She rolled her guts into the classroom in a wheelbarrow, her heart thumping.
“Look!” she said, waving a magician’s hand over them. “See how they shimmer.”
“They’re too slimy,” said a pale child, poking the pile.
“They smell awful,” said another.
“Shouldn’t they be shorter?” said a third.
“Or maybe less bloody?” said a fourth. One by one, each child spoke. When they finished, the class looked to her for a response. Instead, she sat, silent, head down, eyes fixed to the floor. The children waited and waited.
Finally, the instructor placed his thin fingers on her shoulder and called her name. But, by then, the girl’s heart wasn’t pounding, and her body was already growing cold.
Matt L. Hall is a freelance journalist and first-year MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His work has appeared in The pacificReview, Black Fox Literary Journal, The Watermark, and The Ice Colony. Matt is also a recent recipient of the Chet Frederick prize for fiction excellence.
Those kids are not very good at triage.
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