The Messenger’s Revenge by Leah Mueller

When my mother sent me to

the grocery store for cigarettes, 

she scribbled a permission

note for the cashier:

“Please sell a carton of 

Benson and Hedges 100s 

to my 12-year-old daughter. 

Thank you.”

I begged her to quit smoking, 

describing photos from 

my school’s science fair—

grisly, side-by-side 

comparisons of a healthy lung 

and a smoker’s lung. 

The healthy lung 

was lush and pink 

as a freshly picked carnation.

The smoker’s lung looked like 

someone had kicked it repeatedly

and left its battered carcass 

on the ground to decompose.

My protests made my mother

furious, and her rage

sparked a powerful hunger

for more cigarettes.

I learned to make the best 

of Mom’s addiction, stealing 

her change for my own fix:

Hostess cupcakes, brownies,

Ding-Dongs, and Twinkies—

stuffing my mouth like a squirrel,

chewing furtively, as the 

cheap white sugar coursed 

through my tainted veins.

Forgetting my mother’s

imminent demise, I concealed

crumpled, spent wrappers 

inside my coat pockets, then

shoved them inside the trash can

beneath the kitchen sink.

My unsuspecting parents 

sat together in the living room,

hacking phlegm into flimsy tissues.

I was a thief and a glutton, but 

no one could accuse me of littering. 

Leah Mueller's work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah's flash piece, "Land of Eternal Thirst" appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her two newest books are "The Failure of Photography" (Garden Party Press, 2023) and "Widow's Fire" (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Website: http://www.leahmueller.org.