A Racquetball in a Microwave

A Racquetball in a Microwave
by Joshua Blampied

Her hair was bright fake red, a wedge in front of her right eye. She dressed like a thief, all black t-shirts and pants with a hundred pockets. Camouflage; love and rockets.

When she was little, she napped beneath the microwave. Every day. The sun shone a spot on the couch, and her mother slept in it: the sunlight shape of the window moved from her feet up her legs to her chest and then, when it slipped up to her eyes, roused her. Sylvia spent this time sleeping too, but on top of the stove, under the humming microwave.
She set it so it would beep her awake before her mother woke. Her mother did not like for her to sleep under the microwave.
"Sylvia," she said, "there are cancer beams and heart disrupticators and medical anomifiiers that emit from that thing. Do you want to die?"
Sylvia didn't want to die, but she did want to sleep. Some people listen to tapes of the ocean to relax: she had the whir o...