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SAMPLES / FICTION

DARK HORSE

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by Leah Browning

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She grew up in New Brunswick, in a small house a few streets down from the thrift store and The Painted Pony Bar and Grill. Her dad was dead, but she had his old record player and a life-sized poster of Jim Morrison hanging on the wall above her bed, and she used to lie on her back and listen to Jimi Hendrix and The Doors and think about William Blake, and the known and the unknown.

 

The house. While she’d been gone, her mother had hung a sign with the word Family on the living room wall, above a series of framed photos. Outside the kitchen window, there was a red barn. Three black cats lived in the hayloft, emerging to eat scraps that her mother left in a bowl by the back door. When the weather was nice, they sat in the setting sun and licked their paws.

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[“Dark Horse is continued in Terrain.org.]

 

 

“Dark Horse

Copyright © 2018 by Leah Browning

First published in Terrain.org (September 16, 2022), https://www.terrain.org.

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SENSE

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by Leah Browning

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Jeanette’s adopted sister had been shaken as a baby and lost her sight. Although she was blind, people always said she had more sense than both her brothers put together. 

 

People said? Their mother said. 

 

She never had anything good to say about the boys. Frick and Frack, she used to call them, with derision.

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[“Sense,” one of a sequence of three linked stories, is continued in Flock.]

 

 

“Scents/Sense/Cents,” a sequence of three linked stories

Copyright © 2018 by Leah Browning

First published in Flock, Issue 24 (Spring 2021), pp. 120-125, flocklit.com.

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WHITE FLAG

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by Leah Browning

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She wanted to be like Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8, beautiful and world-weary, but it seemed that Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was more her style: half in the bag and walking around the kitchen late at night eating a cold chicken leg with the refrigerator door hanging open. She, too, had gained weight for the role of a lifetime, and her husband, like Richard Burton, was bitter and past his prime. They continuously circled each other, competing for the upper hand.

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It was a mistake, she’d always thought, to marry someone from the same department. They’d both been tenure-track when they met, but they’d gotten full professorships a year apart, and it had almost destroyed their marriage. Still, they’d powered through. Now they lived in a gorgeous red-brick townhouse with bay windows, an enviable record collection, and a pair of chocolate sable standard poodles called Faust and Tosca.

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[“White Flag is continued in Four Way Review.]

 

 

“White Flag

Copyright © 2018 by Leah Browning

First published in Four Way Review, Issue 14 (Fall 2018), https://fourwayreview.com.

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VENTILATION

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by Leah Browning

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The porch was cluttered, though at dusk under the burned-out bulb I couldn’t have told you with what, and the screen door banged shut behind us as we walked inside. They didn’t have central air, so the blinds were drawn all day, and in the evenings they opened the doors and windows to get the cross breeze, leaving the lights off as long as possible. The living room was a murky space, like a fish tank that hadn’t been cleaned.

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Dale was parked in the corner in his old mustard and brown plaid armchair, hooked up to an oxygen tank. This was the summer he was dying of emphysema. The TV seemed always to be on, even if he was dozing and Reba was in another room, washing the dishes or folding the laundry. As long as there wasn’t a game on, she turned it down while we were there, and she brought out egg salad sandwiches and cold bottles of Coke and asked about the drive.

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[“Ventilation is continued in Necessary Fiction.]

 

 

“Ventilation

Copyright © 2019 by Leah Browning

First published in Necessary Fiction (March 31, 2021), necessaryfiction.com.

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PLANT

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by Leah Browning

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I find the rubber plant leaning against the back wall, between an old Coke machine and a door marked Employees Only. He’s half my height and looks like he’s seen better days. Still, I wind up carrying him toward the neck of the store and taking him home with me.

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[“Plant is continued in Passages North.]

 

 

“Plant

Copyright © 2023 by Leah Browning

First published in Passages North, online bonus content (October 25, 2024), https://www.passagesnorth.com.

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HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

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by Leah Browning

 

 

[She] loved to close her eyes and put the shell to her ear—from those monstrous, salmon-colored jaws you could hear the call of a faraway country, so far away that a place could no longer be found for it on the globe . . .

—Tatyana Tolstaya, “Fire and Dust”

 

 

On the street, cars passed by in a haze of noise and exhaust, the taxi drivers stamping on their brakes and jerking the wheel to whip past whoever was slowing them down—once, on a street too clogged to complete this maneuver, a motorcyclist had lost his helmet in the road and had stopped, briefly, to retrieve it, blocking the lane by hopping down and taking a few steps back while the taxi driver behind him, enraged, leaned violently on his horn, and there was no pity for anyone, they had ceased to exist as such, they were only obstacles. In an expensive city, they were thieves, robbing everyone around them of precious time and money.

