Tally by Emmie Christie
No one drove up Frankfurt hill.
Ann gripped the steering wheel. She had woken up late for her interview. Frankfurt hill cut through the neighborhoods quicker than Jackson street. In the winter she’d never consider it. But in the autumn, without ice or snow, what excuse did she have?
The tally-marked stop sign waited at the top of the Frankfurt street hill. Six tally marks. Police had tried cleaning them off and had even replaced the stop sign at one point, but the marks always reappeared.
Ann’s mother blamed teen gangs. All the way back in 10th grade, telling stories around a bonfire, Ann’s friend Nancy had whispered that the hill had stolen people. Vanished them. Back then, the stop sign had had four tallies.
Ann drove up Frankfurt. This interview promised a much better job than waitressing. And with little Bentley on the way, she couldn’t give in to campfire stories. Just because everyone avoided this road didn’t mean anything.
An SUV turned from a side street ahead of her, known as ‘the coward’s road.’ The bigger vehicle stopped at the top of the hill.
“Fricken rule followers,” Ann said.
“They say,” Nancy had said, “that switching from brake to gas, when you roll backwards for that half second, and you get that feeling, like someone in a chair tipping back too far, you know? They say the stop sign flashes, and the car disappears—”
“Nope! Not worth it.” Ann jerked the wheel, turning onto the coward’s road.
A flash in her rearview. She glanced back.
The SUV had disappeared.
—
Emmie Christie’s work tends to hover around the topics of feminism, mental health, cats, and the speculative such as unicorns and affordable healthcare. She has been published in Flash Fiction Online and Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and she graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013. She also enjoys narrating audiobooks for Audible. You can find her at www.emmiechristie.com or on Twitter @EmmieChristie33.
