Chewing on a samphire stalk, Scolly cradles the head with both hands. The skin’s shrivelled, brittle like cured meat, and stinks of egg. A lipless mouth bares brownish toothy pegs in the snarl of a mad dog. Touching it sends a tingling through his bones.
Something bounces off Scolly’s shoulder. He turns and sees Doban and Ragg hauling the trolley with a netted frame through the green-grey mud. The cart bulges with sea-drift. Doban lobs another mussel shell that whips past Scolly’s cheek.
‘Oi! Ya helpin’ or what?’ calls Doban.
Issue 12
SEA GATE
C. T. Mason writes weird fiction and plays. His stories have appeared in Sentinel Literary Quarterly and The Pygmy Giant. He has collaborated with theatre company Genius Sweatshop on the show Lab Rat. He also enjoys wandering the coast of his native Essex.