Rougarou

Maurice kept his wife’s body in a yellow suitcase in the trunk of his cobalt blue Chevrolet. It was not a modern suitcase, not the kind you’d roll through an airport. No, this suitcase was more of a valise with an ornate black handle. He’d gotten it at an estate sale in Arkansas and had haggled the old woman to twenty down from fifty-five. She’d given him the stink eye as he’d driven away.

It had not been an easy fit, getting all of her in one space. Maurice had rented a handsaw from the hardware store and bought a large tarp he’d burned after. The handsaw couldn't cut the more delicate parts so he’d used a variety of knives he’d also discarded after. It had taken the better part of four days, four days he only remembered in bits and pieces. The spray of blood. The taste of it on his tongue as it had splashed. The smell of it. The way it had changed from bright to dark, another death.

He was driving through rural Washington, fiddling with the controls on his radio. Most of it was static or fragments of a song that would cut in and out.

He turned the dial a few more times, chasing that fragment of a song. It got sharper and clearer until he found the station and could hear it in full.

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, "What will I be?"
"Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?"
Here's what she said to me

Doris Day. His mother had loved that song. She’d sung it every day, humming under her breath or floating through the house as she’d cleaned. He turned the music up.

Que será, será
Whatever will be, will be

He heard the police car before he saw it, that slow beat followed by the sight of flashing lights. His hands didn’t shake as he pulled over the car onto the gravel shoulder. It was still light out and the song had stopped only to start again. The same song by Doris Day.

He stopped, his hands off the wheel. He knew not to make any sudden movements other than to roll down the driver’s side window. He took a deep breath. He was an old man. An old frail man with wrinkled skin and mere wisps of white hair that kissed the bald dome of his scalp. He was harmless, pitiful even.

Maurice had practiced this look in the mirror for years. Timid, nervous smile. Watery eyes. Couldn’t hurt a fly.

The policeman ambled over, looking down at Maurice.

“Good afternoon, officer,” he said.

“Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?”

Maurice shook his head. He’d been driving the speed limit. He always drove under the speed limit and obeyed all traffic signs.

The officer gave him an odd feeling of familiarity. His eyes were a pale blue, almost white. His skin looked like it had been drained of all color. His hair was gray and cut military short.

“Your left taillight is out,” the officer said.

“Sorry Officer…” Maurice peered at his badge. “Specht. I didn’t know that. I will get it fixed right away.

“License and registration,” he said.

Maurice fumbled with his wallet, pulling out one of his licenses. Specht watched, stone-faced, as he reached into the glove compartment for the registration.

“Kansas,” he said, after Maurice handed over the papers.

“Yessir, that is where I hang my hat,” Maurice said.

“You’re a long way from Kansas, Mr. Renard.”

“I travel for a living, young man. I drive all over this great country,” Maurice said proudly.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I sell vacuums door to door with National Vacuum. Used to be owned by Kirby but some outfit in Texas bought it. Still get my checks the same every month,” Maurice said.

“Huh, I thought that stopped in the 70s. That door to door still a thing?,” Specht said. His arms were loose and long at his sides. He’d barely moved this whole time. The stillness bothered Maurice. He’d grown up in Alabama, where the tornado alarm was as familiar as any Saturday morning cartoon theme song. He remembered the quiet before a storm hit. The way the trees held their breath.

“Sure is! Not as much of us anymore but I make good money.”

Maurice eyed the officer’s holster and the gun that sat in it. .38 Special, they used to call them. Who the hell used those dinosaurs anymore?

“Would you get out of the car? I’d like to take a look at that taillight with you,” Specht said, his tone never shifting. Just two fellas having a nice chat. Maurice knew the tone well. He’d practiced that too.

His knees creaked as he got out, pushing against the car door to stand straight. He followed Specht to the back of his car. Specht glanced briefly at his snakeskin cowboy boots, a pair Maurice was particularly proud of.

“Nice boots,” he said.

Maurice grinned. “I don’t ride anymore but they are pretty comfortable.”

Maurice and Specht eyed the left taillight of his car which was definitely busted,

“You think a rock hit it?” Maurice asked.

Specht shrugged. “Probably. Why don’t you open the trunk for me?”

“Excuse me?” Maurice asked. He was calm, he was always calm. He would do what he had to if he had to. He thought of Specht’s eyes. The fuzzy way he had of looking at you. He wondered how many men the policeman had shot, guilty or not.