 

She took the side streets, which were no better, and side-stepped broken bottles and bags of trash, and for a while, an old moth-eaten couch, worn through so deeply in places that the springs were exposed, but then another day a woman was sitting delicately on one side of it with her hands in her lap as if she were waiting for a bus—and as she walked by the woman reached toward her, almost grazing her clothes with these fingers, these cracked and broken nails, or it might have been another day, when a woman sitting in a blanket nest on the sidewalk smiled and asked if she had a brother, and that woman was wearing a tiara crusted with rhinestones and nearby on the pavement was a clear plastic jug filled with something that looked like urine, and it had been there for days with its darkening liquid until—like the couch and the women and the hand reaching toward her—it suddenly disappeared.

 

There was a time—in childhood, perhaps—when she’d gone to the ocean, though that too could have been a dream—her father had been dead for many years, and there was no one left to ask—but she remembered the large, old-fashioned metal key, warming in her hand, and the floor of the motel room, gritty with sand she’d tracked inside after a long day out in the sun, and while the ocean waves lapped softly at the shore, a warm wind billowed the white tulle at the open window, but that really was a dream, or something she’d read in a book, and bore no resemblance to the water that slid past her current city—hostile, torpid, discolored by chemicals, lying in wait, threatening with every storm to rage past its oily banks. 

 

The light turned red and she paused on the curb, at the opening between the city blocks, where one towering building stopped and allowed, briefly, a view of a steep cross street leading down to the water, but she waited for the signal and followed the crosswalk to the next gray corner and slipped through the glass doors into the chilled air of the market, keeping her arms close to her body to avoid colliding with other shoppers, mindlessly pushing their carts into her hips as they stared down at their phones, and then she was out on the street again, disgorged by that gaping glass mouth, with the straps of the bags cutting into her shoulders and wrists, and past an alley, the smell of urine again, hanging on the breeze, and the more pleasant smells from a nearby restaurant, and she fumbled with the bags as she extracted her key ring and let herself into the building, and managed the stairs, which seemed so different at the start of the day, on the way down, than they did now, but she shifted her arms and went up a little at a time, and at last was at the door, and as she wrestled it open, she could hear from inside the apartment the telephone ringing, and she had barely closed the door, the keys were still in her hand, but she rushed forward, knocking her leg against the end table in her haste, and answered.

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“Hope for the Future

Copyright © 2020 by Leah Browning

First published, along with “The Virtuoso (Circa 2018),” in Harpur Palate, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022), pp. 20-21, 56 and online at harpurpalate.binghamton.edu.

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SKIN

by Leah Browning


I told Jeremiah I knew of a place where we could go.  

It’s out a ways in the woods, I said. A cabin where the people that own it don’t hardly spend any time. They have more than one house and don’t need this one so much.    

It took us almost half an hour to walk up there. I’d heard there was only a few houses around, and this one was all by its lonesome. We tried to be quick, looking like we knew where we were going.  

The doors were locked, but one of the windows had a broken latch. Jer just pushed it in, didn’t need to break the glass or nothing.  

It was dark inside. Outside, there was still some light, but you couldn’t tell it once you got in the house. I was afraid to turn on any lamps. The house was pretty far back from the road, but you just never know who might be watching.

[
Skin is continued in Valparaiso Fiction Review.]


Skin
Copyright © 2014 by Leah Browning
First published in
Valparaiso Fiction Review, Vol. 6, Issue 2 (Summer 2017), pp. 5-17 and online at http://scholar.valpo.edu/vfr/.







FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE MERMAID INN

by Leah Browning


Mary Lee hasn’t slept in days. The hospital sent the baby to a NICU in the city and discharged Mary Lee after twenty-four hours. She’s already back waiting tables. Fitz has been out of work for almost a year and she can’t afford to lose this job.

[
Friday Night at the Mermaid Inn is continued in Newfound.]


Friday Night at the Mermaid Inn
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
Newfound, Vol. 7, Issue 3 (Fall 2016), http://newfound.org.

Reprinted in Two Good Ears by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2021), pp. 2-5.







TWO GOOD EARS

by Leah Browning


We went to visit Wendy in the hospital. She had a big white bandage covering her ear. The dog had bitten off the bottom part of her earlobe. Her mother made a fuss over the flowers we brought and served us vanilla ice cream in little dishes. When we got back to the neighborhood, when we were alone again, it was all we could talk about.

[
Two Good Ears is continued in The Homestead Review.]


Two Good Ears
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
The Homestead Review, No. 36 (Fall 2016), http://homesteadreview.net.

Reprinted in Two Good Ears by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2021), pp. 6-11.







