by Sara Dobbie
In the version where it was you, we found ourselves installed in Algiers for three months. I had not wanted to go, having no previous interest in travelling to North Africa. But just think, you suggested, we may find ourselves standing on a beach with a gun in our hands. I didn’t know if you were referring to Camus or The Cure, but you knew I couldn’t resist either, and this knowing of yours, about me, rendered you, likewise, irresistible.
And so there we were, seated on the balcony of our rented second-story room, staring at the sea, staring at the sand. You were off to school to teach English to children, and I would wander through the bleached streets, perpetually smoking my last cigarette. On weekends we went on safari and observed gazelles through binoculars, and once we glimpsed an elephant. The enormity of the creature stunned us, and when it raised its trunk you gasped and squeezed my hand. At night, the atmosphere was close, and we opened up every window, the sweltering air barely stirring even with the ocean breeze. We lay on top of the blankets, and you wiped the sweat from my brow with your thumb, asked me if I had any regrets.
In the version where it wasn’t you, I remember that moment as if it had actually occurred. The not-memory is a faded sepia photograph of you standing on the beach, tacked on a bulletin board in a room I’ll never enter. You once said that we can forget memories and remember dreams. Now I see that whichever I choose, it amounts to the same.
Sara Dobbie is a Canadian writer from Southern Ontario. Her stories have appeared in Milk Candy Review, Fictive Dream, JMWW, Sage Cigarettes, New World Writing, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Ruminate Online, Trampset, Ellipsis Zine, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Static Disruption is available from Alien Buddha Press. Her collection Flight Instinct is available from ELJ Editions. Follow her on Twitter @sbdobbie, and on Instagram at @sbdobwrites.
A-minor 
Chilling and humming.