“Open the trunk,” Specht said, coldly, his hand dangling by that gun.

“Sure, sure,” Maurice said, quickly popping it open.

They stared down at the contents of the trunk. The yellow suitcase. The vacuums. The battered brown suitcase Maurice carried his work clothing in. The coil of rope.

Specht didn’t speak for a few moments. He abruptly shifted. “I think we’ll call this a warning Mr. Renard. Why don’t you be on your way?”

Maurice did not have to be told twice. He shut the trunk. “Thank you Officer, I’ll get that fixed right away.”

“There’s a little town about sixty miles away, called Slow. They don’t have much but there’s a decent motel and a small auto parts store. You should be able to get what you need there,” he said.

Maurice nodded, smiling. “Odd name for a town.”

“Is it?” Specht asked.

Maurice didn’t push his luck, he got in the car and drove away. At a moderate pace. With Officer Specht standing near his own vehicle, staring the whole time.

The song continued to play, it was apparently the thing the radio station played, just the one song. Over and over.

Maurice tried to change the channel but the knob wouldn’t budge. He looked through his windshield, pushing all the feelings he had into a tightly wound ball. He chilled that ball and breathed out.

When I grew up and fell in love
I asked my sweetheart, "What lies ahead?
Will we have rainbows day after day?"
Here's what my sweetheart said:

He could do this. He could make it another sixty miles. Then he would fuel up his car, fix his taillight, fix the radio. Then he would get the hell out of this state and start somewhere more civilized. Maybe Albuquerque. Lots of lonely land in Albuquerque.

"Que será, será
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see"

The town was where the cop said. Maurice pulled off at the exit. His bones were tired.

There was only one light in the town and it flickered from red to yellow. He saw a single street filled with boarded up brick and mortar stores. Just past that was a motel called Boring with a vacancy sign. The ing in the sign was dead, Bor was lit up in red.

He drove into the parking lot. The motel was all one floor and had about ten rooms in a line. A squat brick building was under the sign with an open door. Flies swirled around the square window, some dead, some alive. Some were eating the dead ones. There were so many he heard the buzzing like a roar.

He’d been hungry before that but he decided he’d eat the crackers and peanut butter he had in his car and sleep. He was going to leave as soon as the dawn broke.

He stepped into the office and saw no one was at the desk. There was a notice near the cash register that said he was to write his name down, take a key, and put cash in the lockbox. He stared at the notice and then shrugged. He took room eight, put two twenties and one five in the box and went back to his car. He parked close to the room, noticing the broken coke machine next to it on the corner. He was glad he’d brought his own pillow and blanket. If no one checked people in who cleaned the place?

Maurice was pleasantly surprised at the room. It was pretty big, with a wide king sized bed in a well-made wooden frame. A clean flannel comforter and fluffy pillows were on it. The place smelled like lemons. No television but there was a small bookshelf with some popular titles and there was an old digital clock radio on the nightstand.

He set the alarm and turned it on. Doris Day sang to him again.

Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother, "What will I be?
Will I be handsome? Will I be rich?"
I tell them tenderly

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head.

Shower and then sleep and he could leave this crazy shit behind.

The water was hot and there were small soaps and hair products that he appreciated. The towels were clean.

He pissed and then washed his hands in the sink, staring at his own eyes in the foggy mirror. He saw a flicker of black and white. His mother stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders.

Her face had the plumpness he remembered when he was a child, not the skeleton she’d been after cancer. She wore an apron with a smiling bear on it. Her smile matched the bear’s, gentle and quiet. But it wasn’t right, she was soft, almost like the lines that made up her form kept shifting. She wasn’t bright either, her red hair was faded as was her skin and her clothing.

“Why’d you kill her Maury? She was so sweet.”

She sounded distant, an echo rather than a person right next to him.

“I didn’t…” he stammered.

She shook her head and made a tsk sound with her teeth. “You can’t lie to your mother. You murdered poor little Janice. She worshiped you. Made your favorite meals. Did your laundry. Stayed with you through your drunken fury. Stayed with you when she lost both those babies. And how did you repay her?”

“She was sick, Mother. She was dying. She wanted me to do it!”

Her expression changed, becoming hard. Her voice sounded impatient and short.

“Is that what you tell yourself?”

"Que será, será"

He put his hands over his ears. “You’re not real. You’re dead. You’re dead! I bought your tombstone.”

