Worthing Flash

She plunges her paintbrush into the jar of turpentine and shakes the sleeping dog’s leash at her. Lamia wakes and scrambles to her feet. Want to go for a walk? Susan says. It is 2 a.m. and this is their routine since Susan’s brother left and never came back. Try not to let her miss me too much, he’d said as he handed the dog over. But she did. One night Susan was going through her old voice mails and the dog heard her master’s voice. She jumped up whimpering and knocked the machine out of Susan’s hands in an effort to free her master from it, in the process erasing his message. Susan moved into his house mostly for the dog’s sake, Too much change was no better for dogs than children, and Lamia bonded hard with Susan. Followed her everywhere. After a night of painting, Susan was relaxed enough to take the dog out. It was almost an apology for inverting Lamia’s schedule and synching it with her own, but Susan was a night owl. She needed the simmering down of the day’s noise to access...

 Hind and Stephen King My sister was a precocious reader, and our mother would let her read Stephen King novels at age 10. One night, when my sister had nightmares about Firestarter. Mom ripped her beloved book in half and threw it in the garbage as if her reaction was sinful. Mom was teaching Hind that she was to blame for fear, that emotion was shame and because Firestarter created an emotion, it should be destroyed and shoved into a trashcan and buried under coffee grounds and lettuce that had gone bad three days earlier along with the evil weakness that was her feelings. by  Salwa Emerson Writer/Editor/Owner Emerson Ink LLC Writing Services for the Discerning Author