HE WOULD BURY THE BODIES FOR HER, careful to sweep out all of the soil in the crevices of her trunk. And she would always be his alibi, lying so quickly even she believed it. And she would look the other way when he handed her the money. He would stay faithful to her, would keep his belt firmly tightened, would avoid college campuses and nail salons. And she would tie her hair in that bun he loved, and make her voice like trembling ash. And he would watch old films with her, Bergie and McCall, and they’d pretend that he was a different kind of criminal. She would invent alias for him, stringing together names, Kent Longfellow, Maurice Flowers, and Damien Cornflower; threatening, but with a musicality she used to foster in the mirror while she curled her hair, waiting for him to take her out to dinner, pouting only to her own image, knowing it was another night they wouldn’t talk about specifics. He showed her a picture once, (blood snaking down a drain) and she had cried, and she had asked him for a justification, one she could understand, but all he’d say was it was business, and that was always the world between them, and she would always want him to pop that bubble, have him catch her in his arms. He’d kiss her brow and she’d forget for just a second, start to name her own necessities in her head. A list only for her. One day, he said, he wouldn’t return, and she promised she’d spill the paint on the driveway, the pint blood-red, soaking into the cement, and a vow to never move on, but that was her last alibi, her last lie, until he was nothing more than a credit in an old movie, the inky shadows strobing her to sleep. •




Tommy Dean is an associate literary agent with Rosecliff Literary, the author of two flash fiction chapbooks and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He is the Editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. His writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2022, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere. He has taught writing workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop, The Writers Center, and The Writers Workshop.

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