‘The Art of Tear Eating and Other Non-predatory Behaviours’ by Cheryl Skory Suma

Survival Instincts

From Pulp Literature Issue 45, we are thrilled to present the winner of the 2024 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize, now in print! Read an excerpt of Cheryl Skory Suma‘s winning story ‘The Art of Tear Eating and Other Non-predatory Behaviours’ here, and find the rest in Issue 45, Winter 2025.

The Art of Tear Eating and Other Non-predatory Behaviours

by Cheryl Skory Suma

Yesterday, as I was exiting the parking garage to our apartment, I saw a butterfly. She was beating her wings against the soiled sidewall window, so close to freedom and yet with no hope of escape. If only she would follow me down the stairs to the exit, I could hold the door open and set her free. Sadly, she was ensnared in a habituated cycle, drawn to the light just beyond the glass, a light she’d never reach if she stayed on her current course.

Like the butterfly, rather than flying freely through the door just out of reach, I’ve chosen to thrust against the window before me, focusing outward when really I’m mesmerized by an inward pull. I wish I knew how to find the exit, how to escape this place where we’ve trapped ourselves.

Unlike birds, butterflies do not flap their wings. Instead, they pull their bodies inward, contracting themselves. This causes air to be forced upward and under their wings, pushing them forward.

I hear you breaking again, your sobs breaching the thin walls of our apartment. I enter the bedroom and crawl silently onto the bed with you, folding my body until it mirrors yours, enveloping you. Two becoming one, cocooned together in a foetal position. When I lift my head to kiss your neck, your tears bridge our cheeks, finding their way to my upper lip. I taste your pain and wonder how I could consume more of you.

Butterflies in the Amazon consume the tears of turtles. Not out of compassion, of course, but rather out of necessity. It offers more than a drink—a quick fix of sodium. This is critical for egg production, for their metabolism. For flight.

Read the rest in Pulp Literature Issue 45, Winter 2025!

Looking for contest glory for yourself? There’s still time to enter the 2025 Magpie Award for Poetry!

Cheryl Skory Suma’s fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and photography have appeared in US, UK, and Canadian publications, including Barren Magazine, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award Anthology, Exposition Review, Blank Spaces Magazine, Reckon Review, and many others. A multi-Pushcart nominee, her work has placed in fifty-one competitions since 2019. Cheryl’s a past CNF contributing editor at Barren Magazine. Her story ‘Adrift off the Shore of Alzheimer Island’ was runner-up for the 2022 Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest, and you can read it in Pulp Literature Issue 37, Autumn 2022. You can find Cheryl on Twitter/X and BlueSkySocial @cherylskorysuma.