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before Luther dug deep enough for him to feel it, past the dead, black and green flesh to the sensitive meat around his shin bone, to think about what the drunk group had said to him.
    D-don’t you know…you can get p-pinched if you don’t wear green ?
    He jammed his hand into his pocket and removed the wrinkled cigarette. He clamped it between chapped lips and searched his pockets for a lighter he knew wasn’t there.
    B-bad luck not to wear green .
    He screamed as Luther bit down again and the cigarette fell into a spreading pool of blood, soaking it in. This time, he felt it. Loud and clear. He looked down at his ruined leg, saw there were still portions of his flesh tainted with that green color.
    It didn’t keep his dog from pinching him, over and over, until his teeth scraped against bone.

GHUNT
    by Lee Thomas
    S ally turned on the faucet and splashed cold water over the eggs. She’d placed a dozen Grade AAs at the bottom of the pasta pot, careful so as not to crack their white shells. Stepping back, she put a hand on her hip and looked through the window as the water level rose. Gray sky. Wind pushing the tops of trees. Her gaze roamed to the distant edges of the yard, the rows of rose bushes on the left and the six-foot hedges on the right. Straight ahead at the end of fifty yards of immaculate emerald grass, stood a blonde brick wall held in place by lines of dove-white mortar. The striking grid between the bricks caught her attention for a moment, but it was the play set beyond the patio that pulled her gaze like a magnet.
    Eric called it a swing set. When she’d heard that he’d ordered such a thing for their daughter, Sally had expected one of the metal tube and rubber seated constructions of her youth. She should have known better. Eric did nothing cheaply. It had taken a fourteen-foot truck to haul the thing to Sally’s house. Two men who looked like extras from a Mafia movie had hauled the pieces and parts to the backyard and had spent two days building the thing, which was part tree house, part jungle gym and yes, part swing set. A stainless steel slide twisted from the second story to the patch of sand below. Mary had been thrilled by the structure. She’d jumped up and down, clapping her hands, squealing and racing toward the edifice with such joy, Sally had felt guilty for trying to talk her husband out of buying it.
    Of course the set was too extravagant—ridiculously so—for a four-year-old. Not only was it enormous, it cost more than Sally’s first car had. Further, she just didn’t see the point. At her daughter’s age, Sally’d had only a rusted bicycle, handed down from her older brother, Mitchell, and random toys—a few dolls, a couple of puzzles, an incomplete set of Lincoln Logs and another of Tinker Toys—and they’d kept her occupied well enough. Granted, she would never wish her childhood on Mary; she wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
    All beautiful plants start buried in crap , Eric had told her.
    Her husband, a font of bumpersticker wisdom and Hallmark sentiment, was, nonetheless, wonderful. She just wished he could forgo this one tradition: the eggs; the hunt. She found Easter and its trappings distasteful, but she’d kept such feelings to herself, choosing instead to pretend disinterest in the springtime festival.
    Sally turned off the tap. Water covered the eggs. Ripples ran over the surface, and she stared into the pasta pot, unnerved by the sudden idea that each egg would have eventually become a chick, a living creature if only it had remained untouched. But did it matter? Either way—whether hard-boiled or allowed to gestate and hatch and sprout feathers—the things were still low rungs on the food chain. At least this way they weren’t forced to push toward maturity through suffering and perplexity.
    None of that for these little guys. Just some water. A bit of flame. A pool of scald. Oblivion before sentience.
    She carried the pot to the stove and set it on the front