Whenever I Felt Tummy-Sick About Monday Mental Maths

by Chris Cottom

or robbers stealing my rabbit, Mr Nibble, to sell him for vivisection, Mum would spray me with Worry Remover. She’d mix it herself with the squeeze of a lemon and ‘a teaspoon of love’, always kept a bottle handy. She sprayed Dad when he went for promotion as Deputy Foreman, sprayed herself before every appointment up at the General. At the end, I fetched her the bottle, misted her with magic when the nurses weren’t looking. I said I was proof that it worked, because I’d long stopped worrying about Mr Nibble.

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CHRIS COTTOM is a recovering insurance copywriter with recent work in Banshee, Barrelhouse, Fictive Dream, matchbook, New Flash Fiction Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Orange Blossom Review, and The Broadkill Review. Catch him pedalling around Cheshire, UK, and at chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom.

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