#fridayflash: A preview of Takpe from A Kind of Death

There is a nail in the back of Nur’s neck. She doesn’t know why.

She doesn’t think about it often, though sometimes when she bathes, her fingers touch it and she shudders. She doesn’t pull it out; she can’t, she’s not allowed to. Her husband Bakri doesn’t talk about it, changing the topic whenever she brings it up. She doesn’t anymore.

She wants to please him.

No one else she knows has a nail there. She’d seen a girl before, on that one trip to Kuala Lumpur for her daughter, Alia’s...