Dinosaur Bees

Tell It Again From Your Mouth
Ben Segal

Tell him and tell him everything and also the proper names. Where I remember we were was the part about the hospital. Those were nasty bone breaks and all that seeping blood! You were I think recounting the stitching up of that skin or what you call bone encasement.

And right, there was the part where the girl ran her finger up along the scar and the boy asked her to pull out the stitches and use that stitching thread to tie up her arms! That was some part to hear and ask for retelling. It was that good or listenable I think! I will sit right here with you while you tell him that part and the whole story from the beginning where you were watching those kids shimmering way down on the beach.

What I like is the trace of physical memory on your face during that part and the ending part too. What I like is how the lines on your cheek map right onto those scars. I want to run my finger like the girl, up along that raised skin of yours and real slow.

The last thing or the ending, which is the part you hadn't gotten to before, is the part he and well, also I, want most to know. Those kids on the beach or that crumbling dryness of skin around those thread holes; something had to collapse out of that slippage. That black thread from the stitching, that black thread is what she used for floss.

BEN SEGAL is the author of 78 Stories (No Record Press) and co-editor of the anthology The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature (Cow Heavy Books). His chapbooks Science Fiction Pornography and Weather Days were published by Publishing Genius and Mud Luscious Press, respectively, and his short fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from various publications including Tarpaulin Sky, Gigantic, The Collagist, Eyeshot, and elimae.

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