By Rosanne Griffeth
This morning, there is no skin. No callous, no glove, no covering, just pink, flayed tissue with no granulation and white tendons barely holding everything together.
I am a study in vivisection. My obicularis oris twists wryly. This just won't do. No amount of Lydia O'Leary's Covermark will hide this, so I rummage through the couch cushions for spare change.
Finding none, I resolve myself to placing a new set of skin on the credit card.
By the time I reach the boutique, my surface is dry. Dog hair from the last time I took Bunny to the vet sticks to my meat. I will have to scrub with a wire brush to remove every little bit of dirt ...
categorized as Fragments.
The Courtship of Lady Boo-Boo
By Bosley Gravel (apologies to Charles Dodgson) In the land of Nod . . . Tweedledee threw three knives, one after the other; they sailed through the air, spinning in a blur of ...
The Separation, Chapter 11: “Refugee Crises”
[Table of Contents] By Josh Wilson The small woman had a downturned mouth and the kind of lines around her eyes that don't come from laughter. She picked at her cuticles and tugged ...
Mawulf Sees the World
By Adam Myers In the very long, long ago, (or maybe in the soon, soon to be), there lived a curious creature whose name was Mawulf. Now Mawulf was curious in two ways. First, ...
The Separation, Chapter Ten: “Search Results”
[Table of Contents] GIZA PLAZA PUBLIC BRANCH, LOWER SLOPE, COMMON TERMINAL 832176.GP.FUL DECEMBER 1, 21-- login: public password: reader “Welcome to Giza Plaza Public Branch. Would you like research, arrangements, contacts or public programming?” “Research, please, just ...
A Roadful of Ducks
By Tantra Bensko I never thought I'd find comfort this way, but no one told me I couldn't. I just gave it a go, and the ducks are following me down the road ...
The Separation, Chapter Nine: “Escapee”
[Table of Contents] At first, the escape had gone brilliantly. They moved swiftly though the desolate corridors, dimly lit, doors sagging open, scattered with evidence of fighting — abandoned barricades, scorch marks ...
The Breath Between Wonder & Dread: Seven Photographs
All images (c) Peter Schwartz [These photographs leave one with a sense of having just turned the corner onto a vista in which, moments earlier, something extraordinary happened. What displacement of mass caused ...
The Burning Turtle
by Michael C. Keith The Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it. -- John Keats Turtles communicate mostly by grunting, and what they have to say is amazing. I know because ...
The Separation, Chapter Eight: “Enemy Combatant”
[Table of Contents] The next 12 hours were the definition of hell -- and he'd seen some of the worst of the fighting back home: On his belly amidst the creosote and ...