HE TAKES LONG DRAGS off his cigarette while driving his pickup truck down the rain-wet road, slick and dark as a whale’s back. The yellow, sodium-vapor glow of streetlights filter through the late-night drizzle and glint off the scar on his forearm—old, yet babyflesh smooth, sharing canvas space with the tattoo of a stained glass grenade, a reminder that peace is fragile. He flicks his cigarette out the window, and it skitters down the road, scattering sparks. He picked up the smoking habit and scar during his first tour of duty, back when he was a kid fresh out of the Bible Belt, hell-bent on discovering if he was a coward or not. He found his answer, but the truth of his mettle came with a hard lesson: eyes are windows to the soul, but they become mirrors when they glass over in death. Animals linger on the roadside. Fox fur and owl feathers flicker like muzzle flashes in his high beams. Ahead, traffic lights cast their red glare across the glossy blacktop rendering water to blood, the product of violent alchemy. He accelerates and hurtles through the scarlet-stained stretch of road, fleeing another idle moment infested with memories of his youth spent making mirrors out of men’s eyes. — ALEC KISSOONDYAL
Alec Kissoondyal is a Florida-based writer. His fiction has appeared in several publications, including The Los Angeles Review and Cornice Magazine. He is also the winner of TEA magazine’s 2023 Palmetto Prize for Prose. You can find more of Alec’s writing on his website, alecauthor.com