In Short – Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
May 31, 2024
Swiped Wrong
By Cheryl Snell
He was proud of his pedigree, especially of his aristocratic grandad. The other grandfather was just an oil baron, he said, clueless about the black gold on his tiny farm until his wife stepped in it. There must’ve been a few drunks in the family, from the way he kept downing whiskeys. He finally asked about my line. Both gramps were criminals, I said. One was a horse thief and the other killed a man in a bar fight. Jumping like he’d been hit by a switch from my family tree, he excused himself and stuck me with the check.
Cheryl Snell (she/her)’s books include several poetry collections and the novels that make up her Bombay Trilogy. Her most recent writing appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Book of Matches,100 Word Story, Does It Have Pockets? Switch, Your Impossible Voice, and other journals. She has been nominated nine times for Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions awards, and has had work in several anthologies, including a BOTN. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.