There's something in my closet. Its raspy monster breath makes my curtains flutter at night. I tell my mom, but she says it's just the sound of the wind whispering secrets to the moon. There's ... [+]
Where Have You Gone, Chu Hua?
Kenneth N. Margolin is a retired attorney, and lives with his wife, Judith, in Newton, Massachusetts. Ken made it a sacred mission to avoid legalese in his professional writing. Ken's stories have been published in print and online, in Short Edition, Evening Street Review, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, The Literary Hatchet, Dash Literary Journal, among others; poetry in Shot Glass Journal. "Where Have You Gone, Chu Hua?" is in Short Circuit #08, Short Édition's quarterly review.
I met Mia for the first time at my tennis club. A small Chinese woman with dark brown eyes and short-cropped black hair, she greeted me with a heavy Chinese accent."Are you Ken?" she asked.To my acknowledgment, she said, "I'm Mia. We play now."Mia had a challenging tennis style—she returned shot after shot until her opponent made a mistake. She would grunt with each shot as if to will the ball forward. I hit with pace, and if I made a good shot, Mia would applaud by slapping her palm against her racquet. With my flashy shots and her steadiness we were evenly matched. We agreed to play regularl