https://www.frazzledlit.com/p/the-house-burnt-down-before-we-lit
The stringy air smelled of plum and snapped like gum. Arguments between Dad and Cat sharpened, switchblading even their silences. A pebble lodged in me, I felt the roundness as I did what I was told, mama making sure of it with a bony finger gun poking that part of my back that makes me freeze up. I hate that part though physiologically it doesn’t exist. ‘There’s nothing there,’ Cat said over and over, but Cat doesn’t understand the process of petrification.
