Juicy orbs plucked from weak limbs, bending to greedy hands to the point of snapping

The crackling of spidery fascia being torn from firm shell

Screams misting the air with nose-crinkling sourness

Your shame perfumes the stratosphere as your essence is devoured

Tart juice bleeds out, seeping from open wounds

Your puckered skin, sweating with sweet oils

Your planetary glory, divided into slices and conquered by the sucking of scurvy mouths

Until all that remains, a rind

We used to have a small spruce tree right next to the stairs leading to the patio. Every spring robins would nest there and they would leave their perfect cadbury eggs dangerously close to curious fingers. "Don't go too close to the nest or you'll scare the mother away," they would tell me. And every day I would walk down the stairs, going in slow motion once I neared the nest, savoring each peep into the opening in the branches.

I often thought about how tragically magical it would be if something should happen to the mother and I had to raise them. I could picture it all so clearly, checking on them under the heat lamp, hearing that life-changing crackle of the chicks hatching, growing close with them and fulfilling my Disney princess destiny... Everytime I passed the nest my mind was infected with a sick tactile compulsion.

My best friend was over one evening and I proudly showed her the robin's eggs. As soon as Hailey saw them she was overcome by the same urge. We secretly discussed my plan and she agreed that we would each take one and leave the rest for the mother. With my parents just inside, we made our move. I crept close to their tiny twig bed and delicately picked up one of the warm, blue eggs. Wanting to conceal it, I quickly tried to slip it into the pocket of my jeans. The shell immediately cracked under the pressure of the seams. The embryo seeped into my skin like a splash of self-loathing. Desperate, we went for another and another until the nest was empty and my ribcage was full of hot shame.

We ran upstairs to shower the viscous bird off of ourselves and tried to hide our salty eyes during dinner. That night held no sleep as I was inundated with images of the mother robin returning to her nest only to find her precious clutch gone. As my punishment, I let my projections of her shock and sorrow consume me and went without breakfast the next morning, but it was never enough. Even now, whenever I am home I think of our grabbing hands and the dripping yoke and the tiny embryos filling my pocket and I hate myself.

#prose #shortstory #flashfiction #memoir

Goblins fester in dark wombs,

Their dormant grey-blue bodies in a grotesquely acrobatic tuck,

Until the Reaper’s toll animates their waxen limbs and begins their descent.

Fresh spongey fingers lacerate the red moss coating of the cave walls,

As blind eyes desperately seek the white air.

With every movement their black claws siphon sanguine ooze that drips like the leaking of foul preserves from a shattered jar.

Velvety vines of algae fall on nascent corpses like wet spider webs, entagling cyanotic legs in the now sputtering moss.

Goblin palms, in the throws of consciousness, are slashed by defiant stalgmites and

The cave floor sizzles with the unholy mixing of the bloods of animal and mineral.

Yet still they scramble on to the tunnel’s end, desperately following the light's sirenic beckonings.

The perverse crowning of goblin heads emits dizzying shrieks,

A horrible brightness seeps into their closed eyes as if voles being plucked from their dens.

Warm air poisons their damp, opalescent skin and with a final cosmic snap their they are expelled from the petrous hollow.

Their wails deafen any who pass as they crawl through alien worlds, forever searching for a familiar haunt.

#poetry #prose #gothic #horror

We walk through the door to long lacey curtains fluttering and the smell of wood and dust. Sitting on the pilly couch, a petite frame shouts curses at the television between breaths from her oxygen mask. We take turns kissing her cheeks, crinkley and powdery like molasses cookies when you make them right. I patter into the kitchen to sneak Fig Newton's, before running downstairs and crowding into the basement to watch Bay Watch alongside everyone else.

I would throw back my head and laugh

I would scream at them until they did

I would throw hardcover books at them until their skull broke

I would waterboard them with audiobooks

I would unplug everything they owned until they built libraries

I would banish them to cabins until they craved prose

I would shrug and think "more for me"

We dress nicely, but warmly.

I meet you every year, but never know you any better.

If they didn't drive, I'd never know where you are and I'll never ask.

We take sticks and trace their sharp ends into the letters that spell your name,

Carefully scratching out long strings of frozen moss and dirt.

Setting down our verdant offerings, we withdraw to explore the rest of the grounds, pretending to search for more sticks, so that they can be alone with you.

On the way home, I press my cheek against the cool window and wonder what you would be like.

She threw away everything she owned except for her favorite things which she packed in a secondhand suitcase which also happened to be one of her favorite things. Having arrived at the desolate cabin that was to be her home from now on, she lugged the faded embroidered floral suitcase over the cobbled forest path. Out of breath, she stopped along the trail to take it all in. As she lay down on the dirt and leaves, the roots began to move. Their serpentine flow turned more deliberate and she knew that they were searching for her. She kept still and let them take her, surrending herself to the forest.