Hum

by Helen Phillips

She used her right foot to remove her left shoe and her left foot to remove her right shoe.

She couldn’t stand the despair in his voice, the twin of her own despair.

The white garbage bag glowed from within, and it was a disorienting second before she remembered about the battery-powered light. It had definitely been off, dark, when she threw it away last night. But now the light was on, radiant inside the bag, and it made her uneasy, that spurned light calling out to her. She wrestled with the bag, trying to press the light to turn it off from the outside, but she couldn’t achieve the right grip; the light kept slipping away from her beneath the plastic, slick with milk.

She had thought being free of their phones would feel like freedom.

Sy bit into the tomato, seeds and juice squirting down his shirt, smiling at his sister through the mess.

She shook him and he didn’t wake. She shook him again, hard, and he woke.

“I can’t identify your face, May,” the hum agreed. “But you are the only one here with an unidentifiable face, which makes you stand out.”

The mannequin looked like the woman carrying the mannequin.