Elpie dropped her backpack, climbed over the rail and let go from the pier, ungainly and urgent as an accident, chasing some vague glinting thing see-sawing among vexed and invisible pockets of current – some flash of substance, like a new coin that she thought she’d just glimpsed through the hard morning glare at the sea’s little peaks. How strange for Elpie, so near where she’d been walking on her way to school, diving for this enigmatic trinket fallen from the sky - and so suddenly cold! Nothing ever moved toward the water from that spot on the pier but lonely fishhook worms and cigarette butts;
Kenneth Ryan short fiction and poetry can be found online with Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, Thieves Jargon, Ward 6 Review among others, and is forthcoming in print from The Binnacle and Greatest Uncommon Denominator. For the latest news on his recently completed first novel, Hiders, please visit
www.kennay.com, the online home he shares with the preternaturally perfect Nadine Darling.