BY KIM HUTCHINSON
TELEPHONE
“Hello?” he inquired politely.
A dial tone was the only response. It had been so long since the telephone had rung, he’d forgotten the sound. Undaunted, he picked it up every few minutes and asked: “Hello?”
One of these days or nights, someone would be there.
RESPONSIBLE
Yesterday, she dazzled. Professionally brilliant, she sprinkled starlight and success over the meeting.
Twice they cut her contract.
This morning, she woke to the banshee: “Individuals must get up early and put in a full day’s work in this economy!”
She smashed the button, breaking the radio. Where? she raged. Where?
LAST DATE
“This is why I came here,” says the man from Montreal. He points to a Facebook photo of a woman from Missouri. “We thought the border could be our place, but…”
His eyes are red. He falls asleep as soon as the train starts to move. When he dreams, his fingers caress the keyboard.
– – –
Kim Hutchinson is a writer and filmmaker, a former Detroiter, and an AmeriCanadian living on the border. Her fiction has appeared in online journals, and her non-fiction has played on television and radio and has been featured in print. Kim’s short films have been in international distribution and played at film festivals in the US and Canada.
A-Minor 
these are great.
Love these snapshots, glimpses, slices of life that ring so true. I read, and re-read, attempting to walk the bridges between, to digest the nuances within. Really wonderful vignettes, and a complete piece in its entirety. I always tell folks when they read pared down flash like this, TRY IT! Then you can see how truly difficult it is to craft a story with this kind of expertise.
Yeah! These three fit so well together. I love the way these tiny pieces create big emotion, Kim.
Thanks so much for the wonderful comments!