Cousin

the bustling underhill a place for beautiful bitey things

is guarded by two balafred badgers, arms thick as oak trunks smoking cigarettes, and letting kids in.

she went with gore : a blackberry patch in one fist a hare, by the wishboned neck

still twitching, spitting foam in the other, like some kinda preteen

artemis moon on her forehead and everything

well, she whistled right by them down to the bleeding heart —where the white moths

flurry to that tree's tender fruit, their red halos begging those moths to trip the light fantastic

dagger belted to her hip all of twelve, and holy for being the apostle number.

she met her cousin at the foot of the tree, gnarled as grandfather knuckles.

his eyes glistered from the hot dark his wide mouth a

buffet of carrion; the vixens further

deep in the earth

where all the wonder lay.

She drops the berries by his snout the hare by his foot and

her cousin cracks a bone in his jaws and the

vixens snarl for the meal of her.

"what," he asks, "do you want for it?" and she,

not a woman not a witch either

but a girl, said

"what"

are you going to give?"

Flash Issue 6