Posts Tagged ‘Bundle’
May
Three Claw Marks
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
In a flash, a furry bundle leaps silently onto the bar counter.
Before the sailor can cover his face, sharp claws tear skin from his cheek. The glass of bourbon falls from his hands, and its contents spill over the table.
“Don’t talk behind my back—”
The sailor turns and sees a tabby with a metal peg leg glaring at him in the tavern’s gloom.
“—if you want to live long in space!”
“Aye sir.” The sailor trembles like a child.
“Sayonara, baby.” The tabby lifts his tail and vanishes. Blood drips from three claw marks on the sailor’s cheek.
From Guest Contributor Umiyuri Katsuyama
Translated by Toshiya Kamei
Umiyuri Katsuyama is a Japanese writer of fantasy and horror. In 2011, she won the Japan Fantasy Novel Award with her novel Sazanami no kuni. Her latest novel, Chuushi, ayashii nabe to tabi wo suru, was published in 2018. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous horror anthologies in Japan.
May
Junk
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
There’s so much still to suffer that even tediously waiting for a train that’s hours late would be a grateful interruption. People are digging in the burning soil with bare hands. My wife’s there. My mother, too. I was going to join them, but now I can’t. It’s as if I’ve become, without my consent, a junk collector. Strange items keep appearing outside the door: a pamphlet, “Human Beings against Music”; rusted bedsprings; a bundle of pencils with broken points; feathers from random birds. Someday, I suppose, children will ask me, “What was it like, the end of the owls?”
From Guest Contributor Howie Good
Oct
The Bundle
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
He’d always seen the precious bundle as his passport to validation, his means to assuage all the failures of the past. He sought to learn from the wisdom of its sometimes harsh words. It was only two years old, light enough yet to cradle in his arms until he fell asleep in his chair, teary-eyed, yet hopeful.
Each morning there would be either little to feed it, or surfeit enough for an unsightly spurt of growth. It all depended on the postman.
A particularly cruel epithet from an envelope’s maw tipped the scales.
The bundle helps the dry leaves burn.
From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid