"Plethora" by Antonios Maltezos He said her eyes were sunken, lifeless. “Like you’re half dead already, dying.” He wanted to know if she was sick. “You got a disease, or something?” She pulled off her top so he would see the ribs straight up, before anything could happen. “Look,” she said. He ran his finger down her side, feeling the rib bones, and then again. “Mmm, the skin’s so thin, smooth. You haven’t got much further to go.” She knew, winced when he grabbed at her breasts. He had a clutch of nerves and glands in his grip, and he was twisting. “What’s your name,” he wanted to know. She’d been Plethora from birth, from when her lungs first opened up to the smell of her mother’s heaves, the smell of her father’s pipe tobacco wafting in from the other room. “Plethora,” she spat out. “Mmm,” he moaned, “sounds like a disease.” *** She’d moved her lips deliberately, so he could read them from across the bar. She’d wanted to dance with him. “Dance,” she’d hissed. When she was younger, asking a boy to dance would’ve been out of the question, asking for trouble. “Most men are killers,” her mother had warned. “They should only dream of being with you.” “Dance,” she’d hissed, moving her shoulders with the beat, ching-a-linging her necklaces against her weathered collar bones. “I want to dance.” About the Author: Antonios Maltezos is currently working on a novel told entirely through flash. Email: antonios@sympatico.ca