Little Boy Lost
Originally published in Midnight Echo issue 4 June 2010
Some people say that when you die, they put you in the ground where worms come to eat you until there is nothing left but bones, and that's what you are: dust and bones, never to come back to life. Other people say they've talked to the souls of the dead. Maria can do better than that: she feeds them carrots.
She sits on her knees in the grass, damp with dew, seeping into her jeans. The bag of carrots rests in her lap, the plastic crinkling whenever she moves.
It's well after dark, and the back yard breathes mystery. The too-long grass casts tangled shadows and the forbidding metal fence hides just out of view. Even the concrete looks different: with deep cracks like hieroglyphs.
They come out of the shadows, one
