TRIGGER WARNING -Helen Laycock The above image is the front cover to Helen’s first volume of microfiction. “Windblown”. Her next volume will be called “Ink Spills”. I will be featuring microfictions from this over the week. Here is the second. Helen says of these: The words in capitals are not titles as such; they are the prompts given in vss writing challenges. In brackets I have indicated the general theme of each piece.

-Helen Laycock. A Tongue Once a lass craved by a lad. He lusts after her. She is cold. He forces himself on her, He cuts out her tongue, to stop her gab. Sliced by his blade, he holds it with pincers. Her tongue’s root quivers, the rest lies on dark soil, writhes and trembles, searches for some sign of her. She weaves the fact in purple design on a white background, so her boss sees what her mutilater has done and moved by her rape molds her into a feathered thing, warm brown back, pale front, speckled with lines of dark arrows that point to her head, a tinge of golden brown on her breast, belly almost white with a few small dark spots, a bird who embroiders the fact of her pain in the cup of her nest, twigs, grass and moss, cemented thickly lined with mud, dung, rotten wood, mixed with leaves. At the start she can only call his name, nothing else in short bursts twice, clear and flute-like. She is a dirsh, thrusher, thirstle, throggle. Come icy ground she smashes the shells of snails against a favourite stone, picks at the foot, as at a swollen tongue, swallows the meat. -Paul Brookes Bios And Links Amazon Author Page

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Helen-Laycock/e/B006PGFVL6

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