(The flash fiction story “Bed Rot” by Sarah Chin first appeared on November 14, 2025 at Okay Donkey.)
If you read enough flash fiction like I do, you notice that a couple of subjects are rather popular with writers; death, pets, and breakups. This isn’t a complaint, as I understand why – the three I named bring up strong emotions in people. Breakups are an especially tricky one, as the writer has to thread a very fine needle – don’t want to be too angry and come across as bitter, and god help you if you are too whinny. The best breakup pieces, I find, work in a healthy amount of humor to balance their pathos, which is why Sarah Chin’s “Bed Rot” is such a fun and honest work.
You can never go wrong with a good opening line, and here Chin delivers a sentence that at first hints at a promise of possibility only to end with the foreshadowing of what is actually to come. Word choice, and sentence length is used here to create a staccato rhythm that keeps the piece moving in spurts and prolonged moments. This creates a feeling that nothing is centered or even fully processed; that what the speaker is experiencing still has a level of shock to it, but also balanced with a desire to try and stay in control of their emotions.
Another aspect of the piece I enjoyed was following the path of thoughts the speaker has, and the logic it traverses going from subject to subject. From tulips, to the other woman’s name being Amsterdam, Martha Stewart’s idea of women and flowers, from the shedding of the brunch date outfit to be comfortable, and a little tulip madness thrown in. Peppered in each subject are dry comments, and observations that are sharp-tinted with a hint of anger, but tempered with humor. Nothing spins out of control, though it feels like it could, yet never does.
“Bed Rot” does stick to a structure which dramatically works very well. Each subject change, and snarky comment is building toward the climax of the speaker expelling this relationship and its confinement to her. What she is left with is a raw, more authentic self, thus completing this journey, and leaving us with the understanding that she will continue to grow and be fine.
