Once, my father drove from New Jersey to California by siphoning gas from strangers’ cars, then sent his van off the Pacific Coast Highway by laying a brick on the accelerator. His mother almost died ...

how starlings bathe in the plastic gutter over my bedroom’s bay window, fountaining out water in big dollops and how their claws go scrabble scrabble where the gutter dips above a corner and how they bathe to get rid of mites while having lots of fun enjoying their cold baths and how I used to love soaking in a hot bath and how wild starlings typically live two to five years although a 22-year-old wild starling was found in Denmark and how my typical lifespan is/was 58 and how starlings have starry plumage and rainbowy neck feathers and how I once had pretty hair and how if I open my window the starlings take fright and how my body keeps trying to eject me the way birds don’t trust humans no doubt for good reason and how starlings use flocking and communal roosting to increase their survival rate and how I’ve lost touch with friends and how my body was a friend and we had many quarrels but things always turned out all right until they stopped turning out all right and how starlings use migration to increase their survival rate and how I should try going on holiday and how if I don’t eat anything for 24 hours maybe I could take a dip in slightly warmer than lukewarm water without sparking a flare-up and how cold baths are recommended but you need wings   --- Frances Gapper’s work has been published in four Best Microfiction anthologies and lit mags including trampset, Splonk, Southword, Wigleaf, New Flash Fiction Review, the Citron Review, Forge, Atlas and Alice, 100-Word Story, Literary Namjooning and Trash Cat. She lives in the UK’s Black Country region.  

how starlings bathe in the plastic gutter over my bedroom’s bay window, fountaining out water in big dollops and how their claws go scrabble scrabble where the gutter dips above a corner and how they bathe to get rid of mites while having lots of fun enjoying their cold baths and how I used to love soaking in a hot bath and how wild starlings typically live two to five years although a 22-year-old wild starling was found in Denmark and how my typical lifespan is/was 58 and how starlings have starry plumage and rainbowy neck feathers and how I once had pretty hair and how if I open my window the starlings take fright and how my body keeps trying to eject me the way birds don’t trust humans no doubt for good reason and how starlings use flocking and communal roosting to increase their survival rate and how I’ve lost touch with friends and how my body was a friend and we had many quarrels but things always turned out all right until they stopped turning out all right and how starlings use migration to increase their survival rate and how I should try going on holiday and how if I don’t eat anything for 24 hours maybe I could take a dip in slightly warmer than lukewarm water without sparking a flare-up and how cold baths are recommended but you need wings   --- Frances Gapper’s work has been published in four Best Microfiction anthologies and lit mags including trampset, Splonk, Southword, Wigleaf, New Flash Fiction Review, the Citron Review, Forge, Atlas and Alice, 100-Word Story, Literary Namjooning and Trash Cat. She lives in the UK’s Black Country region.  

The first unblinking baby is an anomaly. Facial nerve palsy, the doctors speculate, offering lubricating eye drops, soft tape for sleep. Soon all babies are born unblinking, their dark eyes gazing into their mother’s face, faces of doctors, families, neighbors. Our faces. Babies are supposed to be cute. But these wide eyes that never close, like snakes or sharks. We are glass. Our babies see every withered promise, every muddy heart. We scrutinize old pictures of sleeping babies, those half-moons of closed lids, thick dark lashes brushing their orbicularis oculi muscle. We watch old videos of awake babies: splashing and babbling and blinking in the tub; licking plates of mashed squash, orange goo on their blinking lashes; wailing into a kitten stuffie, blinking tears into its fur. We cradle babydolls that kick their chubby legs, that coo and laugh and cry. That blink spontaneously.  They are voiceless, our babies. No whimpers, cries, or giggles, just those huge dark eyes, peering at us. Their rare smiles luminous as a snow moon rising over Denali Peak. Congressional meetings, Supreme Court hearings, Presidential briefings: the babies are lined up in baby rockers, and their stares hold the future, our yesterdays trailing behind like a chain of rusty nails.    --- Claudia Monpere’s flash appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, Split Lip, Craft, and elsewhere. She won the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize from New Flash Fiction Review, Genre Flash Fiction Prize from Uncharted Magazine, and 2023 Smokelong workshop prize. She has work in Best Small Fictions 2024, forthcoming in Best Microfictions 2025.

how starlings bathe in the plastic gutter over my bedroom’s bay window, fountaining out water in big dollops and how their claws go scrabble scrabble where the gutter dips above a corner and how they bathe to get rid of mites while having lots of fun enjoying their cold baths and how I used to love soaking in a hot bath and how wild starlings typically live two to five years although a 22-year-old wild starling was found in Denmark and how my typical lifespan is/was 58 and how starlings have starry plumage and rainbowy neck feathers and how I once had pretty hair and how if I open my window the starlings take fright and how my body keeps trying to eject me the way birds don’t trust humans no doubt for good reason and how starlings use flocking and communal roosting to increase their survival rate and how I’ve lost touch with friends and how my body was a friend and we had many quarrels but things always turned out all right until they stopped turning out all right and how starlings use migration to increase their survival rate and how I should try going on holiday and how if I don’t eat anything for 24 hours maybe I could take a dip in slightly warmer than lukewarm water without sparking a flare-up and how cold baths are recommended but you need wings   --- Frances Gapper’s work has been published in four Best Microfiction anthologies and lit mags including trampset, Splonk, Southword, Wigleaf, New Flash Fiction Review, the Citron Review, Forge, Atlas and Alice, 100-Word Story, Literary Namjooning and Trash Cat. She lives in the UK’s Black Country region.