The Light of the Fireflies

by Paul Pen

room,

see her deformed face, but I could perhaps make out some grotesque

falling. I saw it as I stood up in the tub. Dad was already washing his hands. When he’d finished, he said to me, “Watch and learn.” He picked up the bar of soap, the same one my sister had used in secret in the night, and placed it carefully on the blue fish. “You put it back in the soap dish,” he told me. “You. Put it back. In the soap dish.” “Come on,”