Best Left Unseen

By Henry S. Kivett

Filled with not quite ghost stories and not quite love stories, this quirky collection of just over 4,000 words explores what we can, can't, will, and won't see when we're looking for connections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312468184

Book preview

Best Left Unseen

Best Left Unseen

Short Fiction

By

Henry S. Kivett

Copyright © 2014, Henry S. Kivett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

All characters and places in this book are fictitious.

ISBN 978-1-312-46818-4

Dedication

For Pluto

Mutual

Originally published by Smokelong Quarterly, Summer 2011

She's got the worst fuck face ever. It's a sneer. Her thin upper lip curls towards her icy green eyes. She looks right through me, off into space. It's a look of embattled concentration. Like she's trying, with no dictionary, to translate from French, searching her vocabulary for the English words that make up la petite mort.

Really, it's her attitude that keeps me coming back for more. She acts as if she's got the fuck face that launched a thousand ships. She flirts and she teases. She does yoga in knee socks and no bra. I consider myself, fuck face aside, a lucky man. But you can tell she knows something is up. She's overcompensating.

So we break up—it's mutual—in April. Our lease runs