All Stories, General Fiction

I’ll Tell You Your History by L’Erin Ogle

They never tell you how hard it is to love someone.  Or how hard it is to be loved.

The first person you ever think you love is the shift manager of the restaurant of your first job.  He’s twenty, four years older than you, and you don’t even know him.  He doesn’t know you.   All you remember about this first love, the one you aren’t ever supposed to forget, is that your first kiss was a shotgun hit of weed that turned into tongues and teeth mashed together, that later he vomited tequila in the sink and then you fucked in the spare room of your friend’s house.  You were so drunk you didn’t realize you started your period and it looked like a crime scene, which seems appropriate now.  Anymore, sex and love seem like crime.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Broke Nose by L’Erin Ogle

“Tell me where it hurts,” he says.

Are you fucking kidding me?  There isn’t enough time for that.  But I know he’s not asking about that.  My eyes are black from the corners to across the bridge of my nose, swollen across the bridge.  My nose feels like hamburger meat rotting on a kitchen counter that we forgot to put away because Kenny actually showed up on time with the dope for once.  That meat sweated and swelled and stank for a week before we finally came down and realized there was a dead animal rotting next to the empty cans of beer and overflowing ashtrays and stacks of dollar bills from a great weekend at the club.

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