‘The Storm Tastes of Freedom’ by Finnian Burnett

Ends as Beginnings

From Pulp Literature Issue 46, feature author Finnian Burnett leads us back through time in ‘The Storm Tastes of Freedom’. Enjoy the first two acts of this story below, then discover the rest in Issue 46, Spring 2025, on sale now until May 31st.

The Storm Tastes of Freedom

by Finnian Burnett

Act 5. The search encompasses the east woods, the back of the old motel where high-school kids’ frantic whispers scratch across each other’s bodies on mouldy bedspreads, the airport. They search behind the bushes where they’ll find condom wrappers, needles, and the pink blazer Kevin Clarence buried after killing his wife. Maybe the bike path along Muller’s fields. The search ends there, but, after a tip, a squad car goes to your father’s home where officers arrest him, though they never find your body.

Act 4. A hole in time and space, and you don’t know if she’s real or not, but the chance to escape is this doorway, this light—the glow shimmers on the wet rivulets cascading down your face, melting into pools in your valleys. Taste freedom, she says, and you stand in the threshold, rainy tendrils tickling your back, his voice behind you, hers ahead. You hover between here and there, between rough skin and soft lips, between remembering and projecting, and you step through without looking back.

Read the rest in Pulp Literature Issue 46, Spring 2025!

Finnian Burnett is an author whose writing explores intersections of mental health, gender identity, disability, and life in a fat body. Their work has appeared on CBC Books, in Blank Spaces Magazine, Pulp Literature, and more. Finnian’s most recent flash fiction collection, The Price of Cookies, is available from your local library and wherever books are sold, and you can find their stories in Pulp Literature issues 37, 41, and 43. When not writing or teaching, Finnian watches too much Star Trek and futilely tries to grow a garden.