They prey with pleasant voices, names like Megan. Chad. Ask when I can make payments.
Can you make a bigger payment?
I have to make rent.
When can you pay it off?
I lost my teaching position.
Estimate?
I lost my position.
You’re delinquent.
Blood drained, I spout a date.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and “Tales From A Communion Line,” were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.