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“What do you do for fun?”

It was a simple question, but Becky couldn’t answer it. Five years ago, she would have been able to. Now, in a cloud of motherhood, she didn’t know who she was anymore. There was no time. There was no space for just her.

“Yoga,” she lied. Becky hadn’t unrolled the yoga mat since before Ava was born. Her body was stiff and tight.

She took another sip of her whiskey sour and slowly rubbed her freshly shaved legs together. Becky massaged the deep indention on her ring finger and hoped he wouldn’t look too closely.

It’s dark, and I’m afraid. My bare feet are sticking out from under the blanket. I don’t have the strength to bend over and arrange it. I’ve been locked up and lying in this bed for a whole week.

He comes again and stays for a few moments observing everything. He grabs the blanket and he fixes it: my feet are less cold now.

Again that look that terrifies me. I don’t know what to tell him.

But it is he who speaks to me.

“Julie, my dear, do you need something?”

I’m still speechless. If only I remembered his name…

I watch my kids play baseball. Cole, the little one, is seven, and Cody is ten. Our garden shimmers under the spring sun. The wind breezes past the blooming lilies.

Cody pitches the ball. But Cole is daydreaming and the ball flies over his head. I instinctively reach out to catch it and throw it back.

Both boys freeze. Cole points to the sky, “I told you dad is watching over us.” They run to tell their mother, “Daddy threw the ball to Cody.” She gathers them close to her chest.

Later she calls my mother. “The boys have wonderful imaginations.”

I never forced Dave to lick the metal bar inside our family freezer, but I offered him a dollar if he did. The fool! The icy hinge stuck to his tongue like super glue; when he pulled back his head and ripped himself free, tiny taste buds remained intact on the door, visibly wiggling from side to side. After that, Dave applied Orajel to his wounded mouth four times daily, hiding the numbing ointment out of reach from others in his bedroom. I gave his selfish behavior very little thought until I fell while skateboarding and knocked out my two teeth.

He awoke, as he often did, in the middle of the night. His duvet was tangled from the man’s lack of sleep, and his right hand hung off the side of the bed. Groaning, he rubbed his eyes with his other hand and tried to locate the piercing red figures on his LED alarm clock. 03:03.

Exactly three hours and twenty-seven minutes until he needed to be up. Another groan. His dog’s damp tongue rubbed across his right hand, as if for comfort. Not a moment later, he heard his only dog bark, loudly and from the bottom of the stairs.

Morgan, concerned father of three, stared nervously at the uploaded file he’d spent days working on, entitled ‘No Free Speech Equals Fascism.’

Heart pounding in his ears, he moved the cursor to hover dangerously over the SEND button.

Images began flickering in his mind like playback of stop-motion animation.

Bloodthirsty Twitter posts, hateful headlines,

death threats to his children, rape threats to his wife,

vulturous journos picking away at his past,

termination of his employment,

knocks at his door.

Awareness returning, his eyes landed on the framed picture at his desk: beaming children, darling wife.

He sighed and pressed ‘cancel’ instead.