Flash fiction, 2 stories, Huina Zheng

The Pin Inside My Body

There’s a pin beneath my skin. It’s lodged under my right breast, between the ribs, like a stubborn thorn. X-rays show nothing—I’ve been to five hospitals. The doctors all say it’s anxiety.

But at night, the sharp sting wakes me. My fingertips can trace its shape—sometimes upright, sometimes flat, sometimes slanted deep in the flesh.

Is the pin real?

Or just a figment of my mind?

Yet the pain is undeniable.

When my daughter runs through the park, the ache returns. Just as I open my mouth to call her, she falls on the gravel path, blood beading on her knee. Her cry sharpens the sting, drives it into bone. My husband’s key turns in the lock—it digs deeper. When he vents about clients, reeking of alcohol, I feel it drifting through my veins. My father’s fist. My mother’s trembling arms. The dull thud of flesh against flesh. Maybe that’s when it pierced me—quiet, unnoticed.

How do I ask a surgeon to find the pin buried between my bones?

The Cloud on the Balcony

When the humid spring days in Guangzhou came to an end, a tuft of white cloud appeared on the first-floor balcony behind iron railings in my building. The balcony faced the narrow path I took home from school, right beside the main entrance. Every day after class, I’d tiptoe to peer inside until one day, the cloud moved. It was a puppy. She let out two soft barks, her nose pressed against the gaps in the railing.

Before long, she learned to squeeze through the bars, darting toward me like a bolt of white lightning before rolling onto her back, pink belly exposed. “She wants you to pet her,” my mother said. “Dogs love that.” And she did. As I stroked her soft stomach and the fluffy fur on her forehead, her eyes would drift shut. But if my father was the one picking me up, he’d march straight upstairs, muttering “Disgusting,” the same word he used when fighting with my mother.

Seasons passed, and the puppy grew familiar with everyone in the building. On rainy days, her fur hung in damp clumps; on sunny ones, it fluffed up like dandelion seeds. One evening, I watched her bound joyfully toward a neighbor carrying grocery bags. But the woman kicked her away with a sharp “Scram!” The puppy whimpered. That same night, no matter how many times my mother explained the math problem about ratios and age differences, I couldn’t understand. She slapped me and I cried, but the numbers still refused to make sense.

Most days, the puppy had little freedom. Often, she was locked in a tiny cage, watching me pass with wide, dark eyes. Other times, they tied her up, and no matter how hard she strained against the rope, she couldn’t reach me. She never barked because her owners would beat her with clothes hangers if she did. My father would pull me upstairs, and we’d stare at each other through the bars until I was dragged out of sight.

Now, she’s gone. I don’t know when it happened. Just that one day, the balcony was empty, as if she’d never existed. Like my father, whose slippers vanished from the doorway one afternoon, whose clothes disappeared from the closet. “Don’t ask about him,” my mother said. “He is a terrible and irresponsible man.” So I filled my notebook with white clouds, one of them with chocolate-brown eyes, wagging its tail on the balcony.