SOMETHING ELEMENTAL — ALYSSA JORDAN
/Not an hour after they gave her the news, Jules took home a stranger from her favorite bar. The mirror above her bed gave her an excellent view, a generous offering; she stared at her reflection while he undressed her, and again when he pressed their bodies together, forcing hipbones to stomach, shoulders to neck.
When he climbed on top of her, she tried not to think about gloved hands or tight smiles.
Jules stroked his back with heavy, bloodless fingers. Her hands traced the baby fat on his sides, the dimples in his back. A tattoo bisected the skin on his shoulder blade like the singed remains of a wing. She carefully sunk her nails into the dark, inky swirls.
What would it be like, she wondered, to be fucked by an angel?
Maybe it would absolve every flaw in her body. Maybe it would flatten the puckered slopes that formed her cesarean scar. Maybe it would shrink the lump in her breast, tear it down cell by cell, fixing things she hadn’t even known were broken.
Brimming with grace must make you heavy, Jules thought, heavy and monumental, like the tectonic plates that shifted underneath their feet, giving rise to mountains and volcanoes and oceanic trenches. She saw herself kneeling at the bottom of the ocean, mind and body bent from the steady pulse of life.
When Jules ran a hand down the man’s heaving back, she pretended to feel the flutter of wings.
Alyssa Jordan is a freelance writer in California. Her work has appeared in publications like Every Day Fiction, Reflex Fiction, and 100 Word Story. Her work can also be found in two print anthologies, The Lobsters Run Free: Bath Flash Fiction Volume Two and Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. Currently, she is an Associate Editor at Tethered by Letters and the 1888 Center. Follow her on Twitter @ajordan901.
