I do have a job, but it’s mostly an exhausting, soul crushing, Kafkaesque affair… so it’s probably best to skip forward to when I get home.

When I open the door to my apartment my catdemon, Aphelion, will howl from some hiding spot or another and so I call in that general direction, “Hello bébé? Oú est mon homme?” He prefers French or Russian. Catdemons, you know, such polymaths. So demanding. I don’t really know French, just some remnant words from college. I ADHD impulse bought a lifetime subscription to Rosetta Stone about a year ago so I’ve been casually learning Russian, periodically popping back into French, and last week decided to start Spanish.

And catdemon will be demanding food of course, right when I get home. Before I even get into comfy clothes.

I usually read while I eat dinner and for the purposes of this missive, I took count, I’m in the middle of about ten different books right now. I might need to focus on one at a time until I whittle that down a bit, but I do like the rubbing together of ideas that happens when you’re reading several things at once. You get strange friction.

Then we water plants. I usually listen to podcasts while I water plants. I follow a few different history, true crime, folklore, and science podcasts, so there is always something interesting on tap. More idea friction. Sometimes, in addition to watering, I’ll do some repotting, seed planting, or pest control, always we talk to the plants, ask them what they’re up to. Plants are crafty, you know? Catdemons are terrible with plants, in case you were wondering. If you leave catdemons in charge of your nursery, your plants will stage an insurrection, you’ll get poisoned, stabbed, strangled, and smothered all in one night… and catdemon will be forced to eat your corpse. Not ideal.

Then, finally, it’s time to settle down at the coffee table and write. Between 7:30 - 10:30 to 11:30 I work on various writing projects, with lots of breaks for playing with catdemon. Two days a week I do beadwork instead of writing.

Then sleep if I can get it. Usually with nightmares… I don’t sleep with catdemon (he’s nocturnal) so I sleep with my teddy bear instead (he’s not alive).

Share

In 1518 in the town of Strasbourg a woman known in records as Frau Troffea began dancing uncontrollably in the street. Soon others joined her and by the end of the dancing plague possibly as many as four hundred people had been infected with the mania. However this wasn’t Europe’s first dancing plague. From 1374 to the seventeenth century several dancing plagues are mentioned in historical records. While historians don’t know the real reason for these incidences of mass-hysteria, many speculate that they were stress induced. Because dancing was seen as impious, and even diabolical, it was the perfect medium for civil disobedience among a populace of poor, exploited, and over taxed peasants and serfs. Petitions to various saints typically ended the madness. In 1518, dancers were led to St. Vitus’ altar, made to put on red shoes sprinkled with holy water and with crosses painted on the tops and soles. They then walked around the altar and were cured.

Twirl kick shake it shake it do the twist they laid me off leg sweep pretty twirl kick shake shake denied me unemployment my kids won’t talk to me twirl twist arms up shoulder roll dog needs food or dog will die planet's dying does any of this matter twist shake it shake sweep the arms rock sway twirl why go on why does anyone go on twist twist twist

“Ma’am? Ma’am? Ma’m can you hear me? This is the Deadwater PD, you can’t dance here, you’re creating a disturbance.”

“I don’t think she can hear you.”

“So what the fuck do we do?”

“I dunno, tase her?”

“For dancing?”

“For disobeying a police officer and creating a disturbance.”

“She might be deaf. Hence the dancing to no music.”

“Fine. I’ll wave in her fucking face. Happy?”

“Hm… didn’t work. Tase her.”

“Did the prongs hit?”

“Yeah they fucking hit, they’re IN HER.”

“She’s still dancing.”

“No shit.”

Rand de jambe plié jump twirl can’t afford food this month avant position two point around plié

Pop it lock it wave weave surveillance state jump elbow pump fist pump need a job bad credit beat beat beat follow me follow me follow me fist pump

“What the fuck is going on? Now more of them are dancing? Is this some kind of flash mob?”

“Hey sir, sir? Can you hear me? Sir, please stop dancing. Sir!”

“Better call in back up.”

Tonight on Deadwater News at Nine, we’re going straight to our top story. A strange mania has overtaken at least forty Deadwater residents today who are dancing in the middle of downtown and have even stopped traffic. Now this is odd enough, Bob, but they’re dancing to no music. Yes, you heard that right, no music. Complete silence, no choreography, in fact they don’t even seem aware of each other or of anyone around them. Police tased the woman who started it all, but she barely seemed to notice.

Now that is interesting, have the police said if there are drugs involved?

They have not been able to detain anyone for testing since they won’t stop dancing. And that’s the most worrying part about all of this, Bob, Susan Troffea, the woman who started it all, has been dancing since 9:32 this morning.

That’s nearly twelve hours.

It is, Bob, and authorities are becoming concerned about the health of these dancers, some of whom are clearly dehydrated and in pain.

Wow, so what’s the plan? Do we know if the police have one?

There does not seem to be a plan at the moment because these dancers are peaceful. But they are also not responding to, or even acknowledging law enforcement or really anyone else at the scene.

twirl twist shake it shake it arms up can’t find a job lost health insurance get help get help get help twist twist twist and shout shake it shake it losing everything leap

ba ba bada ba ba bada kick step kick step ICE agents everywhere following me I know behind me behind me behind me ba ba bada ba ba bada kick swirl arms kick cross step kick

“How many now?”

“Fifty-five, Sir. Some are family members of the original dancers. They came down to stop them and got… infected?”

“Infected?”

“Not really sure what to call it.”

“Any of ours?”

“Four, Sir.”

“Jesus Christ, somebody get a doctor out here.”

Tonight on CNN, The Dancing Plague, what is it, how it has spread to every state in the nation, and what you can do to protect yourself. Plus we’ll take a look at who could be responsible for this devastating mania.

shake it shake it feet are bleeding soul is bleeding eyes are bleeding twist and shout and shout and shout and twist and polar bears are gone and I still use Amazon plié plié de coté my dreams are death and taxes and taxes and taxes and tour en l’air the power’s shut off and we’re all so hot so hot getting hotter getting hip thrust snake hip shimmy shimmy twist twisted cut off SNAP how will I how will jump turn arms around look over shoulder wink at ICE always there ICE always there right foot out shoulder roll head bop head bang bang head bang head pop it lock it isolate rib cage slide left denied cancer coverage how long airbaby backspin break fist pump heel steps how do I shake it shake it

A quick update, Bob, since the dancing plague started here in Deadwater three months ago nearly four thousand people have died from dehydration, exposure, complications related to over exertion, or in violent altercations with unaffected members of the public. But that all might becoming to an end as the President of the United States authorized via his social media account the use of force against the remaining affected. That’s nearly fifty thousand people, Bob.

Wow, that’s quite a development. I bet many people will be will relieved when this horrific plague is over with. Do authorities have a concern about a reoccurrence?

There have been talks in congress about banning dancing across the board in an effort to crack down on future outbreaks.

Sounds like a solid plan, thank you for keeping us up to date.

Of course, Bob.

“Sir, did you see the President’s social media post?”

“‘Bout damn time. Get everyone in position. We’ll hit them with the tear gas first and open fire when I give the command.”

“Yes, sir!”

Twist twist dodge shaking shaking falling fading please help me

Share

shitch shitch shitch shitch shitch

Ida sat back and looked at her work, setting her felting needle down on the table. She stretched her back.

“It looks pretty good. Don’t you think?”

Melon blinked and purred.

“Yeah, I think you’re right. We’re done here.”

The project had started with vacuuming and there being enough hair between Ida and Melon to create the effigy of a new god. Melon’s fur was soft and black, Ida’s hair was long and white. Their new god was grey. Washed and hand carded. Soft and fluffy, like a baby’s toy, it stood eight inches tall and had a lumpy round belly that dragged on the ground between its fourth and fifth pairs of legs. Its first through third pairs of legs were designed for snatching, perforating, and grinding, respectively. It sang beautifully from a doll’s mouth and had eyes that wobbled as it crawled, half supine, half upright. One could never know just where it was looking. Its tail of course was for balance and strangling. Its tongue leapt out of its mouth in a silent, barbed invective. There will most likely be venom, Melon thought, idly stretching out to her full length on the carpet.

“Okay, Kittymelon,” Ida lifted the effigy from her work table and kissed it gently on the snout, “time for a snack.” In the kitchen Melon jumped up onto the polished formica and sat. Ida set the effigy between them, then went and disappeared into the ice box. Melon hoped for a certain limb, but knew she oughtn’t be too avaricious. Ida would pick the right meal for this god. She watched Ida straighten, her hands, holding their prize, were still hidden by the ice box door. Melon licked her nose. Ida kicked the door closed.

“I listened to everything in there and this one screamed the loudest,” Ida set a platter on the table. Melon rrrrrowed, it was just the thing she’d hoped for, the plump arm of a Josia’s Witness who had darkened their porch the day before last. The taste of her fatty blood had been haunting Melon since the kill. She watched Ida work, cutting raw meat from the bone. Setting the glistening, jelly-like slabs of meat on three plates, one for Melon, one for Ida, and one for the effigy.

“It’s really perfect, isn’t it, Melon? The emissary of a hostile god appears just

in time for this new god to be created.”

Fortuitous, Melon thought. Ida put her knife down and took her seat.

“But, I suppose that neighbor with the red door we hate would also have been suitable.”

Melon’s stomach rumbled. Ida pointed two fingers on her right hand to the sky and two fingers on her left hand to the Earth and closed her eyes.

“Earth and Sky, Meat and Memory, Time the Eternal Eater. We offer sacrifice to this new God, who will be our deliverance from the Linear. Nema.”

Ida opened her eyes and smiled at Melon, “Well dig in.”

Melon did, diving into the jiggly raw meat with her whole head. Ida had better table manners, genteelly cutting her meat into bite-sized cubes, chewing at least twenty times before swallowing. After a few minutes Melon’s left ear twitched at a fluffy plop on that side. She turned to look, the effigy’s face was planted in its meat. Sentience took some getting used to.

“Oh, silly thing,” Ida tucked a finger under its chin and lifted it out of the slick flesh. She held it until the creature had gained better control. “There you go, you’ll be bathing in the spoils of war in no time.”

The trio ate the rest of their meal in silence. The effigy quickly gaining mastery of its limbs and assorted appendages. By the time it had finished its meat, flesh of its own had replaced the soft cat/Ida hair felt of its body and it had doubled in size. Almost as big as Melon. She moawed. Ida dabbed her mouth with her napkin.

“You are absolutely right. Time to get this new god outside.” She stood and picked it up, carrying it like a puppy and scratching between its bird-like ears as she called it a good good new god, what glorious new destroyer he is. In the bright openness, under the warded lintel, she set the new god on the porch. It pranced for a second on the cold cement before sitting its lumpy rump down and waving its first, second, and third pairs of legs at Ida. It opened its red doll’s mouth and sang. No words, just a beautifully melancholy melody that hinted of wrath and destruction. Ida smiled and stroked its muzzle.

“You are a precious, precious argosy. An empty vessel, ready to be filled with entrails and livers and all that is squirmy and red. Go forth, my ravenous one, and fill thy belly with the whole of the Earth. And when that is done, I shall give you a name.”

With a high and transcendent note, the new god was gone, Melon could hear its clawed feet clipping down the street. Screams came not long after.

Ida turned to Melon, “I’m a little tired after all that, how about a movie?”

Rrrrow

“Ooo milkshakes, wonderful idea, Melon.”

Melon’s tummy rumbled again, a chilly bloody vanilla bean shake sounded divine. She listened to screams echo down the street and jumped up onto a windowsill. She was just in time to see the new god’s barbed tongue shoot out of its mouth and pierce the chest of a man on the sidewalk. The barb dug in deep. Melon expected the man to crumple in heap of pain or bubble into goo, but instead he stayed upright, quivering as though electrocuted. As Melon watched his head began to swell, his skull cracking open and ripping his scalp, a hairy bit of it flopped to the pavement. Fine white fuzz seemed to grow out of the exploded head, blooming from the gore.

“Oh, Melon! Isn’t it beautiful? It’s like a dandelion!” Ida had stopped to watch as well. Each white filament umbrella took to the wind, blowing in all directions. A few floated close to the window, Melon spotted little legs thrashing in the air under each buoyant bit of fluff. Not venom, then, Melon thought, but an ovipositor.

Even better.

Share

***DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YA***

LAST WILD RHINO KILLED, ANIMAL DECLARED EXTINCT IN THE WILD

“Did you see this?” Dio pointed with the long neck of his beer bottle to the scroll on the bottom of the TV.

“Jesus Christ, can’t they start to farm the ones in zoos or something?”

“Impractical. Do you know how much those fuckers eat?”

Colter snorted, running a hand through unwashed hair. “What are they like, the size of minivans?”

“Something like that. And all for a bit of keratin that can take a year or two to grow back. Even if you charged a mint for it, it’s-“ Dio nodded to the waitress to catch her eye, a subtle gesture in the dark bar, but she was one of the good ones, used to the dark, she never missed a cue. She definitely never missed Dio’s cue. Colter watched her hips as she walked up to them, their practiced swing awakening an ache that he knew would come to nothing.

“Ready for another?” She smiled, her sweet, cherry blossom perfume glossing over the dank, sweat-stained air they’d been breathing for the last hour. They both nodded, Colter tried to act cool, Dio actually was cool.

“You’re my rock, Marie,” Dio grinned at the waitress. She smirked and flicked her hair as she turned from the table.

“Did you say keratin? That’s what that shit I buy is made from?”

“Yeah, keratin, like your hair and fingernails. All it is.”

“No shit, how come it works? Must be something different about it.”

Dio looked over the bottom of his empty bottle, draining the last cold drop of alcohol before his fresh drink arrived, and rolled his eyes. “It don’t work. It’s all in your mind. You know my thoughts on this.”

“It works fine. I have proof.”

“You have anecdotal evidence. That ain’t proof.”

Colter shifted in his seat, “Shit, what am I gonna use instead.”

“God you’re dumb.”

“Fuck off, Dio. I’m not elite enough for health insurance, I need something blackmarket.”

The waitress set their drinks on the table. Colter took a big swallow, staring down the front of her blouse to the gentle curve of her breasts, but nothing stirred. Dio didn’t understand. Dio was cool and Dio didn’t have any issues, he just functioned as intended. Colter was broken, or complicated. Either way, he didn’t function much at all.

*

Colter sat naked on the edge of his bed, listening to high-heels receding, then the front door slam.

“All in my mind, huh, Dio?” He looked down at his limp dick, listened to the sound of her car start up and drive off, fast, and felt rage curdle in his gut.

“All in my fucking mind, huh, Dio?” He screamed into his empty bedroom, hurling a glass of water against the wall, rage deaf to the shattering. He needed something.

* 

HIPTALK INFLUENCER SELLS HIS OWN KERATIN AS VIRILITY DRUG

“Did you see this?”

“I’m not on that app, what are they talking about? Do you know how long it’s been since I could get it up?”

“See a therapist. Ain’t nothing wrong with you that isn’t in your head.”

“Just tell me what it’s about before I split your fucking lip.”

“Haha, tough guy. All pent up, huh, kitten?” Dio grinned, “Buff stud influencer is selling his own fingernails and hair to replace the now extinct rhino’s horn. Says it’s even better. Guys all over swear by it. Calling this dude The New Rhino.”

“I need it. How do I get it?

