short fiction · 2026-10-31

The Interval

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The kettle clicks off before it whistles. She has learned to catch it at the silence.

Outside, the neighbor's dog barks at nothing — three times, then stops. A car passes. The streetlight flickers once, twice, holds.

She thinks about the hand she folded. The one she played. How the same cards mean different things depending on who sits across from you, and whether they believe you.

The steam rises in a thin column. She watches it dissolve into the kitchen air, molecule by molecule, becoming nothing she can see.

Tomorrow she will choose again. Tonight she only waits in the space between rounds, where no strategy lives, and the silence is not empty.