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[charli-txt]

"$4.99!" the tv cheered. I sat across from it, on the couch, staring absently at the screen. I could hear the kettle whistling and the pot bubbling and my mom chopping vegetables in the next room. Its 5pm, almost time for dinner.

The ad on the tv ends, and the screen switches back to the loud action-packed movie previously. The chopping stops, and mom walked into the living room, glancing at me before taking the remote from the coffee table between the couch and the tv. She lowers the volume. Is she mad at me?

She looks back at me. "Didnt i tell you to sweep the floor?" Ah, I forgot.

"Sorry," i mutter, getting up from the couch to get the broom from the closet under the staircase, cursing myself for forgetting the task she gave me. She returns to the kitchen, and the sound of vegetables being chopped continue. I sweep the floor, listening to the soft dialogue from the tv.

I go into the kitchen, broom in hand. I pass by mom, holding my breath, chest heavy for whatever reason. Shes facing away from me. She puts the knife down and lifts the chopping board, tilting it to the pot on the stove to drop the diced ingredients in.

I quickly start sweeping from one side of the kitchen to the other, and leave as soon as possible, sighing.

I toss the broom into the closet when i hear dad reversing into the driveway outside. Its easier to leave like that--he gets mad at mom when she parks in the lot normally. It seems like everything she does is wrong.

I turn off the tv and hurry upstairs, hearing the car door opening.

[charli-txt]

Story // Her Life After and Before the Sea

~3100 words // ~15 min read (full)

Meera balances a wicker basket full of fish and prawns on her head as she rings the doorbell of the second-floor flat. Three times a week, she carries the freshly dead marine life on her head, stops at the spots her mother-in-law told her to stop at, and sells at the rate her mother-in-law told her to sell at.

It is her final round of the year because it's her third trimester of pregnancy now, and more significantly, because her mother-in-law told her to stop making her rounds.

Preet Apartments is a small, old building, only five floors tall. Four of those floors house rabid seafood lovers, so it’s not a spot Meera can afford to miss or lose out to the competition. Mrs Jadhav, the middle-aged housewife on the second floor, calls Meera every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday to ask for the latest stock and rates.

Her door swings open now and with smileless affection, Mrs Jadhav lists her order out: mackerel, bombayduck, and prawns - the small kind, not the big kind. She can't afford the big kind right now, but her husband will be back from Lucknow next week, and then she'll want the big ones, the ‘tiger’ prawns.

"I won't be there next week," Meera explains. "The months are passing, you see."

"So, she finally got you to stop, did she? I hope you get to enjoy the free time."

Meera shrugs, pushing aside the fish in her open basket and placing her small chopping board in the gap that’s created. "Free time is for those who know how to enjoy it. People like me have to keep working or we lose our minds."

She slides one of the mackerels onto the chopping board and with a moist, dark knife, slits its underside.

"You don't have to worry about that," Mrs Jadhav laughs. "When I was going to have Atul, I was absolutely bored out of my mind. Then when he turned up, I started wishing that all I had to worry about was a nine-to-five like my husband."

Meera offers a smile, wiping her brow of sweat and then cutting the mackerel's throat.

"It's a different kind of hard work," she says, "but maybe that will get me some sound sleep, at least. Have you seen my eyes? They're turning into tomatoes."

"What's the matter? Are you staying up too late?"

"No." Meera pulls the entrails and gills out, holding the mackerel's jaw up like she's trying to comb a child's hair. "I've been having these strange thoughts lately. I don't know what to call them. Maybe it’s something a demon’s putting them in my head."

"What kind of thoughts?"

"They're just stupid thoughts." Meera puts the knife aside and lifts the cleaver.

"Like?"

Meera puts the cleaver down and stares at the gutted fish. "I sometimes think about an underwater market full of fish, but they sell humans. Some humans alive, some dead, all chopped up and then sold to fish. It’s nonsense, but it feels more real than a dream. More real than real, in fact. I feel like I'm there."

Meera lifts the cleaver back up.

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[charli-txt]

The hand in the fuel gauge pointed impatiently at the empty sign. Haruhara had been traveling the desert for 2 weeks, and supplies was running short.

The ratty car slowly sputtered to a stop. "Shit."

Ah, well, she knew she would have to travel by foot eventually.

But she wished it didn't happen so soon. She took her favorite pink lighter and a cigarette and slid out of the drivers seat, black boots digging into the red sand. Her lighter igniting after a couple of clicks, Haru took a long drag from her cigar and let a stream of smoke out between her lips float into the darkening sky.

Haruhara watched the sun against the brutal red sky as it was half-sunken in the blood colored sand. Behind her, stars had started rising from the ground.

Haruhara was expecting to die soon.

This is how she saw it: sitting by a tiny campfire which she made out of a pile of cigarettes, flames reaching for the night sky from which they came, she'd swing a bottle of wine in the air madly, yelling to nobody about calitalism and climate change and how she hadnt been able to watch the last episode of her favorite show because I guess the end of the world just couldnt wait one more day!

And when she was finally sick of it all she'd take the last swig of her wine bottle and pass out in the earth's embrace never to wake up again.

"Tsk." Whatever, if she's gonna die then death has to catch her first. Haruhara threw her cigar into the sand and grinded it under the heel of her boot. Packing everything she could fit into a bag, she started walking.