Multiple Choice. fiction by Cheryl Snell

Multiple Choice

A novel/short story/ poem are lost in a library. A student/scholar/amateur rescues them and checks them out, but will not share with her classmates/professors/ habitués of coffee shops. They upend/shake out /Heimlich her newfound knowledge from her, but find she has already eaten/swallowed/assimilated it. The knowledge is her, she is the knowledge. They ambush her anyway, brandishing weapons/ placards/ backwards caps.  Suddenly, a jackfruit/fig/mulberry tree breaks through the concrete. The trunk grabs/saves/protects the girl. The tree enfolds her, she inhabits the tree, the tree is she. Authorities decide she is a thief/sociopath/fraudster. They try to prune/ transplant/ cut her down, but her roots have caught them by their ankles and aerated/delved/turned them over into the soil. With such fertilizer, the tree can’t help but grow. Its roots spread out and lift the buildings out of the ground, except for the library. All summer the tree produces enough fruit to feed the desperate citizens in the ruined town; but when autumn comes, it buries the whole village under an avalanche of falling flowers/fruit/and leaves like pages of a book.

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Cheryl Snell’s books include the novels of Bombay Trilogy, and poetry collections from Finishing Line, Pudding House, and Moria Books. Her new series is called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries and includes a volume of flash fiction, a collection of poems, and a novelette. Her work has been included in anthologies such as a Best of the Net and Pure Slush’s Lifespan series. Most recently her work has appeared in Gone Lawn, The Drabble, Ilanot Review, Cafe Irreal, Roi Faingeant, Literary Yard, New World Writing, and elsewhere. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.

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