“Sent you the link. Hope you don’t get prion disease or something.” Dio took a sip of whisky, “Eh, maybe I do.”

Colter didn’t look up. “Jesus, I’m on my last credit card. Whatever, it’s worth it.”

Dio set his drink down and watched his friend, “While you’re at therapy, you should look into your compulsive spending. I bet there’s a link there somewhere.”

“Lay off the therapy talk, there’s nothing wrong with my head.” Colter looked up, fingers curling around the unused butterknife still resting on the napkin at his seat. Dio raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, ok, I gotta bounce. Let me know how this New Rhino shit goes,” Dio walked off laughing and waved two fingers at Marie. “Hey, see you tomorrow, Marie.”

She smiled and winked at him, “Later, Dio. Miss you.”

“I know you will,” he grinned as he walked out the door.

Colter watched him leave. If he’d have said any of that to her, she’d have called in the bouncer. What made Dio so cool? They’d been friends for years now, and no matter how much Colter tried to emulate him, he couldn’t figure it out.

His phone pinged, confirming his order. Hope surged and for a second he thought he felt some life in his limp little guy. But no, just his stomach grumbling.

“Another drink?” Marie asked.

Colter looked up from his phone, she wasn’t even looking at him, she was watching the TV in the corner. He cleared his throat.

“No, I’m good. Thanks, ma’am- Marie.” Colter got up and pushed past her, stomping through the bar and punching the swinging door open with a growl as he left.

* 

“Mmm, better than last time,” the woman lying next to Colter snuggled up against him. Her breath smelled like wine and her soft neck of overly sweet perfume.

“Heh, yeah, just in a bad place last time, you know? Had to go talk to my therapist.”

“Oh, babe, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you say something, I would’a said goodbye at least.” He knew the catch in her voice was a lie, but cupped her face and kissed her wet mouth anyway.

“It doesn’t matter anymore, we’re here, we’re together, and that is not going to happen again.”

“Better not,” she teased her hand down under the blanket, “It’s too long of a drive to get here for nothing, even if you did still pay me.”

Colter held his breath as her hand slid down to his shaft, had he taken enough? Was it too soon still? He felt himself respond and let out a groan.

The New Rhino was definitely legit.

* 

NEW RHINOS FLOOD THE MARKET, CONSUMERS UNCERTAIN ABOUT EFFICACY AMID CLAIMS OF AI GENERATED PROFILE PHOTOS.

“They’re posers, is what they are. And you can’t even trust what you’re getting. Now my guy is charging three times as much because he’s the OG.”

“Not to beat a dead horse, but-“

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up.” Colter stared at Dio. The other man met his gaze, smiling easy.

“You just need confidence. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. There’s nothing wrong with you except you’re a damn coward who needs a crutch. Get therapy.”

“If you’re so smart, kindly explain how a non-elite like me would get access to a therapist.” Colter was digging into the tabletop with a fork tine, not looking at Dio as he spoke.

“There’s blackmarket therapists just like there’s blackmarket everything else. As if you didn’t know. Probably not near as expensive as that disgusting human fingernail powder you are actually shoveling into your body.”

“It’s in a pill, fuck.” Colter looked up, pointing the fork at Dio. “And explain to me all the people getting it from the new posers who still can’t get it up. If it’s all in their heads, they should be able to get it up no matter what they take?”

“I’ll explain, it. It’s fear. They read these headlines, they think they might be getting ripped off so their insecure big head, pulls the off switch on their little head. What you don’t see, are the people the scam stuff works for. You know why?”

“Tell me why, Big Brain.”

“Because in that moment, when they take it and their dick springs to life and they read these headlines, they realize what you, my friend, need to realize. It’s all in their heads, and they don’t need shit but confidence. So they stay quiet and pretend like they never ordered this stuff and were fully functional the whole damn time. Boom. Explained.”

“As if it even fucking matters. Can’t afford any of it anymore anyway.” Colter ran both hands through his hair. “Dio, I gotta figure something out. There must be something else I can get. I’m going fucking crazy. Like I get these urges but then I can’t do anything about it. And it just keeps building and building. I’m gonna lose it I am.”

Dio frowned.

Marie stopped by the table. “Hey Dio, I’m off early tonight. It’s been awhile.”

Dio turned and took her hands in his. “You know what, beautiful baby, you’re right. It’s been far too long.” He lifted and kissed the top of her right hand. “Let’s hook up tonight.”

She ran her free hand through his hair. “Mmm, I can’t wait.”

Colter could hear the subtle gravel in her voice.

He cleared his throat. “Hey, Marie, how’s it going?”

She looked back up at the crowded bar. “You need a refill?” Her tone suddenly polite, professional.

Colter scoffed, “Yeah, maybe the fucking bottle.”

“Mmmhhm, sure ok. Be right back with that.”

When Colter looked up, Dio was grinning at him, “Blackmarket therapy, man. That is what you need.”

“Fuck off.” Colter stabbed the fork into the table.

“Gladly. Got to go grab some flowers now anyway. Girl loves daisies.” Dio got up and left, blowing a kiss to Marie as he passed her. She blushed and giggled and went all stupid. Colter felt one of those urges surge up and press against his chest.

“Fucking dammit,” he stabbed the table again and growled. He paid his tab at the bar and left without a word to Marie.

* 

Dio was humming as he stepped into his apartment. He set a bunch of white daisies down on the kitchen counter and stopped.

“Colter, buddy, what are you doing here?”

“You’re so cool, Dio.” Colter stood in the living room, leaning on the doorway, half hidden by the wall.

“Ok. Thanks. But I’ve got Marie coming over in a couple of hours. I gotta shower and maybe make some dinner. So if we could discuss this later-“ Dio finally saw the black duffle bag sitting on the floor behind Colter. “What’s that?”

“My kit. Never used it before, not sure it has everything I need, but you can help me find out.”

“Your kit. Ok, for what?”

Colter smiled, “Come here, I’ll show you.”

“You’re acting real weird, buddy. You finally catch that prion disease I’ve been warning you about?”

“I don’t think so. Come look, and then I’ll leave. Want to run a new business idea I got by you.”

“Colter Reed coming up with a side gig? Now I know you’re fucked up.” Dio shook his head and walked to where Colter stood, still half concealed by the doorway. Colter brought his hand out from behind his back and pressed a gun to Dio’s chest, firing once.

“It’s just a sedative dart. You were right, you can get anything on the blackmarket.” He waved the gun in Dio’s face as the man stumbled around, clutching at his chest with numb fingers. “Now, it’s not supposed to fully knock you out, just kind of paralyze you. Come here.” Colter grabbed him by the shoulders and helped him to the ground in front of the sofa.

“Now that I’m thinking about it, a tarp might have been a good idea. Then again, I ain’t dumping you so who cares? See, I got a little tired of for one, you telling me to go to therapy all the time, and two, you being so fucking cool. So I thought to myself, how do I kill both birds with one stone? And I did a little research.”

Colter unzipped his kit bag and brought out a large knife and a pair of tongs. Dio, mumbled through the drugs, his body trembling as he fought against the poison.

“You see, there is a long history of people eating other people to cure them of stuff. Like up until the 1800s. The 1800s, Dio! That’s not even that long ago. They still eat human placenta in China, too. It’s not that weird and you should have been a little more supportive of me. But anyway, I thought really hard about it and decided that since I wanted to be more like you, good with the ladies, laid back, more confident, the best thing to do was to eat you. Online it says they used to cut up bros that got hanged on the gallows because not only were they raging, virile, and violent, they were only recently dead. The longer you’re dead, the less potent you are. But I know a guy in my apartment complex who sells all kinds of shit so I decided to get the dart gun and harvest you while you’re still alive. I don’t want to lose any of your vitality.”

Tears ran down Dio’s cheeks and long strings of saliva slid from the corners of his mouth to the beige carpeting.

“Just relax, you’ll probably die of shock before I carve you up much. But I’m starting with your tongue, I think that’s where the majority of your cool lies, in your slick, silver tongue. Always got something clever to say.” He turned and dug in his bag again. “But I have a list of the best order to harvest stuff so that it’s not likely to kill you too quickly. Sorry, buddy, but if I want to be more like you, I need to eat you. It’s just a part of medical history that’s suppressed or something. You know they’re alway suppressing important info.”

A sob escaped Dio’s throat.

Colter pried Dio’s mouth open and pulled his tongue out with the tongs. Dio choked and gurgled on blood as Colter sawed through the thick muscle. He went for the genitals next, carefully collecting blood in a jar as he cut.

As he dropped the severed cock and balls in a plastic bag, Colter glanced up at Dio. He was pale, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Hey, hey buddy, you still in there?” He poked his friend’s chest.

Dio groaned.

“Gonna get harder from here on. I need bones and your heart. I’ve been thinking about taking your whole ass head, too. Not sure how much effort cutting a head off someone takes. If it’s too much-.”

Dio let out a ragged, choked scream.

“I should get on with it.” Colter laid out Dio’s right arm and pulled a machete out of his bag. He took a deep breath to center himself, then chopped Dio’s hand off. He looked down, Dio was silent.

“Aw, well, safe travels or whatever they say.”

He cut off and bagged Dio’s other hand and, in the end, did take his head.

He bottled and bagged everything, nibbling on the raw bits and thinking about Marie. By the time she knocked he was sticky with blood and his dick was so hard it hurt. He answered the door naked.

“Hey, Marie, Dio’s in the other room.”

“Colter?” Marie froze in the doorway, confused.

“Yeah, come on in,” he winked at her. Dio always winked at her.

“Oh no. No. That’s a lot of blood on you and you’re naked.”

Colter’s body responded to her voice, to her revulsion, and shook with the orgasm. He grinned and moaned as cum shot out toward the woman in the doorway.

“Oh my god!” Marie screamed and turned to run. Colter reached out, body still spasming and grabbed her hair, yanking her back inside. He threw her to the floor, breathing heavily in her face.

“Damn that was real good. Hasn’t been that good in awhile.” He sniffed her neck, “You want to eat some of Dio, too? To remember him by and maybe feel as good as me?”

Marie screamed and slapped him, struggling to get up. Colter reached up and grabbed a knife off the counter, stabbing her until she was quiet

“Can’t harvest anything from you,” he said, fixing her hair so it flowed nicely on the linoleum. He stood and cleaned up his mess, collected his things, showering last and putting on some of Dio’s clean clothes.

*

OUTRAGE MOUNTS AS POLICE REFUSE TO INVESTIGATE MURDER OF NON-ELITE COUPLE IN THE CITY’S SOUTH BLOCK. INTERNET SLEUTHS BELIEVE PURPORTED BODY PARTS FOR SALE ON POPULAR BLACKMARKET SITE ARE CONNECTED TO THE MURDER, BUT AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN EITHER UNABLE, OR UNWILLING, TO TRACK THE SELLER. SELLER IS GOING BY THE NAME “ULTIMATE RHINO,” BUYER BEWARE.

Share

Bode twisted the nob on the microfiche machine forward and sighed as the newsprint spun up the screen in a blur. He read the next headline, “Three Die in Horrific Accident on Neckbreak Hill.” That was terrible, but it was neither unusual for the location, nor what he was looking for. He hadn’t had much luck at all, though he knew the Deadwater Chronicle had published an interview with Dr. Salamon somewhere between 1963 and 1968 about the town’s homegrown cult and the controversy surrounding them. The Chronicle had refused to help Bode when he’d asked for a copy, stating that the article had been published without permission from the editor at the time, and had been pulled from the archives. He was surprised it was still such a hot button issue some sixty years later, but then, Deadwater tended to hold tight to its secrets. As it was, he’d yawned his way through 1963 and ’64 and was on his fifth cup of coffee. A followup article about the accident at Neckbreak Hill caught his eye, “Closed Caskets as Morgue Admits to Losing Heads.”

Bode read the rest of the article quickly and printed it before scanning forward for a followup. As it turned out there were several. Heads had gone missing from the mortuary, and several graves had been robbed of only their occupants’ heads, the morgue had actually been robbed of heads twice. He couldn’t believe no one had mentioned this to him when he’d asked about Heads to Heaven, the cult had been operating right around the time of these incidents. Bode found it difficult to believe the proximity was just a coincidence.

The coroner, Dr. Salamon, had been asked to determine the method of decapitation used in each case. But being a podiatrist appointed by committee and not forensically trained, he had no idea what he was looking for. He noted strange striations and singed flesh as common on all of the cadavers’ neck tissue, but didn’t know what it meant.

Things got weirder after the grave robbing stopped, decapitated cattle were found in fields, dogs, cats, foxes, ravens, seagulls, any animal outside at night was in danger of losing its head. In an article from late 1965, Dr. Salamon insisted that all decapitations were made by the same instrument.

When asked if he’d consulted any experts, Dr. Salamon wouldn’t say.

Bode stretched and looked around the microfiche room, he was alone. He’d been alone all morning except for the old man who’d wandered in looking for the DVDs. Bode didn’t know where they were. This was the first time he’d ever entered the spooky old castle of a library. A plaque on the door said the whole building and a trust fund for running the library indefinitely had been donated by some guy whose name he had immediately forgotten. But now that he was here, he had to admit he liked the place. It had a Dracula’s castle exterior, but a cozy hearth fire kind of interior. He appreciated the relaxed atmosphere, the last two weeks of his life had been a rollercoaster of the bizarre and unnerving. He stretched again and nudged the reader’s control knob a bit until the next article came up. There it was, the interview about Heads to Heaven. Bode didn’t know much about the cult except that they had formed in Deadwater in 1960, had done something to upset everyone else in the town, and then had all been burned alive when their encampment on the outskirts of town caught fire in 1968. The fire was ruled an accident by Bode’s own grandfather, who had been the town’s sheriff at the time.

Bode had first heard of the Heads to Heaven cult two weeks prior to this particular research trip. Lying in her hospital bed, bald from chemo, and so thin Bode was afraid she’d disintegrate if he touched her, his grandmother had given him a warning.

“They’ll come for you now. I’ve been praying to their god all these years to keep him away from you. The Heads to Heaven, Dr. Salamon, they’ll come for you.” She’d slipped into a coma after that and died a few hours later. Bode had shrugged it off, she’d said a lot of crazy things on the cancer drugs.

-Suzi McCormac: - “Dr. Salamon, thank you so much for being here, I really appreciate you doing this interview. I’d like to start by asking you how you got involved with the Heads to Heaven."

-Dr. Salamon: “I was tasked by the sheriff, Sheriff Eklund, to determine how the heads of each victim, that is the stolen cadaver heads and the animals, were removed. And then recently, of course, Gary, the CEO of Commerce in town, as you know was murdered and decapitated. I was not able to determine the method of these crimes. There was suspicion among law enforcement that the Heads to Heaven were responsible, but I never agreed with them. Later, separately, I was asked to determine if the shrunken heads that The Heads to Heaven members had stitched to the top of their heads were human or not.”

-SM: “We’ll definitely get back to the heads stitched to other heads, but for now, we’re you able to determine that? That the heads weren’t human?”

-DS: “Yes, in my opinion, the heads were not human. I believe they were created with pigskin.”

-SM: “How did you come to that conclusion?”

-DS: “I looked at the tanned flesh of the shrunken heads with a magnifying glass and could determine that the leather, that’s essentially what it is, was not human by the shape of the pores.”

