The Centifictionist

“Where’s Mum?” I ask Dad.

“She’s gone,” he says, slamming pots onto the draining board, water sloshing over the sides of the bowl.

“Gone where?”

“Just gone; disappeared, vanished, evaporated. She isn’t here anymore.” He flings up his hands, scattering rainbow bubbles onto the lino.

“Evaporated?”

“Yes, like the milk.”

“The milk?”

“Yes, the milk. I never did understand what that was. How it got that strange color.” Dad scrubs at a lipstick mark on the rim of a mug.

“But she’s left her coat in the hallway.”

“She has other coats.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No son, neither do I.”

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Rebecca Field lives and writes in Derbyshire, UK. She has work in several print anthologies and has been published online by Reflex Press, The Phare, Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, Milk Candy Review, and Ellipsis Zine, among others. Tweets at @RebeccaFwrites.