Wild Embers by Kikita Gill

Rated: 3.5 Stars

Read: 2018

Edition: Paperback (1st Ed.)

Published: Hachette Books (November 14, 2017)

Strength, rebellion, beauty, and resilience are clearly there. Without question, Gill writes from the heart and with passion. Her renditions of the Disney princesses and the Greek goddesses were absolute gems that I had to read out loud for my brother and sisters. These were more like prose in form, they’re something else, though I felt some were a tad too romanticized, like Athena, which isn’t necessarily bad.

Via TWO CATS AND A LITTLE HOUSE

On the whole, I think it’s a pretty neat book. It’s a slim volume, has over a hundred individual poems. However, while each and every poem has merit, some were better articulated than others.

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Poem: it’s actually simple, but not really

Short story: Doctor Kebab. Shish Kebab.

Story contains swearing

He scoops me up like one would a small sleeping child. I am neither. I scramble for bars of my cage frame but he was stronger. Thrashing wildly as I can the fucker holds on like I’m nothing. Not always a happy person, not particularly strong, but I meant something once. I could again.

“You’re making this worse, sweetheart, more than it has to be,” his breath comes in puffs of fetid peppermint.

Screaming was moot, the basement took care of that. The two men that still breathed roused from their cages, their teeth bared in feral grimaces. One throws himself against his door, the other follows suit.

I know he’s hauling me to the steel table by the incinerator where Carter’s corpse had slept. Chest split open. Organs harvested. I feel the wince crack apart dried up riverbed of tears. Hell wasn’t the destination it was just a passage to something worse than the tales, and ours had its jowls laced with ashes and flames for teeth.

I may be nothing in this moment but I’m not stupid. Faked injuries facilitated recovery time. He’d wanted to have some fun with us before he got down to business eventually. The slime was considerate enough to let me off the hook so he could start all over again.

The plan, need to follow the plan. I go lax in his arms. I sing a lullaby with my body, arms like wilting flowers and breaths leafless trees in the wind. I feel his grip ease, only a little.

Got it. My hand closes around cool metal at his hip. I need to act quickly.