SEVEN VOICES
  • About
    • Emily Norcliffe
    • Clarissa Wigoder
  • Curators
  • Contributors
    • TT19 >
      • Delphine Chalmers
      • Kate Weir
      • Natalie Perman
      • Kwan Q Li
      • Alex Beukers
      • George Wilson
    • MT18 >
      • Catherine Cibulskis
      • Bethan James
      • Rose Morley
      • Maia Webb-Hayward
      • Kwan-Ann Tan
      • Hannah Patient
      • Martha West
    • TT18 >
      • Jonny Budd
      • Charlotte Bunney
      • Jack Cooper
      • Leila Roberts
      • Nick Smart
      • Sarah Spencer
      • Simran Uppal
    • HT18 >
      • Clara Atkinson
      • Haroun Hameed
      • Meredith Kenton
      • Billy Lucas
      • Jessie Palmer
      • Anjelica Smerin
      • Emily Wigoder
    • TT17 >
      • Harri Adams
      • Julieta Caldas
      • Hannah Chukwu
      • Anietie Ekanem
      • Bea Grant
      • AS
      • Annabel Sim
    • HT17 >
      • Ed Maclean
      • Georgina Lloyd-Owen
      • Surya Bowyer
      • David Carey
      • Robert Jackson
      • Minying Huang
      • Jessica Ockenden
    • MT16 >
      • Charles Pidgeon
      • Adham Smart
      • Rebecca Thornton
      • Thomas Hornigold
      • Annie Hayter
      • Adam Milner
      • Thomas Lawrence
    • TT16 >
      • Thea Keller
      • Rebecca Took
      • Dominic Leonard
      • Anna Manning
      • Ben Ray
      • Harry Baker
    • HT16 >
      • Catriona Bolt
      • Ryan O'Reilly
      • Rebecca Marks
      • Ed Gould
      • Honor Vincent
      • Pierre Antoine Zahnd
      • Lindsay Tocik
    • MT15 >
      • Alexander Shaw
      • Lucy Byford
      • Emma Lister
      • JK
      • Kat Lewis
      • Maria Shepard
      • Adam Turner
    • TT15 >
      • Tom Gaisford
      • Jemma Paek
      • Harry Jones
      • Nasim Asl
      • Charlotte Pence
    • HT15 >
      • Ariel Fresh
      • James P Mannion
      • GL
      • I H-M
      • James Mooney
      • Tom Pease
      • Shivani Kochhar
  • Seven Voices
    • TT19 >
      • 1: mottle
      • 2: foam
      • 3: cinders
      • 4: milky
      • 5: dew
      • 6: grounding
      • 7: syrup
    • MT18 >
      • 1: ephemera
      • 2: alcove
      • 3: harem
      • 4: off-kilter
      • 5: stillborn
      • 6: embrace
      • 7: bloom
    • TT18 >
      • 1: percolate
      • 2: limerence
      • 3: wonky
      • 4: diaphanous
      • 5: hiraeth
      • 6: epoch
      • 7: epiphany
    • HT18 >
      • 1: scintillate
      • 2: periphery
      • 3: azure
      • 4: architect
      • 5: limbs
      • 6: ethereal
      • 7: opaque
    • TT17 >
      • 1: act
      • 2: wish
      • 3: fall
      • 4: cry
      • 5: restraint
      • 6: choice
      • 7: consequences
    • HT17 >
      • 1: truth
      • 2: digital
      • 3: horizon
      • 4: sharp
      • 5: luck
      • 6: savage
      • 7: uprising
    • MT16 >
      • 1: shelter
      • 2: morning
      • 3: colossus
      • 4: conceal
      • 5: curiosity
      • 6: recursion
      • 7: spirit
    • TT16 >
      • 1: coincidence
      • 2: details
      • 3: release
      • 4: we
      • 5: spiral
      • 6: dream
      • 7: endings
    • HT16 >
      • 1: evolve
      • 2: doubt
      • 3: memory
      • 4: &
      • 5: physical
      • 6: light
      • 7: permanence
    • MT15 >
      • 1: eclipse
      • 2: submersion
      • 3: collect
      • 4: voyage
      • 5: conflict
      • 6: portal
      • 7: map
    • TT15 >
      • 1: partial
      • 2: suspension
      • 3: £
      • 4: downstairs
      • 5: silence
      • 6: orbit
      • 7: final
    • HT15 >
      • 1: fantasise
      • 2: terror
      • 3: an awkward encounter
      • 4: in between
      • 5: wheel of fortune
      • 6: elemental
      • 7: races
  • Contact

6: Kat Lewis

23/11/2015

0 Comments

 
The Dead Man’s Cuticles

            The first time I saw a dead body I was ten. The corpse was slumped against a wall under the bridge – his head bowed and limp like he was praying without any hope. A coyote loomed over him, lips smacking as it savored the taste of August-cooked flesh. I quietly stepped off my bike and kicked down its stand when the coyote flinched. It pulled its face out of the man’s chest and looked at me. Blood tinted its tawny snout a dark shade of carmine. It peeled up half its lip to bare a row of red-washed teeth. A growl boiled in the back of its throat as if to say, This one’s mine. Find your own.
            I dropped my backpack to one shoulder and dug out the sandwich bag of quarters Mama told me to take to the Coinstar in Kroger. There had to have been at least a hundred bucks worth of quarters in that bag and I shook every last one of them at the mutt. It cowered away, answering each step I took towards it with a step back until I shouted, “Get outta here!” The mongrel whimpered as it turned tail and ran along the riverbank into the woods. I looked back at the man.
            His chest was split open like an unzipped jacket. I saw everything – ribs gnawed to nubs, intestines all drug out. A heart hung in the corner of his chest, shriveled up as if it had died mid squelch. Death was in the air and the taste of it fermented on my tongue like a rotten fruit – disgusting but vaguely intriguing. I blinked and realized I was standing directly over the body. Something drew me towards it like a pied piper playing a song on the wings of hungry flies. What I remembered most about my first dead body wasn’t the smell or the buzz of flies or the way his ribcage sat exposed like a yawning maw full of chipped teeth. No. It was the hands.

​[see more]
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    November 2015

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.