by Matt Hollingsworth
Lush valleys and placid waters, a boy in a boat with his father—who months ago told him his mom drowned in this lake—mealworms writhing in sawdust, the boy sucking his bleeding thumb, scarlet dripping off a fishhook, the father calling him worthless fuckwit, the boy crying, ripples from a gigantic fin in the water, splashing, rocking, jaws as big as the boat chomping on the screaming father, swallowing him, then silence, the leviathan’s glistening blue skin, its eye up close, familiar—the boy’s mom—a tear, a wink, and the creature submerges.
A boy in a boat, alone.
Matt Hollingsworth is a neurodivergent human and award-winning color artist for Marvel, DC, and Image Comics. His prose has been nominated for Best of the Net and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year and has appeared or is forthcoming in Interzone, Tales to Terrify, Uncharted, and Bourbon Penn. matthollingsworth.com Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/matthollingsworth.bsky.social
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