The couch was trying to digest him, slowly eroding him into the leather’s forest green. The cushions were what he imagined whale skin to feel like—deflating whale skin—and he giggled as it slipped against his skin. He giggled at the crowd of clones with their torn flannel and bare feet, clutching coffee mugs and cameras. He giggled at the music strumming somewhere in the house, at the wooden floor creaking beneath his oxfords, the phallic candlesticks erect in the tarnished chandelier, the way he kept accidentally making eye-contact with himself through a wall of scratched mirrors. Nothing in the world was as metal as the beer can in his hand, nothing as bumpy as the corduroy jacket draped over his knee. The back of his PBR told him a joke but he missed the punch line. A leaf had been caught in his hair since Wednesday.
Heather Allen was born in Holt, Michigan, but is currently living in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has been previously published in The Central Review and The Blue Route.