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.

flicker into view. The wind howled, rain hammered the windows with a relentless drone,

memories crashed over

and gray, rain threatening at

her to run to the corner store for a bottle of soy sauce,

out candy, even choosing a piece of cake she knew her mom

bag of groceries, when she reached

was a sickening

When she finally looked,

mom's gentle eyes stared wide and unseeing, blood spreading from

in dark,

mouth, and ears. Her skin was as white

a woman

surrounded

to the ground. She pushed through the

to call out, to scream

lips parted, but no sound

the thunder and

home, locked Jessica alone in their apartment, and followed

In the darkness, the image of her mother's broken body played on a

wind and rolling thunder outside never stopped, battering

never understood why her

fiber in her body, the time

she had come home earlier,

her teeth, hands shaking as she pulled out

was blinding in the

Her lips trembled.

crash of thunder nearly made her drop the