Bode rubbed his eyes, he hadn’t been sleeping well and this was all getting a little bit heavy. Decapitations? Shrunken heads that looked human but were pigskin? But it wasn’t just the research, the first time he’d seen the shadow was at his grandmother’s burial. It was a sunny mid morning, family and friends had gathered around the casket to watch as it was lowered into the ground. A priest said some things, Bode hadn’t really been listening, he was thinking about his grandmother’s last words. Or more accurately, he was thinking about his mom’s reaction to his grandmother’s last words. When he’d told her, she’d gone pale and started shaking her head. “It’s not true. It’s not true. Don’t ever tell that to anyone else. Ever. I should have listened to her. You’re going to be fine.” And then she’d walked out of the kitchen. He could hear her sobbing.

The priest had said amen or something and his mom had elbowed him out of his reverie, then the casket started to drop slowly into the ground. He didn’t even understand the shadow at first. It didn’t make sense. What looked like a human head with… other roundish things on top of it in kind of a graduated stack. He couldn’t tell what the other shapes were, just odd blobs. He turned around, hoping for clarity, but there was nothing there.

-SM: “But you are not a forensics expert, is this correct?”

-DS: “It is, yes. I’m a podiatrist.”

-SM: “So how did you decide on that method? On looking at the pores?”

-DS: “I had asked a dermatologist I know who said that was how museum curators identified books bound in human skin. It’s a rather macabre thing, but back in the less civilized times of humanity some books were bound in human leather, its called anthropodermic bibliopegy. My colleague gave me a closeup photograph of human skin and I made a comparison with that.”

-SM: “But you’ve never done this before? And are you aware that the tanning process can make accurate identification of leather down to a species extremely  unlikely?”

-DS: “I’m aware, but I’m confident. Heads to Heaven were not wearing human shrunken heads.”

-SM: “It is true, though, that you’ve spent quite a lot of time with them, during and after your investigation?”

-DM: “True, yes. I became… curious.”

-SM: “So you were operating under a pretty heavy bias during your investigation? Would you agree?”

-DM: “No, my assessment was accurate.”

-SM: “I see, so let’s move on. What can you tell me about Heads to Heaven and their core beliefs? Many people in the town watched family members, loved ones, and neighbors give up everything to join this group, who are all now dead. What was so appealing about them?”

Bode leaned forward in his seat, this was what he needed. The name of their god. He needed to plead for his life, to stop the shadows following him. After the burial, the shadows were everywhere, rising up behind him like smoke wherever he was. Always a human head and shoulders on the bottom, and this impossible pillar of lumps on top of it. Always towering over him. He couldn’t understand what he was looking at. The internet had barely been helpful, calling the Heads to Heaven “An obscure cult from California of unknown origin who allegedly created shrunken heads.” He shivered remembering reading that line. But why had they cursed him? His family refused to discuss it. When he brought it up they tacitly changed the subject and ignored him.

-DS: “I really shouldn’t discuss this publicly, out of respect for the dead, but there are so many questions. The townspeople, people of Deadwater, they want to know. I just want to help. Heads to Heaven is, was, a group of people worshipping the god Den. They believe he once walked the earth, always carrying his head in his hands after having been tricked and decapitated by the Sky God. From the mouth of his severed head issued forth constant proclamations and portents, wisdom and woe. Where he walked also, his blood flowed onto the ground, and all who stepped in the blood would die and their bodies would shrivel. The shriveled bodies became sustenance and medicine for Den’s followers who took to wearing the shriveled heads strung around their necks. It was during a total solar eclipse that Den ascended to the stars and by his mighty will, and the vengeance of his followers, who also ascended with him, that Den became the ruler of the heavens and the One True God. His earthly followers today must reach him by their heads, towering toward heaven. Pillars of heads that are tall and desirable enough will get their wearer ascended to be with Den in the stars.”

-SM: “That is- fascinating. I need to move on, or... So how are the heads prepared?”

-DS: “That is a question I can’t answer. I was never allowed to witness that holy rite.”

Bode let out a breath. Den, the beheaded god that took over heaven. Whackadoodle. Or it would be if he hadn’t been seeing shadows that wavered like smoke everywhere he went. Shadows he hadn’t understood until now. And now that the dreams had started…

-SM: "What about some insight into the towers of heads? How is that constructed?"

-DS: "The first shrunken head is sewn into the scalp of the follower of Den, then subsequent heads are sewn onto that first head, then the next, and so on up." 

-SM: "But the towers are sometimes ten heads tall?  There must be some support? It must be heavy."

-DS: "No structural support is needed at all, Den keeps the towers of the righteous standing tall."

-SM: "Forgive me, but that’s difficult to believe."
 
-DS: "Adherents insist the towers are light as a feather, as long as they hold strong to the faith." 

Difficult to believe didn’t even begin to express Bode’s feeling on the matter.

-SM: "I’d like to move into the murder of Gary Greaves, more than five months ago now. It has not been definitively proven that any one of the Heads to Heaven members murdered him, but there is circumstantial evidence to tie them to the crime, correct."

-DS: "That is correct, but I’m certain they were innocent." 

-SM: "But there was a strong motive as well, can you discuss that?"

-DS: "Gary was planning on selling the land where the Heads to Heaven camped. The land is owned by the city, so this was absolutely within his rights to do. Heads to Heaven was also not paying the city any rent for use of the land."

-SM: "But the murder only exacerbated their problems, yes?"

-DS: "Yes, the townspeople were livid. A trial was scheduled for two Heads to Heaven members, but as you know, it won’t happen as the encampment burned to the ground last week. Every member of the cult died. Preliminary findings point to an accidental fire."

-SM: "Many don’t agree with that assessment."

-DS: "The fire is actually still under investigation, I can’t really discuss it further."

-SM: "Is it true that Sheriff Ecklund is being investigated as having started the fire?"

-DS: "I cannot comment on that."

Bode covered his mouth. His grandfather had burned down their camp. That’s why he was cursed. Bode had never met the man, he’d died before Bode was born. “In the line of duty” was the only thing his family had ever said when Bode asked how he’d died. He printed the interview and scrolled forward. A sheriff doesn’t die without a mention in the paper.

And there it was. The article. His grandfather had died in a car accident on the way to the scene of a robbery in 1969. His car had slid under a semi, decapitating him. The only photo was a grainy picture of his grandparents together in front of their house, smiling proudly. He’d never seen a picture of his grandmother so young, she looked so carefree. And her hair. Bode touched the screen, her hair was nested up in the biggest bouffant he’d ever seen. He caught himself missing her, and then frowning, following his finger up to the corner of the photo. A familiar figure stood at the side of the house. Bode zoomed in, a robed man, a tower of heads on his head, a grin spread wide across his face. It wasn’t possible, the caption under the picture said it was taken in 1957, before the cult had formed.

His father had died when Bode was only six. He barely remembered him and his family was equally as cryptic about his death. He had to get a new roll of microfiche from the librarian, his father had died in 1993. A fishing accident, as it turned out, aboard a Dungeness crabbing boat. He’d been decapitated by a crab pot’s rope. A picture of the boat and crew, smiling before the voyage was attached to the article, in color this time. Standing at the end of the row of crew, right next to Bode’s father, was a woman with seven shrunken heads towering above her own, a wide grin spread across her face. Bode’s finger reflexively hit the advance knob, a blank, dark screen crept up. Reflected in the screen behind him, a face, a tower of small, leathery faces atop it.

Bode spun around. Convinced he’d find an empty room. Instead, a figure stood behind him in a tattered, filthy robe, its head cocked slightly to the side. Atop its skull a tower of small shriveled heads was stacked seven high. As the figure smiled, its other heads smiled, too. Bode’s scream caught in his throat. The thing loomed over him, in its hand two shrunken heads dangled by their hair. His grandmother’s voice seemed to whisper into his ear, “I’ve been praying to their god all these years.”

He dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together, he had never prayed for anything in his life. His mind was blank, his mouth dry. The thing reached out to him, the two shrunken heads swinging and knocking together. Bode shrieked. Even dried out and leathery, and uncannily small, he’d recognize his father. The other, no doubt his grandfather. Bode’s tongue loosed, he let go a torrent.

“Oh Den in Heaven on high, ruler of all Earth and Sky. He of the prophetic head and shriveling blood, please spare me. I don’t want those sewn on my head. I believe in you, I’ll prove my devotion with daily supplication, you’ll always be in my thoughts. I’ll uncover my grandfather’s wrongs. Please spare me, please. I beg you.”

The thing leapt at him. Bode struggled, the grinning face, inches from his, suffocated him with foul, stale breath. “Spare me,” he groaned, and then the world went dark.

Bode stumbled out of the microfiche room and down to the main part of the library. Something trickled down his face and he wiped it away, not bothering to look at what it was. He had a terrible headache. He wiped his face again. Blood. Bode came to the front door, his reflection in the glass smiled back at him. Two heads on top of his, his grandfather and father.

Laughter bubbled up his throat.

“Whackadoodle,” he giggled, pushing the door open, and leaving the library.

Check out the Deadwater Navigation Page for more stories set in this strange little town.

Share

Linus took a thin, tattered scrap of blue felt from his pocket and rubbed it absently between his fingers and thumb. He leaned back into the camp chair he’d brought with him and stared up at the cold, disconsolate stars. In years past he would’ve waited on his feet, pacing and soliloquizing, daring it to show up. But he couldn’t muster that kind of energy this year. It was his forty-first year of watch.

For awhile, when they were still children, his sister and friends had come with him each year. Mostly to taunt him in his inevitable embarrassment. But now, well, Lucy had cancer, Chuck worked two jobs, and Sally- he wasn’t supposed to dwell on Sally. Linus cleared his throat and sat up, turning to grab the bag he’d brought with him. Something small scurried away at this movement, rustling the dying pumpkin vines. He took a thermos of hot coffee and a book from his bag. The flashlight he’d brought with him clipped to the back of the camp chair for easy reading. An LED lantern sat at his feet. He’d lit a fire one year, and had quickly learned that farmers don’t like flames anywhere near their dry fall harvests.

The book was an old and worn leather-bound volume held together with a rubber band. Linus took a few sips of coffee and opened it, his fingers running down the columns of strange script he’d somehow understood instantly as a child. No one else he’d shown it to could read it, and he’d shown it to a lot of scholars over the years. They’d all begged him to part with it, let them study it further, and though he dearly wished he could, he never had.

It was his curse.

His burden. None could bear it but Linus, who had found the unfortunate book in the woods one day as a child. He still carried around a piece of his childhood blankie to soothe away the horrors the book held inside. The nightmares he was used to by now. The dread, the anxiety, the panic attacks, they were just a part of his life. Part of being Linus.

He drank more coffee and leafed through the book until he got to the page he was looking for. On it was a drawing of a floating jack-‘o-lantern with a light, illustrated in sickly yellow-green, illuminating a mouth crammed with sharp teeth and big oval eyes. Its vines stretched out like long tentacles, each one was tipped in a sharp hook and seemed to thrash across the field. Below the monster were the corpses people and animals, blood flowed from their cracked skulls in crimson rivulets through the withered pumpkin patch. It wasn’t illustrated, but Linus saw it often enough in his nightmares to know that the blood would feed the other pumpkins in the field, awaken them. And the horror would spread. To the side of the picture was the caption, written in the same strange, unknown language as the rest of the book:

Behold! The Great Pumpkin
On Hallowe’en his terrors begin
Ruin and ravage, death and blight
Until a brave one snuffs his candle light

Though the book was filled with horrors, torture devices, monsters, plagues, scenes depicting massive wars with thousands of dead, only this one rhyme held an implicit threat. Everything else in the book was written about with an almost academic detachment. Possibilities, not probabilities. Or historical anomalies already dealt with by others doomed to be heroes. Among the beasts with long claws and soft footfalls, the witches, the famines, the diseases that had already been conquered and left to history, was this Great Pumpkin and its future threat of horror and violence. Linus’ Monster.

Linus rubbed his eyes and checked his phone, three AM. He took another swig of coffee and surveyed the darkness. Not that there was much to look at. Just a field of withered vines and plump, seemingly non-sentient pumpkins. Rustling to his right made him jump. A rat. He held up his lantern, nothing moved. A pause, then he heard it again behind him, he turned. The lantern swayed in his grip, casting wavering light over the dark pumpkin patch.

“Fudging rodents.” Linus watched his breath curl into the night. Something was moving in front of him, just beyond the lantern’s arc. A low mound came creeping toward him through the dark. Linus waited until he could see it, The Great Pumpkin. It was huge, nearly as tall as him. Its vines, snaking across the ground beneath, him began to writhe and twist. The fat orange pumpkins they held shook and bumped along the ground. Linus stood still, a strange energy crackled around him with the sound of the contorting vines. A single wavering light appeared in the center of the mound, glowing a sickly green. The color of ill-gotten conquest, of ancient evil. Linus’ eyes glinted in his lantern light. It was finally time. The moment he’d been waiting for. His faithful observance over all these years had not been in vain. He’d believed, he’d believed when no one else had and it had finally come time conquer this demon.

“Until a brave one snuffs his candle light,” Linus whispered. He set the lantern down and picked up the machete he’d brought. The shape in front of him drew closer. Vines rippled out at him, he slashed with the blade, deftly severing their hooks. The Great Pumpkin opened its mouth and screeched, exposing the flickering flame inside its cavernous head. Linus heard dry rattling all around him as vines began to coil closer. He gripped his machete and steeled his nerves, slashing vines as he moved to meet the monster. He quickly patted his pocket for the secret weapon he’d brought. It was mistake. A vine wrapped around his leg while his attention was elsewhere, its hook digging into his calf. Linus growled and slashed the vine in two. When he looked up, The Great Pumpkin was upon him. Slick strings of pumpkin guts glistened from behind razor sharp teeth as it grinned.

It spoke in a sibilant croak, in a language only Linus understood.

“You have waited long.”

Linus shoved his hand in his pocket. “No one has been more faithful than I,” he said, pulling a small device free from the fabric. His leg ached and he could feel the wet torrent of blood filling his shoe.

“You will be a sacrifice, a gift to give me strength.”

“Actually I’m afraid I can’t let that happen.” Linus whipped his hand up, pressing a button on the device as he did. It’s blades whirred to life, releasing a strong torrent of air. The Great Pumpkin’s light guttered in the air flow. It roared. Linus shoved the small, personal fan closer to the creature’s mouth. The light went out. The Great Pumpkin slumped to the field. Linus let out a barking laugh. And then staggered. He’d lost a lot of blood. But he’d done it. The Great Pumpkin, was no more! He snapped a picture with his phone, as the flash illuminated the creature’s corpse, he saw that it looked just like any other pumpkin, no face, no flame.

“I saved the world and no one will ever believe me!” He screamed into the dark, bitter night, before staggering back to his truck.

Click Here For Ko-Fi

Check Out My Etsy Shop!

The Bone Wife paused in her dusting to watch a red fox pounce on a mouse and lift it up, struggling, in his jaws. The fox was gaudy against the deep green field and the gray sky, a wound streaking across the morning. She looked up at the silk cord on the drapes and considered untying it, perhaps such gruesome scenes going on outside would upset the bones. She placed a withered hand atop a skull burnished with age.

“What say you, Husband?”

Dropping her duster, attached to a cord around her waist, she brushed the jawbone of another skull lightly with the fingertips of her other hand, “Wife? Do you like the drapes open?”