“But you cremated me didn’t you Maury? Sold my burial plot and had me burned like an indigent. Little shit.”

Maurice screamed and headbutted the mirror. The pain gave him clarity. The blood in his eyes only made him angry.

He ran back to his room and ripped the clock radio out of the wall, hurling it against the floor and stomping on it. The song continued.

"Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see"

He dressed and packed up everything in his suitcase, tearing out of the parking lot and spraying gravel. The song followed him, blasting over the radio in his car.

It was pitch black now and he couldn’t see well with the blood still in his eyes. He drove faster and faster.

His mother looked at him from the driver’s side mirror.

“Janice still loves you boy. She wants you to join her.”

Janice was in the suitcase. Janice was a fossil, hardened from more than ten years of preservation. Janice didn’t want anything anymore. He’d seen to that.

Maurice swerved as he saw the whites of a deer's eyes.

“You’ll not get me mother. I’m not a little boy anymore. I will survive. I will endure. You bitches can’t do this to me!”

"Que será, será"

He smashed his fist into the radio, the sound distorted as he ran into the shoulder and then back on the road.

Damn deer.

He breathed out, trying to calm himself. The song had stopped. It was quiet now. No mother. No Janice. He wiped his face, the blood had started to dry. He saw the shadows of the trees and the distant light of a city in the distance.

His heart slowed. He stopped pressing down so hard on the gas.

Bang!

He’d driven into a tree. His vision spun. The deer he’d almost hit walked up to his car and peered in. Its eyes were yellow, its pupils were slitted. It ran back the way it had come, disappearing into the trees.

His mother appeared in the mirror, singing.

“Que será, será
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see
Que será, será
What will be, will be"

He closed his eyes, slumping forward.

“Que será, será”

I have always eaten mice. My earliest memory is of swallowing one whole while my mother chased me with a broom trying to get me to spit it out.

When my teeth grew in, I rarely swallowed them whole. Instead, I enjoyed the taste of warm blood and the crunch of small bones.

There was a hunger in me that food would not sate. I found myself constantly trying to fill a hole.

My mother used to worry I’d choke on one of them. Maybe a tiny bone would lodge somewhere hidden in my throat until I passed out and died. She rid the house of mice with traps and poison. She bade me to be loud when I wanted quiet, encouraging my steps to make more noise.

“Akweke”, she said. “Women are safe when they are hidden. When they are wind.”

My grandmother told her not to worry, that I had part of Mamlambo inside of me, that urged me to claw and hunt. She’d come from a village far away and spoke like she was always singing. I grew up on her knee. She was the first person I tried gifting a mouse to.

I remember her politely thanking me and hurling the small body into the brush. Such waste, I’d marveled, too young to understand.

She told me to hide it from my father. I was used to keeping secrets from him.

It is difficult to describe my growing years. There was the spring of my mother and the winter of my father, whose voice sometimes caused earthquakes and hurricanes. He’d only spoken to me once before I turned fourteen.

I’d asked him to teach me to hunt and he said no, women were not hunters. Women were for marriage and children, he’d said. I thought he’d swallowed a storm of birds.

Grandmother told me stories of tricksters and said my father had the spirit of a warthog inside of him.

Look, she told me, how he enters each door slightly backwards.

She’d never liked him and made it clear. She was the only one who ever spoke a word against him. I envied her brittleness. I too wanted to be old and outspoken. I wanted to carry a cane I could hit insolent boys with.

My mother’s love was stealth and shadow. She wore dresses that resembled the color of our walls, a muddy brown. Sometimes I’d forget she was there unless she spoke. Her shoulders sank, year after year. I was convinced her ankles were disappearing.

She whispered to me at night, when my father wasn’t raining thunder down on her or my sisters. Touched the back of my hand, matching our skin tones like swatches of fabric. She spoke like she was always vibrating.

I grew my nails long and sharpened them to wicked points. I learned to hunt from the lioness, patient and quiet, on my belly in the brush. They did not hesitate to kill, tearing into flesh with their razor teeth.

Their men sat fat and happy to be waiting on them to finish their work.

I ran my tongue over my own blunt teeth and wished I could join them. I could bask on rocks in the sunlight and hunt when my belly was hungry. It did not seem like such a bad life.

On my fourteenth birthday, my father came upon my sisters and I. We were mashing cassava and plantains to make Fufu. My sister, Nadya hummed softly under her breath as we worked together to form the rhythm.

