Gertrude

I want to be eaten by pigs. To feel the warm air blowing from their sniffing snouts is the answer. To feel their teeth gnawing at my flesh is the way to my end.

I’ve climbed in their pen. I’ve counted ten. Oblong mounds of soft pink. Twenty ears that flip and flop as I squash through their graveled mess. They’re over there: cornered in a herd by their feed. And I’m right here. On the ground. Inside their mud. I treat this liquid like a pool. I’m submerged. My skin sits camouflaged in the brownest of brown. I wait patient like a floating log.

Then I hear them. Now—pit pat, pit pat toward me. And pit pat, pit pat is my heart.

Hogs appear. They surround me. They can smell me. Soon they will taste me.

Perla

I burned her in a barrel. I can still smell the blazing soot on my shins. I can’t stop thinking about how I killed her. I won’t reveal my name, but I will let you in.

I carried her—flailing and screaming like a fighting fowl—to the garage. I threw her into the tallest, fattest barrel I could buy. And before she could even try and tip it over to escape, I poured in gasoline. She screeched. She gasped for breaths.

“Shut up!” I said. I threatened her with slower deaths. I lit the flame faster than she could wipe away her eyes. I watched her die. Her pounding sounded like the beating of enormous drums. Her whole self was ignited.

I stepped back to gaze at fire—the prettiest yellowish orange-red I’ve ever seen. I leaned against the open door. I watched the ombré dance.

Owen

I drowned myself in the ocean. I jumped in. Then I swam. Then I swam and swam some more. I don’t know how I did it. I could never hold my breath for long. I was a terrible diver. But I kept on. Kept diving down. I passed glaciers of fish. I noticed seaweed and starfish. The light from the sun on those waters had faded. I had entered the oily dark.

I grabbed hold of a rock. The biggest I could muster to find. My head was dizzy, my muscle weak. I held and held until everything stopped. I felt my mind rise up and out of the wet. Into the dryness of the sky.

My body was limp. A thin thing slow to surface. Something trying to follow—at least half of the way.

Faye

Flat on the roof. The first of February. Skin slanted against feathered shingles. Heavy snow from the heavens. Angry angels shaving clouds. Godly phlegm on truffled skin. 30 inch frizz frozen under a marshmallow spread. Unanswered calls from cut phone lines. No clothes, no help. No love letters lost or to be written. Just her entombed atop a house.

Just him inside a car below. He rolls his beet car up their driveway. He steps in snow: raspberried sweats, boots, and a hat. He searches through cruel blizzard winds. He unlocks his wife’s cranberry door. He walks in to feel a silence he’s never heard before.

Richard

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“He jumped?”

“Mhmm. From the bridge.”

“My God.”

“I know. He was only 27.”

“He had so much left to give.”

“He was supposed to be married in another month.”

“I know. I was all ready. Had my suit and shoes and all.”

“Another waste.”

“He left his baby girl, you know. She had just turned 2 in May.”

“I know, I was there at the celebration.”

“Don’t know how he could just leave her.”

“People do unfortunate things.”

“She was his partner in crime. Best friend, he always said.”

“Doesn’t seem like that now.”

“Poor girl.”

“Little Edie.”

“How is she, anyway?”

“Don’t know.”

“Don’t know?”

“No. I haven’t seen her since.”

“Like disappearing father—”

“Like disappearing daughter.”

Maggie

She kept eating. Anything and everything she could find went into her mouth. Breads and pastas. Soups. Loaded salads. Meats of every kind. She forced fish down her throat. Pushed pork between her puffed lips. She gorged in the morning, late afternoon, and night. She ate breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and dessert. She had snacks galore. Chips, chocolate, and packaged cakes. Whipped cream was her favorite. Caramel syrup, a treat. All she thought of was food. Her eyes were as pies: large and honeyed brown. Her stomach bulged. Her skin felt as if it would rip open from one tiny tear. Her heart couldn’t handle the heavy pressure. But her mouth watered and tongue tingled, so she swallowed some more.

Michael

She drove him to a wood 100 miles from their house. She dragged him through leaves, sticks, and over ground. Dumped his body near an evergreen. Threw his t-shirt and corduroys by an open ring of water. She hid his socks inside his boots and buried them in nearby brush. There was no need for his wallet or his keys. She tossed those in a hollowed tree. She brought no blanket or a form of quick façade.

I hope he rots in sun and endless rain. She considered clubbing him but stopped. She left on light feet in his old tennis shoes. She dumped him as a feast. One for birds, she thought, insects, and any other starving beast.

Anne

They found her on the side of the road. She was thrown onto the shoulder like a deer. Beads of blood were strung dry underneath her. Her one eyelid was open. The other, half-closed.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I have,” said the passerby to the policeman, “once before.”

Whoever she was, she was a stranger to them. A young girl. Buttoned dress made of denim. “Will you find her family?”

The policeman lowered himself. He brushed away strings of bangs to uncover her forehead. Depressions and torn skin. He looked into her brown eye. He heard shouting from the farthest point of the road. He saw shapes swelling from the backdrop of the mountains. Bending legs and waving hands.

“There is no need,” he said. He pointed to those moving shapes that began to wail. They heard them. Then they saw what happened next: bodies dropping to the blackened ground.