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Chelsea Stickle

The One Who Gets Away

         
          You are the one who gets away. The one who doesn't accept that drink she didn't see get made, provoking the dude in the backwards baseball cap to scream, "I'm not a rapist!" You never said he was but now you've got suspicions. You are the one who gets a bad vibe from those guys in the dive bar, like they’re all gripping the wooden handles of steel knives to press against the thin skin on your neck, and it has you calling an Uber instead of shoving your tongue down the ginger's throat. You're the one watching the placement of their hands and observing the thin veneer of civility they fake before they can reveal the fur and canines of the endless-stomached wolf beneath. You will not be their dinner tonight. 
          You make it home okay. You don't get roofied or raped. You don’t wake up wondering where your underwear is. You’re one of the lucky ones. The adrenaline of having narrowly escaped a closing cage keeps you up past when the other girls stumble home, eyeliner smeared and unclear about what happened. Shaking off their discomfort and the tiny voices in their heads by confirming via text that it was awesome! So much fun! If only it weren't for you. They call you a worrywart to your face and a stuck-up, no-fun bitch behind it. 
          They stop inviting you out. No one wants a reminder of the fragility of their bodies. The unimportance of their volition. Or how easily their autonomy can be snatched away by some no-named rando on a whim. All they want is oblivion. To forget their student loan debt and the ever-louder ticking of their biological clock for an hour or two. You are too intense, too real, too pulsing. Ignoring reality has only ever given you a ruptured appendix when you were twelve. But your reality checks, like the one that kept you alive, harsh their buzz.
          You would’ve had to block out that night for one reason or another. You chose the one where you find out who your friends really are. You didn't even realize it was a choice. The small voice of self-protection in the back of your head was momentarily louder than your desire to get along and be cool. But you’ve never been cool. You’ve never been willing to make the sacrifice.
​ 





--
Chelsea Stickle lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and an army of houseplants. Her flash fiction appears in Monkeybicycle, The Molotov Cocktail, matchbook, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. “The One Who Gets Away” is from her debut chapbook Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Find her on Twitter @Chelsea_Stickle.

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  • Home
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
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      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
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      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
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      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
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      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
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      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
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  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
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      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
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      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025