Fresh Ink 2022
Chance Encounter
1st Place - Short Fiction
Grace Dodge* Winner of the Luke S. Newton Memorial Award for Short Fiction
A vividly lit sign reflected in the windows of a church that shadowed the entirety of the street. Across from the site of worship stood an establishment that encouraged a different kind of devotion. A cigarette sat between Indy’s cracked knuckles. When she glanced downwards, all she saw were finger bitten nail beds, and sour smoke drifting up past her hands, and into the sky. Indy flicked ash off the end, watching embers fall into the snow-lined sidewalk. She took one more inhale, savoring the warmth in her lungs, before crushing the stub underneath her sneaker, and throwing it in a nearby trash can, readying herself for reentry into the dive bar that employed her. Above her, the chapel towered, steeple stretching higher than any of the buildings around it. Indy savored one more brief moment of quiet, all the other windows surrounding her now dark, and shouldered her way through the heavy wooden door. The noise of the bell that hung along the frame echoed throughout the room. At one a.m., it was practically empty. Only two patrons remained, the piss-yellow of their cheap domestic beers filling their glasses. It was Monday, which meant they were supposed to close twenty minutes ago, but all of her attempts to prompt the men to leave had gone either unnoticed or ignored. The chairs at all of the unoccupied tables were up, most of the earnings from the night counted, and the heat had been turned off, leaving Indy wishing for something else to warm her fingers. She sighed, knocking her fist against scuffed wood, causing one of the two men to look up at her. One man had a face full of patchy stubble and bags beneath watery, red-rimmed eyes, and had spent the majority of the evening fiddling with a gold band. He looked like an absolute wreck. Another divorcee, if she had to guess, or just another person to get the shit end of the stick. A ragged sweater with threads frayed on the shoulder, hung loose off his thin torso. Being at a bar this late, alone, on a weekday, looking like you haven’t slept in a few days, wasn’t a great indicator of success, or prosperity, herself included. Two seats down sat the other one. His head was bowed, a trenchcoat hung 2
