Suzanne Verrall lives in Adelaide, Australia. Her flash fiction, essays and poetry appear in Atlas and Alice, Monkeybicycle, Archer Magazine, Lip Magazine, Poetry NZ Yearbook, Australian Poetry Journal, and others. www.suzanneverrall.com
Ogre
The ogre lived in the dense damp core of the forest. His treasures – the sheep with their self-spinning fleeces, the unsnuffling pigs – were born and grew and died as they had for all memory. Only the ogre had no beginning or end.
A silver-skinned princess stumbled into the forest. She wore a look of terror as if having woken to find herself blind.
The ogre smelt her. He lumbered through the forest, crushing wildflowers in his haste to glimpse her amongst the green-black shadows.
Day and night he watched her scavenging for berries, sipping dew from bladed grass. He fell in love. She became more beautiful and his love grew until it reached the last unvisited corner of his mighty ogre heart.
At which time he took the princess in his trunk-like arms and squeezed every last drop of life from her.
It was what was expected of him.