by Melanie Maggard

Since they’ve turned the abandoned K-mart into a laser tag, there’s nothing else that makes Margot happy. After our three boys are packed up and delivered to school, with carrot sticks they won’t eat and apple slices that will brown in the cave of their lunch boxes, long after the edges of sandwiches are tossed in the trash, creamy cereal milk drying in puddles on the kitchen countertops, she’ll be hiding behind wooden crates, heart pounding, sweat dripping down the middle of her shoulder blades where I used to kiss when we were new and fresh with each other. At night, with the lights off, she’ll tell me how she dreams of laser light piercing her enemies as she jumps and flips and hides from everyone. She’s a ghost in the room, someone to look out for. There’s purpose to her evaporation into the shadows. While she’s telling me her desires I drift off, her words weaving their way into my brain until I see the crisscrossing of laser beams against a backdrop of smoke, my wife sitting cross-legged on the floor with her arms outstretched to the sky, her body filling with a light so bright I can no longer look at her, it hurts too much. Then, one afternoon I come home and can’t find her. I search the house, call her name, check her car in the drive, see her purse and coat hanging in the hall. She must be here. We boys must find her. We search for hours, peeking into closets and closed rooms, behind shower curtains and open doors, under beds and couches, until we find her, sitting at the kitchen table, tears streaming down her face as she tells us she’d been there all along.

Melanie Maggard is a flash and poetic prose writer who loves dribbles and drabbles. She has published in Cotton Xenomorph, Ghost Parachute, X-R-A-Y Magazine, Peatsmoke Journal, The Mackinaw, The Dribble Drabble Review, Five Minute Lit, and others. She can be found online at melaniemaggard.com and @WriterMMaggard.