Maggie's Grave

by David Sodergren

Justice, aye? There was no justice. Just men with a perverse pleasure in the destruction of women’s bodies.

‘God, my mum was acting so crazy about that. I think she was making a dress to wear to it.’

What are these parents up to?

‘Trust me to end up in the town that time forgot.’

She had read once that magic mushrooms were to blame for so-called instances of witchcraft, people hallucinating and blaming — who else? — the women. Some things never change.

Steve kissed Courtney and thought of Boris Johnson.

Maggie! What a brilliant idea. He pictured Margaret Thatcher in a corset, smacking a riding crop off her bare thighs and leaving a thin red welt.

She was tall and grey, her limbs rotted and hideously extended. Her grinning head was perched atop an elongated neck that swayed meanderingly as she moved, like a mountain stream. And there, there was the gaping cavity in her belly, where once upon a time the men of the town had torn her open and removed her unborn baby. Despite her decayed form, blood still gushed from the wound, splattering on the ground in an endless, terrible waterfall.

WHoa!

She moved like falling snow, drifting and ethereal.