CROCODILE TEARS — KATHRYN TRATTNER
/In all things there is a starting point, an X to mark the point of origin. Later she would tell me that I didn't know what I was talking about, what the truth was. That word. I hate that word.
There never was any truth in that woman.
She wore her skin like you would a coat or pair of gloves. She would peel herself out, exposing muscle and bone, the yellow of her teeth muted against the hot red of her cheeks. The whites of her eyes soured, thickened, and when she blinked large crocodile tears oozed free. The big toe on her right foot was deformed, pinched and swollen all at once, from being stuffed like a Christmas goose into high heels too small and too tall. They barely brought her to five feet, without them she wandered down below my chin, breathing air that didn't belong to me and seeing the world as a slightly larger, slightly taller place.
I reached out once and skimmed my hand over the top of her head, touching nothing but sizzling air. She glared, mouth pinched up and sucked in so that she didn't seem to have any lips at all.
"This is where it started." I pointed at emptiness, because that's what fingers were made for and I couldn't poke through her; I couldn't melt her like butter with body heat and lick her from my hands. Her taste sour and sharp, sneering, as she dismissed me.
Kathryn Trattner writes from the middle of the United States supported by three cats, two kids, and one husband. Her fiction can be found at Wyvern Lit, Minotaur Lit, and Dragon Poet Review. Find her @k_trattner.
