(Editor’s Note: During my Amherst training, we were asked to write a list of chores, and then a list of characters. Then our prompt was to combine one from each, and this was the concept I ran with, though it’s also been built out since then.)
Logan took off his blue gloves and turned on the water as hot as the spigot would go.
Let it burn, he thought. I’ll heal.
He squirted Joy onto the green brillow side of the sponge, then some on the soft yellow side, too. He held the sponge under the water, which was already warm enough that steam swirled up from where it fell and struck the basin. The Joy bubbled up and he took a white bowl rimmed with cereal milk and filled it from the faucet and plunged in the sponge to sweep out the inside. The water was near hot as it could go now, scalding his hands a boiled crab red, and Logan’s memories floated from the dishes to Jean.
Jean. The sort of woman you wait hundreds of years for.
Then a darker thought.
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