THE LUCKY ONE by Pamela Painter
She walks with purpose over to a gangly tree and dumps our mother’s ashes at its base, then smears them around with the toe of her purple sneaker. Then she turns to face me as if to see if I’m going to object.
Pamela Painter
Pamela Painter is the award-winning author of five story collections. Her stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ekphrastic Review, Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, Fractured Lit, Harper’s, JMWW, Smokelong Quarterly, Three Penny Review, and Vestal Review among others, and in the anthologies Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction, and recently in Flash Fiction America, Best Microfiction of 2023, and Best Small Fictions 2023. Painter’s stories have received three Pushcart Prizes and have been staged by Word Theatre in LA, London and NYC.