Winning entries for the short story competition by Melissa Fischer, the entries are Peppermint Bloom and Coffee.Word.Angel

Coffee.Word.Angel

Coffee.  It was the first thing I ever asked for.  My first memory.  I was two.

My mother used to have a mug fixed to her hand.

Everywhere, all the time, she’d be sipping the black verve.

It kept her grounded, she’d said, kept her going.

She let me taste it once.

I had reached my tiny hands toward her ceramic handle and she gave.

Mummy liked it.  I would like it too.

I sipped with the clumsy cherub lips of a tot, screwed my face as the liquid stung.

It blistered my tongue with fire and bitterness.  I hadn’t been prepared.

I lashed my fist and everything shattered into a thousand oozing shards.

Burning and screaming and crying.

I had just wanted to be like Mummy.

My mother had tears in her eyes, when I finally looked up at her, when silence fell.

Her gravity was gone, she’d said.  I’d taken it from her.  But she still had enough to go.

She cuffed my head on her way out the door.

How can one with no gravity be held down?

**** **** **** ****

I was fourteen when I spoke my first word.  I hadn’t had the inclination to talk before then.

What was there to say?

Coffee.

I had ordered from my bicycle at a drive-thru window.  My voice cracked on the syllables.

The attendant balked at my mode of transport, but I placed my nickels on the shelf anyway.

I had reached my middling hands toward the Styrofoam cup and she gave.

My mum had liked it.  I would try to like it too.

Something had to keep me anchored.

I rode my bicycle to the quarry.  The lidded cup had swayed precariously between my calloused fingertips.

Steam escaped the sipper and moistened my eyes.  I refused to look at it.

I had it reasonably balanced on my handlebars; I was in control.  My wheels weren’t.

My concentration had been elsewhere when rim collided with rock.

Crashing and smashing and burning.

I had just wanted to have a go.

My flesh combusted with the stygian ichor.  The swelter thawed sensation.

It was the first time I’d ever felt warmth.

**** **** **** ****

I met an angel once.  I was thirty.  She stumbled down a staired stoop into my shoulder.

The cup-caddy she’d been carrying had taken flight. Her heel had stuck on a crack in the concrete.

I caught her eyes in a sideways glance before the collision.

My world crawled.

It took minutes for her hand to clutch at the lapel of my coat to catch her fall.

It took an hour for a gasp to escape her lips.

I had reached my sizeable hands for her waist and caught her in a dip.

It took an eternity for our gazes to unlock.

The cup-caddy plummeted with a splash of scorching disruption.

Drenching and burning and baring.

Coffee had seared the moment closed.

The world righted its momentum; a sudden weight planted in my boots.

I had been floating too long.  The heaviness jarred.

The angel sputtered pain and apologies.  A peace offering, she’d said, the coffee was.

Her father had been devoted to the perk till doomsday.

It would have smoothed a rough patch, choking down the concoction in his company.

She’d have given it a go.  For him.

I plucked the cups from the gutter, examined the vessels for the first time.

Empty.

Weak.

Insubstantial.

The pull had dissipated.

My mother had been hooked.  I never would.

I tossed the hosts back to their new home.  The waste welcomed them.

They belong there, I’d said.

The angel smiled.

The ground held.