Missing In Action

A short-short story I wrote for my fiction class, ages ago.

Missing In Action

She cut her heart out in the morning beside the kitchen sink. It was the only sensible thing to do. Afterwards she lit a cigarette and smoked it standing up, and the grey ashes fell onto the grey linoleum floor without a sound. She flicked the butt into the crowded sink and it hissed.

Once upon a time the floor was white and the dishes got washed twice a day and she didn’t smoke because of the children.

Once upon a time, before Jim got shipped overseas and the phone calls stopped coming and MIA turned out to mean something. After that she stopped noticing colours, and the dishes didn’t matter so much, and the kids smoked pot and locked their doors to keep the smell inside.

Last night’s coffee catches like sand in her throat. All the sugar from the cracked tin on the counter doesn’t help, and the milk has gone sour, so she drinks it black and bitter and cold, and the caffeine makes her shiver.

Six steps from the kitchen to the living room. Today her feet drag and make it seven, and her trailing toe snags on the unravelled edge of carpet.

Three more steps to the bathroom cabinet with the little bottle full of nothing-matters.

She cut her heart out in the morning beside the kitchen sink because the dishes weren’t done and she didn’t care. She cut her heart out in the grey morning beside the dirty dishes because last night’s coffee choked her and there was no sugar left in the world.

She cut her heart out because it was broken anyway.

Afterwards she smoked a cigarette and went on with her life – what was left of it – and nobody noticed the difference.