Thump thump thump thump.

“Your mother is dead,” he said abruptly. He looked at the walls and the furniture, never my face.

Perhaps I was a ghost, dead a hundred years. Or he found me hideous. Either way, a ghost did not speak. A ghost did not feel.

I wished for that as the sound of his voice stopped.

“How did she die?” Nadya asked.

“She was trampled,” he said. “She was where she shouldn’t have been. She was always where she shouldn’t be.”

I shook my head. My mother was never out of place. She fit, as easy as weaving elephant grass. She always fit.

I tried not to picture her smashed under hooves and muscled limbs. Her beautiful eyes full of blood.

I had seen someone trampled before. A boy my age, who’d run from his mother shrieking in delight as she’d called him back. They were on him before his joy could turn into terror. He’d been but a toy in the herd. The animals had left only his tattered clothing behind.

That was all my father told us of my mother’s death. I felt different after. There was the me before who had all of her parts. All the limbs and teeth and tongue. I became aware that I was missing something, some part I could not name. I felt its loss, a phantom pain.

I’d known warriors who’d described the sensation to me. They kept reaching for things with hands or arms they no longer had.

My father would never admit it but there had been blood under his nails. I scrubbed the memory of that from my heart, blinking memories away with the sweep of a lash. I willed it away, pressing the feeling deep into the pit where I kept all the unpleasantness. There were worms in that pit, eating each other nose to tail.

That was where my spirit was. All the hiss and spit of my cat. Dying or dead already.

Less than a month later my father married all of my sisters off to much older men and came home with a bride the same age as I was. I knew what he’d traded for that bride. My father was not a great hunter nor was he a great provider. He only had us to trade.

I wondered how many cows I was worth. Perhaps two and a half. He would wait until I was as old as my sisters, plump and ripe.

His bride’s name was Zuri. She had skin so dark I couldn’t see her when the sun went down. Her arms and legs were thorns that seemed to shake all of the time. I didn’t know how she walked on those legs, she wobbled like a newborn.

I did not blame her for taking my mother’s space in his bed. She did not have a happy time of it but she tried to smile. Her lips were pink and full, she had a chipped front tooth that peaked out when she forgot to hold them closed.

Day by day, she was crushed as my mother was. Not all at once during a trampling. This was a slow steady pressure that lowered her shoulders. That dropped her eyes.

I could not help her. I was a ghost.

My grandmother visited once, she brought hand cookies she’d baked the night before. Zuri and I sat on the floor eating as my grandmother’s eyes lit up when she told us old tales of gods who spoke through animals.
Zuri did not laugh even then but she did not frown. I felt that she at least smiled inside.

My father forbade my grandmother from coming back. He said she had an evil aura and he did not want his house to become infected.

Her belly grew large, it was the only part of her that looked fed. She let me touch it sometimes so I could feel the child moving. I dreamed of it after the storm. The steady thump thump of a heart within another heart.

Zuri screamed when her time came. Her screams matched the rage of the thunderstorm. I couldn’t tell where one began and one ended. The child did not scream when he was born. He had a cord of flesh wrapped around his neck. He never made a sound.

My father buried the boy he would not admit he wanted.

Zuri stopped getting up. She stopped cooking and cleaning. She slept as if she was already dead, looking past my father when he spoke. Perhaps he’d become a ghost too, I thought.

Even so, her belly began to grow large again. My father had not given up. I cleaned her and fed her. I prodded her to move so she wouldn’t get sores. I held her hand when it stormed and she trembled so badly I felt it in my bones.

It did not storm when she birthed the second child. The quiet was worse. Our house was already a graveyard then, spirits nesting in the foundation. We added another that day, a little girl. She at least had made a sound when she was born, a sort of gurgling as Zuri held her, trying to get her to nurse.

Zuri held her for hours until my father used all of his strength to pry her fingers free.

He became convinced someone had cursed him. He called in a babalawo, a man named Golibe who wore patterned robes and kept his hands together in a praying position always. He smoked a pipe and lit some incense, walking through our home and humming under his breath.

Golibe said definitively that an evil spirit had invaded our family. The spirit had killed my mother and transferred to me. If my father sent me away, he would have no more issues with having children and Zuri would be happy again.

He brought Ikem to the house a few days after. Ikem was a man of elder years, at least twenty my senior. His skin was the color of a tree struck by lightning and his hair was braided tightly to his skull, black with veins of silver. His eyes were sharp and though he was older than eye, he stood tall and proud.

