Anti-Heroin Chic
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Music
  • Art
  • Comedy
  • About Our Contributors
  • Masthead
  • Issues
  • About our contributors - 2019
  • About Our Contributors - 2020
  • About Our Contributors - 2021
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Music
  • Art
  • Comedy
  • About Our Contributors
  • Masthead
  • Issues
  • About our contributors - 2019
  • About Our Contributors - 2020
  • About Our Contributors - 2021
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

​

10/1/2022

When the Blank Screen Drops & You Need to Move On By K.A. Hunter

Picture
      Andrew Seaman CC




When the Blank Screen Drops and You Need to Move On

I caught the therapist as she bit the eraser between her teeth. Hard. So you could see the rubber warp and bend under the pressure. And for the tiniest fraction of a second, I held my breath, hoping. Not believing. But she did it. She bit the thing right off.
   She had a nervous habit of tapping her lips with it. Her pencil. During each session, she’d sit, squared off against me on the other side of Zoom. Sometimes leaning back and relaxed. More often she was staid, upright, or even leaning in. But always she was perched with the same pencil in her hand. Tapping, tapping, tapping. Her only tell.
  Once before, she’d strayed from the tapping and had almost bit it. She’d paused, looked away, and slid it into her mouth. Her teeth clamped down. At the very last second she’d caught herself and placed it down on her side table with a resolved thunk. She’d still averted her gaze, though.
   That was the time I’d confided about buying my husband a pair of high heels. Gorgeous ones, too. Platform. Gold. Ankle straps so delicate I have to kneel in front of him, helping to put them on, the buckles’ elastic catching his leg hairs to thwart me. They’re higher than any I own, than I would ever dare. When he straps them on and rises to his feet like a newborn deer, knock-kneed and compelled by nature and instinct, he towers over me so I’m level with his silicone breast forms.
   But she’d caught herself. And that same hope had surged through me, hot and rich, when she’d set the pencil down. Now, though, she’d become lost. She’d crossed that subtle line where reflex and impulse give in to the inevitability of it and truth wins. All because I’d told her I thought I could come to love him better this way.
   Therapy, she’d said at our very first appointment, was a safe space of nonjudgement. The fresh tooth marks branded into the discarded chunk of pink eraser at our final appointment, however, had said otherwise.


​

K.A. Hunter lives with too many cats and a lone dog in New Hampshire, because, frankly, if it was good enough for Donald Hall, then it's good enough for her. As a writer, she's obsessed with the slipperiness that's flash fiction. To her, there is simply nothing more beautiful than brevity, especially in fiction.
​

Comments are closed.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    March 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.