Her fingers. They are like creeping spider legs, spindly and skeletal, reaching out towards you, pleading and desperate.
MORGAN QUINN, BRIDGET CLEARY’S FINGERS
A Soaking Rain—Shelly Jones
The villagers used to call her a fool, gawking from their homes and storefronts as she stood arms akimbo in the rain. Waves crested over her cotton dress, hanks of hair clung to her face. They’d shake their heads, murmuring portents of chills in her bones, colds settling in the nape of her neck, her chest, her back.
Bone Dolls—S.E. Hartz
Baba would come quick after dinner, one crooked finger to her lips, and press my palm with a chicken bone. Father saw her once and told her to stop her old country witchcraft; after, she moved in secret. I wrapped the bones in cloth and hid them in my trunk, and when it was full, I buried them along the path to the forest.
Saving Yourself—Kim Malinowski
Sometimes you have to break out of dark towers with bread knife, tapping and sawing, until there is day and moonlight. Eat raw nettles for supper, then breakfast, tripping, tearing clothes through briars.
When It Comes—Sarah Muir
Our girl first notices the wolf on a warm summer day in Detroit. She is walking along the river, having wandered away from her friends at a local club for a cigarette break. Truthfully, she quit smoking months ago but still uses it as an excuse to duck out of social gatherings she didn’t want to be at anymore.
The Crows Remember—JY Saville
Once upon a time a man had three daughters. No wife, not any more – he’d plucked her from the village like a delicate flower, and hill-farming’s a hard life – but she’d left him three bundles of laughter who chased crows from the farmyard and sheep across the fells.
How to Sort Through a Laundry Basket Holding Ten Years Worth of Single Socks—Jerica Taylor
First, do not get your hopes up. While statistically there are likely to be accumulated matches, lost socks have long defied established data.
Solid Wall but the Wall Is Made of Hands but the Hands Are Made of Sheetrock—Sean Noah Noah
The girl named Minus can start hands with her fire. She strikes matches against her skin to light them. As they burn, the flames don’t sputter. They’re overconfident for their size, conical little jets of fire like what comes out of the end of a blowtorch.
You Keep Yourself Alive on the Moon—Jacqueline Xiong
You keep yourself alive on the moon by weaving cloaks of hare fur.
When your hare was alive, it bounced from side to side at your feet, and you would always reach down to rub its head. The people on Earth call it yutu, Jade Rabbit. Just as they call you Chang’e.
The Guilty Pleasure of Parthenope—Kathy Hoyle
He wakes, pushes himself up to rest on his forearms, his pale shoulders jutting like scallop shells. He blinks against the blur– blue water, to no avail. Everything moves in flux, rippling in slow time. Whispers dance around him, muted echoes ebb and flow. He blinks again, tries to focus, but the world remains a curved and fluted half-dream.
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Growths start. Spreading out from the point of contact: lumpy knobs that flatten out into palms, with knuckles on one side and heart lines on the other. The palms fold out into jointed fingers as she draws the flame back, reaching forward for the match, ending in nails.
SEAN NOAH NOAH, SOLID WALL BUT THE WALLIS MADE OF
HANDS BUT THE HANDS ARE MADE OF SHEETROCK