I knew he would be my husband before my father spoke.

I knew I would have no choice. Women did not have a choice.

“This is your new husband, Ikem,” my father said. He did not look at me. I listened to the quiet, the whole world had gone quiet. I would not see my father again.

I did not think I would regret that but part of my spirit hurt, a dull pain where his love should be. A thorn that still throbbed after being removed.

Ikem waited while I gathered my things in a sack. I whispered to Zuri that she was my sister. Zuri’s eyes did not open. I kissed her cheek and turned my back on her.

I turned my back.

Ikem did not speak to me as we began to walk. We would exist as my mother and father did then, as ghosts revolving around each other. I did not want to think of what the night would bring. I did not want to think of the rainbow of choices that were taken from me.

I do not know what I would have chosen in a husband. Someone kind and gentle, maybe. Someone who laughed and shook the whole house. Someone who held me with tenderness.

We walked and I did not know where we walked. I had no thought to even ask. What did it matter where we ended up? It was the leaving that lived in me.

Ikem proved to be a decent companion, stopping when we’d walked too long, sharing his waterskin with me. He watched me closely, making sure I drank enough. He gave me handfuls of dates and nuts to eat.

When we stopped for the night, he gestured to me to help make the fire and I gathered wood together, shaping it as I had been taught. I created the spark and lit the fire just as he came back with two small lizards impaled on a spear.

I watched as he cooked them over the flames.

“Why did you choose me?” I asked after we ate.

Ikem stared into the blaze. “I married my wife seven years ago. She died when I was on a hunt last summer with our child inside her. I did not want another wife but when your father came and offered you… the way he spoke. I could not let him go anywhere else. You will stay with me and I will teach you to hunt. When you have learned I will ask you what you want. If it is to stay I will care for you and you will have my children. If it is to go, you will go. That is all.”

He closed his eyes and said nothing else.

I slept fitfully, fearful that he lied and would come for me in the night. He did not.

Over the next few weeks he taught me how to hunt, how to look for signs on the ground. This antelope is wounded. This antelope is pregnant. I listened to him, listened to the soft way he spoke. He used minimal words and I found each to be chosen so deliberately. He was cool and dark and deep.
I learned to use a spear and a bow. I could mostly hit what I aimed at and felt myself smile for the first time in perhaps years when I struck down my first antelope.

I thought then I would stay. I thought then I was safe.

That was foolish of me.

One night a group of three hunters approached our camp. They were so lean I could count their ribs. I do not remember their faces. I remember their eyes. Bottomless and dark and wide. I remember their shark teeth. I remember their nails that scratched and cut.

Ikem on the ground, staring at the sky. No life. No life.

My body taken again and again. Their laughs like hyena cackles. Echoing inside my head.

I died.

I lived.

I died.

I felt my body moved, dragged through the earth.

I opened my eyes and saw a great white python curled around me, warming my skin.

“Eke?” I croaked. My grandmother had told me stories of a sacred python that came to devour sinners. She’d frequently said Eke would be coming from my father to swallow him whole.

“No,” the snake hissed. “I am just a motherrrr. I have sssseeen your past and your future. You willlll bring great changessss onto the world. I wish to asistttt.”

“What?” My vision blurred. I could feel my blood pooling beneath me. Would I die again.

The snake nudged a white egg towards me.

“Eat,” she said.

I brought it to my mouth and cracked it open, swallowing the goo inside. I was beyond nausea at that point. My body and I were separate. I did not own it anymore.

I slept and woke and slept again.

I looked down at my belly in horror when I had a moment of lucidity. It was distended just as Zuri’s had been.
“Not theirssss,” the snake said. “Mine, my child. It sacrificed for you. To change you. Sleep. Change. Become strong.”

I slept, not sure I wanted to wake.

I stretched awake, aware that my body felt no pain. My limbs were loose. The snake was gone and I was alone in the cave. Had I dreamed her?

I looked down at my arms that were strong and muscled. They were covered with golden scales. My bare legs were covered in more scales.

My tongue felt different. I felt a fork at the end of it and laughed. It came out on a long sibilant hiss. I had more teeth now, teeth enough to eat the world.

I was happy to be alive. Happy to be strong.

First I would find Ikem and bury him as was proper. I thought perhaps to find the men next, to stare into their eyes and drink their souls.

But no.

I had turned my back to Zuri. I could do so no more.

I live in Florida now, pretty sure I have to do this or the gators will eat me.

Title: Sunshine and Rainbows
Prompt: “The path is made by walking”
TW: Cursing, Homophobia

I moved to a small town three years or so ago. And by small town, I mean a rural Washington town so tiny it has one medium sized grocery store, no stoplights, and is an hour from the nearest Walmart.

I run a library in this town, I do displays and programs. I quite like being surrounded by trees and looking up at the stars at night. You forget what they’re supposed to look like in the city. You forget how to say hello to people or what berry picking with a group of really serious berry picking women look like. They all have secret Huckleberry spots that they’ll only take you to if you get up at five in the morning and agree to haul buckets down the mountain.

June is Pride month and it’s a month I love and dread in equal measure. June means I do Pride displays, colorful rainbow picture books and drag queen motivational books dot my shelves and my walls. I love seeing them but I dread listening to the vocal minority that begins to pop up.

Take those displays down.

Think of the children!

You’re too loud.

LGBTQ people don’t exist here.



It’s as though the displays remind people here that gay people live here. That they deserve representation. That the quiet unheard lives they lead should be enough right? Be invisible, be silent is the message I hear again and again.

The more vocal of them shout slurs at you if you walk through town wearing a rainbow sweater.

The less vocal get together on Facebook and sign petitions to remove books and displays because only straight white Christians should have a voice or be heard.

This year I took it, I took all of it and did something either brave or stupid. I kept the goddamn Pride flag up after June. I put it in the front window so that anyone who drives by sees it. Knows that in my library there is no “tolerating” of others. We accept everyone. We embrace everyone.

Libraries are not neutral, they are radical as fuck. MAGA books are shelved with All Boys Aren’t Blue. Mein Kampf is next to the Quran. No matter who you are, I guarantee your library represents you in some way.

One of the folks who works for our library board has made it their mission to get the flag down. Even threatened to take funding away from our library if we don’t take it down. She’s been recorded at meetings (yes this is a small town which are usually full of messy bitches who live for drama, who will record you saying stupid things) espousing this rhetoric.

Now I am conflict averse to a disturbing degree. I’m the kind of person who won’t send the wrong food back in a restaurant. But I can’t make myself cave on this. Our community is not all white Christian people who marry other white Christian people. Trans kids do exist. They commit suicide in towns like mine. Same goes for anyone on the LGBTQ spectrum. They deserve representation and respect.

Almost weekly someone comes in and asks me about it. Some are curious. Some are mad. Some write notes because they too are conflict averse but still need to get that point across.

It’s incredibly stressful for me. I think about taking that flag down many times. How much easier it would make my life. How I wouldn’t have to deal with angry white women or men who flap their hands to simulate limp wrists.

And I can’t do it.

I can’t take the flag down.

I can’t take that path.

My library has books for everyone. It has a rainbow flag. And you are welcome, no matter who you are or who you love.

Title: Recipes for Grief
Prompt: Without You
TW: Death


I don't want to write about grief anymore

I don't want to write about how it fits like an old jacket
that I keep having to patch the elbows on
how every year the shoulders tighten
buttons fall in the same patterns as falling leaves
from old bark trees
we used to make angels under

I don't want to write about all of the women dying in winter
my grandmother and mother gifting me Christmas ashes
how they sold her underwear in yellow plastic tubs
how her jewelry rubbed green
how she never got the funeral she wanted
gilded and grand

I don’t want to write about how I killed a mouse once
after its foot was caught in a snaptrap
how it woke me at three in the morning
frantic death squeaks all trapped creatures must make

I don't want to say that it made me remember my mother dying
on that dialysis machine
tubes pumping her veins clean
though never enough to counteract weeks of sin

There must be a recipe
for grief
something like tea using dust instead of leaf
filter through sleep
steep in water
let it wash me clean

Title:All is Well
Prompt:Someone who will love you in all your damaged glory
TW:A little gore
----------------------

Urie clicked the lights on and off three times. He did this twice more, running his hand over the wood veneer of the light switch.

9:15 and all was well. Or at least it would be once Urie checked on his chickens, his goats, and Clem, the cow.

He knew it was late and they’d all be asleep. Knew it wasn’t really normal to need to go out into the darkness.Every night he thought about it, staring at the rifle he kept behind his cabin door.

