“Dissolving” by Tania Hershman

Shakespeare with Champagne
Image courtesy of Victor Juhasz, artist

When she had had an afternoon drowning in the feeling of being the imaginary lover of an imaginary man, she took herself out to the nearest place that would fill her with liquid and she drank forever. When the last had gone, swindled away in a nonsense moment, she swayed back into the virtual streets and bound her cells for home. There, thinking he might find it comforting to hear the music he was used to, she weighted his voicemail with old 50s songs, crooning into the receiver. When hours passed and he did not answer, she curled herself up with her own double helix and dissolved back into the air.

 

 

Tania Hershman is a former science journalist turned fiction writer. Her first book, The White Road and Other Stories,(Salt Modern Fiction, 2008), was commended, 2009 Orange Award and included in New Scientist’s Best Books of 2008. She is currently writer-in-residence in Bristol University’s Science Faculty and has been awarded an Arts Council England grant to work on a collection of biology-inspired short fiction. She blogs about writing at TaniaWrites.

Read an interview with Tania Hershman here.