Headmoths by J. Motoki

His last words hiss under the pendulum of the lightbulb. Flash burns, sloughed flesh. He is an insect collapsing on itself, body rocked by spasms, arched back, feet drumming the basement floor.

Dad, attending to death, stumbles through the house at odd hours. His child sleeps with both arms wrapped around himself. Dad the County Coroner, searching for truth in flesh and fluids, doesn’t notice his child sleeps too long, too often.

The boy leaves clues in dust and shadows. He disintegrates into a thousand flying things in the white eye of the light.

How long until the Coroner comes?