This year’s Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize contest entries blew us away! There were so many stellar examples of flash fiction storytelling. However, there were a handful that stood out. One of the honorable mentions chosen by Julia Rios, our judge, was “Egest Leporidae” by A.A. Balaskovits. This is an intense tale. Take a breath then dive in when you’re ready.

Egest Leporidae

The first miscarriage was odd, but not odd enough to cause alarm. The flesh had dripped
out wrong, in pieces that were unfamiliar, not human, all pink gummy flesh and blood clots. Her husband had only sighed and did the duty of his labor: he buried the meat in the yard under the Oak, then took her to bed again.

She told him that she had seen a rabbit that morning, before it went wrong. The rabbit
had looked at her, its black little eyes, and she had been afraid.

He told her not to speak of it.

Her belly grew from that night, and after the heavy months had passed she went into
labor again. Her mother-in-law, who was called in because she was a midwife, and because her husband suspected the first had been mishandled, came into the birth late, and by the time she had arrived there was no baby, but skinned parts of lean legs, a purple liver and lungs, and curved ears with long veins.

Her husband fed the pieces to the cat, and took her to bed again.

The next birth had him pacing outside her door. When his mother came out with the
offering, it was of three long legs with tufts of black fur around its ankles, a long vertebrae with no extensions for arms or legs, and guts winding around itself.

She told them she was dreaming of their cat, which had run away not too long ago, and
she thought of it, then, when she was pushing.

Over the next few days, when her husband went to lie with her again, she said she was
too ill, and when they woke up there were black eyes and brains between her legs.

At a loss, her husband called in the doctors, who did not believe in such miracles, and
they examined the newest parts and said they were too carefully butchered – knife scratches on the bones – and told him to lie with her again. Then, they tied her legs together and tied the rest of her to the bed, only allowing her to sip spoons of vegetable soup. They shuttered the windows, so that she might not see any animals, though she still heard the birds outside, twittering their songs, and at night, the scream of the rabbits as they were butchered for the doctor’s meals.

After the months had passed, they untied her and pushed on her belly. A skinned young
rabbit with broken teeth flushed out under her dress, as well as so much blood. The cord was still attached to it, and when they pulled on it, it came out from under her as if it had been connected to nothing.

Madness, they told one another. It is pure madness.

They bet their degrees on a hoax, and informed the husband that he should lie with her
one more time. This time, they allowed her to move, but they watched her carefully in shifts so that she was never alone, and kept her diet strictly of cabbage and oil. Against propriety and her wishes, they sat in the corner of the room as she birthed, smoking cigars and rubbing their foreheads.

The rabbit came out this time alive, twitching and squealing.

“My child,” she said to it, and asked it to be placed in her arms.

The mother-in-law made to do so, but the doctors snatched it from her arms and threw it
against the wall. They fell on her as one, tearing the clothes from her body as the women
screamed at them to stop. When she was naked and sobbing, they backed away from her,
gasping. The mother-in-law stepped forward and dared put her hands in the space between her legs to feel the soft, grey fur covering her from thigh to belly. She removed her hand when a face, long ears and long teeth, made its squealing way out.

A.A. Balaskovits is the author of Magic for Unlucky Girls (Santa Fe Writers Project 2017). Her fiction and essays appear in Indiana Review, The Madison Review, The Southeast Review, Gargoyle, Apex Magazine, Shimmer and numerous other magazines and anthologies. She was awarded the New Writers Award from Sequestrum in 2015, her short fiction was named in the top 50 of Wigleaf‘s Very Short Fictions in 2017, and she won the grand prize for the 2015 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards series. She is the co-editor in chief of Cartridge Lit. Find out more about about her award-winning fiction & creative projects at http://www.aabalaskovits.com
Follow A.A. Balaskovits On Twitter @AABalaskovits!

Thank you to all of those who submitted their work for consideration this year. For more information about this annual SRP contest, please join our mailing list!