scars
EPIPHANY FERRELL
“There’s a trick to it, not like that fancy-cowboy-hat-wearing glad-hander was doing.”
“What’s the trick,” I ask.
“You have to ask nicely,” my brother tells me.
We’re talking about an alligator show. The fancy-cowboy-hat-wearing glad-hander punched the alligator in the nose until it opened its mouth, then he put his hand into the ‘gator’s mouth, pulling it out as the jaws snapped audibly shut. I wished he’d lost some fingers.
My brother has scars from every stage of his life. He has burn scars from the time a pal dropped a smoldering doobie onto paint thinner in his apartment. He has a scar on his thigh from a horse kick, and one on his foot from a jaguar, both animals he’d worked with and loved and didn’t blame even a little. And a scar on his elbow from an alligator. There are others I’m sure, these are the ones I know about.
“So are you happy now you are single?” my brother asks me.
Not all scars show outwardly.
the day after
EPIPHANY FERRELL
It’s a steady rain, relentless, and I stand by the window and watch as the yellow chalk sun melts into the pink elephant and the blue horse and cow. I want to go out there with an umbrella, stand guard over the last pictures my daughter will ever draw, protect them from the elements the way I could not protect her. But it’s already too late. The colors are dim, the cow is under a growing puddle, a blue-gray blob that soon won’t even be that.
I always wondered if it was morning dove or mourning dove, but I can answer that now. I lay in my daughter’s bed in my funeral dress and listened to them yesterday. All there is to hear today is rain, thunder rumbling. Yesterday was sunshine. It didn’t seem right to put her in the ground on such a beautiful day. Today wouldn’t have been any better.
I can’t stay in this house. I put my key under the mat and shut the door for the last time. Overhead, a lone goose sweeps the sky, leaving its cry behind.
we all make mistakes
EPIPHANY FERRELL
It’s a common mistake. Usually it goes the other way – someone kills a perfectly harmless water snake thinking it’s a copperhead.
People make similar mistakes all the time, Leila thought. You buy a house in a safe neighborhood, a tree crashes through your would-have-been-the-baby’s room. You marry a man who makes you feel safe, who seems like he’d be a great daddy, and you wind up with an order of protection and uterus damage. Mistakes happen all the time.
I’m not going to live my life afraid of everything, Leila thought when she saw the snake.
“Danger!” her instincts cried.
“Just a water snake,” she said to herself. “Harmless.”
She could have walked on, but she wanted a closer look. “Beautiful,” she said, congratulating herself on her bravery.
Copperheads don’t warn. It got her on the forearm when she reached to move aside the vegetation for a picture.
Leila walked a few steps up-trail to a small ledge, and there she sat. She’d dropped her phone during the post-bite chaos. She didn’t have a knife with her. She didn’t even have water – it was supposed to have been a short hike. She’d tried to make a tourniquet, but really, Leila thought, what’s the point?
“I meant you no harm,” she said, aiming her voice in the general direction the snake had gone. “You didn’t have to go and bite me. That wasn’t very nice.”
Copperhead bites are rarely fatal if treated promptly. Leila thought she’d read that somewhere. Also, that there might be something in the venom that would hinder the growth of cancerous tumors. Good to know, Leila thought.
Some mistakes are so easy to make. Trusting the wrong thing, making a seemingly innocent choice.
“It’s almost dark,” Leila thought. “I’ll just wait here until morning.”
Epiphany Ferrell lives perilously close to the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail in Southern Illinois. Her stories appear in Best Microfiction 2020, New Flash Fiction Review, Ghost Parachute, Dream Noir, and other places. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and won the 2020 Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize.