Competition Seventeen Shortlisted: Temima by Isabelle Fortaleza-Tan

For the fifth time this week, my mother tells me I’m rotting, like a fig. Turning black from within, attracting flies. When she opens my door, I see a silhouette of someone I might’ve known once: a faceless figure from syrupy dreams. When the door closes, either five minutes or an hour later, I drift back into cold void and the sharp stench of blood.

****

One day in the sixth grade, my science teacher walks into class carrying a box behind his back, like a magician, or a thief. Once the class comes to a still hush, he places the box on his desk in the middle of the classroom and carefully extracts the rabbit inside, like a cavity. It is black, small, shivering. Quiet. 

He clears his throat and asks: “Is this alive?” as if gently setting down a bomb and taunting us to defuse. 

****

Now, I lay lathering in moistened sheets, inhaling stale sticky air—pondering my vitality. I stare into eggshell abyss and form murals out of popcorn ceiling: beautiful vignettes of men at war, of women in red-faced birth. I am sensitive to changes in temperature and let the air conditioning consume me like a kiss. When I clench my fist, bloody half-moons are left carved into my palm like a promise, or a warning. 

****

We are supposed to be answering questions printed on grainy paper. I don’t bother looking at my sheet. As classmates prod sticky fingers and fling chewed erasers, I just watch the rabbit—named Temima, I decided. Her eyes remain silver slits sown with loose thread, but the outline of her fur still makes slow, subtle contractions up and down. In and out.

Beating, beating.

Isabelle Fortaleza-Tan lives in Los Angeles and is studying English. She enjoys solipsistic fiction, Wikipedia film summaries, frozen corn dogs, and the Oxford comma. Her work is published and forthcoming in The Rising Phoenix Review, The Apprentice Writer, miniMag, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch among others.

Photo – by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

SUBMIT / MAILING LIST / COMPETITION / CRITIQUE SERVICE / BOOKSHOP / TWITTER / INSTAGRAM / DONATE

*