ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

  
GOOD FOR NOTHING
by Mark Budman

Can you talk well with a gun barrel in your mouth? I couldn't.

"Do you love me?" she said.

I nodded.

"Then say it!"

"Ah lah uu."

"I don't understand a word you're saying."

"Ah lah uu unee."

"Do you still think I'm good for nothing?"

I still thought so. But you can't always be confrontational with a gun barrel in your mouth so I shook my head.

"Say you're sorry."

This time I wasn't going to budge; a man has to draw a line in the sand. I shook my head again.

She squeezed the trigger. The hammer clicked like a diseased bone snapping. I had taken all the bullets out a few minutes before, and I knew she wouldn't bother to check. I wrenched the gun out of her hand and loaded it.

My turn.

Mark Budman was born and raised in the former Soviet Union. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Mississippi Review, In Posse, and Exquisite Corpse, and he is the publisher of the flash fiction magazine Vestal Review.