Tierra Porter

The landing strip, then the narrow isthmus where Paul drove you earlier, and then the land around the station.

Only a small clump of trees, the rocks by the station.

Griffin.

I'm describing all this to show you how small and bare the island is.

So how hadn't we seen the naked, rotting man standing on the shore looking at us?

When I say rotting, he wasn't dead.

He was rotting while alive.

There was no meat on his body, just skin drawn across bone.

The skin was not a human color.

His eyes were fish eye white.

His hair was long and matted, but the worst thing was skin.

that I knew who he was, an art teacher that I had a crush on when I was 12, who'd been hit by a car.

And then he leaned back and howled at the sky, and it was my dad's voice.

He died of a heart attack, but it sounded like he was right there.

But Ardley's breath hitched in a sob, and he said,

That's mom.

The art teacher, dad, mom thing squatted on the shore and nipped with its teeth at the side of its hand and peeled off a long strip of flesh and started eating.

There was no blood.

I only realized I hadn't been breathing when I yelped as Arlie screamed, mom, stop.

And