R. E. Dyer

The Unsaid Good-Bye. First Place in SFS 8: Pear Tree Challenge. Top Story - August 2021.

Nic sat on the toilet in her great-grandmother’s house, staring at the shower wall mural that had creeped her out as a child, feeling very creeped out. She hated using the bathroom here, because there was nothing to do but sit and look at those creepy, sculpted people with their white, almond-shaped eyes and oversized hands, positioned around the trunk of a vast Yggdrasil of a pear tree, branches spread wide above the length of the tub and oval leaves ending in sharp barbs like wasp stingers drooped in silent menace. If a bathroom could be threatening, her great-grandmother had cornered the market.