55 Word Stories

1.

“But I saw it!” Jimmy protested.
“No you didn’t. Fairies are only in stories.”
“What about the Tooth Fairy?”
“My brother says your mom does that.”
Jimmy wondered how his mom knew when every kid in the world lost a tooth.
“But it was glowing and had wings,” Jimmy pressed.
“It must’ve been an angel.”


2.

It was funny to see him lying there. Not funny ha-ha, but funny weird. There were butterflies loose in her stomach; she was glad she’d skipped breakfast.
He looked smaller than she remembered, like a doll in a box, and no doubt just as light, un-tethered by the weight of his life or his innards.


3.

“Hurry up, I hear someone.”
“You’re paranoid,” Jessi sneered.
Heather stood in the empty corridor chewing her fingernails to blood, eyes bouncing from door to door. The home-ec class had burned their assignment; she could smell it.
“Okay, let’s go,” Jessi called, and they ran, leaving their handiwork behind, SLUT scrawled across the grey locker.


4.

To her, poems were drugs, absorbed to alter the mind. She had to have them, and wanted them to be a part of her somehow.
She was on the verge of eating them, she explained.
“Why don’t you bathe in them?” he laughed.
She shrugged, tearing the pages from their binding as the tub filled.