Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome writer Elizabeth Ohga, based in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, with her first published work, the gripping flash fiction “Ghosted,” which we nominated for the Best Microfiction Anthology. A woman picks up her cellphone. “The screen glows with an unknown number. “Potential Spam” flashes beneath, an epitaph for those who still call. I’ll answer anyway. I’ll always answer.” Our narrator is haunted by the time she ghosted her former best friend, letting her messages go to voice mail when she was in deepest need of a friend. Piece by piece, she reveals what happened that night in the form of a letter. It’s a stirringly human tale and so relatable in these days of cellphones, especially for those of us who remember when texting was new and expensive. Elizabeth packs suspense and extreme regret into an unforgettable 397 word narrative that paints a picture of two girls floating apart at adolescence. “It had always been us. Us, huddled together on the school bus. Us, singing along to Mariah with hairbrushes for mics, in matching scrunchies and braces. Us, shrieking in dressing rooms as we tried on bikinis for the first time, audaciously wearing them to the pool that summer before junior year. That was when I knew, along with everyone else, we were no longer us. Suddenly you were pretty, while I stayed plain.”
Read “Ghosted” in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, Vol. 6, No. 4, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. You do not want to miss this wonderful emerging voice in her debut.
Elizabeth Ohga (she/her) began writing fiction in the early days of Covid lockdown as a form of pandemic therapy and has been writing ever since. A lawyer by day, she lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC with her husband, two kids, and 11-pound rescue mutt. She struggles daily to choose between writing and binge watching Korean dramas in the few hours between her children’s bedtime and her own, but technically, she is at work on a novel. “Ghosted” is her first publication.