Milwaukee. April 5th. A belt. A fixture. Three lovers. Milwaukee. An accountant. Too much money. The truth. A satisfying meal. Expense reports. A plan. Another belt. The Days Inn on Airline Drive. Destiny: A crooked smile. An exchange of phone numbers. A used Datsun. Sunrise. Various maps. Permanent markers. A stain. A case of misidentification. Brothers. A road trip. A detailed account of an emergency appendectomy. A clerk with a hoarse voice. An actual horse. The wrong exit. A belt. Manitou Springs. A yoga studio. An envelope full of cash. Small details. A short walk. Bananas. Circumstances beyond our control. Breaking news. Errands. Delays. “I can’t do this.” Two lovers. An argument. Fists. The authorities. An escape plan. The horse, remarkably, again. A case of misidentification. Shots. Death. The end.

Kathy Fish’s stories have been widely published in journals, anthologies, and textbooks. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, Guernica, Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, Denver Quarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, the Norton Reader, and Norton’s Flash Fiction America (2023). She has been honored with a Copper Nickel Editor’s Prize and multiple appearances in both the Wigleaf Top 50 and the Best Small Fictions series. The author of five short fiction collections, Fish teaches a variety of writing workshops online. She also publishes a bestselling craft newsletter, The Art of Flash Fiction, which was recently named one of the 20
Best Creative Writing Substacks by Writers at Work. Her writing has been generously supported by fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation and the Kerouac Project.