These flash fictions by Eirik Gumeny are miniature excavations of us, our times, our foibles and dreams.

She slices open her belly and spills herself out over the kitchen table, fingers falling loose around the supper-caked knife. Her knees buckle. She places her hand upon a chair for support, listens to the patter of blood diving for the linoleum. Slowly, she pulls herself up and grips the knife again. A short breath and she begins. Poking and prodding at the viscera with the cold detachment of science, searching and scouring through the bits of herself, looking for a collapsed star, the black hole that forms every time she doubts, worries, thinks, about yesterday, tomorrow, now.

 

Rachel has had the dream nearly a dozen times now, twice even before she found out she was pregnant. In the four weeks since it’s become unbearable. What used to be slightly unsettling now brought her to tears at three in the morning.

 

~ excerpt from Inside Out