Undressed Wounds

Still struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, Steven finds something in his attic. Something that shouldn't be there. Something alive. Originally published in Fusing Horizons from Grey Friar Press.At first, I thought it was a dead chick: one of those barely feathered near-foetuses you stumble across every now and then while out walking in the woods. I wondered how it had got there: in the attic, on top of a pile of newspaper clippings, themselves stacked upon a small tower of battered suitcases containing my wife’s favourite clothes. Scrutinising the thing (squinting, as if this would somehow make up for the naked 60-watt bulb’s lack of generosity), I was proved wrong. It wasn’t a chick at all. And it wasn’t dead. It was a foetus of sorts, however; I’d got that much right. It was vaguely simian, with the consistency and colouring of regurgitated liquorice. It pulsed and twitched, its tiny, gluey mouth opening and closing, its grimy eyes rolling.