Half a Second

Intro

This flash fiction story was inspired by my own writing challenge:

#AmpersandAfterDark /:\ Challenge 006 March 04, 2026

Every sentence in your piece must logically follow from the one before it.

No leaps.

This simply means each sentence should clearly connect to the previous one through cause, consequence, explanation, or observation. No sudden jumps in idea, subject, or time.

I also included the word prompt “Disguise” from (#ThingsToWriteAbout).

#AmpersandAfterDark is a writing prompt I host on Bluesky.

Half a Second

She wore a different face every morning, the way other people wear a coat.

The coat kept out the cold, and the face kept out the questions.

Questions had always found her, even as a girl, trailing her like a second shadow.

Shadows, she learned early, could be managed if you moved toward the light at the right angle.

The right angle meant smiling before the room had a reason to expect one.

That smile arrived half a second ahead of her, a scout clearing the path.

The path, swept clean, made her appear effortless to the people who walked it with her.

Effortlessness was its own kind of armor, harder than iron because no one thought to test it.

Still, armor grows heavy over years, pressing down on the bones it was built to protect.

Her bones remembered the weight at night, when the face came off and lay folded on the nightstand.

The nightstand held other private things: a letter she had never sent, a photograph turned face-down.

The photograph, face-down, could not look at her the way it once had.

That look had been the only mirror she ever fully trusted, which was why she turned it over.

Trust, she had decided, was simply a disguise that two people agreed to wear at the same time.

And yet, some mornings, she stood at the window before the face was on, watching the street below.

The street did not ask her anything, and she was grateful, and that gratitude felt almost like being known.