IN THE AIR

by Leah Browning


She was flying home from Guadalajara when she thought of a man she used to date. He’d been an air traffic controller in El Paso. One night, he had invited her to visit him at work. She climbed the stairs to the top of the tower. All the way around the room, every wall was a window. Outside, it was dark, and to the south, she could see the lights of Juarez.

[
In the Air is continued in The Threepenny Review.]


In the Air
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
The Threepenny Review, Issue 152 (Winter 2018), pp. 18-19, www.threepennyreview.
com.







DOUBLE YOU

by Leah Browning


I decided to make a list of everything I knew about the Jonathans.

The one in the cubicle to my left had glasses and a comb-over. The one in the house across the street was a bit younger, with smaller glasses and darker hair.

At least, that’s what I thought at first.

[
Double You is continued in Santa Ana River Review.]


Double You
Copyright © 2014 by Leah Browning
First published in
Santa Ana River Review, Vol. 1, Issue 2 (Spring 2016), http://sarreview.ucr.edu.







TIEBREAKERS

by Leah Browning


They held David’s funeral at our grandmother’s church in Albuquerque. She was the one who placed a notice in the newspaper and had his body transported back from Kentucky after the motorcycle accident. He was only twenty-eight when he died.

This was years ago. You may have been there yourself, if you knew him.

[
Tiebreakers is continued in Bellows American Review.]


Tiebreakers
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
Bellows American Review, (April 6, 2016), http://bellowsamerican.com.

Reprinted in Two Good Ears by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2021), pp. 24-30.







THREADS

by Leah Browning


I was only five when a tiger bit off one of my hands.

My mother filled a glove with sand and sewed it to my stump. Every year, she cut the seam with a miniature pair of sewing scissors and stitched on a new glove.

[
Threads is continued in First Class Literary Magazine.]


Threads
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
First Class Literary Magazine, (March 18, 2016), https://firstclasslit.wordpress.com.

Reprinted in Two Good Ears by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2021), p. 1.







WHERE YOU BELONG

by Leah Browning


We moved to Oklahoma City. She got a job. I stayed home all day. We lived on a quiet street in a one-bedroom apartment. Second floor, maybe third. I was a little kid. What did I know?  

There were trees outside with something on them. Not leaves, not flowers. At school, we had learned what makes something a mammal, a bird, etc. There was only one animal that didn’t belong in any group. That animal was a platypus. The things on this tree were the platypuses of the tree world.

[
Where You Belong is continued in Nebo.]


Where You Belong
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
Nebo, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Fall 2015), pp. 42-44.
Reprinted in
Orchard City by Leah Browning (Jefferson Hills, PA: Hyacinth Girl Press, 2017), pp. 6-8.







ELISE IN ITALY

by Leah Browning


It’s late, but she can’t sleep. Instead, she’s lying in bed in her hotel room watching a movie on MTV. It’s
Footloose, but dubbed into Italian, so she can only understand a word here or there. She’s at the point where John Lithgow stops the townspeople from burning the books. He gives an impassioned speech, shaming them just enough that he can hand the books back and send everybody home.

It’s been several years since Elise has seen the entire movie, but she’s found it often enough while flipping channels at home that she knows the story backwards and forwards. The preacher father, the rebellious daughter. She was that kind of daughter herself, at one time.

[
Elise in Italy is continued in Waypoints.]


Elise in Italy
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
Waypoints, Issue 2 (March 2016), www.waypointsmag.com.  

This is the first in a series of three linked stories. The second, Elise in Austria, was first published in Clementine Unbound (February 22, 2022), https://clementineunbound.wordpress.com. The third, Elise in Croatia, was first published in LitroNY (May 31, 2015), www.litrony.com.
Reprinted in 
Loud Snow by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2022), pp. 7-12.

Reprinted in The Wardrobe’s “Best Dressed” feature (June 17-21, 2024), https://sundressblog.com/the-wardrobe/.







5290 BEAR CREEK

by Leah Browning


Saturday, early afternoon. I
m scrubbing the bathtub when the doorbell rings.

It
s the mailman, already driving away by the time I get to the door. Hes left a package on the step. The print is small, and I have to lean close to read the name on the label.

Mrs. Frank Wittkin, two doors down. Shirley. They bought the house thirty years ago, when it was new.

I walk past the Lius
 perfect lawn. Shirley Wittkin answers her door in a pink tank top and pedal pushers. Oh, good, she says, and pulls me inside by the wrist.

[
5290 Bear Creek is continued in Wigleaf.]


5290 Bear Creek
Copyright © 2015 by Leah Browning
First published in
Wigleaf, (December 1, 2015), http://wigleaf.com.
Reprinted in
Orchard City by Leah Browning (Jefferson Hills, PA: Hyacinth Girl Press, 2017), pp. 14-15.







JEOPARDY

by Leah Browning


Around the corner from her aunt’s house, there’s a strip mall with a little Chinese bakery, a nail salon, and a 7-Eleven. That’s the only place within walking distance that’s open at midnight, when her aunt mutes the TV and says she wants a donut and a pack of cigarettes.

[
Jeopardy is continued in Chagrin River Review.]


Jeopardy
Copyright © 2014 by Leah Browning
First published in
Chagrin River Review, Issue 6 (Spring 2015), www.chagrinriverreview.com.







PUNCH

by Leah Browning


First, there’s an ultrasound. Or, no, that’s not the beginning. First, there’s a forgettable night with your husband. You’ve been married eight years already and the spark is gone—it’s more than gone—its absence is so huge that it’s become a presence in and of itself.  

But you’re not thinking about that anymore. You want a baby now. You’re like the Marisa Tomei character in
My Cousin Vinny where she’s standing on the porch in a black bodysuit saying, “My biological clock is ticking like this,” and pounding the wooden boards with her foot. The main difference is that you’re not going to win an Academy Award for all the nights you’ve sat up in bed trying to wheedle your husband into agreeing that you should go off the pill.

[
Punch is continued in Halfway Down the Stairs.]


Punch
Copyright © 2010 by Leah Browning
First published in
Halfway Down the Stairs, Issue 4.2 (September 2011), www.halfwaydownthestairs.net.







CAUGHT

by Leah Browning



He found a woman on Tinder, but then she wanted to meet for the first time at her house. No woman had ever wanted to meet him at her house. They had some sort of rule book: a public place, a neutral location, an escape plan. Already, she wasn’t following instructions. It gave him an uneasy feeling.

[
“Caught is continued in Contrary Magazine.]


Caught
Copyright © 2020 by Leah Browning
First published in
Contrary Magazine (Summer 2023), https://contrarymagazine.com.








SMALL TALK

by Leah Browning


Paulie decided, as a joke, to buy a gorgeous, formerly handfed Scarlet Macaw. She put the parrot in a tall gilt birdcage in the corner of her living room, where it could be seen from the front window, provided that the drapes were open.

She invited her friends over for drinks. They poked their fingers in between the bars of the cage until the parrot fanned its tail feathers.

“Say Paulie,” Paulie said.

The bird said nothing.

“Maybe he’s a mute,” one of her friends said teasingly, and the others laughed.

[
Small Talk is continued in Fiction Southeast.]


Small Talk
Copyright © 2014 by Leah Browning
First published in
Fiction Southeast (February 12, 2015), http://fictionsoutheast.org/.

Reprinted in Two Good Ears by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2021), pp. 17-21.







GRAVEL

by Leah Browning


The therapist said Brendan wanted me to be his mother. That
s why he kept kicking little holes in the wall and pulling his own hair.

I dont want to be his mother, I said. Wed been dating for four years. I felt like that went without saying.

Well, thats what hes telling you with his behavior, she said smartly. This is the kind of smug insight I was paying $100 an hour for.

[
Gravel is continued in Toad.]


Gravel
Copyright © 2014 by Leah Browning
First published in
Toad, Issue 5:1 (February 2015), http://toadthejournal.com.

Reprinted in Two Good Ears by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2021), pp. 12-16.







THE RED PARACHUTE

by Leah Browning


Emily, kneeling in the garden, looked up and saw a spot of blood against the summer sky. It unfurled slowly toward her, and though it was still so far in the distance, she knew at once that it was the parachute, that he had finally returned for her. Emily rose, and as she did, the beans that she had gathered fell from her apron, forgotten; she strode toward the house to find Clare, who was in the kitchen. She looked back, for a second, to see the parachute again, to make sure that she had not imagined or dreamed it, and it was still there, but she was weak and sank again to her knees; she could not stay upright; she had to lie down for a moment among the soil and plants, though she was still so far from the house.

The parachute landed in the garden, deflating softly among the green stalks, and the man, who was fastened to it with fine white threads, lay still for so long that Emily thought he might have died.

She had lived her entire life on the farm, and she and Clare had found their parents after the accident; they were not afraid of death. So Emily lifted the parachute silk away from his face and felt for a pulse at his neck and temples. He was unconscious, perhaps, or stunned, but he was alive.

[
The Red Parachute is continued in Bluestem Magazine.]


The Red Parachute
Copyright © 2013 by Leah Browning
First published in
Bluestem Magazine (June 2014), www.bluestemmagazine.com.







