‘Maybe We Once Were Birds’ by Benny Lawrence

In Pursuit

In Pulp Literature Issue 49, Benny Lawrence explores mythic family histories in ‘Maybe We Once Were Birds’. Read an excerpt of this story below, and be sure to pick up a copy of Issue 49, Winter 2026 to find out how it ends.

Maybe We Once Were Birds

by Benny Lawrence

The getaway went okay this time around, except that Dee lost a hand. Not the whole hand. As they ran, Dee jammed her mangled fist tight against her jacket, and Freddy could still see a thumb there. Also an index finger, but it was half-severed, its broken bone gleaming a sick blue-white in the red pulp. It flapped to the rhythm of Dee’s footsteps.

It must have annoyed Dee, the flapping, because she bit the finger off before long. It took a jerk of her head and a hard twist to pop the tendon. When she spat the finger out, it left a strawberry smear against a pavement dank with rain.

Freddy caught up, fisted a hand in Dee’s jacket, and yanked. Dee stumbled back and Freddy grabbed her, handfuls of her, gathering her in. Even now, Dee was shorter, short enough that Freddy had to lean down to kiss the top of her head. Her sodden hair smelled of wet dog and the sharp onion reek of fear.

Dee’s breath, when she spoke, made a warm patch on Freddy’s chest. “We can’t stop when she’s this close.”

“We can’t leave blood spoors when she’s this close.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Sit.”

They’d finally reached a street tenanted by something other than funeral homes and used car dealerships. Lights from a night club across the road shot the raindrops full of sparks.

Dee wobbled over to sit on the curb. Dark jacket, hollow cheeks, ashen skin creased by shadows. Freddy’s baby sister was a clip of black-and-white film, high contrast and grainy. Her right eye flicked around the scene, street to sky to shadow and back again. That was Dee’s own eye, the human one, wide now with animal terror.

Dee’s other eye, the Eye, looked the way it always looked. Blank, faintly luminous, with no pupil or iris. A blown-glass globe filled with cold moonlight and fog. It didn’t show any emotion, the Eye, and why would it? The Eye didn’t care that Dee was being hunted. The Eye, as a rule, didn’t have opinions.

Freddy braced Dee’s arm between her knees, while Dee’s twitching veins dangled, and stripped a lace from her boot. It was soaked and gritty, but it would do the job. “Want something to bite?”

“No.” Dee scrunched up her eyes. “Do it fast.”

Find the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 49, Winter 2026

Benny Lawrence practises poverty law in Toronto and writes weird books, mainly about lesbians quipping at each other. She has five sisters and has yet to ritually cannibalize any of them, though she understands how the situation might come up. You can find her at bennylawrence.com.