Snuggles

by TM Upchurch

She turned the pages, ‘Once upon a time…’ her fingers felt for the edges, twisting, sliding, brushing the paper aside as the words rounded the corner, ‘there were aliens who came to Earth and ate the mothers, all up, from the inside, except for the skin.’ Her eyes skimmed left, right, left, ‘No one knew if the mothers died, because the aliens left the skins intact, and lived within them. They moved a little jerky, paused occasionally, but they still looked, smelled, and felt the same.’

Her fingers faltered, found themselves, ‘And they all,’ she whispered, ‘lived happily ever after.’



Author bio: TM Upchurch lives and writes in a small house overlooking the Atlantic. Her fiction has been published in print and online, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and HISSAC short story competition. She is working on her first novel.

Twitter: @tmupchurch Website: www.tmupchurch.com.

Snuggles is part of 101 Fiction issue 24.

Smile

by TM Upchurch

The pumpkin stares ahead, eyes burning. ‘This is your night,’ I say, ‘so smile.’ There’s a brief flicker. I gave this one a wide mouth.

Pumpkins never last; they’re designed to rot. Tonight the eyes will succumb to the cold. Tomorrow, the skin will crumple and drop; juices will trickle through the cracks and pool where the neck might have been. The cheeks beneath the eyes are already wet and waxen. I scrape them with a knife still sticky from carving, and dry it on my leg.

I lean in, press my skin close, and whisper, ‘Try to stay pretty.’



Author bio: TM Upchurch writes fiction at www.tmupchurch.com and tweets as @tmupchurch

Smile is part of 101 Fiction issue 13.