Twenty-three Small Disasters

She had an affection for other people's children. Probably because she had none of her own. The way their eyes lit up with wonder, the way they smiled and laughed in that blind way that signifies the world hasn't touched them enough to change the conduct of their happiness. She liked the smell of licorice and milk on their breath. Sometimes she wanted to take them between her fingers and nibble them like gingerbread.

On the playground, during recess, she talks to the girl named Millie. "It is the best name in the world because no one else has it," Millie says. Millie hates her real name—Mildred—but she doesn't mind Millie. It makes her unique. They have talked about uniqueness before and Millie agrees that being special is important. "My mother says I'm special all the time," says Millie.

"Your mother is right," she agrees. "But recess is almost over. You should go play with the others."

She has a whistle to blow if there is trouble. There never is. She only blows it to call the kids in at the end of the period. Autumn she doesn't mind, it's winter that stirs her. The colder it gets, the colder the whistle grows. Once she put it in her mouth and it stuck to her lips. Now she holds it in her hand to warm it first.

There was a time when she could have had children with a man she lived with, made love to, and loved most of the time. He wanted children and a house and that dream. "You know," he said, "the one they're always talking about." She knew the dream, she had felt it pressing on her from outside her body, like a vise.

"I know that dream," she told him. "Someone keeps trying to put it in me."

He had left a few days after that conversation. In a letter, he wrote, "I didn't know I was forcing you into anything. I'm sorry."

But she hadn't meant him. She didn't know who she meant.

The children fly through the soccer field, the ball lifts above their heads with their smart kicks. Two boys dangle upside down from the jungle gym.

Two girls sway in a desultory manner on the swings. The whistle is in her hand, warming. The hands of her watch keep moving. It is time to go in. Millie is laughing with two girls on the concrete steps. She looks at her watch and rubs the whistle. Just a little bit longer, she thinks. Surely. Surely a few more minutes won't hurt.

Christopher Barzak recently returned to the U.S. after living abroad in Japan for the past two years. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies such as The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Nerve, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Trampoline, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Salon Fantastique. His first novel, One for Sorrow, is forthcoming from Bantam Dell Books.

More about Christopher at http://christopherbarzak.wordpress.com