For over four years I worked at a newspaper in Tooele County, a rural desert county in Utah. I had a coworker once say the county is a collection of almosts—it could be almost a fantastic hiking ... [+]
L.N. Hunter shares an untidy home with two cats and a soulmate, and has been published in the Flame Tree Fiction newsletter, Obscura and Trickster's Treats 3, amongst others. "Plum Tree" is in Short Circuit #05, Short Édition's quarterly review.
I saw them once, when I was little. Maybe age four or five. The tree on the other side of the fence had branches stretching over our garden. It was too tall for me to reach the succulent, juicy plums that arrived every summer, but sometimes ripe ones would drop onto our lawn. I would gorge myself on them until I was sick. Mum would scold, telling me they were dirty and covered in germs. But I'd still eat them.One day, I'd gobbled so many that I had to lie down, kneading my sticky fingers into my stomach to relieve the pain. Eventually the cramping subsided, and as sweat trickled across my chee