Goodbye, Mr. Regret

Timothy stared at the message on his phone, his dark eyes fixed on the glowing

screen for a long while.

[Do you like it?]

He typed a reply.

[Yeah, just like Happy and Lucky.]

He pressed his lips together, thinking.

If Sheila liked them, there was no harm in giving her one too.

There were twenty-two left.

He bought them all, though he only intended to keep one.

The rest, he'd throw away.

It was just an excuse to set one aside for Sheila.

[If you like it, keep it.]

Capital City.

Jessica was too afraid to sleep. She huddled in the corner of the hotel room, knees pulled to her chest, shivering so hard her fingernails nearly broke the skin of her palms.

Every clap of thunder struck like a hammer against her heart.

across the sky did the world briefly flicker into view. The wind howled, rain hammered the windows with a relentless drone, and Jessica felt

memories crashed over

and gray, rain threatening at

had handed her a twenty, told her to run to the corner store for a bottle of

candy, even choosing a

of groceries, when she reached the foot of

a

she finally looked, she saw it was

mom's gentle eyes stared wide and unseeing, blood

head in dark, snaking

from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Her skin

that a woman

surrounded

crashed to the ground. She pushed through

to

but no sound

thunder

in their apartment, and followed the ambulance to

lights were out. In the darkness, the image of her mother's broken

thunder outside never stopped, battering her

never understood why her mother

every fiber in her body, the time

she had come home earlier, maybe her mother wouldn't

gritted her teeth, hands shaking as she pulled out

of the screen was blinding in the pitch-black

Her lips trembled.

of thunder nearly made her drop the