Slugs
by Roberta Allen
They are the largest slugs she has ever seen. Spotted and over eight inches long. Every evening she waits for them to emerge from their dark damp tunnels under her cottage in the country. Her enthusiasm is so contagious her neighbors have become interested. But her friend in the city says he’s seen enough bugs.
“But slugs are not insects!” she tells him. “They’re related to snails though they don’t have shells. Slugs are mollusks like octopuses.”
He is silent.
She doesn’t say slugs saved many soldiers in World War 1. They detected harmful levels of mustard gas before humans could. Nor does she mention annual slug races on an island in Canada.
What would’ve been the point?
Every evening at this hour neighbors gather in front of her cottage, bend down, and look closely at the soft slimy creatures but they aren’t allowed to prod them. Slowly crawling along the ground, the slugs leave trails of mucus. The neighbors cry out, “That is so disgusting!” Still, none of them can look away. They make gargoyle faces to emphasize their revulsion. She is the only one who does not make faces. In truth, she likes the slugs better than the neighbors who come to watch.
A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction and a Yaddo Fellow, Roberta Allen is the author of nine books. Her latest story collection is The Princess of Herself. Her many stories have appeared in such magazines as Conjunctions, Guernica and Bomb. Also a conceptual artist, very active internationally through the 1970s-early 80s, her art papers and her works on paper have been acquired by The Smithsonian, her writing papers by the Fales Archive at NYU
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Slugs”? I saw these slugs in Virginia but I love research and was inspired by the little known facts I learned about them though these facts play a very small part in the piece.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD