Fast & Short is a flash fiction collaboration between eight Literate Ape writers. Each was tasked with authoring one piece of flash fiction that would be combined to create a single short story. The writers’ flash fiction needed to serve two purposes: 1. Stand alone as a unique piece of flash fiction and 2. Serve as a vehicle for building a larger story and driving that story forward. Over the next two weeks, Literate Ape will publish all eight flash fiction stories individually with a link to the growing compilation. We hope you enjoy this literary experiment.
—DH2 , co-editors

By Kari Castor

THE SEATBELT PRESSED UNCOMFORTABLY AGAINST HER NECK.

She liked Len okay, really. She just didn’t true love love him. They barely knew each other. They’d met on a Tuesday, gone home together on Wednesday, and by Friday decided to go all in on the whole “boyfriend/girlfriend” thing. She’d taken things slow with her last relationship, after all, and look how that turned out. She wished Len would stop letting his mom cut his hair and go to a real barber for fuck’s sake, but the sex was good and they got along smoothly enough.

But she’d forgotten about the full moon tonight, and Len didn’t know that it mattered because three and a half months with someone you like okay isn’t nearly enough time to spill your deepest, darkest secrets.

Gravel crunched like bone beneath the tires. The moon was out of sight, but she knew it was there, waiting, if she’d just tilt her head a little. She tried to collapse her mind in on itself like her therapist had taught. Narrow everything down to the mechanics of breathing: in, out, in, out…

“Sara?”

A car door thunked open. The world flooded back into her awareness with the moonlight through the breach.

“We’re here.”