Honorable Mention – Flash 405, June 2025: “Illumination”
Nonfiction
A man standing on his balcony sees his friend below and shoots him. It’s a convincing two-handed mimicry, like this isn’t the first time. His left hand cocks the gun before shooting, and he recoils slightly with each shot, his back arching in quick succession. Bang, bang, bang. His friend staggers back, smiles, clutches his chest, and takes the stairs up two at a time. Something inside me surges forth and snaps before it is even made whole. Like a wild animal darting into the brush at dusk.
The thing that is not whole wants to rob the man on the balcony this last summer evening before fall sharpens its edges, drag him by the collar of his sweatshirt to my last night shift—as in last night—where I can pry my hand from the grip of a girl’s, so it is his to hold after her right knee’s shot through and through; so there’s no bullet, just what a bullet can do—no, so he can stifle her screams with the palm of his hand as we set what is left in place; so you can draw a line instead of a zigzag between her hip and ankle, and her screams go through our bodies like bullets and the medical students and the interns, I watch them recoil, learning what a bullet can do.
No, better yet, take him down to the operating room, where her friend (she yelled, “You’re here, too?!” like this was all a big surprise party) lies with her insides turned completely outside, her uterus like a split piñata so the trauma surgeons call in a second team of surgeons to piece it together while they run her bowels, like unspooling a skein of yarn, looking for holes because a miss can kill, too. And I know the next few days will be like this, that a bullet is the fastest way to die but not the only, that the fear of death will settle like soot in the crevices of their lives, and I want him—no, the whole of me dares him—to look at his friend again from the balcony, cock that gun, and fire.
Judge’s Comments:
This nonfiction piece is so visceral but also necessary. To see how as simple a thing as a gesture, meant in jest, can send a person reeling, to send them plummeting into the abyss. How some of us ignore how devastating a bullet really is to the human body.
Liana Meffert is an emergency medicine physician-resident in Beloit, Wisconsin. Her writing has been featured in JAMA, The Lancet, The Maine Review, SWWIM, and X-R-A-Y, among others. You can find more of her work at Lianameffert.com. All views expressed are her own.
Photo by JC Gellidon