Betrayal by Edith Bow

from Betrayal: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series

He spoke. Mouth moving without a sound.

My ears ring and it’s getting louder, the way that trains take voices with them. Visceral. TV clatter static wretches through my brain. Falling backward into a wolf’s jaw. The strangeness of it, and how it lingers in your brain, where the dial tone never ends. His face is flushed, embarrassed by the notion that he, a man, could abandon all hope.

Photo by Redd Francisco on Unsplash

The warmth of my skin crawls through my veins and fluctuates. Squeezing the life from my eyes in the shape of a knife.

World is spinning now; faster than memories I could ever recall. Imagery blurred in its pathway screaming into my head. Making the loudness of my insides, stop. Barely, a person the decades stripped from my membranes, gone. Body parts, my flesh is removed from its sense of self. Hungry to escape staring through two tunnels that make a barrel. Mine, this third attachment, has outgrown, and underachieved. Listless, a burning of chemical carbon and iron. Violently collapsed into the sky.

I’ll be your forever black hole.

This story appears as part of Betrayal, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series, originally published May 2024.

Bio

Edith Bow

is an indie writer who lives in St. Louis, MO. She has lived in California her whole life living through various lifestyles and experiencing the artists underground. Surrounding herself with musicians, and artists, she pulls inspiration from the noise. She’s known for her pugilist minimalist writing style. Her works can be found under Will Christopher Baer’s Nine Story Hotel.

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PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.

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