The Cutting Room

Karen Schauber

Maudine can’t leave good enough alone. She picks at the wound until a generous mixture of blood and pus oozes out. The perimeter has enlarged two-fold and is now festering something awful, a putrid mustard stink. 

As she works meticulously to peel back the inflamed skin flap, her lips purse tight keeping the screams locked inside. The excruciating pain does not tear her away. Increasingly light-headed, she takes pause every few seconds to catch her breath, and to savour the accompanying relief. Soon she feels nothing at all.

Maudine detaches from her surroundings. She is unaware of the passing of time, the passing of her young life. Hovering out of body, she is oblivious to the approaching footsteps outside the bedroom. Jerome bent on confrontation, his engorged tatts pulsating through a soiled, buff, tank, lurks around the corner. He bursts into the room yelling at her to cut it out, threatening that he’ll tie her hands down if she cannot control herself. Maudine cowers. ‘He’s a miserable shit. Doesn’t know when to mind his own business.' Her gut clenches in a vice grip holding back vomit and rage. She swallows it whole. 

Ignoring a faint reminder of life that once held promise, she follows the dark voice inside that pulls her beneath the surface. Maudine burrows deeper into the gaping hole until her nails hit bone. The pain is acute and arresting, a welcome distraction from her pathetic life. 

“The Cutting Room” by Karen Schauber originally appeared in Blood Puddles: Night Terrors and Daymares, Volume 1, published in May 2018 by Scribbler’s Press.

<https://www.amazon.ca/Night-Terrors-Daymares-Blood-Puddles/dp/1719555761>

Karen Schauber's flash fiction appears in seventy-five international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. including Bending Genres, Cabinet of Heed, Cease Cows, Ekphrastic Review, Fiction Southeast, New World Writing, Spelk; with three “Best Microfiction” nominations. She is editor of the award-winning flash fiction anthology “The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings” (Heritage House, 2019). Schauber curates Vancouver Flash Fiction, an online resource hub, and Miramichi Flash, a monthly literary column. In her spare time, she is a seasoned family therapist.