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Womb Viewer

Story by Julienne Grey (Read author interview) March 25, 2014

art by Haily Myziuk

For the second night in a row, Daddy Marshwood sat in front of the screen and picked up the phone. “We don’t like what we’re seeing here.”

“Maybe you should change the channel,” Chris told him, flashing his eyes at Angela, who was sandpapering a chair the size of her thumb.

“The womb is still empty,” Mommy Marshwood chimed in.

His father assented, “We didn’t spend a couple hundred on a Viewer for this.”

Chris strained to hear him, idly playing with a fridge magnet. “Dad, we told you there’d be nothing.”

“Not nothing. Two nights ago the wall ruptured—left side, like fireworks!”

Chris sighed, toying with the pineapple magnet while handing Angela a finger puppet with an iron-ball head.

Angela sat the puppet into the chair, and leaned back.

“Make it fun together,” Daddy said, lowering his voice. “Macaroni, smooth jazz—”

Fun, they’d said. They bought it for Christmas, the Viewer.

Angela held the puppet and chair in her fist. She untied her bellybutton, dropped them both in, and knotted it closed.

She smiled and Chris put down the phone.

Angela took his yellow pineapple and made the little iron man dance.

About the Author

Julienne Grey was recently awarded the Slice Literary Writers’ Conference Scholarship and has done feature interviews for Slice Magazine. Her work has appeared in Joyland, Squawk Back, theNewerYork, The Ink and Code, and Quail Bell Magazine. She has stories forthcoming in Blue Fifth Review and Slice issue 16. You can find her website at juliennegrey.com and her tweets @JulienneGrey.

About the Artist

Hailey Myziuk lives and works in Detroit, Michigan, and is the owner/designer behind Snow and Ivy Paper Goods, a stationery and custom design studio.

This story appeared in Issue Forty-Three of SmokeLong Quarterly.
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue Forty-Three
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The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest

Deadline November 15th!

The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest (The Mikey) is now an annual competition celebrating and compensating the best micro fiction and nonfiction online.

The grand prize winner of The Mikey is automatically nominated for Best Small Fictions and any other prize we deem appropriate. In addition, we will pay the grand prize winner $1000. Second place: $500. Third place $300. Finalists: $100. All finalists and placers will be published in the December ’25 issue of SmokeLong.

Previously published as well as previously unpublished work will be considered.