The voices that answered fell down to her ears like snowflakes, slow, soft, and cold. She’d leave them open then. Picking up her tethered feather duster, she returned to her work. The Bone Wife had been dusting, talking to, and caring for the bones in this ossuary since she was a girl of seventeen, when she’d been chosen to fill the spot of the last Bone Wife. So many years ago. She recalled how terrified she’d been on her first night, wedded to all the sleeping skeletons in strange, candlelit ceremony. The eerie songs of the monks echoing through the cold stone building still haunted her on long winter nights. They’d given her some bread and soup and then left her alone with the bones, their voices, their laments, and the body of the last Bone Wife. She would decay in the central hall, lying on her smooth stone slab, for the next few years, guiding the young acolyte through her lonely duties with a chilling, gentle voice.

It was nearing afternoon when a knock at the door startled the Bone Wife out of her work and she hurried out of the room where she dusted. As she made her way down the echoing stone halls, whispers followed her. It was impossible to distinguish anything coherent in the multitude of voices, but they chilled her more than usual and she pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The great wooden door stood tall in the main hall and was getting difficult to open in her old age. She undid the latches and tugged it open far enough to peek through. The face of a middle aged monk peered back, his brow knit in worry.

“You’ll have to push the door open, Brother, it’s gotten too heavy for me.” She stood back and waited, listening to the scuffle outside, a chill creeping deeper into her own bones. New bones were never brought unannounced, preparations had to be made for the ceremony. And her groceries had already been delivered this week. Family were only allowed at the ossuary for visits on Sunday or by appointment, today was Thursday. No appointments were scheduled. Social visits were not allowed at all by her strict vows. But she tried not to speculate. Instead she tried to pick out anything useful from the icy barrage of voices snaking into her mind from the various rooms in the labyrinthine ossuary.

Finally, the door began to creak open. Frigid wind screamed in from the fields, picking at her plain dress and shawl with belligerent fingers, pulling strands of hair from her tight bun. She held her shawl up to shield her face from the icy blast. When she brought it down again, two of the five men were pushing the heavy door shut. On the floor sat a wooden box about three feet long. Not long enough for an adult, but children were taken to the ossuary of the Bone Mother, not brought here. The Bone Wife looked searchingly at the men, three monks and two craftsmen from the town.

“My Lady, we’ve brought you bones,” one of the townsmen stammered.

“We didn’t know where else to take them,” the eldest monk came forward. The Bone Wife knew him from the weekly grocery delivery.

“Who’s bones? I’m not prepared for a ceremony tonight.”

The men stood pale and speechless. The voice of the last Bone Wife fell into her ears with unusual heaviness.

“I can’t accept them.”

“You haven’t seen them,” the monk pleaded.

“I don’t need to. The dead here won’t have them.”

“Surely you can tame these bones, settle their restless spirit?”

One of the town men pulled out a crowbar and began to pry the top off of the wooden box. The whispering in her ears grew more urgent.

“Tell him to stop! He shouldn’t open that!” The Bone Wife cried. The chorus of voices around her grew louder and colder. The wooden lid cracked as the last of nails came loose and it slid to the floor. Silence filled the hall. The chill coming from the box caressed the Bone Wife, luring her closer. Inside lay the fox, a grin splitting its bloody snout.

“A fox?”

“It wasn’t when we killed it,” said one of the craftsmen, he wore a thick scarf around his neck, knitted in an exquisite color of wool the Bone Wife had never seen before.

“It was a man then. Tall and thin, with a wide grin.”

“He attacked a merchant in the square, and then three children walking home from a music lesson. We killed him and he became a fox when he died, so we sent for the monks to advise us.”

The Bone Wife looked down at the dead fox, its eyes rolled up toward her, its grin spread wider. As she watched a broken leg knitted itself back together. But a large bullet wound still gaped on its chest.

“Sister, you must have a way to keep dangerous bones contained,” one of the monks pleaded with her. She did, of course, but she hated to go down there. And the whispers and chill of warning were not insignificant. Still, this was her duty. Was it not? To wed them all, to ease their troubled spirits. And when she couldn’t, to imprison them, and keep the others safe from the malicious ones.

“Put the lid back on before we go.” She turned to a cabinet that stood in the great hall and pulled five black silk ribbons with small bone pendants from a hook. When she turned back around, the lid was securely on the box. She handed each man a pendant an instructed him to put it on.

“These are the left-hand finger bones of the first Bone Wife of this ossuary, Sister Gytha. We will be heading down to the Hole of the Forgotten, these relics will keep the fox in the crate, but only if you keep contact with the box. Do you understand? If any one of you stops touching the box, or takes off the pendant, the evil will have a chance to escape.”

“Surely you don’t expect us to go down there?” One of the men from town asked hesitantly.

“Surely you don’t expect this elderly Sister to haul that crate down there herself!” Cried one of the monks. The townsman crimsoned and busied himself unwinding his scarf and slipping the black ribbon over his head. He hung the scarf on a coat hook near the door. When he was ready, the Bone Wife addressed them.

“We’ll be walking down a narrow flight of stairs leading to the Hole of the Forgotten. I will go first and light the torches on our way. Whatever you do, don’t stop walking, don’t set the crate down, and absolutely do not open it. Do you understand?” The men all nodded. The Bone Wife looked up to the monk who brought her weekly grocery delivery, “Brother Esben, can I trust you to follow behind us? You’ll need to be stalwart, keep your faith about you, and be ready to pray the Sun Supplication at the slightest provocation.”

“Of course, Sister, may the Sun shine on us all in the depths.”

“Follow me, don’t speak, and ignore anything you hear. Down there, you’ll need to rely on your faith and your wits.” Without waiting for their replies, she turned and made her way down a side corridor off of the main hall. Halfway down the hall, a dark archway lurked. The stone voussoirs of the archway were inlaid with sun discs cut from shimmering sunstone, with a nine-rayed sun set into the keystone. The Bone Wife took a torch from the wall sconce next to the arch and began the descent, behind her, four men carried the wooden box, and Brother Esben followed behind them.

The stairs were steep and narrow, dead torches in sconces lined the wall on one side. The Bone Wife lit them one by one as they made their way slowly down into the depths. She’d been down here thrice before, never with worldly men. Never with such fear treading at her heals. They walked on for several minutes, the air growing colder and denser as they went.

“Sister, how much longer?” Asked one of the men.

“As long as it takes,” she muttered, cringing at the echoes and waiting for the silence to return. It filled her with unease to be away from the endless whispers of the bones upstairs.

“Can we set the box down for a second, it’s digging into my neck,” complained another.

“We cannot stop. You cannot set the box down. I explained it all upstairs.”

“Just for a mo-“

“No!” Her voice roared through the stairwell, a formidable growl that bounded off the walls and seemed to return to pummel her, she who never rose her voice. The men quieted down without further fuss. They walked down in silence for another few yards. Only their breathing, footsteps, and the soft whoosh of each torch flame catching and taking its first gasp of life echoed in the stairwell.

One of the men gasped. The Bone Wife turned to see the box shift of its own accord. A hideous screaming was heard from inside as the box shifted again.

“It’s alive! We should let it out!” Cried one of the town men. The monks began to protest.

“It’s a trick. Hold on to the box and ignore the screaming. Keep walking.” The Bone Wife turned, and walked on. The fox continued screaming, a chilling, desperate screech. Beneath the cries, Brother Esben’s voice picked up, low and quiet, chanting the Sun Supplication.

Before long the staircase ended and opened up into a bare stone room.

“Do not put the box down,” the Bone Wife ordered. One of the men groaned. Brother Esben stepped into the room, chanting prayers, a little out of breath.

“Brother, help me with the door.”

Set in the wall opposite the staircase was a small wooden door about three feet tall and three feet wide. She handed the monk the torch and took a key ring from her belt, searching through the many keys for a long, black skeleton key. She knelt down at the door.

“A little more light, Brother.”

The monk held the torch closer. She slipped the key into the lock, and heard a scuffle behind them. Then the sound of the wooden box hitting the stone floor. She turned, the two townsmen stood rubbing their shoulders and necks. The monks’ faces flickered in horror as they stood, bending over with their hands still on the box. Before she could say a word, the wooden box splintered.

Blood spilled to the stones. She saw the four men fall to their knees. She pulled the key from the lock as Brother Esben’s blood showered her in a warm spray.

“May the Sun shine on us in the depths,” she whispered before the world went black.

The bones watched as a man came jogging up the steps that led to the Hole of the Forgotten. He rummaged through the rooms, taking the pants from one skeleton, a shirt from another. From a third he found shoes that still held a bright polish and curiously, a wool coat.

“Who the devil is interred in a coat?” He mused. At the door, he wound a scarf around his neck made with wool of an exquisite color. A kind of teal green that he thought quite a compliment to his red hair and fair skin. At the door he turned and bowed to the bones.

“Farewell, and never forgotten,” he said, before pulling the heavy door shut behind him.

Tip your writer on Ko-Fi🦴

Click here to visit my Etsy shop👻

The ceiling in my bedroom was an intimate image. I knew every pit and blob of the grimy textured paint by heart. Every pareidoliac hallucination was mapped in rogue neural pathways tucked away in a corner of my brain. The dog with a mohawk, the circus clown holding a teapot, the little girl with the hollow eyes, the cat, the demons.. all of them. They were always there. Always lurking and ready for a macabre parade across my dashboard, across my desk, stomping on my twitchy psyche.

Every night watching the demon procession, every night looking for new bumps and divots, new demons, new freaks for the phantom parade brought to you by insomnia.

Every day they haunted me. With open eyes they traipsed like specters across my vision, their images washed out and bleeding into reality. Was the clown with the teapot sitting at the reception desk? Did he wink at me?

It was like this for awhile. For a long while. A silent task. A silent torture. The never-ending exhaustion.

Then one day, the demons told me to look under the bed.

I didn’t look that day.

I didn’t look for awhile.

As I lay in bed one night, tracing their familiar geography, I heard breathing. Deep and centered, like those yoga people I wish I could be. Those people who haven’t mapped their ceilings. Who haven’t faced despair with a bottle of gin and a sharp knife. Deep, people. Deep, breathing.

“Are you a demon?”

Creaking.

Breathing.

Deep.

“Yessss.”

“Do you want me?”

“Yessss.”

“No one’s ever wanted me.”

“I want you.”

“Why?”

“You’re beautiful. You’re deep.”

“No.”

A hand, jet black and furry with claws curved like those pretty vases in museums, reached out for me. Claws like scythes, glowing against my black sheets. I reached out for it. The hand held mine. Tight and warm. I slept that way.

I slept.

The next night I looked under the bed.

I was there. I’d been there for awhile by the looks of it. A little swollen, a little purple.

Lost.

I embraced me.

And we slept.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi😈

Check out my Etsy shop👻

It was 6:15 PM, October 14 when the wail started. I was staring at my phone, waiting for a text that I knew wouldn’t come when it picked up in a burst, like a siren being flicked on in an ambulance sitting behind you in traffic. I lay in bed, listening, my phone screen glowing in the darkness. My words, a pathetic wail of their own, sat in their text bubble, hanging in that liminal space, delivered, but unanswered. I stared at the lacuna on the screen, and closed the message app. The wail was rather intense anyway. Hard to put out of my mind. I went to the window and pushed it up, leaning out. My apartment was five stories up, below me, specks of other heads poked out of their windows, and below them, figures milled around in the street, staring vaguely upwards, as if they’d be able to see the wail as it drifted by them and track it back to the source. It was all around us. A blanket of thorns.

It wasn’t like a siren, no modulation in tone. More like a fox’s scream, but never ending. A nerve-tearing shriek that gripped you at the base of the skull and held on with sharp teeth. My neighbor yelled over from his window.

“What the hell is that?”

Without looking over at him I shrugged and pulled my head back in, slamming the window shut against the noise.

There was only one person I wanted to talk to. I opened the message app again. No response. It wasn’t even a complicated question. But whatever. The wail was making my fingers tremble and I set the phone down on my bed. Then I picked it back up and Googled.

Who is hearing the wail?

It was only in our city. No one outside of there seemed to be able hear it. But it was already being played and replayed on every social media site, so if viral counted, the wail was everywhere. It had only been fifteen minutes, but I felt like the wail had gotten into my pores and was now moving through my bloodstream. Feeding my organs. Replacing the oxygen.

Only fifteen minutes.

It had taken you longer than that to destroy me. It had taken hours. Hours of waiting for you, only to see you leave the theater with someone else. Your glance in my direction, defiant.

If I was destroyed already, why worry about the wail?

I checked my phone again. No reply from you. You weren’t even asking me if I heard the wail. Or if it hurt. Because it did. Maybe it hurt you, too? I typed in the question. Hit send.

Waited. I listened to the wail until I thought I was seeing things. Thought you were there, lying on my bed, a pillow wrapped around your head to keep the sound out.

A news alert popped up on my phone. Residents recommended to wear hearing protection and ordered to stay indoors. You were always prophetic. The wail’s source had been located. Authorities were moving in. The situation would be neutralized soon.

A relief. My fingers hurt, my eyeballs felt swollen, the wail was zipping between neurons. Drops of the wail fell from my brow and slid down the bridge of my nose. My phone pinged again. A reminder this time. It popped up daily. A thing I tell myself to keep situations like this from happening.

Always remember that you’re a monster. No one can love you.

I don’t always listen to my own advice.

Sometimes I try anyway. Like with you.

My door flew open with the crack of splintering wood.

Guns were aimed in my direction.

I knew I should close my mouth.

But I didn’t.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi😱

Check out my Etsy shop👻

Eli was standing in the sun. He’d been in the lab for hours. There were no windows, it was too cold, and he thought he might go crazy if he heard one more mouse shriek. A slight breeze blew, chasing the scent of mouse piss and wood chips from his nostrils. Leaves rustled in the trees. It was warm. He pushed up his sleeves and closed his eyes, imagining being rooted to the spot, just growing. Nothing more complicated than that. His scientist’s brain started to argue that actually, a tree’s growth was pretty complicated, but he took a deep breath and shut off the voice. He was just flesh, standing in the sun. And it felt so good.

Something tickled his hand and he looked down, thinking it might be a bug. It wasn’t a bug though, somehow a dandelion seed had stuck to him, its little bit of fluff waving in the breeze. He pinched the fluff and pulled, but it was really stuck. Bringing his hand up to his face he could see that the seed had somehow embedded in his skin. Was this a thing dandelions did? It couldn’t be. He tried to remember if he knew anyone in the botany department. In the meantime, he pulled harder. His skin tented up, but the seed didn’t come loose. It didn’t even budge. As he stood there, perplexed, the breeze picked up again. A cloud of dandelion seeds floated around him, he batted at them frantically before remembering he wasn’t a tree, he could run.

So he did. Back inside the building’s lobby he lifted his hand to his face. Now a cluster of seeds sprouted from his hand and partway up his arm.

