by Chey Dugan
Honorable Mention – Flash 405, August 2026: “Quake”
Fiction
My father is far and foreign. He speaks in a tongue I do not understand. He is a country I have never visited, with a name I forget because of long vowels.
We talk on the phone once a year, around monsoon season. His face is becoming a muddy image. Rainforest, jungle, bosque—I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a crowd. He is a man bustling with people, imports, security. Violence and culture. He tells me over the phone about the exciting new things he’s unearthed recently; altars and cities, ruins and bones. He wrote an article for National Geographic—did I see it? I tell him about the paywall. He says he’d like to send me some small artifacts, but it’s not worth getting caught again. He already did his time for this, and he likes being home—to howler monkeys and ocelots. He talks about meeting his grandchildren, my children. I remind him the youngest’s name. He has stories to tell about our ancestors, stories about volcanoes, love and anger colliding in fiery eruptions. Would we visit him? I worry about traveling to a country with active volcanoes.
He asks how my mother is doing. She’s on the other side of the world, I tell him, with the shoreline and nature’s souvenirs, with Michelin stars and expats. All the things that make her forget a place she once knew.
He does not ask if I feel alone in the desert, with a home that has family photos, with soccer practice and tutus, a bulldog and in-laws. A life I don’t take for granted. He does not ask why I’m uncultured, a consumer, overweight—though he points out this last one from the recent photo of us I sent to him. Recognizing a body that’s marked like a map. Trails and ridges from all directions, some too damaged to travel, intersecting at my belly button.
He tells me, Fine, he’s visiting—but the injury from his last excavation will make this nearly impossible. I let him talk, make plans. He sets a date. His foundation is always shifting, consistently unpredictable, capable of inciting another disaster. In his voice, I can tell he means it.
Judge’s Comments: So much is revealed in the dialogue we never hear in this piece–everything we learn comes through the prism of the narrator’s bias and baggage. The confidence of the narrator’s voice inspires trust and belief.
Chey Dugan attended the summer Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been recognized as a finalist in fiction by The Adroit Journal, Southeast Review, The Plentitudes, Cult. Magazine, and Midway Journal. She was awarded the 2024 SmokeLong Emerging Writer Fellowship. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Phoebe Journal, Wallstrait, and elsewhere. Chey lives in Albuquerque with her family.
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck