Concrete Worm
1.
The elevator clicks and clanks, crawling down the building’s belly like the accidentally swallowed rusty coin Dad told me to lick for my daily iron. I lick so I won’t end up bloodless.
2.
Once Mrs. Kovács from the second floor caught me feeding half my school lunch Dad prepared for me every morning to the stray kittens that played around our block. Their tiny teeth pierced the buttered pieces of cheap parizer I pulled out from my sandwich. Mrs. Kovács leaned out her window and yelled, Stop it! I jumped. She pointed a long stick-finger at me, her red nail angled like an arrowhead. She said, No free lunch for fleabags. The kittens meowed and purred around my too long pants, so I squatted down and pet their heads. You soft worm! Mrs. Kovács continued, yelling, Now they’ll never know how to be tough and fight for their lives. Then she added, Just like your mother. She aimed her words like rocks from a slingshot, bruising my ears.
3.
I always refuse to use the elevator in our battered building, even though we live on the sixth floor. But now Dad’s limping from the blood clot that was only just clawed out of his left calf. The doctor said he should stop smoking, but Dad said people like him are meant to be loyal to what hurts them.
Roses Afield by Hector Viramontes
4.
When I told Dad about Mrs. Kovács, he stopped under a coughing streetlight, his face turning moon-white. He fished out my hands from the warm tube of my windbreaker and exhaled on them, his cigarette breath tickling my fingers. He told me, If you live here too long, the bite of concrete creeps under your flesh. You end up being crunchy, dropping scales of skin on the ground as you walk to the bus stop, leaving bits of yourself behind for the crows to peck at. When I asked Dad for how long he’d been living here, the lines on his forehead hardened like cement.
5.
As we step inside, the elevator moves up and down under our feet like jelly. In the blood-sweet tang of metal, we squirm upward, hopping and tugging, clinging to every floor like I cling to Dad’s hand, clutching it hard as the cab’s wall drops pieces of plaster around us like snow. When my breath turns to sawdust and gets stuck in my throat, Dad says, It’s okay, honey, just breathe like we practiced, it’s okay, it’s okay. But I know it’s not, it’s not okay how his left shoulder leans against the twitching wall because one of his legs grew a rock, and it’s not okay how my thumb digs into his palm and finds stones under his skin buried by the roots of his fingers, and as my lungs whistle like the wind blowing through our slit windowsill, all I can think about is when the elevator will screech to our floor and spit us out, I’ll air out Dad’s yellowing bedroom, and when he goes to sleep, I’ll pour water on his tongue from our green plastic can like he was a plant, and I’ll watch the waterdrops worm down his throat, hoping they will make the stem of his body burst through concrete like a dandelion.
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Noémi Scheiring-Oláh (she/her, they/them) is an Autistic writer from Hungary. Her stories have appeared in Passages North, SmokeLong Quarterly, Fractured Literary, The Molotov Cocktail, Maudlin House, New Flash Fiction Review, among others; placed in the Bath Flash Fiction Award (third prize); and have been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and The Pushcart Prize anthologies. She’s a fan of stray cats and underdogs. Tweets and Bluesky: @ itssonoemi. Virtual home: noemiwrites.com.