EAR MITES

by Leah Browning


The vet tells you that the kitten has ear mites. She has swabbed the kitten
s ear with a Q-tip, and she holds the stick out so you can see: its covered with little blackish dots.

Thats their waste, she says, and clucks sympathetically as the kitten shakes his head and flicks at his ear with one paw. Has he been doing this a lot?

No, you say. I dont think so. But now that shes pointed it out, the kitten seems to do nothing but flick his ears. You feel itchy just looking at him.

I cant believe that the humane society missed this, the vet says.

When you get home, your boyfriend is at the table eating breakfast. He looks up and says,
Howd it go?

Raging case of ear mites, you say. You open the carrier slightly and leave it in the bathroom, shutting the door on your way out. Dont touch him. The medicine needs to dry.

Are mites contagious? your boyfriend asks. Geez, Molly, you let him sleep on the bed.

You shake your head. To other cats, not to us. Still, while the kittens in the bathroom, you strip the bed and wash the sheets in hot water.

Your boyfriend leaves for work, pretending to check your scalp for nits as he kisses you goodbye. You grimace but say nothing. He
s been a good sport since you brought the kitten home from the shelter.

Two years have passed since your husband
s death, and the twinge you felt at the sight of the tiny face behind glass seemed like proof: a maternal instinct, long dormant, slowly ticking to life. Now youre not so sure.

After a moment, you hear the sound of claws, a frantic scratching at the bathroom door. You busy yourself with other things. You wait.  



Ear Mites
Copyright © 2006 by Leah Browning
First published in 
Brink Magazine (October 2007), www.brinklit.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I
m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), pp. 10-11.







A PARTY LIKE THIS

by Leah Browning


On the last night of the conference, all the presenting writers who were still in town had a party in one of the hotel’s double suites. Geoff drank two beers and then went outside on the balcony for a cigarette. They were on the sixth floor, overlooking the water. It was windy, though, and he kept having trouble with the matches.

He was about to go back inside when one of the women opened the sliding glass door and poked her head out. “How is it?” she asked. “Cold?”

Geoff shrugged. She was one of those women who can’t seem to talk without flirting. He’d made that mistake before and he’d be damned if he’d do it again.

She came outside anyway, wearing a shiny, low-cut dress and a pair of very high heels. She was carrying a glass of white wine, and she shivered theatrically, but without spilling the wine. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

There wasn’t any good response to that, so Geoff didn’t bother trying to think of one.

[
A Party Like This is continued in The Citron Review.]


A Party Like This
Copyright © 2011 by Leah Browning  
First published in
The Citron Review (Summer 2012), http://thecitronreview.wordpress.com/.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I
m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), pp. 29-32.







PICK YOUR OWN

by Leah Browning


On the first weekend after the surgery, I took my niece to a farm to pick peaches. She was nine years old and liable to ask all manner of uncomfortable questions, so I had braced myself for the worst, but she didn’t seem fazed by my appearance.

We parked the car and walked out toward the orchard. A woman wearing a big sun hat was sitting at a folding table, and she gave Heidi a silver bucket for our peaches.

The trees were in neat rows, and we walked past the ones that had already been plucked clean. The ground was covered with dead leaves and rotten fruit, one peach after another broken and mottled by bird bites.

Heidi directed me to a more remote corner of the orchard. She wasn’t very tall, but she could reach the lowest branches.

I tried to help, but I was having trouble with my new hands: the fingers didn’t bend the way my old ones had. There seemed to be something wrong with the joints, which were too stiff, but I knew that I needed to be patient. The doctor had said that it would take some time to break them in. He had a shoe on the desk in his office, and he picked it up and bent the sole back and forth to demonstrate.

The sun was bothering me, too, and I couldn’t seem to get the hang of blinking. The new eyeballs were just a bit bigger than my old ones, and it took more effort to open and close my eyelids than I was used to.

[
Pick Your Own is continued in Salome Magazine.]


Pick Your Own
Copyright © 2012 by Leah Browning  
First published in
Salome Magazine (February 11, 2013), www.salomemagazine.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I
m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), pp. 6-9.







TOUCH

by Leah Browning


Gareth had been on his feet all day. He
d even worked over lunch, on a walk-in with a sad story. For some reason, he could never say no to women like that.

It was dark by the time he left the salon. He hurried past the windows of the other shops on the street. Winter had come early, and he was still wearing an old denim jacket.

The lights were off in his apartment, so Gareth knew that his roommate hadn
t come home yet. He made himself a plate of scrambled eggs and two slices of toast with butter and cherry jam, and he ate reading the newspaper.

If his roommate had been there, he would have said that Gareth was living his life backwards, starting with dinner for breakfast and ending with breakfast for dinner. But his roommate wasn
t there . . . 

