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Germ By Claudia Smith We huddled on the comforter and listened to a scratched song. It was a ballad about a man who shot his girl. The girl had flaxen hair and dancing eyes, and lay deep under the wet earth in a pine coffin. The comforter was made of polyester and synthetic fill. I couldn't remember a time without it, although I thought that once it was crimson, instead of rust. It smelled of urine and must, which made me feel like burrowing into it. This place is full of germs, I said. The sky outside was green and yellowed like a bruise. The sky looks like gout, I said. What is gout, he asked me. A kind of sickness, I told him. We crawled under the covers and thunder sounded like horses over our heads. We are inside a mountain, I said. Can you hear the horses over our heads? We are on Monster Island, he said. Outside are Stretch Monster and Gamra. Their sores are oozing puss, I said. They are so big, that's what the sky is. Their skin, he said. The sky was the skin of giants and smell was from deep inside a body. We held our breaths and waited for the horses to pass.

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