“Shit!” He brushed at them, but they were already embedded. Adrenaline pumped through him and he pulled hard on a seed stuck in his forearm. The seed popped from his flesh, a little root already sprouting from its shell. Eli felt woozy and dropped to an overstuffed chair nearby. This could not happen. It didn’t make any sense. He began frantically pulling out the seeds in his arm. Blood began to ooze from the wounds and he ran to the bathroom where he wrapped his arm in paper towels as he weeded his own arm. Finally he came to the first seed, he pulled. It wouldn’t budge. A little harder and the seed wriggled free of his skin, a plump white root ran from the seed into his hand. He pulled harder. More of the root slid out of the wound, but it didn’t end. He pulled more, realizing he could feel it tugging from inside his arm, like an internal itch.

How deep did the root go? Panic welled inside him. He had to get to help. He had to get back to lab. He wasn’t thinking clearly, but Jenny and Sung always thought clearly. He turned to leave the bathroom and the world went black. Then bright. He saw the sun again, its light muted through green leaves. A wrinkled hand came into view. It held a dandelion, a pure white fluff ball.

“I wish for vitality.” The voice filled his head, filled every cell in his body.

And Eli’s world went black, for the final time.

She rattled her hollow bones, scattered across the forest floor. Her consciousness, unlike her meat and sinews, could never be devoured. Dissociated though it was from the rest of her, it still had power.

“No marrow,” her disembodied voice lamented. “So difficult without the marrow.” A broken metatarsus, carefully hollowed out by long, sharp tongues, shivered beneath a fern. It’s other half twitched a few feet away. Dragging them through the leaf litter, she aligned their jagged, slivered edges and fit them back together. Still hollow, but together, nonetheless. It was a few hours of work, sifting through fragments, piecing them together like a puzzle. Not all of the pieces were there.

Soon she stood, embodied again, if wobbly and all hollow bones. Taking a careful step she felt the lightness, the fragility of her skeleton. Heavy antlers, weighed down her head, forcing her eyes to the dirt. To the tracks. The long-clawed three toes of her destroyers. The greedy ones who took her marrow. Nosing the tracks with her naked skull, she thought she caught the scent of herself. Her pelt, perhaps they’d dragged it off to line their den. She took another step, her knees ached, the joints dry and grinding. Carefully placing her forelimbs to either side of the frenzied clusters of tracks, she began to follow them.

The forest around her grew dim as she walked, slowly and painfully, to her marrow. Her strength. Smaller creatures scurried before her, running from her plodding steps. She snapped the slower ones up in her jaws, using all her strength to toss her head back and gulp them down. Feeling her gullet and stomach as they reformed to catch the treats. Her bones ached more with the added weight. Though hunger gnawed at her, she couldn’t eat more, or she’d have to carry more as her body rebuilt itself.

The marrow, though, and the bones, those she couldn’t replace. Only the greedy ones took those. She’d tried to stay far from their territories, but they strayed into hers sometimes when they’d eaten too much in their own. With the fading light it was getting harder to see their dagger-like tracks, just three slits in the soil, but she could still sense herself in each, deep footfall. Soon, she could hear their laughing, shrieking calls echoing from a shallow cave. The scent of herself became overpowering as she moved closer to their den. Her bones itched to be whole again, to carry the weight of her entire self.

The night was dark now, but the moon shone through the trees, lighting her battleground as she bellowed for the greedy ones. They slunk out, wide grins on their greedy faces, giggles erupting from between sharp teeth as they snaked their razor tongues out at her. But those tongues couldn’t hurt her now, and the three long claws on each foot would only get tangled up in her bones. She charged forward, catching the first greedy one by surprise and flipping it with her antlers onto its back. Her skull, without its flesh, tapered to two sharp incisors, with these she sliced its belly open, her tongue grew in her mouth and she ate her own flesh and marrow from with in the warm hollow.

The greedy ones howled at the death of their own and threw themselves at her, but she was quick and sliced them all out of the air. As they writhed, she feasted on their stomach contents, her marrow slipping back into her bones. Her strength returning. Soon, she was whole again. Her new fur shimmering in the moonlight, her antlers draped once again in soft black velvet. Her skull, however, she kept free of flesh, just her tongue for swallowing. She didn’t plan on losing her marrow, ever again.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🦌

Check out my Etsy shop👻

Janna felt the moth crawling on her shoulder. Its sticky little bug feet, tiny points of attachment, moved slowly on her skin, perhaps contending with the fine hairs on her arm. The moon kept shifting behind clouds so she couldn’t get a good look at the small trespasser. And if she moved to look more closely, her presence would be felt. The tree she leaned against dropped a leaf, it bumped the trunk on the way down and then gently crashed into the leaf litter below. Janna held her breath. The moth paused, she could see its pale, luminous antennae flicker and twitch. Janna gritted her teeth, her own ears strained against the silence. The forest, all the creatures, knew that patience meant survival. The hound would try to use the stillness against them, let it goad them into movement with its warm, airless caress. But no, she knew what the forest knew, to move was to die. So she waited.

The cloying scent of jasmine, twining and pulsing its fragrance into the night tickled Janna’s nose, she tried to breathe lightly to avoid sneezing. The moth rubbed its fuzzy head on her arm. It wasn’t often Janna liked moths. They tended to be trouble makers. Flitting about when they should be still, knocking into the Rulers as though their insubstantial, powdery bodies could do anything but anger them. This one was no different. Horrible, ticklish little creature. Just trying to provoke the hound.

The Rulers’ hound was not much of a hound, it had no snout to smell with and no eyes for sight, it was slow and dragged a filthy, matted tail behind it that often got caught in shrubs and brambles. Its angular bones poked out from underneath its pelt, as though even they couldn’t bare to be part of the travesty and wanted to escape. For all its faults, though, the hound was smart, for it had once been a man. A formidable hunter that the Rulers had caught poaching on their land. As punishment, they had turned him into a hound with no adaptations for the hunt besides his large, dish-like ears, and paws that sensed even the slightest vibration. They’d given him teeth, of course, many sharp, jagged teeth, so that if he ever did catch anything, he could cause it immeasurable pain. The Rulers loved pain.

The hound stood in the forest every night, stalwart and silent, waiting for the tremors of those stupid enough to get caught out after dark. Waiting for fear and impatience to bubble up inside the unlucky fool and push her to run. The hound was slow, but he also knew the forest, no one escaped.

The moon emerged from the clouds. The moth tapped a silly rhythm on her arm. Janna glared at it in the dark. It wriggled its moth bottom and flapped its wings. Waiting out the hound had felled greater creatures, maybe it had lost its stupid little mind. Its legs tickled her arm. She itched to swat it off, but that was movement. That was something the hound would feel vibrating. She took a slow, careful breath and wished the moth a speedy demise.

Beyond them, out in the heart of the dark forest, the hound shifted. Janna heard its great bones clack together. On the breeze she smelled its rank breath.

The hound was close. How had it gotten so close? Janna felt her heart thump in her chest and breathed slowly to calm it. For all she knew the hound could feel a heart trying to burst out of a chest when its body wouldn’t run. Panicking was what just what the hound wanted her to do.

A sharp pain in her arm made her look down more quickly than she would have liked. The moth grinned at her with blood dripping from its jaws. Janna felt a wave of fear, bitter as bile.

What kind of moth bit people?

As she watched, it opened up wide and took another bite. Janna bit her lip to keep from screaming as pain shot through her. The moth gnawed at her flesh, in seconds it had disappeared inside her arm, its pale wingtips the only things visible as it burrowed.

Janna lifted her other arm from where it rested on her knee and brought it up to the moth. She pinched its wings between her fingers and pulled. Slowly. Forcing herself to keep her eyes open and her breathing calm. The moth held fast to her meat. Janna tugged and felt a tiny pop as it ripped from her arm. She held it out in front of her face, her features contorted in rage and pain. The moth snarled and snapped at her. Janna flung it into the forest.

She heard it land with a tiny thud.

The hound grunted and shifted, its bones grinding together like dry gears. Janna heard it take a few steps away from her as the moth thrashed in the leaf litter.

It was far too late when she noticed the trickle of blood running off her elbow to stop it from hitting the ground.

The hound turned and bounded over to her, knocking her flat on her back. Janna kicked its knees out of their sockets before it ripped out her throat.

The hound starved where it fell, on top of Janna, unable to move with its broken legs. Unable to rise and devour her.

No one waits out the hound anymore, but some say, if you stand by the spot where Janna’s bones lie underneath the hound’s, you’ll hear moth wings flutter. And if you do, you’d better run.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🌕

Check out my Etsy shop👻

Frostbite

It nibbles your toes 
It nibbles your nose
It filches your fingers too
Stay away from the frost
Your body’s the cost
Have a night with the hoar 
You’ll rime ever more
With lips undeniably blue

Dead Meat

She held his fingers up between them, they were waxy and black. Blue-green where the dead meat met the blistered red of the rest of his hand. 
“I’m so hungry,” she said, “and you won’t feel a thing.”

Snowman

“Why is the floor all wet?”
“We built a snowman and invited him in to play.”
“You look so cold.”
“He wants to play inside you, too, Mommy.” 

Eleanore

“Ma’am, I live up the street and I have a snowblower, just wondered if you’d like me to clear your drive for a few bucks.” He stood on Eleanore’s front porch in a puffy parka and held out a gloved hand. One of those bearded bums in skinny jeans, she thought.

“A few bucks?” Eleanore shivered in the cold draft from the door.

“Yeah ten, five whatever ya got.” The man moved his hand closer to Eleanore, she thought the begging gesture rude and tugged on the door to close him out.

“No thank you, my son will be over later.”

“You’re loss.” He shouted as she shut the door.

“That’s what you think.” Eleanore beamed as she hurried from the door to the loveseat in the front window. She grabbed her tea from the coffee table and curled up on the floral cushion. This weather worried at her bones, but there was some good to be had in it. She didn’t need to part the curtains, they were sheer, and her eyesight was still good enough to see through them.

She watched the man stomp through the snow down her driveway. Cursing her out as he went, no doubt. Calling her all the things the young call the old, useless, smelly old hag. When he reached the sidewalk and turned right to go speak to the neighbors instead of left to go home she nearly shrieked with glee. A cackle, she thought, I’m cackling like the old witch I am. She parted the curtain a little, she had to, she just had to see this clearly.

The man screamed as his feet flew out from underneath him. He landed heavily on his back and Eleanore felt a tingle of pleasure in her gut as his head bounced off the sidewalk. He tried to rise, his back bowed oddly. Eleanore could see his arm pitched at the wrong angle. She’d iced the walk the night before. How lucky someone should slip before lunch. She sipped her tea and nibbled a cookie. It was exactly seven minutes and fifty-three seconds before anyone came to help.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🥶

Check out my Etsy shop👻

Mary twirled in the mirror that leaned against the wall in her apartment.

“It’s so pretty! I look perfect!” The red wool peacoat was belted tight around her waist and brought out the flush of her cheeks. She was just two days away from her first trip to New York and wanted to look like a true New Yorker. She tried to put her hands in the coat’s pockets before remembering that the clerk at the store had said she’d need to pull out the thread that held them closed.

“They sew them shut to keep the fabric from stretching during shipping,” the clerk had explained. Unbelting the coat and shrugging out of it, she flipped on her desk lamp, and sat down. The thread for the first pocket came out easily, but the second she had to cut in a couple of places. With the coat back on, she stood in front of the mirror again and turned the collar up, plunging her hands into the pockets, hoping she looked as mysterious as she felt.

In the right pocket, her fingers brushed against something cold and hard, a few things actually. Closing her hand around them she brought the handful of objects into the light.

“Shit!” She dropped them on the desk, wiping her hand against her jeans. On the desk sat a milky constellation of seven human teeth.

“You found human teeth in the pocket of a coat you just bought?”

“Correct,” Mary told the officer on the phone.

“Where did you buy it.”

“Polly’s, on First Street.”

“You say the pockets were sewn shut?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, what’s the brand of coat?”

Mary grabbed it and read the tag, “Byzantium.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Well I can’t really afford designer,” Mary said in huff.

“Not what I meant, lady.”

“Sorry, this is just very weird. And I’m leaving for New York in two days so can you guys come pick up the teeth tonight? I don’t really want them in my apartment. They creep me out.”

“I’ll have to run that by my dispatcher and get back to you, we’re a little swamped tonight, one of those weird days. And it’s not technically an emergency.”

“Oh, I see. It’s just, they’re so…” Mary shivered, unable to complete her thought. She stared at the small pile of teeth and tried not to wonder who they belonged to.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m here, I’m sorry. This is just very disturbing. If the bus ran this late, I’d bring them to you myself just to get them out of here.”

“It looks like we’ll be by in the morning to pick them up. Just have them ready for the officer around eight AM.”

“Ok, eight, I’ll be ready. Thank you.”

“Of course, see you in the morning, ma’am.”

Mary hung up the phone and stood by the desk, it looked like the top front six teeth, to the canines, and one molar. Nightmare scenarios of a factory murder ran through her head. Bits of the body in different coats all over the country. Then again, if that were the case, teeth were positively innocuous. Just think of what she _could_ have found in her pocket. She looked at the coat again, _Made in Ohio_.

“Ohio? Not what I was expecting.”

At her laptop she searched the manufacturer and found that Byzantium had closed down a year prior, but there was no mention of a murder or accident. Not even a news article, just an announcement.

> Byzantium Outer Wear will close its doors permanently on Friday, June 23, 2023. Please, be advised.

Outerwear wasn’t even two words. No wonder they went out of business. She wondered why Polly’s was still selling their clothing so long after they’d closed. How long had the coat and the teeth even been in the store? None of this made sense. Hopefully the police would sort it out… while she was far away in New York. Having pizza and beer with her best friend. The one who’d ditched her for post-grad in the Big Apple. Maybe the cops would just send her an email with the unexciting conclusion that the teeth were fake, a stupid prank pulled by a worker upset that the factory was closing. Filched from some unfortunate granny’s dentures and planted to sew mayhem.

That could happen.

Mary looked at the teeth again. She didn’t want to, but her eyes kept wandering that direction. They were very white. Whoever lost them was on top of their dental game. Maybe she could find a list of former employees and search for pictures…

_No, Mary,_ she told herself. _You’re going to go to bed and let the police handle this._

About an hour and an Ambien later, Mary was asleep and dreaming of New York. The teeth were making their way to her bed. And then to her face. Mary didn’t feel it when they jumped up on her cheek and began to root themselves into her flesh, digging and wriggling in and forming a sort of mouth with three teeth on top, and four teeth on the bottom.

She did feel it when she woke up, though. Late. As the cops were pounding on her door to open up so they could collect the teeth. Mary ran to the bathroom. The mouth in her face smiled at her in the mirror.

“Hello, Mary. Guess who’s in charge now?”

Mary tried to raise her arm to claw the teeth from her face, but it wouldn’t obey. Instead she marched to the front door and let the cops in. They stood in the doorway in horror, blood still dripped off Mary’s chin as the rouge teeth grinned at the officers.

“Ma’am? Why?”

“I’ll do the talking,” the mouth said. “And you’ll bow to me. This is my town now.”

The officers dropped to their knees. And the mouth smiled.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi 🦷

Check out my Etsy store👻

Pandora sat on the edge of her chipped “vintage” avocado green bathtub with her phone in her hand, staring at a text from her boyfriend, Brad.

Hey baby sup?

She cringed, tapping her fingers on the case and replying with a curt,

Busy. The phone pinged again almost instantly.

Busy? WTF w what?

She let out a long slow breath, curling her toes into the furry black bath mat.

Call you later, promise.

SRSLY? WTF is up w you?