[
Touch is continued in Wigleaf.]


Touch
Copyright © 2011 by Leah Browning  
First published in
Wigleaf (September 3, 2012), http://wigleaf.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I
m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), pp. 3-5.







ALL THESE QUESTIONS  

by Leah Browning


When you tell people that you have all boys, they want to know if you tried for a girl. If you are still trying.

Once, in line at the grocery store, a woman said to me, “Why don’t you just quit already.”

When you tell people that your oldest son is sixteen, they want to know how old you are. If you’re as young as you look. When I tell them that I’m thirty-three, I have to look away while they furrow their brows. I know they’re thinking it through; they’re doing the math.

When you tell people that your oldest son is sixteen and your youngest son is almost a year old, they want to know if all your kids have the same dad. Sometimes they ask outright, which still surprises me, even though it seems like it shouldn’t by now. Sometimes all the kids are with me—one with skin the color of café au lait, another with my pale, freckled skin, skin that was the bane of my existence at one point, skin that couldn’t hold a tan to save its life—and then people don’t even ask. They just look from one kid to another and purse up their mouths.

[
All These Questions is continued in Fiction365.]


All These Questions
Copyright © 2011 by Leah Browning
First published in
Fiction365 (February 6, 2012), www.fiction365.com.







BECAUSE I DIDN’T NOTICE THE LITTLE SIGNS (PART 1)  

by Leah Browning


. . . On the screen in front of us, the dying mother retches into a plastic trash can before raising her head weakly and asking for water.

Leaning close to me, my mother twists her mouth into a frown. “I don’t like this,” she says in a loud voice.

I try to shush her. I am too embarrassed to look in the direction of the woman sitting on her other side. I hope she didn’t hear.

“The acting is terrible,” my mother complains.

“Shhh! It’s not acting,” I whisper. “This is a documentary.”

My mother clicks her tongue. “Well, it’s awful.”


[
Because I Didn’t Notice the Little Signs (Part 1), the first of a sequence of three short
stories, is continued in 
971 MENU.]



Because I Didn’t Notice the Little Signs (Part 1), Allegiance (Part 2), and A Little Luck (Part 3), a
sequence of three short stories
Copyright © 2011 by Leah Browning
First published in
971 MENU (December 2011), www.971menu.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I’m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press, 2015), pp. 12-16.
Reprinted as
Little Signs in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence, an anthology of flash sequences from The Marie Alexander Series, ed. by Robert Alexander, Eric Braun, and Debra
Marquart (Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2016), pp. 66-70.  







STRANGE MEN IN BARS  

by Leah Browning


Jennifer is sitting alone, nursing a 7UP and squinting across a dim, smoky motel lounge at her mother. It’s a Thursday night around ten o’clock, and Mallory’s already had three Black Russians and a vodka tonic. The effect of this combination is that Jennifer’s 43-year-old mother—a woman who works in a bank and wears expensive tailored suits and strings of pearls, who speaks in a low, carefully modulated voice about stock options at the breakfast table—is sliding around a dance floor with a drunk man from the bar, his arms knotted around her waist and his face buried in her neck. It’s a sickening sight, yet Jennifer is unable to look away.

The band takes a five-minute break, but Mallory and her partner go on dancing for a few seconds after the music stops, swaying to some rhythm only they can hear. At last they break apart, and the man pats her arm clumsily before lurching away.

For a moment, Jennifer thinks she sees a look of recognition; she thinks that Mallory realizes how crazy this is. But then Mallory turns and disappears through the swinging doors at the back of the room.

[
Strange Men in Bars is continued in 42opus.]


Strange Men in Bars
Copyright © 2005 by Leah Browning
First published in
42opus, Vol. 7, No. 2 (June 14, 2007), www.42opus.com.







THE COSTUME WEDDING

by Leah Browning


Jennifer flew all the way to Albuquerque with the dress in dry cleaner’s plastic draped across her lap. Still, when she got to the hotel, she almost lost her nerve and went to the wedding in the black slacks she had worn on the plane.

She had slipped into the dress and then opened the bathroom door before unzipping her makeup case. “Don’t you think it’s too much?” she asked after a few minutes, leaning toward her own reflection and catching her boyfriend’s eye in the bathroom mirror.

Barry sat on the edge of the bed in a pirate costume. He was eating macadamia nuts out of a glass jar and watching as she daubed rouge onto her cheeks with a big brush. He shook his head.

