20
FICTION
Alice Sola Kim
Deena didn’t invite me to her birthday party, so I crashed it. Specifically, I inhabited every last person at her party. I waited until after everyone got into her apartment. I became thirty-six people. The sensation was almost too much, I could barely carry on ten conversations and one of me got a terrible nosebleed that poured out of my nostrils as suddenly and smoothly as poured wine. Somewhere else in the room, a beer bottle slipped from my hand, and rolled over on the floor. A puddle fanned out around my feet and burbled quietly to itself. Keep. It. Together. This is the last time, I had said into the mirror at home. This time something has to happen. Maybe we can all line up. Maybe Deena will choose one of me. Maybe Deena will choose the one she might be able to love from a catalog. I think we can discuss this like adults. My chest was angry and red from repeated applications of toothpaste.
ALICE SOLA KIM ’s
fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from McSweeney’s Literary Quarterly, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tin House, Lenny Letter, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons, among other publications. Kim was a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has received grants and scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is currently working on her first novel and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
