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Frances Boyle
Green Smoke Serpents
(excerpt from Skin Hunger) Rowan was in hospital, asthma they said, but Evie knew she herself had poisoned Rowan, that evil had infiltrated her, bone and sinew, and she had breathed it into her daughter. Her every sense was alerted to it: the hiss of the canister releasing the gas, the green vegetable stench that hung in the air, the intensified taste. Or was it the green snakes the coils of steam had become, flicking their tongues before slithering beneath the chesterfield.
Touch of hot tongues on her skin. Hollow voices, a sibilant chanting, a language Evie didn’t understand but knew in her gut was incantation, dark magic, and she its vessel, its instrument.
She went once to look at Rowan in hospital, the child’s pale face thin, with its fair hair on the pale pillow. The jaws within Evie yawned towards the child, and their effortless malice frightened Evie more than if they had lunged slavering.
There were long hours alone in the house. No cartoon music or child’s requests filling the silence. Evie knew she could not dig the evil out of herself. It was too deep. It was her, and she was it.
She counted her pink pills. Seventeen – not enough.
Frances Boyle is a Canadian writer, living in Ottawa, Ontario. She is the author of Tower, a novella (Fish Gotta Swim Editions, 2018), Seeking Shade, short stories (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2020), as well as three books of poetry. Skin Hunger, her debut novel is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in 2026. Frances’s recent fiction publications include work in Eunoia Review, Paris Lit Up and Bandit Fiction. Her poetry is also widely-published. Visit www.francesboyle.com/home for more, and follow @francesboyle19 on various social media channels.
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