My aunt started hers years ago, before the seas dried out. It’s packed. Most of the starfish are carefully stretched flat. Others are twisted into curious shapes; these are the ones which died natural deaths, and were frozen in their final poses of concealment or frantic attempts at escape.
She never displays her starfish, my aunt, not even the big one with the magnificent blue spines or the small one filled with eyes. She slips little ones into my tea, and later uses fine pearlescent tweezers to harvest the tiny, shimmering creatures when their grasping arms reach from my pores.
I’ll be posting some creepy drabble (100-word stories) inspired by random word pairs here every Thursday for a while. I’m planning to do this for a few months or until I get sick of this particular writing exercise. No idea how long that will be…
…all images = supplied by Pixabay.com & Photoshopped by me unless otherwise indicated.