He thought about the night years ago when he’d woken at the same time. Something had told him to check the fence or the wire. But he hadn’t gone out and the next day he’d found all of them dead. Lumps of flesh torn in two, hardly recognizable as animals.

Urie still dreamed of those parts. Most hadn’t even been consumed as though the wolf killed them for fun.

The sky was dark, he imagined the stars gone as empty sockets where light bulbs should be.

Urie clicked the lights on and off three times.

He shrugged on his sheepskin coat and took the gun out from behind the door. He held it in his hand and thought about what would happen if he went out with it. If he found the wolf and shot it dead.

Would he stop dreaming about legs still twitching and body parts torn into twos and threes? Would he stop dreaming of grass so red?

Urie looked at his mantle.

There weren’t any pictures of him in his house. He’d often had the thought that a picture would make him a real person. Or that a part of his soul would be held there in the frame.

Urie clicked the lights on and off three times.

He thought maybe if he shot the thing he was afraid of he wouldn’t dream anymore. But he knew if he killed one another would hatch in the forest, slithering from its shell to Urie’s farm. It would not be deterred by the high fences or the sharp wire.

He left the gun at his door.

9:15 and all was well as he checked the fences that were too high and the sharp wire that wrapped around them. He listened to the chickens, wishing he could dream their chicken dreams. He watched the goats all curled up in a goat pile.

Clem leaned her head over the fence, gently nuzzling the red curls at the top of his head.

“You love me don’t you?” he asked her soft black nose.

He rubbed her ears for a second. Her eyes crossed.

She sneezed violently, blowing liquid onto his face and beard.

He laughed until one of the chickens came out to peck at his boots.

Gelfred often watched his neighbor through the wide window in his own kitchen. The boy was called Alfie, a name that sounded cute and harmless.

But Gelfred knew the boy’s secret.

Each night, the boy sat at his desk and opened a small wooden box. Inside the box was a large round object that Alfie would cut into.

The next day a country would disappear. Gelfred would ask his neighbors if they remembered Poland or Pluto.

No such place, they’d say.

Which meant that the boy was eating the world. One bite at a time. Planets too. Oceans and land and all the people in between.

Well Alfie had to be stopped didn’t he? Gelfred planned to act before Denmark or Saturn went as well. He quite liked the rings around the latter.

In the morning he put on his tweed suit and clipped on the red bowtie Millicent always said made him look official.

He hadn’t been next door physically in years. Not since Alfie’s parents and grandparents all died on an ill-advised trip to Disney World Scotland when they ate haggis on a stick that had spoiled.

Alfie had come back hollow eyed, his ribs protruding in a disturbing manner. Most in town had avoided the boy after, for fear whatever was haunting the boy would manifest in them.

Gelfred had thought the boy was getting better. For sure Alfie had gained pounds and pounds, filling out until he resembled a cooked dumpling.

Gelfred could still see the boy’s ribs, above the potbelly and waddling knees.

Alfie’s door looked different. Gelfred remembered a cheerful lion door knocker with a ring through its mouth. The lion now had the patina of old metal and snarled, making him hesitate to use it.

“You won’t give me a disease?” he asked the metal lion anxiously, wringing his hands.

He knocked once and waited. If no one came to answer he could at least say he tried saving the world.

Five minutes later the door opened a crack.

“No solicitors,” the voice croaked.

“Is that you Alfie?” Gelfred asked. “I came to speak with you but I’m not selling anything. Unless you’re interested in some very fine china I found at a yard sale last week. It’s got little blue octopuses painted on it. Quality work.”

The door opened and there Alfie stood. His shirt was stained in bruised purple and green stains that matched the patches of food on his chin.

Gelfred squinted. “You’ve been eating Finland haven’t you? I can see fjord drippings on your neck.”

Alfie shrugged and turned around, leaving Gelfred to pick his way through newspapers and empty cans on the floor.

Tetanus shot tomorrow, Gelfred vowed.

Alfie had carved himself a single spot on the couch in the living room that was free of trash. He curled up on his spot, eyeing Gelfred suspiciously.

“Tired of spying on me?” Alfie asked.

Gelfred sniffed. “I know what you’re doing. My Milly has been gone over a decade and I still have urges to swallow large parts of Canada but I resist because Milly always liked those Mounties. Also eating large parts of anything is wrong. Gives you indigestion.”

Alfie stared at his hands. “What am I gonna do then? When sadness empties my belly so that I hunger and hunger with an appetite so big I might as well be inside out?”

