Fwriction: Review
On the Anniversary of the Suicide of Mr. Wedgeford, by Alicia Hyland
When Mrs. Wedgeford’s husband passed–well, killed himself–she carried on with life as usual. Mrs. Wedgeford was honest with herself, even if she wasn’t honest with anyone else, and the simple fact was that her marriage had been languishing for quite a while. All of her friends smiled their heartsick smiles, patted her on the back, and said she was so brave. ‘Not really,’ she said, ‘I do it for Barry.’ It was astounding how consumed Barry had become by his father’s death, grieving to the point of debilitation. However, she would not go around keening and wailing. That would make her a terrible hypocrite. A hypocrite was one thing Mrs. Wedgeford could not abide.
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Publications
Alicia Hyland
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
God is in the Naming
There's a ridge just outside Asheville, where you can see the French Broad River. But only in winter, with bare trees, free of mountain fog. I'd drive my truck over there fifty times a year, hauling lumber to Chimney Rock or cement to Hendersonville. Ice came quick; you freeze in your tracks.
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Mason's Road
She planned to cover the surviving leg in tattoos; only the foot would be left bare. A band of posies around the ankle for the border. This was not a girlhood memory of circle games; it was a reminder of lying in a field with the most vibrant red flowers she had ever seen. Had they appeared so alive because they were at eye level or because she’d believed she was dying? It had been painful to look at them for too long. When she squinted, though, they looked like pencil sketches, good ones, where the colors are depicted by reflections moving across the surface. They had distracted her from the bleeding.She sketched these flowers onto the heads of all the doctors and nurses strewn around her room. She was young, the surgeon encouraged her. Rehabilitation would be child’s play for her at twenty-three. She was very lucky. When he told her that the right leg would have to go, she plucked the petals one by one from his flower-head. In her mind, she daintily arranged them over the ruined leg until it tingled with a grey light that aroused visions of red.
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