"Thaw"

by Taylor Ward

Hey dogs! I want to introduce to you to Taylor! Taylor was one of our very first submissions and we loved their work! After acceptance, they asked to be a reader! If you ever submit Fiction or CNF to dogyard, your lovely work might get read by this lovely reader/writer. I hope you enjoy this piece!

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Thaw

They will find me in Spring, when snow melts and I begin to thaw. I will be cool to the touch, fingers and lips blue as the Slurpee I had bought with my allowance; three dollars and fifteen cents. I can still feel the taste on my tongue, the sourness and artificial flavor that I can only call “blue.” The cup is still clutched in my palm, and they will not be able to remove it, my hand clawed and firm, a last act of defiance. 

There will be a bug that has made a home in my ribcage, a survivor of the harsh winter—she will lay her eggs in my heart, her spindly legs twisting round and round the offal, up and out of each atrium, carefully inspecting each valve with the utmost care. I will be a wonderful babysitter, and it will be a favor, as I doubt that she, being a bug, could pay me. I will do it out of the goodness of my heart. Because that is what good people do.

A coyote will tear my left leg from the socket—she is hungry, and it is cold. That’s the nature of things, I suppose. She will take it back to her den, her starving babies yipping and yapping happily as their mother places my leg before them, watching them eat. Her own belly growls, hunger gnawing at her, eating away at her. She will not return for my other leg. I wouldn’t mind; I won’t be using it.

They will tell my parents that I was a junkie, a runaway, a mess. My father will turn to the drink and my mother will sit in her chair, not believing them She will never believe them. She will divorce my father and take my younger brother to live with my grandparents, my father choosing a pack of beers over his wife.

They will find me in Spring, but Spring is a long ways away. For now, I lie in the snow, unable to breathe, staring up at the starless sky. They will find me in Spring, and it will be warm. I will have a Monster High themed coffin, because that’s the one thing my parents knew I liked when I was ten. I still like it, but I’m too old for that stuff. Too old. My mother will put black roses on my grave, because that was the only type I liked, being an angsty middle-schooler and all. They will find me in Spring, and I wonder if any of this will really happen. I shake the feeling as I stare up at the sky, trying to make out any stars, not wanting to be in the dark.

They will find me in Spring and the sun will be shining.

Taylor Ward is an author and artist from the Midwest whose interests lie in queer, trans, and indigenous horror. Taylor has been published in Flash Phantoms Magazine twice and serves as an assistant editor for Moon City Review. 

"Women who ring" by Catherine Ferrell is also available to stream and share on dogyard mag's podcast "The Bark at dogyard" on YouTube and Spotify <3

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