[Fiction] The Forgotten Funambulist

Read the second-place entry for our week of September 22, 2024 prompt, 100 Words.

The Forgotten Funambulist
by Keri Cronin

We were locked in a battle of wills on a wire stretched high above the river. My husband, “Gregory the Great,” had been scheduled to cross the mighty Niagara at noon. I stole his thunder by starting from the other side at 11:45.

I had winked at the owl-faced girl slicing a lemon at a refreshment stand as I shed my cloak and stepped into history.

He lunged at me, purple with rage. My foot slipped. Would he actually commit murder? Here?

Steady on, head up.

The band fell silent as I told him how things were going to change.

About Keri Cronin

Keri Cronin fearlessly scribbled stories as a kid, but that came screeching to a halt in high school. In 2020 she returned to this early love. It was a tentative, cautious return, but also like reuniting with an old friend.

She is a professor by day, teaching and researching in the fields of art, history, and animal studies. Her stories draw upon these interests, but venture to places academia doesn’t allow her to go–the haunted, the strange, the imaginary, the unexplained, the impossible-to-footnote.

This piece was written in response to the prompt 100 Words.