A First Kiss

by K.C. Mead-Brewer

 Steve Johnson

The salesman hired his girlfriend to model the chairs, to sit in them not-too-provocatively while people furniture-shopped, but the ploy worked too well. Every chair on the showroom floor loved her right away. Her stark charisma. Her round bottom. The way she tucked her ankles behind their two front legs, teasing her own to spread. “Wait,” said the salesman, “wait,” except his girlfriend was tired of waiting; weeks, and they haven’t even kissed yet. But these chairs, within moments, Sit here, sit here! Allow me, allow me! Too fast, too much, too everything. They clamored to support her. They rushed to uplift. They gathered in close to declare themselves her throne. She looked up as their plush arms enfolded her and there, finally, she saw, she realized, she allowed the chairs to raise her up, up off the ground, higher and away, and before the poor fool of a salesman could climb his way to her — vaulting wingbacks and tangling with barstools — she was far too high to hear his call, already curling her finger under the gentle ceiling’s chin and lifting its mouth for a kiss.

Inspired by a tattoo from The Body Ruiner https://www.instagram.com/p/B3Ph9TPlGWL/

---

K.C. Mead-Brewer lives in Ithaca, NY. Her fiction appears in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Joyland Magazine, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Tin House’s 2018 Winter Workshop for Short Fiction and of the 2018 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. For more information, visit kcmeadbrewer.com and follow her @meadwriter.