He was so high maintenance. Not for the first time she questioned her own sanity in still dating him.

Nothing. I’m just in the middle of something important. Call you later, ok?

He could be cool, there was the time he’d surprised her with tickets to LA to see her favorite band. And for a self-obsessed man child he was surprisingly great in bed. But then…

Dude better be yoked or he’s fuckin dead.

…he could also be a total fucking waste of flesh.

FFS, not a guy. Hair emergency.

Christ. BYE

“Asshole,” Pandora hissed under her breath as she swiped the phone from messages to camera. She turned on the flash and aimed at the hardened mass of foam attached to the underside of her bathroom counter. Somehow Brad had missed the large, off-white lump every time he’d been to her apartment. Either he was too intellectually stunted to wonder about it, or too conceited to notice anything other than his own reflection while he was in the can. She rubbed her temples and decided not to think about Brad for at least another hour.

The mass moved. It was barely noticeable, but it, or more accurately, something inside of it, had been moving all morning and it was now crazed with a dozen zigzagging hairline cracks. The shape of a football halved lengthwise, and with the hardness and texture of dried foam insulation, the large mass had appeared, wedged between the cabinet and the underside of the counter, about three weeks earlier. Pandora had only seen one other thing even remotely like it in her life.

Her Great-Aunt Myra, at nearly ninety years old, had discovered a wasp nest in her kitchen pantry and live-streamed her attempt to destroy it on YouTube. Her death had been slow and painful and she’d managed to record most of it. Pandora could still hear her wheeze as her throat closed up and she forced out her last words. The post had gone viral and thousands of strangers all over the web had argued for months about what those last words had actually been. Knowing Aunt Myra, it was probably, “don’t try this at home.” Pandora had initially assumed the mass in her bathroom was a wasp nest and had decided to heed Auntie M’s advice.

The exterminator had shown up late. He had been a skinny, balding man in blue coveralls and Raybans. He’d clicked his tongue and shook his head when she’d showed it to him.

“Looks exactly like an ootheca,” he’d said, the tobacco scent rolling off him in pungent waves and making Pandora light headed, “‘course, it’s waaaaay too big to be one of those.” An ootheca, he’d explained with many hand gestures, was an egg sac. There were several types of oothecae, he had demonstrated the various shapes. “But this ain’t none of those. Too big, like I said.” He had stopped, leaned over the counter, and put the lid back on Pandora’s q-tip jar, “ladies always have that styling mousse around, right? A can of that probably leaked.”

“But how?” Pandora was nauseous from the tobacco and irritated. If mousse dried rock hard the hair emergencies would become very real. “How could it have leaked under the counter?”

“‘Fraid I don’t use the stuff. Not sure how that might happen. Can exploded, that’s the best bet.” He balled up his fist and then opened his fingers wide to signify an explosion.

“So you won’t get rid of it?”

“Nope. I’d get something sharp and chisel it off. Do you have a screwdriver? You can pick those up at any hardware store if you don’t. You been to one of those?”

So many assholes, so few screwdrivers. Pandora had kicked him out, refusing to pay the consultation fee. A stab in the wallet, instead of the gut.

The mass shifted and a muffled chittering sound came from inside. Pandora cooed to it, then laughed nervously at her own tender reflex. Online she’d learned that most oothecae were indeed small, no more than an inch in length, and that they were primarily laid by mantids and cockroaches. So there were eggs in there. What kind of eggs they were was a mystery even the internet couldn’t solve. There weren’t even any bad photoshops of giant oothecae out there. Pandora had considered visiting the local university with pictures, but she was afraid they’d either have her escorted out by campus security as a total nut or call in the feds and have her apartment quarantined. No, their mother had done her best to protect the eggs, Pandora could do the same. Besides, they might be some rare creature heretofore living in obscurity that had been brought out of hiding by climate change. She did not want an extinction on her conscience. The thing chittered again and the ootheca cracked through the middle.

Still, motherhood had never been on her bucket list. She liked children and they seemed to like her, too, but she’d never wanted to rear any. Motherhood was an endless and thankless task impossible to get right. Not to mention the damage it would do to her body. All the expanding and stretching and shifting and breaking. Why put herself through something so destructive just because she was physically capable of doing it? She was also physically capable of dislocating her own shoulder joint, but that didn’t mean she did it for kicks at parties or anything. Anymore.

She wondered about the ootheca residents’ actual mom. Did she have a choice in the matter? Was she driven by biology to mate and spawn? Had the act of birth been painful? Or deadly? Or maybe she was recuperating and was lurking around in the apartment, waiting for her spawn to call to her. Most likely she’d just left. Pandora knew from the research she’d done that very few insect mothers (if this was an insect) stick around to rear their babies. Besides, the mother must be huge, probably not something she’d miss. She must have come in at night. Not a pleasant thought really, and one that gave rise to an endless monologue of other unpleasant thoughts. She’d checked her bedroom at least four times for any possible entrance point and now slept with the door closed.

“Too bad you can’t just tell me about your mom.” Pandora slid off the hard edge of the tub and sat on the bath mat. It made sense to talk to the ootheca. There were living things in there after all, they might need… encouragement. They might even bond to her if they heard her voice. An antithetical thought struck her, too, she could just knock the thing off into a bucket with a fire in it. She shivered imagining it, though, what if they screamed? She wouldn’t be able to bear it. She bent forward and ran her fingers along the hard, porous shell.

“Hello in there. I’m not your mother, and I won't try to be, but if you need assistance getting out into the world I’ll gladly offer it.” The egg case shifted again and cracked. A large chunk fell off and bounced on the linoleum between the toilet and the counter. Pandora jumped up and stood looking at the golfball sized piece of ootheca. It had left a big hole. Could they squeeze out now? She waited, halfway to the bathroom door and ready to run if a thousand inky horror movie wasps started to pour out. But nothing happened. She walked back over to it, snatched the broken piece from the floor, and held it. It was light, lighter than she expected, but strong too. She couldn’t break it with her hands. Nothing had crawled out so she knelt back down to inspect the opening. There wasn’t one, not really, the ootheca appeared to be lined with a thin, milky white membrane. Something dark moved behind the barrier and she thought again about the bucket of fire as her heart leapt into her throat.

A shiny hook shot through the barrier. Pandora gasped and fell back, knocking her head on the edge of the tub. She scrambled up and into the bathtub, waiting, tensed. Nothing more emerged. She rubbed her head and watched. The hook was smaller than the hook of a coat hanger, deep, reddish brown and glistening with oozy wetness. It twisted and prodded at the open air, feeling around for purchase. There was nothing for it to grab and it eventually rested against the opening it had created. This was different than swatting a fly. This thing was big. She’d never killed anything that big before. Curiosity drove her out of the tub. She crawled over to the ootheca and reached out and touched the hook. It was tough and slick and jerked back into the hole at her touch.

“Don’t worry little buddy. I won’t hurt you.” She kept her finger extended, a sign of trust. The hook extended again and felt for her finger, then wrapped around it, coiled, like a tentacle kind of, but with several joints she hadn’t noticed at first. It was a warm, strong grip. Pandora laughed, joy and terror bubbling in her chest. The timed release of the air freshener dispenser on the counter hissed and the hook retreated back into the egg case.

“Way to ruin the moment, jade summer.”

Pandora moved away from the ootheca and sat on the edge of the tub again, cradling her chin in her hands. No, she’d never wanted to be a mother. But this was more like a pet owner. Not the same thing at all. She was a compassionate person, she did her best to help fellow living beings. She returned stray dogs and cut apart the plastic soda bottle rings to save fish and birds and sea turtles. Childless didn’t mean heartless. All her adult life she’d stood her ground against all the negativity society, and her mother, threw at her for deciding to not to have kids. Now, she wanted to help this creature and she was vexed that she had to rationalize it to herself. God, and what would her mother say? What would Brad say?

“Oh, fuck Brad,” she whispered, leaning forward and brushing her fingers against the rough ootheca again. “Come on out, my little darling.”

Her phone buzzed on the counter. She jumped and cursed. It was Brad.

Babe! Is your hair done yet? I need some laundry done…. And I miss you.

Pandora typed back:

Not done yet. Go to your mom’s.

And?

Be nice to her.

srsly :(

She slammed her phone down on the edge of the tub. The egg case cracked again and another chunk broke off exposing more of the milky sac underneath. Four dark round eyes peered out at her through the translucent film. She saw the eyes disappear and reappear.

“They blinked. Oh my God they blinked!” It made her chest hurt, the realization that at least some part of them was familiar. She held back tears and swallowed a sob.

“Are there only two of you?” She knelt down in front of the ootheca and tried to make out the jumble of limbs and heads inside. There were five creatures, maybe. Up close the sac smelled pungent, sour, and there was a thick yellow liquid dripping from it onto the floor. Birth was messy, she’d heard. Things must break, a woman’s body, or even the Earth itself, to create new life.

Another hooked limb broke through the membrane. It brushed her cheek as it poked wildly at the air and left a long, deep scratch. She sat back on her heels and put her hand to her skin, her fingers came away bloody. She smiled and wiped the blood on her jeans.

“Well, now we know those are sharp. I’ll have to teach you to be careful.” She leaned forward again and put her hand against the sac, it was warm and soft. Inside the creatures squirmed against her, an urgent pressure, breaking more of the ootheca off. It crumbled and fell to the floor.

Pandora took her hand away.

“You’ll need a soft place to land when you finally bust out of there, won’t you?” She cleared away the chunks of egg case and set them aside. She knew some animals ate their egg shells or casings after they were born so she wanted to keep the bits close. Then she laid down several plush towels. The creatures were getting more active and the egg case was breaking up faster. Thinking about them eating the shell made her wonder what sort of regular diet they would have. She quickly left the bathroom, closing the door behind her to make sure no one escaped, and went to the kitchen. She gathered some of everything, fruit, veggies, cheese, cold cuts, eggs, leftover chicken breast, and spread it out on the bathroom floor where the creatures could easily get it if they wanted to.

Her phone buzzed again and she rolled her eyes. The lock screen displayed a text from Brad:

Baaaaabbbeee! I really need laundry done.

She ignored him. Another hooked limb sliced through the sac then was immediately withdrawn. Then, a head. Pandora bit her lip and watched the sac stretch around the slick crown. She sat back amazed and found tears spilling down her cheeks. The head was scaled, or armored in what looked like iridescent green plates, imbricated and flexible. Long, rubbery-looking black spikes, or spines framed its round face. Its mouth was wide, stretching in a grin that wrapped around the curvature of its head. The thing yawned revealing strange teeth that were small, tightly packed in several rows, and looked like pearls set in plates of thick bone. They seemed more like instruments for crushing than slicing and it made her curious to see what food the creatures went to first.

Soon, four more heads popped out of the sac, grinning their huge grins and taking their first breaths. Now that their heads were out she could see that they were round like owls, but slightly crested at the top. They blinked their big black eyes repeatedly as, she assumed, they got used to the light. She wondered if they were nocturnal with such huge black eyes. Next the hooks poked back through, widening the holes in the stretching, sagging sac. Their shoulders popped through, Pandora saw that the rubbery armor covered their upper torsos too, even their bellies were protected. More goo squeezed from the holes in the sac with a pungent, wet splat. It finally split, spilling the five creatures onto the towels below. They were rat-sized with heads that looked too large for their thin bodies. The way they twined around each other was almost serpentine.

Pandora hated that the only comparisons she had for them were from known animals. They were unique, they needed unique names and words. Their back feet were clawed and had three toes each. Their front feet ended in the hooks she’d already seen, but they seemed to move around well enough on them. She wondered if they ever slithered completely on their bellies, or ever walked upright. When she got up the courage to touch one, the pressure in her chest returned and she sobbed again. She brushed the nearest one’s back with her fingers, lightly, afraid it might be sensitive after just having been born. It turned and blinked its big black eyes. Then it smiled, or what seemed like a smile, stretching its huge mouth even wider and showcasing its odd, nubby teeth. As she watched it turn and join its siblings in exploring the food she’d left out for them, she wondered if all she’d ever needed to be comfortable with motherhood were the right children.

Outside, in the hall, she heard Brad’s voice calling her name and his footsteps approaching. She hoped he felt the same way about fatherhood. The creatures went straight to the chicken, crunching and crushing the meat and bone in huge, ravenous bites. The doorknob turned, the creature’s heads turned, too. Their mouths widened, bits of chicken and bone were wedged in between their nubby teeth. It was impossible to know what they were going to do when he opened the door.

Pandora would just have to wait and see.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🪳

Check out my Etsy shop!

                        I’ll be the sinews of a teller, shrouded in story
                                  To bring back what I helped destroy
                                                                I give to you,
                                                       A story for a life

Breathing mindfully, in with the good, out with the bad, I made my way through the throng of patrons in the viewing gallery. I was aware of being watched. My badge and uniform were not subtle and the Archivists’ work was often seen as arcane and mysterious. Our work put us in front of the artifacts, kept us buried in libraries, dusty attics, and dank storerooms. Or, most often, we were bent over our laptops. Like the carrion flower’s rare bloom, my presence warranted gawking. But tonight was unusual for another reason, the artifact on display was believed to be one of the last, and as such, very dangerous. Very desperate. For the first time in my career, or possibly in the entire history of Archivists, I had been ordered to interview an artifact in public in order to hasten the hour of her destruction. The Curator had chained her to an antique chaise draped in deep chocolate velvet. It was striking choice, the artifact’s grave-pale skin floated against the dark upholstery, her proud face tilted up like a carnivorous water lily.

“Dr. Marangoz, a moment, for an old woman?” Someone grabbed my elbow and I turned to find a woman in her seventies draped in lavender wool crepe. Her hazel eyes darted from mine to the artifact and back again.

“Of course, what can I do for you?”

“I love your work. You always make the artifacts seem so… alive. As though they’d never been destroyed at all. That piece you did on Anansi, I read it to my grandson and he loved it so much he convinced me to buy him a pet tarantula. Can you believe it?”

“Thank you for your kindness. But my pamphlets are meant to instill caution. The artifacts are quite dangerous. This is why we must destroy them.” I waved my hand around the room to indicate the two dozen guards the Empire had insisted were present. The old woman’s gold and green eyes flashed.

“You have to say that out here, but this old woman knows the truth.” She smiled and pressed my hand, and was gone, lost into the crowd.

I had fans. I’d been reprimanded for that several times over my career. Archivists were academics, not storytellers, they told me. I was supposed to make them fear the artifacts, remind them of the destructive power the ancient beings wielded, not make people love them. But then, when millions of people bought my pamphlets the Empire pocketed the money and patted me on the back. Right or wrong, I did love the stories. I guess I loved the artifacts, too, they were alive in a way that the Empire wasn’t. They were emotional and irrational, beautiful and monstrous. Part of me hated destroying them, so I made them live in my pamphlets.

I moved through a crowd standing near an ornate jade burial mask on a pedestal near the artifact’s chaise.

“Doctor, it looks so smug,” a young man in a floral cravat whispered as I moved by. His sidelong glance at the artifact amused me. In the flesh, artifacts were like portals, jumping into one would be dangerous, but the promise of adventure is hard to resist.

“They always look like that,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. It was true, even those I’d expected to snivel when they were destroyed, like Pan, bore their executions with dignity. Sometime in the beginning of my career, after Persephone maybe, I began to ask them, as the executioner raised his obsidian blade, what they had to be so haughty about. Only Coyote ever answered, and he’d said, a sly rictus twisting his muzzle, that it was secret.

