Chelsea Stickle
After Dinner Activity
Hugh sous chef’d in a restaurant so when they roast chicken, he slides the knife behind the wishbone and pops it out in a fluid motion Jane finds deeply attractive. She displays them against the window over the back door. They count their time together in wishbones glowing in the Sunday afternoon sun. Five, ten, fifteen. It’s summer now, and the gnats love landing on them to search for tasty morsels.
“Why do you keep them?” Hugh asks one night as he breaks down the chicken.
Jane scrubs the latest wishbone delicately like it’s their child’s first bath. “If you make a wish and snap it, you know immediately if you’re geting what you want. With other good luck totems, you just hope it works.”
He hmms, and says, “But it could go wrong.”
On tiptoe Jane tilts the newest wishbone against the others crowding the space. “But you know, and that’s something.”
Hugh stops moving the knife. “Want to try something?”
Sitting across from each other, they grip one side of the wishbone. Connected only via bone, they stare into each other’s eyes. Her, gently. Him, competitively. “Do you know what you want?” she asks.
He smirks. “I do.
Jane wishes for their happiness, and assumes Hugh is wishing for something similar. Hugh wishes for a kayak.
“Ready?” She nods. “Go!”
Hugh’s eagerness made her think he was going to yank it. But he does almost nothing, keeping his thumb and pointer clutched at the base of the v. There’s a twisted tension between them that Jane doesn’t understand. Neither of them is exerting enough force to break the wishbone. Hugh has hand and arm muscles that Jane isn’t even conscious of. He’s stood over a pot of cream and sugar, constantly stirring for an hour or more. He is purposefully waiting for her to make a move, and he can outwait her. Tentatively Jane pulls, and her side breaks off: tiny and thin, little more than a bony toothpick.
“Yes! Yes!” Hugh cheers and hoists the bigger half into the air like it’s the Stanley Cup. In his merriment there is no consideration for Jane. She misses the Hugh that walks on the road-side of the sidewalk, the Hugh who picks the peppers out of her salad if the restaurant forgets, the Hugh who places a pillow under her ass during sex. This Hugh she does not know.
The Disappearance
Without warning the words disappeared between them. For months they had been waning. Nights busy with lowlight grunts and sighs. They hadn’t complained. In the mornings they’d hmm’d to bring attention to a stray bowl, a dropped wallet. Over dinner she had a question that couldn’t be posed in a hmm or a lingering kiss. She wanted to know what they were doing, where they were going. Her mouth opened. A broaching breath as the words danced in her head. Her lips could move, her tongue could follow but words didn’t sound. She frowned, cleared her throat, sipped water. Nothing. He frowned and opened his mouth to ask what was going on. But nothing. Nothing came out of his mouth. He shrugged and held her hand. He didn’t mind. His love language was touch. But she was adrift in an ocean she didn’t remember wading into. Treading water with no land or boat in sight. Tired from all the mindless swimming she’d already done to stay afloat this far. Her legs were lead, her arms copper. Her gears were rusting, slowing, breaking down. He drank her in but didn’t notice the metallic taste in his mouth. That too he’d become accustomed to.
Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Her stories appear in Passages North, Fractured Lit, Identity Theory, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. Her micros have been selected for Best Microfiction 2021 and 2025, the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2022 and the Wigleaf Longlist in 2023. She lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and a forest of houseplants. Learn more at chelseastickle.com.
