red on the floor and the window panes, tipped the paint can over the bed coverings until it bled empty. Claire lay in the paint puddle. It soaked through her clothes, her pores. She rested.
BIO:
Sue Ann Connaughton writes fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Literary Magazine; Six Sentences; The Adroit Journal, Bete Noire; Orion Headless; Fix It Broken; Twenty20 Journal; The Binnacle Seventh International Ultra-Short Competition anthology; With Painted Words; Every Day Poets; On the Premises; South Boston Literary Gazette; Everyday Weirdness; American Tanka; and Modern English Tanka.