At the farmstand, a girl with strawberry-blonde hair held back by a crenated clip opens the flesh of an apple. She leans her shoulder on the frame of the doorway and sits on an upside-down bucket. The exaggerated curves of her torso mismatch her stringy body. Dimples come about on her ruddy cheeks when she looks at me and smiles. She probably stands as tall as my shoulders. Her breasts are like taut cones inside the veil of her t-shirt, and her bright pale face is like that in a teen magazine. A red haze enshrouds her like an aura. Why did I come to this enchanted place? What was it again? My instinct is a prison with my eyes locked into distorted goggles lined with the stained glass of lust. Electric chairs shock, and I still can’t help but drool.

My wife raises her voice talking about apple cider. She raises her voice louder. The haze dissipates, and I see a girl old enough to be my daughter and in her freshman year of high school. The climate-controlled room was cool in the summer heat. Devin smoked a cigarette and sat in a swivel chair in front of a laptop on a computer desk. The smoke tasted sweet at the first drag from sugar in the filter. On the next pull, it got tasteless. He sifted through romance stories on “Life and Love,” a literary magazine dedicated to such a thing. Manic thoughts went through his head. There’s porn in romance. Everywhere there’s porn. Porn porn porn.


Frederick Frankenberg (he/him) lives in Highland, NY. His work has been published in KGB Bar Lit Review, Right Hand Pointing, CC&D Magazine, and Pulp Modern Flash. He is also published on an engineering professor’s office wall, next to her children’s drawings. Twitter handle: @FredIsAWriter