“Well it gives me the creeps,” the young man said. “It’s nothing like Mazu, one of my favorite pamphlets of yours, but the way. I was a child when Mazu was captured so I missed seeing her alive. The way you described it though, it sounded so beautiful, so kind. Sometimes I dream she’s returned and I get a chance to see her. That’s deplorable, I know.” He paused again, “I wonder if you’ll convince me to like this artifact too.” His companions nodded gravely and wished me luck. I thanked them and mounted the platform where the artifact was displayed. She’d been listening and turned her face to me. The obsidian chains dampening her power clinked like seashells in a child’s hand as she smiled, pale lips revealing a mouthful of dagger-like teeth. Green eyes veined bright orange with the first fire caught mine, and heat flickered through my mind. I saw a flash of pink, plump flesh. The sound of a wailing infant echoed through the marble halls. Then a stillness fell, like brittle bones cracking. The room began to darken- I broke the artifact’s gaze and dropped my hand to my belly. It was as close as I could get to touching you. Your roundness, your potential, were a comforting reassurance.

I’d always been sensitive to their power. Not even my obsidian jewelry protected me entirely from the stronger ones. I’d learned a few tricks to help me fight their enticements, but it had been almost a year since the last artifact was captured. I was weak, and I knew it. I had asked for more time to prepare, but was denied. She was to be destroyed by midnight, just an hour away. Gathering my strength with an old meditation exercise, I turned back to the artifact to inspect her appearance. Instead of legs her lower half curled into twin, serpent-like tails in olive green with shimmering reddish gold stripes. They twined around the chaise, their jet black tips flicking at the air. I thought of a cat, waiting for the right moment to strike. The artifact’s scales, I noted, were not the smooth, broad scales of a snake, instead they were small and V shaped and appeared to be ridged. Rather like a shark’s skin. I wondered if they felt the same, but the thought of touching her made me shudder. I steeled myself and let my gaze travel back up to her face. She raised a dark eyebrow and smiled.

“Your name, artifact, what is it?” I brought out my notebook and busied myself with filling out the interview form.

“Mother,” she said, her voice rippled through me like a hot current and I again dropped a hand to my belly. See, I have always needed you more than you need me.

“Your name.” I worked to keep my voice steady.

“Lamia.” She smiled, rolling the name out of her throat like a wave.

“Tell me where you came from. Who are your progenitors?” She was silent. I looked up from my paperwork. Her serpent tails writhed along the floor, wrapping and unwrapping themselves around the legs of the chaise.

“I am empty,” was all she said, her eyes slipping up and down my body. Her slender arms spread wide, palms up.

“You mean you’ve forgotten your origins?”

“I am not who I was then.”

“Many artifacts go through changes, some due to actions of their own, others are cursed by fellow gods and goddesses. Is this what you mean?” I watched her eyes flash gunmetal gray and dissolve back to green. I noted on the interview form that she never blinked. Her steady gaze felt like an interrogation of its own.

“When you killed Hera, did she beg for her life?” Lamia’s hands dropped to her sides, a sneer curling her upper lip.

“Artifacts never beg. Did Hera cause your current form? I’ve spoken with many artifacts she maimed.”

“Maimed?” Lamia laughed, “You’re too polite. Hera caused me the ultimate tragedy, but I am the one who used it to turn into this. Into something powerful. I’m a queen now.”

“A queen for now, you mean. And what tragedy?” I watched the first fire curl around the dark green edges of her eyes and creep inward, like blood spreading through water.

“You’ll know soon enough.” She smiled again, I noted on my interview form that her teeth, tiny, numerous, and sharp, seemed well suited to a carnivorous diet. I should have picked up on the threat, but I was too focused on keeping her intrusions at bay. I suspect that was her plan.

“Fine, we’ll start at the beginning. What led to Hera’s punishment?” I had my pen poised to write down her answer although I could have guessed she’d slept with Zeus, it was a common enough story. I’d interviewed him, he hadn’t seemed worth all the horror he caused. Lamia was silent. I looked up to see her staring at me.

“Do you feel our connection?”

“I am trained to resist you.” I looked back down to my paperwork, suddenly aware of the crowd around me.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Perhaps I should leave you for a few minutes. Let the guards remind you why you’re here.”

“You are never leaving me.” Her voice was sweet and menacing, a bee coated in its own honey. The fire in her eyes wrapped around my body and I could feel it begin to seep into me. I inhaled deeply and pictured exhaling ice through my skin, pushing out the fire.

“I’ll go and speak with your captor. I expect you to be more cooperative when I return.” I turned my back to her and nodded to the nearest guard. He returned my nod and pulled an obsidian tipped scourge from his belt. My heart raced as I pushed through the crowd and maybe I knew, even then, what would happen next. On the air I heard her screams. But within me…

Release me.

The whispered words rose through my body like smoke. I half turned, not sure I’d even heard them, but I felt her eyes on me, burning the first fire into my body. A sheen of sweat rose on my forehead as the room grew hot. I hurried away from her ancient gaze, anxious to find the Archeologist.

The adjoining gallery was adorned with the belongings of some of the artifacts we’d already destroyed, Atropos’ scissors, brilliant and bright feathers from Quetzalcoatl, and Thor’s hammer were my favorites. I hadn’t interviewed Thor, but I’d always wished I had. His hammer whispered sagas when the museum was empty, those were tales the Empire would never allow me to write. I knew them though, every bloody feud was inscribed on my heart. Above me, suspended from the gallery’s ceiling, Hugin and Munin flew, forever lifeless in taxidermy. Never again would they croak their secrets to Father Odin.

Near a display case with Pan’s pipe a small crowd gathered around a man in a tuxedo, an Honored Imperial Archeologist medal was pinned to his lapel. He sat on the arm of a velvet sofa and sipped scotch, his black mustache bristled like a broom across the rim of the glass. Seeing me, he winked. I nodded curtly, some archeologists were such cads. He was in the middle of his own saga when I joined the group.

“It was so terrified of us, huddled there like a frightened rabbit on those useless snake-legs. What kind of backward body design is that, I ask you?” The archeologist guffawed and the small crowd around him tittered and nodded. “When we got close it snapped at us, like a crocodile. Would’ve lost a finger if it wasn’t for my apprentice. She grabbed the artifact by the tail and yanked. Those teeth closed on nothing but thin air. SNAP!” He slapped his leg with his free hand and smirked when the crowd jumped, “but I’ve captured worse.” He actually had, he’d captured the Ordog. I had been forced to destroy the uniform I had interviewed that horned soul-stealer in, nothing I tried would wash the smell of sulfur out of it. I stepped up to him and brought out my notebook.

“How do you think she made it to the access tunnel? Did you find where she’d been hiding?” If she’d been hiding, I needed the details of her lair in order create an accurate and vivid account of Lamia. He shook his head. The Empire liked to emphasize the squalor resisting artifacts lived in.

“We searched the tunnels under the city for hours. Mobilized everyone from the Guard to the Retired Professors Artifact Research Guild. Came up with nothing. Not so much as tracks.” He leaned in, the scotch on his breath turned my stomach, “if you ask me, she was dropped there. She’s got some kind of purpose.”

“Dropped there? By who? How could that be? She’s the last.” A woman in a long silver gown said, her hands clutching a beaded purse. The Archeologist ignored her and addressed me.

“It talking?”

“Her name is Lamia. She’s being difficult, but I think I’m getting a picture of her past. She seems to have suffered horribly before she became what she is now. I can only imagine what it took to make such a monster.”

“You Archivists are all too emotional,” he said, tossing back the rest of his scotch. “I’d be sticking obsidian slivers under her fingernails and demanding information about what she’s doing here now, not busy kissing her ass. You give them too much respect by telling their stories.”

“Can’t you hear her screams?” I shot back. “She’s being dealt with.” I wrote the details of her capture and the Archeologist’s concerns about Lamia’s supposed purpose on the back of my interview form as I spoke. Archeologists and Archivists were always at odds.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.” The Archeologist’s tone dropped and he stood up straighter.

“What intentions could she possibly have?” I leaned in closer.

“It looked like was planted for us to capture, I guarantee-“

A commotion in the main hall drowned out the rest of his argument. At first all I heard was the pitched fear of confused voices and the head guard booming orders above them. Then a chant rose above the clamor. Surging through the throng of people, the words found me, assaulted me, their rifled rhythm breaking through my uniform, through my shield. I didn’t understand the meaning, but the voice was warlike and strong and brought stinging heat with every syllable. I felt my heartbeat march to the chant’s charging rhythm. Like a rising storm, panicked voices began to scream for help. Around me, people were clasping their hands over their ears, their faces contorted in pain.

Release me.

I felt the whisper like a lover’s breath against my neck. It was so soft I forgot to fight it. The crowd’s chaos swirled around me as Lamia’s call ripped me in pieces. My body, its ripeness and vulnerability, burned and fell to ash. My being was crushed, thickened with the molten flow of her will, waiting to be molded into her servant. The chant stirred and built me up again. I heard immortal multitudes call her name. Some were voices I knew, voices whose last words I had recorded for the Empire’s archive. The first fire lifted me and the warmth of my blood sang. I felt you kick against your confinement. Were you scared? Were you happy? Neither of us can answer that. Smoke rose within me.

Release me.

Feed me.

The museum fell away and my eyes saw only the Archeologist. I staggered forward and plunged my pen deep into his throat. He swung the scotch glass at me in a weak arc. The first fire strengthened me. Lamia guided me. I pried the glass from his hand and let his warm blood run through my fingers as it filled the empty vessel. Fear pooled in his eyes. His body went limp as his soul acquiesced to the wrath of the true gods. I wonder if it comforted him, knowing he was right. I wonder if it comforts you, knowing that I did it for the stories. I did it to bring them back. I did it because I wanted them to make new stories.

I let his body fall and clutched my prize to my chest as I plowed through people still frozen with shock. I ran to Lamia. I felt fingers gripping and slipping off my uniform and pulling at my hair. I charged forward, pulled by the strength in Lamia’s voice. I pushed over the pedestal with the jade mask, tripping the head guard running for me. He sprawled on the ground as his head smacked the marble floor. I grabbed his keys and leapt onto the platform. I unlocked the obsidian cuffs, staggering as Lamia’s full power washed over me. The screaming around us quieted as she caressed my face and laughed, the sound crackled through the museum like forests burning. With a flick of her wrist she brought the crowd to their knees. I knelt before her, too, offering up the Archeologist’s blood. She suckled my fingers, heat from her long, slick tongue curling through my body as she licked them clean. Then she tipped the glass back and drank deeply. We rose together from the chaise, her stature tall and lithe and shimmering in the soft light. I felt one of her snake legs coil around my ankle. At her glance, the Empire’s elite, my fans, bowed their heads.

“Are you ready, my children?” She said, her voice as smooth as a loon’s cry.

“We are ready, Mother,” they answered. I had prepared them. Without realizing it, I had brought them to this moment.

Lamia gazed into my eyes, her claws curled around my swollen womb. You were so still in there.

I will tell a story for a life. And after I’ve told them all, after all the artifacts have returned, Lamia promises, I’ll get you back.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi

Check out my Etsy shop!

“Someone, no one gives a shit who, gave the parts of an ax the same names as human body parts. Now, I want you to learn them, so pay attention.”

The ax eye never sees the whole.

Pay attention.

His father’s voice is all he ever hears.

It slams around in his skull always. It narrates his dreams. When he sits listening to his physical father both voices chant in wood and steel harmony.

A harmony of severing.

The ax eye sees a cleaved thing. It sees a head with no rabbit. It sees a boy with no mother.

“Show me the eye, son.”

The boy holds up the ax and points to the oval of the wood handle that’s driven through the top of the ax head. Soft wood within cold steel. Living flesh within a hard lie. His father places a cool hand on his head, “this boy has no mother. This boy is living flesh within a hard lie.”

Pay attention.

The boy’s eyes are brown. His father’s eyes are not. The mother he doesn’t have does not have brown eyes either. Brown eyes are soft flesh within a hard lie. Every Sunday, with her green eyes wrinkled at the edges the no mother says, “I made your favorite breakfast, my sweet little man.” His favorite is the ax, but she thinks it’s strawberry pancakes.

This boy is soft flesh within a hard lie.

Cheek to beard. Soft cheek to rough beard.

“Show me the cheek.”

The boy lays the ax on his father’s work bench. The garage smells like gasoline and cut grass. His father is wearing a blue button up shirt, top button undone and sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His father smells like sweat and the stuff he drinks. The boy runs his fingers along the smooth, flat part of the ax head. Its cheek. It shines hard in the blare of the workbench light. The ax is clean. The boy always cleans it after the rabbits. His father taught him to. His father taught him that he had no mother.

The no mother likes beards.

“She wanted me to grow a beard, but I wouldn’t. Beards are for hippies and lazy fucking bums. She laughed when I said no.” His father lays a cold hand on his forehead, “this boy has no mother. Now show me the beard.”

The boy slides his fingers down the cheek to the smooth angle where it slopes into the cutting edge. Cheek then beard then cutting.

Pay attention.

This boy has no mother. The no mother’s cheek is smooth when she kisses him goodbye for school and she smells like flowers. Sometimes he spends a moment and inhales.

Pay attention.

This boy has no mother.

The father rubs his hands along his own smooth cheeks, they’re calloused on pale. Not pink on pale like the no mother’s. The father shows the boy a mirror.

“What do you see in the mirror?” He asks the boy who sees skin the color of dirt. Sun-kissed, the no mother says, because he spends so much time outside with Daddy. His father says his dirt skin will grow a beard one day.

Soft cheek to rough beard.

A shoulder to carry the heavy head.

The garage door is closed. On the other side of it the boy can hear kids playing. He tells his father he sees dirt in the mirror. His father puts a cold hand on his forehead, “this boy is dirt.”

This boy has no mother.

Pay attention.

The father puts the mirror away and brings the boy back to the ax, “show me the shoulder.” The boy slides his fingers to the handle, to the swelling just under the heavy blade.

“We all carry a weight on our shoulders.” The father tells him that his weight is living within a lie. He presses a cold hand to the boy’s forehead, “this boy has no mother.” When he slouches at the dinner table the no mother tells him to throw his shoulders back, to sit with pride and confidence.

“You’re something special,” the no mother says.

This boy is dirt.

The no mother put the weight of a lie on him. Lies are heavy. Lies can be wielded.

Pay attention.

“Where are the belly and the back?”

The boy closes his palm around the center of the handle where the convex side curves out with the blade. It curves out like the soft belly the no mother holds him to when she cries. His fingers curve around the belly of the handle, his palm rests on the back. The blade scrapes along the wooden work bench as the boy picks up the ax.

This boy has no mother.

This boy is a lie.

Lies can be wielded.

Pay attention.

“Show me the throat,” the father scrapes a match along the rough work bench and lights a cigarette. He sucks hard, then in his tight voice, “the throat. Show me.” He says it.

The boy swings. The father’s throat opens up like a watermelon. Before the rabbits he made the boy split watermelons. The father falls. The boy spends a moment watching the blood spread and snuff out the cigarette. He waits until the smoke disappears. The voice doesn’t.

This boy has no mother.

Pay attention.

