Contest Runner-Up

NORTHEAST OHIO SPOTLIGHT

Tease

Fiction by ​Kelly Griffiths

Mark sat behind me in world history class and answered questions with questions.

“What does A.D. stand for?” asked the professor.

Mark raised his hand. “What is Anno Domini, in the year of the Lord?”

The professor would look sideways at Mark, nod, and continue. The next answer Mark gave would be the same: a question.

I turned and whispered. “You watch Jeopardy?”

“What game show won thirty-three Daytime Emmy Awards?”

“Impressive. How do you know so much?”

“What game show won thirty-three Daytime Emmy Awards?”

I swiveled and we locked eyes. Mark was stone serious. I shrugged and gave him little thought until the day at the studio.


For the benefit of passersby, the dance studio was walled with floor-to-ceiling glass. Mark-from-history walked by. I waved. He stopped, haltingly back-stepped, then pressed his hands against the glass. In my leotard and tights, I felt digested.

“What’s his deal?” asked my partner. We were choreographing a sequence.

“He’s from my history class.”

My partner twirled me, and brought me back into his arms. “Oh, then he’s fair game.”

“Of course.”

My partner lifted me above his head and spun me down in a sultry move, gathering my body until we molded. “I’ll bet he liked that,” said my partner.

“You’re teasing him.”

“I’m just getting warmed up.” My partner patted my belly. “Get tight.” He tossed me overhead. Once touched, my body responded. Dancers are like soldiers, trained to respond, to hold the core, to be a board or a whip in hand. My partner made himself a pole and paved for me a serpentine descent along his torso, to the floor between his parted legs.

I lay at my partner’s feet, out of breath. “You’re a show off.”

“I’m giving him what he wants.” My partner flashed Mark a triumphant gaze. “Actually, I think he wants to club me and carry you off into the sunset.”

I turned to the glass. Mark motioned for me to come.

“Don’t do it,” said my partner. “Let’s flip for him.”

I hung half-in, half-out the door.

“Hi, Mark.”

Mark glanced furtively from me to my partner, who was pretending not to watch.

“What if I told you I’m not human?” Mark asked.

I laughed. “That’s the best pickup line ever.” I closed the door and committed to the hallway.

“I’m serious. I can prove it.” Mark’s smile disarmed me.

All I had to do was get my shoes and walk with him, he said. Not even off campus. I decided to play along, figuring it for a YouTube video.

In the privacy of the vine gardens Mark turned to me and took a few steps back. He held up one finger and with the other hand grabbed a fistful of his own shirt. With erotic sloth, he incrementally exposed his form the way a magician pulls the black linen, converges all my wonder on a retreating boundary.

​The horizon line was a half-drawn curtain in his fist. The world sloughed away.

Kelly Griffiths
​
Kelly Griffiths lives with her husband and children in North Ridgeville, Ohio. How great it is to say “lives,” since she had brain surgery on April 6 for a meningioma tumor. Nothing brings life into focus like a dose of possible death. Kelly’s faith is a key part of her life and sustained her through diagnosis, surgery, and recovery. Her recent work appears in Reflex Fiction, The Forge Literary Magazine, and Ellipsis Two.