E. B. Bullet

“The Ache of Newly Fallen Snow” by E. B. Bullet

I’m on a bench outside of my favorite donut shop, except I can’t say for sure it’s my favorite anymore, because a few hours ago Milo broke up with me inside of it. The air is crisp—it moves quickly, like the lashes of an iced whip against my throat, my nostrils, the gloss of my puffy eyes. The cold is a scythe, frigid, slicing across my flesh so that I feel raw and bloody. I rub my finger against my nose, sniffling. It burns, in a sharp sort of way, like when you hold an ice cube for too long and it begins to sting. The snow stopped a w...

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“Fostering Hatred in Innocent Creatures ” by E. B. Bullet

I followed the man for years, much as my frail wings could carry me. I wasn’t built for such extensive travel, but he moved across the land often; I imagined he felt it too risky to remain in one place too long, lest his sins pile up over his back, crushing him. I’d seen the vile nature of his heart, watched it grow and fester into something that chilled me. Even as a child, it churned there, bubbling a cruelty that no one seemed to recognize. But I had seen it, and I swore to inflict a suffering as great as the one he’d imparted upon me. St...

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“Lady Beetles” by E. B. Bullet

Submitted to Contest #174

Goodbye was a thick syrup that gurgled near the back of the throat, coating fleshy walls with a dense, guttural flavor that would not let go. The taste of it has tipped my tongue for the past twelve years since I left the palace. I pursued something grander than a royal enclosure could offer, though most figured the daughter of a lord could want for nothing else, and what was there to seek out in the world anyway? For me, it was the insects.   I heard it time and again, the chastising tongues that flicked and wagged, unrelenting o...

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“Meet Me Once Your Legs Grow” by E. B. Bullet

A little ghost called to me everyday, a whisper so loud that it danced all the way down, caressing, from the branches of the alligator tree in the upper edges of the everglades. I knew the voice, and it was important that I go see him. The other frogs called me a fool, their throats stretched with laughter anytime I mentioned it. Frogs didn’t go on journeys, we were perfectly safe near the pond; no normal frog would ever even think to go up that far, but then, I was no normal frog. I was in love with an old ghost. It's what we call tadp...

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“How to Love a Married Woman” by E. B. Bullet

Submitted to Contest #136

My marriage was a hastily drawn picture, looked upon as the work of madwomen who painted in unthinking urgency. For me however, it felt less a matter of haphazard color splotches and more so that the strokes were simply confident, and unrestrained. We were linework without preceding sketch. My wife was an amalgamation of thoughts untethered, beautifully complicated and unfinished from the frayed ends of her faded platinum hair, down to the tips of her chipped nail polish. Her first name was the same as my middle, which always seemed like ...

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“Just Me” by E. B. Bullet

Submitted to Contest #102

As a child, I wasn’t sure what constituted a good kid. I kept to myself in gentle hobbies of coloring and reading, keeping to mild mannered behavior. I was not a bad kid, but calling me a good one seemed too far a stretch, as though it weren’t an earned title. Most adults simply thought me shy, a bit too quiet for a growing boy. I thought them right. It seemed to me that adults had the sense of it all, and I’d gathered in my limited mind that my mother was the smartest lady to walk the planet. A woman from Mexico emigrated to America with a ...

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“Women Like Kendra” by E. B. Bullet

Submitted to Contest #98

 Kendra Miller lived in Glitters, Texas up until her abrupt departure on a scorching July 14th afternoon. The mosquitos sizzled amidst the heat, smashed against the hot metal of her speeding Chevy Silverado, bound for anywhere past simplicity. Kendra lived in Glitters, and she could not go backPeople in the town were of simple patchwork, intertwined in ordinary ways like a machination with outlined, uncontested purpose. They swallowed steak and potatoes, bathed in buttered bliss and the smell of the South, a signature scent of piet...

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“The Fragility of Moonlit Skin” by E. B. Bullet

Submitted to Contest #92

My parents have long said that I am in sisterhood with the moon, luminescing against the crisp, charred black of the night-fallen sky. My entire family is wrapped in cooked skin tones, like colors of the fertile earth, painted from their temples to the very tips of their toes in patches of brown; but my flesh lives a distinct life—a shivering white like the stark sheets of snow I have seen in picture books. It ends not with my skin. The porcelain hue seeps into the follicles of my coiled hair, slithering from my scalp to the space of my lash...

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“They Sang in the Water” by E. B. Bullet

Submitted to Contest #90

I did not care much for pretzels. Chips did not come up in craving, nor did crackers, or most processed meats slathered in sodium, for that matter. My mind popped in the recollection of such flavors, dripping the memory of them onto my writhing tongue if I let my thoughts wander. I was never one for salt, but my childhood brimmed with memories of Podrezovo beach, and so salt lingered. The taste I could not stand, but the smell I cherished more than anything in the world. Liquid sodium teemed with a life that the sea breeze carried in it...

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“In Truth” by E. B. Bullet

Submitted to Contest #88

From a young age, Tobias knew very well the power of language. His mother had shown him carefully with every storybook she pulled from their well-worn shelves, every sentence she weaved—her word placement endlessly methodical. They would sit by the lake, enwrapped by woody pine near the village, and she would say to him that one’s voice was a magic.“To speak is to bend the world to your will,” she would say. To Tobias, powerless and meek at the peak of age five, this was everything. Often was he witness to the way his mother’s words carried ...

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