He steps over the father and into the house. The no mother is cooking. She is bent over a pot and singing and doesn’t see him coming. He shows the no mother’s head to the ax head. She brings the pot and soup down with her when she falls. The boy spends a moment watching potato soup and blood curl into each other. With nothing left to show, he lays down on the floor next to the no mother, and cradles the ax.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🪓

**Quick trigger warning for suicide right at the top.**

Heather had been dead for a week. Gone. Slit her wrists because I was going to college and she couldn’t go with me. That’s not what the note said, but I knew. Now she was buried in Oaky Shadeling Hills or something “soothing” like that. Underground. Where the dead people go. But the thing about Heather was that she usually ended up regretting her temper tantrums. None of us were really surprised when she showed up on the porch for Sunday dinner. She stood there in her dirt and decay stained pink dress and her doom heavy brows while we argued about whether or not to let her in. Dad and I were solidly against it. Revenants never show up and make shit better. Plus she stank and was carrying a plastic bag filled with meaty lumps drowning in yellow fluid and blood.

But Mom and David won the argument. Heather never did take rejection well, they reasoned, and turning her away might hurt her feelings. You don’t want to hurt your undead sister’s feelings. Do you? Also it was raining and Mom started to cry when the funeral home make-up started to run in thick black streaks down her face. So we let her in. I have no idea how she made it home because her eyes were sewed shut. She navigated the house just fine, too. They say when you lose one sense the others are heightened to compensate, but when you die I guess the only sense you have left is how to creep out the living. I hoped she wouldn’t ask for a bear hug from me like she’d always done before.

Mom set a place at the table for her and fussed about how to help her open her mouth to eat and talk. I for one wanted very badly to not hear her talk. But I was overruled. David pointed out that if she didn’t speak, we’d never figure out how to help her find peace and cross over for good or something. Red rover, red rover, send Heather back over. Heather just sat there, her eyes and mouth closed, serene and waxy and potent. David had helped Mom prepare the body at the funeral home and, because David is a weird little kid, he chatted up the mortician. I thought those guys were supposed to be bad luck. Or smell bad. David said he didn’t smell bad at all. He also said that we probably couldn't get her eyes open since they put spiked contacts over them to keep the lids shut. She didn’t seem to need sight anyway. We pried her lips apart with a greased up butter knife since glue was apparently what they used for that now days. When Dad clipped her jaws apart with wire cutters the lower one kind of swung open and she raised her hands to massage it. A grating grunt rattled in her throat.

Mom asked her if she wanted string beans. Heather shook her head and reached down to the floor. She swung the foul plastic bag up, letting it hit the table with a juicy splat. Heather opened her mouth to speak, but just grunted again. It reminded me a lot of a pig. Mom asked me to help her open the bag. No. No I was not doing that. She could go fuck herself. I was done taking care of Heather. That’s all I’d ever done, mind my sister. Look out for Heather. Do this for Heather. Give that to Heather. Invite Heather. It’s the reason I only applied to school on the opposite coast from the one we lived on. To get away from Heather. She was dead now. I was done. This horrible interlude would end tonight when we shoved her over the other side and smashed the portal generator or whatever it was that opened the door there so she couldn’t come back. She got the bag open just fine on her own anyway.

As Heather reached inside, David said they remove and embalm organs separately and sometimes put them in a bag in the casket. She pulled a few half rotting, plump organs out of the bag and dropped them on her plate. Some kind of bloody goo dribbled all over the table. Mom stifled a scream and Dad threw his napkin on the down while reminding Heather of her table manners. I gagged, more because of the smell than the sight. She finally found her heart and slid the rest of the slick offal off her plate and onto the floor. David asked her what they were for. She grunt-snorted and grabbed her knife and fork with surprising dexterity for someone recently embalmed. I said so, too. Mom always said I should encourage her more. Maybe I could have picked a better moment.

She ate with an enthusiasm she’d never had in life. She’d always been so frail. I hated her for it. Tiny little Heather that everyone wants to take care of, but no one ever does. No one but me.

“Geez, Heather, go easy. Your stomach might literally explode. Unless it’s in the bag, too.” I thought about pulling the plate away from her, but she paused her devouring and looked in my direction. Her eyes were still closed, black mascara streaked her cheeks and her jaw hung slack. Blood dribbled down her chin. She lifted the fork from the plate and raised it, pointing it at me, and holding it steady for thirty long seconds before lowering it.

“Hnnhg,” she grunted.

“Yeah, I missed you, too.” I didn’t, but once you die everything is spin. Mom and David took the opportunity to pepper her with apologies and lamentations. Heather smiled as she chewed and once made the three-fingered “I love you” hand signal. Mom and David cried. Dad looked pissed. He hated anything going against the natural order of things. I just hated anything going against the natural order of me moving on with my life. Which Heather did. She always sucked up all the love and turned it into a dark cloud that rained black eyeliner. She was human sinkhole, was what I was thinking when she finished half of the heart and I realized I felt sick. I tried to drink some water but I couldn’t lift the glass. The room was getting blurry, too. I tried to tell Mom, but she shushed me, “darling, our little Heather’s back.” Mom looked like she was floating.

Heather grunted and snorted as she shoved the last few bites down her throat. I tried to tell her she sounded like a pig, but I couldn’t get my mouth to work. As she finished each bite I felt like my own heart was slowing down. I couldn’t keep my head up. I shoved my plate out of the way and laid my head on the table. I could barely breathe. No one seemed to notice. They gushed over Heather. She smiled at me as she held up the last bite. That huge smile she had that Mom said was a blessing to see. I knew what it meant. She put the fork to her lips, everything went black. Then white as Heather pulled me over to the other side. Red rover, red rover….

“You were going to go without me, but I couldn’t go without you,” she whispered.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🖤

Check out my Etsy store!

Let me tell you something about ravens, ravens are truth, and I’ll tell you how I know.

It was fall, late, we’d done brought in the harvest already but the weather was holding, the days were still warm. I’d been hung up with a pain in my knee that, if history showed true, meant the weather wasn’t holding out much longer. The pain was something of an inconvenience, but I woke up one morning with the damned thing swollen up like one of Old Johnny’s big red apples. This particular morning, my mind had been set on walking out to the pasture to check on my new bull. Make sure he was settlin’ in. Big fellow, expensive too, but he’d breed some good calves for market. I’d noticed him limping the night prior, but we were loosing the light and I was in no mind to take a lantern out to the field and spook him. So I waited for morning, but then the knee acted up, as I described.

My oldest had set off to the school house, the missus insisted he go in the winter when the farming was done. Never needed schooling myself, but the missus isn’t one to budge from her convictions. So I sent my younger son to the field. He gave me a smart, “Yes, Pop” and headed out, but his gumption lost him at the door. He stood in the doorway, letting the morning cool in. His towhead glowing in the rising sun.

“Elijah! Get out that door, Son.”

“But, Pa, there’s ravens flyin’ out there. Six of ‘em and you know what that means.” He looked back at me. The fear on his face only made me angry. Weakness in my children was something I did not tolerate and I told him so.

“But, Pa, six ravens means death. What if it’s my death they’re tellin’?”

“Will be you, by my hand, if you don’t get out that door!” I bellowed. I’d like to say the pain in my knee is what made me holler at him, but t’wasn’t, I was just mean. I spit venom as the door shut behind him.

That was early, he never showed up to breakfast. I cursed to the missus when she asked about where he was that a man should be let alone to eat in peace. But she ain’t easy to grumble off, as I said, so I hobbled out to see what had become of the boy, and my bull. The equipment was all lined up against the fence and ready for the horses to pull into the barn once my elder son got home, so I couldn’t see the field straight on. Through the gaps in the plows I could see ravens hopping in around in the dirt. There was blood spilling across the land. I hobbled faster, knowing for certain that my bull was gone and my spring income shot.

“Elijah! Why didn’t you come and get me, damnit!” I cursed the kid all the way to Devil as I stepped in between the plow and the seeder and under the barbed wire fence. A Galloway cow stood in my way, chewing placidly as I let a stream of curses go and cuffed her on the side of the head. She blinked and turned sideways, blocking me further. I slapped her rump and she backed up, just the way I had tried to walk around. I slapped her again and she moved forward. Just when I tried to move forward. Looking over her I could see blood soaking the soil, lengths of intestines strewn out and glistening in the morning sun.

The cow still had me trapped against the fence, near enough that I was afraid of coming up against the barbed wire. The ravens squabbled in a high pitched ruckus and two of them flew up into the blue air ripping what looked like bright red heart meat between them. On the ground, what of it I could see, anyway, another raven chased an eyeball across a patch of weeds. With relief I noted it was much too small to be my bull’s eye. But then, what was it? We didn’t have any calves at present. Nothing but the bull and the cows were out in the field. Forgetting my anger I scanned the land around me. There was the bull. In my haste I’d not even looked for it.

“Elijah! Answer me, son! Where have you got to?”

I slapped the cow again, this time she bellowed and trotted off. I saw Elijah’s feet first, moving a bit as six huge ravens, dark as my soul must surely be, tore him apart.

Ravens are truth, heed the ravens.

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🐃

Check out my Etsy shop!

Lucretia and Saxon stood in the open crypt door looking out across the silent moonscape. Silver light glinted off marble gravestones, winking like Earth bound stars. Lucretia luxuriated in the night air, so crisp after the dank tomb. Saxon squeezed her hand, gentle, cold, tingling with something like life. There was a word for it, but she’d forgotten so many words over the long years of death. They were like moths, flitting too erratically to be caught and then ending all hope by flying straight into the fire. Saxon needn’t speak to her, his body, the proximity or distance of it, the language in his eyes, told her everything she needed to know.

Neither of them moved from the crumbling stone doorway. Something had changed. With eyes well accustomed to the dark they followed the rise of the cemetery hill to its border. There was a road beyond the poplar trees where there had once been only a field. Had it been that long since the last time they mustered the energy to rouse themselves? Cars, faster and shinier than either one of them remembered them being, raced past like light-taloned falcons. Saxon leaned into Lucretia.

“This world never stops,” his voice cracked through years of silence.

“Well, we’ll have fun anyway. Don’t worry.” Lucretia took a step over the threshold. Her foot landed in the soft grass. Saxon pulled her back.

“What if they see us?” He whispered in her ear. Lucretia laughed.

“They’ll be terrified and never come this way again.” She pulled Saxon from the doorway. He was much taller than her, broad and healthy. He’d died in a farming accident. “Don’t ruin tonight with your whimpering, Saxon. We don’t get this often.” Saxon tossed his dark hair back, revealing the caved in skull that had killed him.

“I guess it could be fun to scare someone.” He flickered. Lucretia knew it was his energy. Saxon had been buried with so much of it unspent. She twirled her white burial gown under the moonlight, the skirt unfurled like an Easter lily. She stopped and gathered up the fabric.

“Let’s go see the road.” She ran, her bare feet leaving glowing footprints in her wake. Saxon ran beside her, trailing his fingertips on headstones as he passed them.

The road was only a two lane highway, nearly deserted at this hour. A low metal railing separated it from the graveyard. Lucretia walked along the hard blacktop, cringing at the feel of it under her feet. Saxon had been buried in shoes, his loafers were slick and loud on the pavement.

“How long before a car comes, do you think?”

“Not long,” Lucretia twirled again, it was nice to have been buried in such a pretty dress. She’d fought the consumption for two years, so much of her life had been spent in nightclothes, she’d nearly forgotten what it was like to be beautiful.

“Afterwards we’ll lie in the grass. I long to,” Saxon said, loosening his tie. Lucretia nodded. Saxon was part of the earth, more so than Lucretia. She’d always been sickly and was rarely allowed outside. She didn’t feel the need to touch the soil like he did. She wanted to touch one of the great machines, though. Could she stop one, little Lucretia who’d died before she could even be wed? How would her will to do so manifest? In a great light, resplendent with all the hopes that somehow still burned in her heart? How would she look to the living? Would she look the pile of bones she must surely be? She laughed at the thought of her skinny bones rattling along the black, curving road.

“What?” Saxon looked up from the rock he was kicking. His blue eyes pierced the night with a wounded glow. Lucretia took his hand.

“We’re going to be so good at this.”

“You think?” He smirked. He was older than she, he’d had a wife and a baby on the way when he’d died, but she liked when he smiled like a boy. They were related somehow, she supposed, they’d both been buried in the family crypt. They both had the same blue eyes, lighting up the night like conjoined fireflies.

“We’ll be beastly, Saxon, like we never could have been alive.”

“Yes.” He nodded, the light in his eyes deepened, his smile faded. Lucretia spotted headlights sweeping along the road.

“Oh, Saxon, look! Someone is coming!” They stood in the road, hand in hand. Lucretia let the vibration of it rumble and roar through her. Beside her Saxon drooled, light from the headlights caught the gossamer drip of saliva and held it for a moment. Lucretia’s head snapped up, mouth open too wide, a grin ripping her face.

The squeal of brakes was like a stray balloon, gone so high so quickly and nothing you could grasp. Lucretia wished she could take the sound back to the grave with her, let it bounce around her casket and set her bones trembling forever.

The car passed through them in a hot, cloying breeze. Lucretia watched the man inside pass through Saxon, his mouth wide open, as if he were tasting her companion. Lucretia whirled around to watch the machine slide into the field on the other side of the road. Weeds scraped at its sides and undercarriage, pulling it to a stop. The glistening beast hissed and creaked. Saxon smiled.

“Huh.”

Lucretia glided forward, watching through the back windshield for any sign of the man she’d seen. It was like the little window in the lid of her coffin, and she was waiting to see if he would rot or scream. Saxon reached the car before her and stood outside the driver’s window. Lucretia joined him and bent down to peer inside.

The man held a bright light to his ear, he was talking into it. Blood flowed from his head. Lucretia put her palm against the window, the glass was smooth and cold. If she pushed a little she would go through. She closed her hand, her fingernails scraped against the glass. Saxon laughed beside her. The man lowered the light and turned his head. Blood covered half of his face, his eyes were like moons. Lucretia pressed her lips against the window. The man scrambled backwards to the passenger seat and pulled the door handle. The door creaked as it opened and he swung his feet out of the car.

Saxon stood waiting there.

“No.” the man turned to climb back into the driver’s seat. Lucretia pushed through the window, climbing on all fours through the car toward him. The man faltered and slipped, falling out of the car and onto the ground. Lucretia and Saxon reached for him.

“No! No!” He screamed. The sound filled Lucretia with shivers of delight, she’d never dreamed their waking could be so wonderful. The pulse of his life flooded her. Saxon grinned dumbly, a fierce light in his eyes. He reached for the man’s neck, Lucretia reached for his heart. She pushed, her hand slid into his chest. The man screamed and screamed, these were new words Lucretia could take back to the crypt with her: the screeching of tires and screams of the terrified. Words that would never leave her. His heart jumped under her hand as she wrapped her fingers around it. Saxon’s grip was cutting off the screams, but the heartbeat pounding against her palm filled her head. She gritted her teeth and squeezed harder, she’d never been strong, but soon the heart spasmed and went limp.

“I do love a good lie in the grass.” Saxon lay with his crushed skull cushioned on a clump of crabgrass. Lucretia licked blood from her fingers.

“It is a lovely night.” She offered Saxon her hand, he licked it clean.

Leave a Tip on Ko-Fi⚰️