Looking Down From Parliament Hill
She watches as the red unravels and sprawls across the grimed toilet bowl. She holds the congealed clots that are too thick to slip through her fingers. Lights off, her knees are illuminated by the dim glow from the neighbor’s window. Inside, she can see two silhouettes dripping into each other, pouring a black puddle of a shadow across her feet. The sound of their singing and laughter pierces through the humming water heater. They sound like hyenas to her. She holds the white strip under her legs as the stream trickles down her rug-burned wrist. It stings the sore opening. She wipes the blood from her hands and thighs and slips up her nylons. The flush rids it all. The stains on her hands loosen into pink, gentle water under the faucet. She leaves the bathroom still wet.
He is draped across the couch, watching a rerun of a Yankees game from Thursday night. Her countenance is fractured under her husband’s gaze. She smiles and wedges herself under his ungiving arm. The gin on his lips is enough to make her weak. Lily-livered, she holds him. He places his hand on her thin belly, mistaking his swelling palms for the soft tapping of a heartbeat. She moves it to her chest. He does not notice her strained breathing. The television screen flashes and swallows their tired expressions.
Once he has fallen asleep, she returns to the bathroom. Water drips from the edge of the faucet. She flips on the light and peels the strip off the sticky counter. A single blue line is drawn across the paper. She swallows the name she gave to tissue, mucus, and bloody cells. She turns the light off and watches the flickering shadows in the window. They are quiet now, still and stalking.
Kira Hook is a New York-based writer and creative writing student at Stony Brook University. Her flash fiction has been featured at multiple showcases, including the 2025 Shirley Strum Kenny Arts Festival.