It was a flapper’s dress from the 1920s: sleeveless, off-white, and pencil-thin, with intricate white beadwork and a thick satiny fringe at the hem. Her grandmother had produced it during Thanksgiving dinner, along with silk stockings and a bell-shaped hat sewn from off-white felt.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Jennifer had protested. Now she dutifully pulled the cloche hat over her long dark hair, which fell past her shoulder blades and ruined the period look, but it couldn’t be helped. Barry had found her a brown bobbed wig, but it was still on her bureau at home. Jennifer hadn’t remembered it until they were in line at the airport terminal.

[
The Costume Wedding is continued in Halfway Down the Stairs.]


The Costume Wedding
Copyright © 2008 by Leah Browning
First published in
Halfway Down the Stairs (December 2012), www.halfwaydownthestairs.net.







SCARS

by Leah Browning


For the entire first year of your marriage, you woke before he did and you watched him sleep. His right eyebrow was dissected by a sliver of pale flesh, which made him look young and vulnerable. When he was four, walking down the stairs with a section of metal railroad track in one hand, he tripped and fell onto it. His mother had panicked at the sight of all the blood and took him out for ice cream, furtively, guiltily, after the emergency room and the sturdy-looking black stitches. She had left him alone for just a second to go to the store—he was napping, and she needed eggs—she was baking him cookies, for god’s sake! She was a good mother! And when she got back, damp with perspiration—because she had been running, she was hurrying as fast as she could—he was kneeling at the bottom of the stairs, his face a mess of blood and tears and mucus. When his mother drinks, she will tell this story obsessively, reliving the moment she walked up the front steps, the sound of sobbing, the way her hand shook so badly that she struggled to fit the key into the lock. Her son was in his late twenties, with a steady job and a wife, the blood wiped away, the damage almost undone, a good man. So you pitied her, with her vodka and sad memories, and in those early mornings, you, you foolish newlywed girl, kissed him gently and thought, I will never hurt you like that.



Scars
Copyright © 2006 by Leah Browning
First published in
The Flash-Flood, No. 6 (January 2007), and reprinted in Wigleaf (January 2008),
www.wigleaf.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I’m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), p. 18.







FLASH

by Leah Browning


Six months before he left, Andrew gave me a diamond tennis bracelet, and I wore that thing everywhere. I wore it when we went to the opera, I flashed it at that bitch Lisa Bramsky at the PTA meeting, I wore it to the goddamn dry cleaner’s when I went to pick up Andrew’s suits. I wanted everybody to know that the rumors weren’t true.   

[
Flash is continued here.]


Flash
Copyright © 2009 by Leah Browning
First published in 
apt, Issue 23 (February 2010), http://apt.aforementionedproductions.com.







PAPER LIFE

by Leah Browning


Maija sat at the kitchen table cutting long rows of paper dolls, all connected at the tips of their outstretched fingers and the flowing points of their skirts. Snips of white paper fell onto the surface of the table as she worked. She had found a pair of sharp silver scissors in the junk drawer, buried in a nest of string and tape and coils of postage stamps. There was also a Polaroid of my mother without her wig, after the chemotherapy. Maija had not commented on the photograph.  

In the fading light from the kitchen window, she folded fine pleats in the paper and cut. The only other sound in the room was the gold clicking of the clock’s second hand completing its revolutions. I hadn’t spoken in days. Maija didn’t look at me, only went on cutting and cutting. There were white vines, a flock of birds, wisps of paper falling to the table. Everything around us—the avocado appliances; the navy blue wallpaper, with its pattern of pale pink flowers and green pears—began to disappear under the snowfall from the scissors.    

She cut out a dress, a simple white sheath, and slipped it on over her school uniform. I had a sharp desire to see her bare skin, then, to go back in time a few weeks, but we remained in the house in the kitchen, with my father’s leather shoes lined up at the door. Maija turned the paper this way and that, fashioning clothes for me, I saw. She set down the scissors and dressed me tenderly, easing my wrists through the sleeves and pressing each paper button through the proper paper buttonhole.  

The house was the last thing she made, a paper replica of my house, with white paper versions of the stove and refrigerator and ticking, ticking clock. Maija took my hand, and pulled me inside the paper cuttings. Our white paper knapsacks lay on the paper floor, and paper scissors lay on the paper table, and I knew that if I opened the paper cabinets I would find paper dishes. Almost everything was still in its place.

“Stay here with me,” Maija said, and pressed her cheek to mine. Her skin carried the faint scent of fresh snow and peach soap. I closed my eyes for the first time in three days and let her wrap her arms around me. She held on, she held me close, and I was almost able to forget, for a moment, my mother’s absence at the breakfast table, my father’s weary silence. All I felt was Maija’s cheek on my cheek, the warmth of her skin, and then I lifted my arms, I put my arms around her, too; I clung to her, and I didn’t open my eyes, even as I felt the house fall softly around us like so many paper flowers.



Paper Life
Copyright © 2008 by Leah Browning
First published in
Eclectic Flash (January 2010), www.eclecticflash.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I’m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), pp. 33-34.







ANESTHESIA

by Leah Browning


Sascha took the bus to the Reid Park Zoo to see the polar bears. It was wintertime, but there was no snow in Tucson. He watched the water of the bears’ pool through a large pane of glass.

[
Anesthesia is continued in 971 MENU.]


Anesthesia
Copyright © 2007 by Leah Browning
First published in
971 MENU (June 2007), www.971menu.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I’m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), p. 17. 






 


BAD NEWS

by Leah Browning


My father asked if I wanted to walk around the corner to the drugstore and get an ice cream cone. It has always been his way of sweetening a difficult moment. To this day, I can’t look at a tub of mint chocolate chip without feeling my stomach tighten.    

It was the day after Thanksgiving, a balmy November afternoon, and as we walked my father asked if I had a light. I hadn’t smoked in almost ten years, but I only shrugged and shook my head. “Sorry.”   

He was a big bear of a man, and he clasped my shoulder affectionately, his big thick fingers as warm as a paw. This was my first visit in several months. I was waiting for him to poke himself in the chest and say, “The old ticker’s going,” or “Your mom’s been having some trouble with her foot again.”   

A year earlier they’d purchased a stackable front-loading washer and dryer, and the dryer hadn’t been installed properly. It had fallen on her as the washer finished the spin cycle on a load of whites.   

But my father only admired the trees, their bare arms outstretched. “Can you believe that it will all start over again?” he asked, referring I supposed to the spring, which seemed a million years away.  

I broke into a run, passing the corner where we should have turned to go to the drugstore, and plowing across the street before the light turned green. “Chris!” my father yelled behind me. “Where are you going?”  

I didn’t turn, just kept running until my breath came in short ragged gasps and my leg muscles burned. I felt old, weak. There was no one around. I sat on a stretch of grass next to the sidewalk and leaned back against a peeling brown fence.    

Cheryl had called me after eleven o’clock the night before, from her parents’ house in Vermont. “You’re going to get me grounded,” I had whispered into the phone, and she’d laughed. I wanted to pull her hand over hand through the phone wires just then, lay her flat on the twin bed I’d had since middle school and press my face against the damp V where her legs met.   

My father’s face was flushed by the time he caught up, and he flopped down on the grass next to me. “What was that all about?” he asked.   

“I don’t want to know,” I said. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to know.” There were so many possible strands leading from this moment, so many twists and false starts and bad turns.    

My father nodded, looking thoughtful. His thick gray hair was damp along the sides of his face. My mother would have a hysterectomy less than a week later, and I would take a dozen yellow roses to the hospital.   

But sitting on the grass outside on the day after Thanksgiving, he just nodded. He said, “Let’s go home,” and pretended to let me pull him to his feet.   



Bad News
Copyright © 2007 by Leah Browning
First published in
Clapboard House, Issue 2 (January 2008), www.clapboardjournal.com.
Reprinted in
Things I Remember When I’m Sober by Leah Browning (San José, CA: Silent Station Press,
2015), pp. 19-20.







THE BALLET RECITAL

by Leah Browning


His new girlfriend brings Paige to the rehearsal. When they arrive, Paige is already wearing her costume, a hot pink leotard with a matching pink skirt. The skirt and the wing-like sleeves of the leotard are a frothy mixture of netting and silver sequins.

Paige is skipping, but she breaks into a run when she sees me, squealing,
Mommy!

I have been standing at the back of the makeshift dressing room, chatting with a couple of the other mothers. I kneel, and Paige barrels into my arms. Her long blond hair is damp and carries the scent of shampoo.

She breaks away from me and I stand, brushing off the knees of my slacks. Her father’s girlfriend, Maxine, is hanging back, looking ill at ease. Paige runs back to her and says,
Come on, pulling her toward an empty seat. I need to put on my ballet slippers.

Maxine sits obligingly, and Paige digs through the plastic grocery bag in Maxine’s hand. We are in the theatre wing of the local high school, in a practice room behind the stage of the auditorium. Five rows of chairs, one for each age group of Paige’s ballet school, are lined up like an expectant audience, facing the door.

I have only met Maxine once, when I went to Mark’s house to collect Paige for the weekend. I walk closer to them and lean forward.
How are you, Maxine? I ask. This morning I woke late, a luxury, and I am feeling magnanimous, larger than life.

[
The Ballet Recital is continued in Literary Mama.]


The Ballet Recital
Copyright © 2002 by Leah Browning
First published in
Literary Mama (March 8, 2006), www.literarymama.com

   

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