The Pearl Growers

Words By Max Medeiros, Art By Isabel Burke

I was twenty-two the first time it happened. My father slapped me so hard that I bit my cheek open and a thin trickle of blood spilled over my tongue while he stood there, jaw locked, holding the pearl in his hand. He looked at it, not me, his eyes only for the smear of light…

Flaming fiddles, it looks like there’s a roadblock here! If you’d like to finish reading this piece, please buy a subscription—you’ll get access to the entire online archive of F(r)iction.

Max Medeiros

Max Medeiros graduated from Bennington College with a BA in literature and writing. He’s lived in nine states and worked in education, insurance, tools, and fish. He has an essay in the Lambda Literary Award-winning New York Times best seller Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. Fireside Fiction published his short story “My Sister is a House.” Max lives in Northwest Washington and is working on a young adult novel.

Isabel Burke

Isabel Burke has been drawing ever since she could pick up a pencil. She brought her passion for storytelling from Austin, Texas to the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she will graduate in 2022 with a degree in illustration and a minor in sequential art. She hopes to continue working in the publishing and editorial industries to bring stories to life through comics and illustration after graduation. When she’s not drawing, she loves cooking, watching historical dramas, and reading!

First Featured In: No. 20, winter 2023

The Bodies Issue

View/Purchase Magazine