Darkseller’s Daughter

Her father was a Darkseller.

A childhood spent mostly on the road between atlas pages that crisscrossed the country. Motel rooms and cramped backseat bedrooms. Horse was her one true friend, and he could never magic himself into the steed that would steal her away from this nomadic life.

She was forbidden to touch his business affairs which all lived in a mustard yellow Samsonite. It held her mother’s Tupperware with its corrugated starbursts that reminded her of summer picnics on the lake. Ants would travel the ridges, their tiny black bodies dotting the bright…