Looking Down by Tom Mead

​Lisa, adrift, feels that rollercoaster-lurch in her gut; she is not strapped in, she is floating, her gown floats around her like wings, like petals unfolding, and she is in the air now looking down, there is a ceiling above her but it is spectral and vaporous, her bony body might slice through it, but she is looking down, and her brow is furrowed, and she is bemused at what she sees, she is not thinking of ceilings, she is thinking of gloved hands, slick and oily, and the gleaming blades, and the heap of grey flesh on the trolley beneath those blades, the masked faces, the muted conversation she cannot hear, the squeak of polished shoes; they are working so hard, they dig their blades into the gungy red meat, they mop each other’s damp foreheads with casual intimacy, and Lisa feels so sorry for them, they have tried so hard, their voices rise, muffled by their masks, they are becoming blurred- these faceless men in their green uniforms, soon they will have vanished from her entirely, she is adrift, the body beneath her and its brisk glove-fingered attendants swallowed by mist like a distant coastline; but she cannot stop looking down.

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Tom Mead is a UK-based author of short fiction. Previous examples of his work have been published by Litro Online, Flash: The International Short-Short Fiction Magazine, Open: A Journal of Arts and Letters as well as various fiction anthologies.