Midnight in Burling

This is a piece of flash-fiction I got published in The Grinnell Review this week. It’s sorta fitting that it came out during finals week.

I’m on the top floor of the library, reading something I can’t understand.

The library is empty and dark. The glare from my lamp turns the window in front of me into a mirror. Every so often, when I don’t think I can take another five syllable word, I look up for a moment and wish I had less acne. 

I hear a train whistle squealing somewhere off in the cornfields outside of town.

A kid broke his leg last year trying to jump on an empty boxcar during finals season. He’d planned to run away and live like some vagrant in the 1930s. I used to wonder how someone that dumb could get accepted into this college. Now I sort of see where he was coming from.

I look up at my reflection again. Maybe I’d have less acne if I worried less. That’s not happening any time soon, though, so I just resolve to get some acne cream tomorrow.

There’s that train whistle again, softer and almost sweet. It sounds like it’s coming from inside the library, hiding somewhere back in the shelves.

“But what of misnorziac if flimpner ishnith tempremium albanakme?” This passage seems confusing enough to be important, so I try highlighting it, but the marker blurs the words into a stretch of faint grey ink. I try highlight it again and the words disappear.

Now the train whistle sounds like it’s coming right over my shoulder. It’s just one long note, high and pure, like a handbell. 

The sound rises, and my lamp flashes off. I look through the window and see ethereal white lights, like stars, but brighter and closer, blinking on and off as they drift in and out of a swirling black nebula. The ground is nowhere in sight

It only lasts a moment, then the light flickers back on and I’m staring at my own ugly, awestruck face again. The whistle more glorious than I can comprehend, and it seems to be coming from somewhere inside me.

I click off my lamp and feel myself drawn into the intermingling light and darkness. There is no window, there is no me. I am part of the cloud, just another point of light, floating in perfect serenity.

I can almost feel my cheek pressed against the paper, almost taste the sour drool that soaks out the pretentious words no one understands. I don’t care. I am part of the night sky, trapped like a fly in amber, and I couldn’t be happier.