Gelfred peered down at his feet. “Well first we clean up your space a bit. Give you some walking around room.”

“And then?” Alfie asked.

“Then,” Gelfred said, “I suppose we can decide from there.”

Just to be safe, Gelfred took the wooden box with him when he left. He liked to take it out sometimes, wondering what Mozambique tasted like.

I could probably do this again. Trying to write more this year.

So I went a little insane and wrote a children's book. >_>




Princess Amelia was tired of the tower. There were all those stairs. She spent more time climbing up and down than anything else. And by the time she was on either side, she was too tired to do anything. So she stayed at the top, waiting.



Her Prince was coming. He would save her from this tower and marry her and they'd ride away on two white horses. She wasn't sure about the married part but she quite liked the idea of horses.



She'd started talking to the castle mice long before her first suitor showed. Phillip was her favorite because he was a terrible gossip and she loved learning about what those evil birds were up to.

She couldn't see much of the first prince. He was covered head to toe in armor and when the sun hit him, he resembled a rather large sparkle.

"Hello, fair maiden," he shouted. "I have come to save you."

"Save me," she said to herself. "It's not so bad here. Food magically appears and I have a nice view of those pretty mountains."

Princess Amelia told the prince to win her he'd have to climb the great staircase in his armor.

She spent the rest of the day gossiping with Phillip, to the sound of a steady staccato clang clang clang as the prince fell again and again.

He left the next day, limping into the forest.

The second prince wore a bright red feather on his cap. Phillip was immediately suspicious and told Amelia he was sure the prince was with those awful birds.

He and his brethren invaded the prince's camp and stole everything. Phillip stole the prince's hat and fashioned one for his very own.

Princess Amelia was very disappointed. None of these princes were real princes. Not one white horse. Not one lovely sonnet.

The next to approach the tower were all too something. One was too fat. He couldn't even make it up the very first flight of stairs. Two were too dirty. Dustclouds surrounded their (not white) horses. And the last.



The last, he was the worst of all. His name was Prince Corncake and he only had the one white horse to his name. Still, it was a very pretty horse.

"Take the tower," she said. "I shall take your horse and you will stay here. Pretend to be me."

She cut off her hair and fashioned a wig from it.

"There," she said. "Now just send those princes away when they come courting. Tell them you've developed boilitious. I have no idea what that is but it sounds dreadful."

She paused. "Also once a month wild hogs come and celebrate. They bring their own wine but the noise can be distracting."

She patted Prince Corncake on his newly coifed head and rode away on her very own white horse. She named her Isla, after the mountains that Amelia could see from her tower.



"Shall we go and see what's on those great mountain tops?" Amelia asked.

The soft thump wakes her. Meryl groans and rolls over, staring at the white popcorn ceiling above her bed.

She thinks about going back to sleep. Pretending she hasn't heard a sound.

"Fuck," she mutters under her breath.

She sits up, legs dangling over the side of the bed as she bends over and reaches under for the wooden baseball bat. Her grandfather's, solid and heavy in her hands. He'd carved strange symbols over it, said they were Viking runes of protection.

The old man had been full of shit but she likes the look of them. The curving hooking lines that circled around the base were stained a dark red.

He'd always fancied himself a berserker. Meryl snorts at the thought.

She wiggles into a pair of ancient flip-flops near the foot of her bed, not bothering to change out of her gray tank and shorts.

The bat drags behind her as she turns on the porchlight.

The body isn't too far away. A man shape slumped against her old apple tree.

Blood tree now.

She lights her cigarette, inhales fire. Must be like the flytraps. Damn things just singed themselves until there was no help for them.

She smokes until her lungs burn. Smokes until nausea crawls up her throat.

The body isn't going anywhere but she can hear the soft pained wheezing of the creature.

She curses, stomps out her cigarette, and takes up the bat again.

She sees the wings first, as wide as her body was tall. Soft downy feathers surround him on the ground.

He speaks in a thousand voices. "Help me. Help me."

"Yeah," she says.

He makes no sound when the bat hits him. She hears only the thwack of the wood hitting bone. She has to swing hard. Her arms are tired by the time he dies. Blood covers her face. It tastes of flowers and spoiled fruit.

The earth beneath the tree will swallow the body come morning.

She should leave them to die. Let the damp or the cold do their job.

But she never could abide suffering. Even if angels were dumb as rocks.