Absolutely ghastly public toilet, the kind that forces you to hover. My new phone suddenly became a wild, slippery thing in my hands.

Never have I wished more for a rubber glove...

Are we able to submit one original and one reprint in this window/call if we have a reprint pending from the anthology 2025 call? (Your guidelines seem to indicate yes, but Moksha told me no. 🙃)

I'm glad it translated/resonates...I felt a lot of trapped pain leave me, writing that one. Sometimes you just gotta go dark and brutal to get'er done properly. 🖤

Actually, it can be listened to on the @creepypod.bsky.social podcast, and their narrator did a bang-up job! It's the second of two stories in the episode that aired September 18, 2023.

I finished it, begrudgingly, but only because somebody I loathed back in the day baited me, claiming I couldn't manage it.

I prefer Foster Wallace's short essays in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."

www.flashfictiononline.com

Free to read:

neondystopia.com?p=100043221

Aw, thank you for the shout-out and kind words! The germ for that story appeared for me so long ago and has persisted fir so long, it had to eventually be allowed to fruit into a full-fledged tale.