Featured Fiction ~ SS 2018
The specter of a cold laugh surfaced in her thoughts and she shuddered.
She pressed herself into the sofa, one frail, limp arm dangling on the floor near a half-
emptied bottle of whisky. The tiny dots of light across the face of her stereo struck out bitterly against the
darkness of her apartment.
She fingered the cordless phone, tempting herself to replay all of his voice mail messages. She had
heard them dozens of times.
She had heard his poetic ramblings, his words of kindness, his motivational speeches, his dreams,
his desires, his promises, his vows.
She had listened to him –- somewhat absently –- as his voice grew more distant, as his visions
became less romantic, as his proposals grew less emphatic.
She had heard his teary regrets, his final cynicism, and his cold laughter.
Now, she heard his silence. It swept through the dead phone line and flooded the room as she
lapsed into and out of consciousness. It hovered over the sofa as she drifted amidst her multiple
personalities. It coiled about the throat of the stuffed bear he gave her for her birthday, it
smothered the rotting flowers on the table, and it brought the bottle of whisky up to
her lips one last time.
For some, silence is golden; for some, silence is terminal.
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Lee Clark Zumpe, an entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers, earned his bachelor’s in English at the University of South Florida. He began writing poetry and fiction in the early 1990s. His work has regularly appeared in a variety of literary journals and genre magazines over the last two decades. Publication credits include Tiferet, Zillah, The Ugly Tree, Modern Drunkard Magazine, Red Owl, Jones Av., Main Street Rag, Space & Time, Mythic Delirium and Weird Tales.
Image by Debbie Berk