Written for The Big O Challenge and chosen by Guest Editor, Monet P. Thomas
When You First Meet the Telepath
she tells you she can make you come without touching — make you come with her mind — & you tell her that’s a hell of a line & buy her a beer anyway because she has a swimmer’s shoulders & a black muscle tank & eyeliner so perfectly smudged that you’re tempted to go home with her just so she’ll do your eyes the next morning before sending you out to the gas station on the corner for coffees and Tastykakes & while you’re already waking up in her bed tomorrow, she’s still in tonight asking about your job at the library & the last book you read, knocking over your empties as she reaches to pop a quarter into the bar’s tiny juke box, laughing as she pulls down the neck of her shirt to show the two dots tattooed on her collarbone — two pips for a lieutenant commander in Starfleet (like Geordi!) — you’ll think this is what she means because you can feel your cheeks blooming & your heart stutter-stepping from the attention of this woman, so when you ask her only half embarrassed if this is how she’ll make you come with her mind (because it’s working, it’s working) she shakes her head, touches your hand — may I? — & it’s then that you feel her voice in your brain — “so much of pleasure is mental” — & she smiles over the rim of her glass & it feels like when you were a kid on your back in a field, the boom-crash of fireworks echoing in your chest & it feels like it’s 10:30 on a Saturday night & you’re driving the back roads of your home town, all corn fields & moonlight & your favorite song’s on the radio & you’re cresting one hill then another & another & she’s smiling at you from the passenger seat & both of you are gone.
Meghan Phillips is the editor in chief of Third Point Press and an associate editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. Her flash fiction chapbook, Abstinence Only, is forthcoming from Barrelhouse. You can find more of her writing at meghan-phillips.com and her tweets @mcarphil.
Monet P. Thomas interviews Meghan Phillips about this story here
Also by Meghan She Feels Self-Conscious about Her Teeth
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