Whatever Happened to Sycorax? by Syreeta Muir - 206 Word Stories - Bag of Bones Press

 

Whatever Happened to Sycorax?

by Syreeta Muir

 

 

The night’s drawing in and there’s a bite on it. The woman sitting on the pavement next to a bundle of magazines, shriveled as a fig, smells of petrichor and sand. She gathers her bog-myrtle shawl around a bundle of rags at her chest.

A passerby with a kind, portly face stops to ask her name. He’s reaching into the pocket of his coat for some change when, quick as silver, she catches his arm in hard, nimble fingers, digging her ridged nails deep into his wrist. He’s confused, instinctively tries to tear his hand away but she just smiles, clicks her tongue at the fetid lump which has begun to mewl as she lets her shawl fall open. A baby hanging from her wrinkled, brown teat opens its mouth, makes a noise in its throat that sounds like bees, little brown teeth clacking like a sistrum. It slithers in through the man’s ears like a thousand rattlesnakes, hollowing out his head and making a nest. The woman helps him lie down on the ground, then eats up everything that’s left.

A young woman with a sling of bog-myrtle green is gathering her meager belongings from the pavement, she’s moving off to find a warmer spot.

 

N

 

Syreeta Muir carries an enormous bag that is entirely filled with things she couldn’t be bothered to put in the bin. Writing in Versification, Daily Drunk Mag, The Disappointed Housewife, Sledgehammer Lit, and others. Photography in Barren Magazine and Olney Magazine.

Twitter: @hungryghostpoet

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