Outside, it’s raining flaming sleeping bags. Ashes fizzling everywhere. It’s not like sleet or snow — they thump when they hit the ground. They hiss. We quiver under the cherrywood bar, our necks craned to the 98” Samsung blaring the emergency warning, 1050 Hz blasting our ears. Five minutes to evacuate! repeated on the screen in cloud-white Luxi Mono Bold text floating on sky blue. Did some consultant plan that? So soothing. Four minutes! Guinness, TV, blue, white — are we not already in heaven? Three minutes! Two! One! We rise in slow motion to the garbled voice, call for another round.
Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Tiny Molecules, The Disappointed Housewife, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, Mslexia, The Dribble Drabble Review, 100 word story, The Citron Review, Atlas and Alice, trampset, jmww, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.
