Accident
by Blake Butler

 

Pulling the woman’s body from the wreckage, they found her teeth had been removed. Her gums and tongue were scorched with symbols. The nails had been plucked out of her toes, each rimmed with bright blood that smelled like money and reflected the onlooker’s eyes. The woman’s pubic hair had been shaved bare, while under her arms the tufts were braided, adorned with tiny beads, inside which could be seen several very tiny cities, white buildings gripped inside the glass. On the woman’s head the hair was also white—almost reflective—though the skin that held her body in appeared so young. Her one tattoo, across the forehead, read, apparently, her name. The only other victim, a child of five among bystanders who witnessed the woman’s high-speed head-on veer into their church’s garden wall, had been struck dead not by the car itself but by the sound that had erupted from the crashing woman’s skull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blake Butler is the author of EVER (Calamari Press 09) and Scorch Atlas (forthcoming from Featherproof Books). Mord kod mordum liaera istvikitieru summ emeasdfl? He lives in Atlanta and blogs at gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com.

 

 

 

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