[FICTION]

[01/30/26]

Killing Country

by Hana White

The Mother

In the kitchen, a thin strip of white painted wood buried itself under my nail. It shot underneath the cartilage, slicing a narrow valley through the soft hidden flesh. It burrowed there, in the swamp of blood. So much blood from such a small wound. The internet said I would get blood poisoning and die of the infection. The internet said my body would fix itself, push it out, no problem. My brother texted to tell me our mother was getting an operation. We hadn’t spoken in six years, myself and the mother. 

I wouldn’t have to speak to her if I got sepsis and died.

The Mother

A man who had had a baby released a hit album and his girlfriend, who had had the baby, had postnatal depression from the birth. She loved the album, she lied. She loved the album, she said, thinking about the blood pouring out of her and the pain and the forceps and the cord tied twice around the baby’s neck and the doctors and nurses never telling her what was going on. They never told her anything, even though it was her body, and it was her body, and it was her body that was dying, and afterwards they said, here you go, a happy and healthy baby, and she was thinking: a happy and healthy baby. Just the words: A Happy And Healthy Baby. That’s what they were, the words. Why didn’t they mean anything? Why didn’t they mean anything to her? She was bleeding, still. She was screaming, still. Nobody seemed to take any notice. The baby had taken something from her. Nobody could see her, that she was bleeding, that she was screaming. They could only see a mass, a fold of flesh, holding A Happy And Healthy Baby.

The baby was not happy, but it was healthy. Most importantly, it was a baby. It was a boy and they named it Violet. The man with the hit album named a song after the baby and the song was called “White Kitchen.” This was the name of the village in South East Louisiana where the baby had been born. There was not too much in White Kitchen. When the person who was her own person but also now a mother had stood outside the house, she no longer wanted to go inside, holding her baby, near the swamp on the Old Pearl River. She had never seen the sky like that before, so clear bright blue and so like it wanted to kill her.

HANA WHITE lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She has been published in 3:AM and Extra Teeth and holds an MA in Prose Fiction from UEA. She writes surreal, absurdist short stories and is currently working on a novel based on her time as a television producer.