Sophie McCreesh is a writer living in Toronto. She recently completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Guelph University. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel.

1 flash fiction by Sophie McCreesh

Elementary Backstroke

You let our oeuvre drop on all fours while I scoured our black and white tiled flat. We went into the back garden smoking and you kicked the fairy ring I’d been warning you to avoid. Their cries were a broken sonar left to trace the rock-hard blocking of exits. The fairies pointed towards a gorge before they died.

I never saw you again after we tried to swim in the water there. After that summer when we spent nights snorting blow with your hand under my black dress feeling imagined scars. I learned to know habit with you but never understood the way our narrowed eyes used to settle on clusters of plaster on the ceiling before we finally slept. Were you tracing constellations and ruining time?

I longed to disappear into the eddy of your sink, which cleaned the glasses we always drank from. To be clear, we always drank in twos. I remember the childhood summer blues when my mother pushed me out the window onto a netted trampoline. There, in foetal position, I closed my eyes recalling waves and the disintegrating moats of my beach castles. I grounded myself with the tactility of memory stones.

Now I spin delicate phone calls with strangers, sliding fingers under my skirt, feigning interest in nobodies while I’m paralyzed with abject fear. But what I’m looking for is gone. And you’re still outside somewhere kicking down homes of legend, smoking in your underwear.