Author: Olivia White; Gemma Amor; Hailey Piper; Laurel Hightower; J. A. W. McCarthy; G. G. Silverman; Joanne Askew; Holley Cornetto; Jill Palmer; Lea Storry; Michelle Tang; Tonya Walter; Denarose Fukushima
Date: 2022-02-16 23:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: A Woman Built by Man is a collage of 21 horror tales that seek to crawl under the skin and deconstruct the many ways women are built up and broken down by a patriarchal society. And the many ways they're finally saying, "Enough."
Publisher: Cemetery Gates Media

Contents

A WOMAN BUILT BY MAN

Table of Contents

Foreword

Every Woman Knows This

She Sings of Pain and Sorrow

The Thing With Feathers

She Asked For It

Genesis 2:22

Better

The Truth Tiger

The Shock of Death

Youngblood

What Doesn’t Kill You

Underground

The Only Thing Different Will Be The Body

Blame, Pain, and Selfishness

New Lines from Which to Shape Her Body

Last Night I Was Having a Drink at the Slippery Nipple

Maddy Long Legs

M.E. and Her

The Eyes of Vaz’lul

The Canary

Bambolina, Bambolina

The Cooper Girl

Content Warnings

About the Authors

A WOMAN BUILT BY MAN

Edited by

S.H. Cooper & Elle Turpitt

A Woman Built By Man

Published by Cemetery Gates Media

Binghamton, New York

Collection and editorial copyright © 2022

by S.H. Cooper and Elle Turpitt

Individual stories copyright © of their respective author(s)

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission.

For more information about this book and other Cemetery Gates Media publications, visit us at:

cemeterygatesmedia.com
twitter.com/cemeterygatesm
instagram.com/cemeterygatesm

Cover Artist: Lorraine Hodge

Table of Contents

Foreword

“Every Woman Knows This” by Laurel Hightower

"She Sings of Pain and Sorrow” by Holley Cornetto

"The Thing With Feathers” by Tonya Walter

"She Asked For It” by Lilyn George

"Genesis 2:22” by Denarose Fukushima

"Better“ by Alexis DuBon

"The Truth Tiger” by Gemma Amor

"The Shock of Death” by Michelle Tang

"Youngblood” by Lindz McLeod

"What Doesn’t Kill You” by Elle Turpitt

"Underground” by Regi Caldart

"The Only Thing Different Will Be The Body” by J.A.W. McCarthy

"Blame, Pain, and Selfishness” by Hailey Piper

"New Lines from Which to Shape Her Body” by Nikki R. Leigh

"Last Night I Was Having a Drink at the Slippery Nipple” by Amanda Michele

"Maddy Long Legs” by Olivia White

"M.E. and Her” by Lea Storry

"The Eyes of Vaz’lul” by Jill Palmer

"The Canary” by Joanne Askew

"Bambolina, Bambolina” by G.G. Silverman

“The Cooper Girl” by S.H. Cooper

Content Warnings

About the Authors

Foreword

There’s a rumor going around that women are just now finally managing to get our foot in the door in the horror genre.

It’s a lie. Revisionist history. Nonsense.

Don’t get me wrong; there absolutely has been a movement in recent years for women—and many marginalized groups—to have a better chance of making it in the horror field. Being taken seriously by gatekeepers. Being considered for awards. All that stuff. But the idea that it’s only happened recently, that’s where the fallacy is.

About eight years ago, I was working on a video game called Willow Lane. The game is on indefinite hiatus, but who knows, maybe it’ll be resurrected one day. That’s neither here nor there though. The game revolved around a house, and spanned different eras. These eras were tracked by marginalia in a fictional gothic horror short story collection, written by the house’s original owner.

As such, I started doing a deep dive into a ton of horror writers from the 1700s to the early 1900s. I was familiar with numerous writers from those eras; M.R. James, Charles Dickens, Sheridan le Fanu, Lovecraft, Chambers, Poe. But there were very few female writers I was super read up on. Some of these may seem obvious these days, but the reason why will become clear. I was vaguely aware of Edith Nesbit’s horror output, and a story here and there from other female writers. But when I started my research, I became increasingly surprised to discover vast amounts of work by female writers that had been out of print for decades. I read collections by Marjorie Bowen, Edith Wharton, Eleanor Scott and many other female writers. I’d heard of some of them, but had no idea how prolific they’d actually been. I looked up old sales figures. From memory, something like 52% of all horror stories published in the UK in the 1800s were written by women. I may have the specific figures wrong and sadly can no longer locate my research, but it was roughly this.

In the majority of the collections by female horror authors, there would be an intro by a male horror historian, expressing dismay that ‘for reasons unknown, the work of [this female author] has remained out of print for decades until now’. I kept reading variants of that sentence over and over.

Thankfully these days, imprints like the British Library Tales of the Weird and others are providing these oft-overlooked female horror pioneers with reprintings and thus newfound popularity. And it’s about time. Do yourself a favor and look up the authors I’ve mentioned, and others from the era. You’ll find some of the best horror you’ve ever read. Marjorie Bowen’s Bishop of Hell & Other Stories for example is one of my all-time favorite short story collections, and a must-have on every horror fan’s bookshelf.

So here’s the thing. There’s absolutely no doubt that for a lot of the time, women have struggled to make it in horror. But I often see this presented as us having not made it, at least until very recently, and that’s simply reductive and revisionist. To say this erases the fantastic groundwork that so many long-dead women did for us. And it erases the work of women from before this current era of feminist-driven horror—women like Shirley Jackson, Muriel Gray, Angela Slatter, Helen Marshall, Angela Carter and many others. They were all already working tirelessly to give women a renewed presence in horror during or after the brief period where it became a lot more male-dominated.

I can’t say for sure who’s responsible for sidelining all the great female horror writers from back in the day, but I find it hard to believe that women erased themselves. And then more recently, erasure comes not just from misogyny and disrespect, but from well-meaning excitement too. Yes, women had been finding success in horror before the last five or six years, it was just much harder. No, your anthology released in 2020 wasn’t the first time women had been on the horror shelves in bookshops. While it’s important to be proud of our achievements representing women in horror, it’s mandatory that we don’t disregard those who came before.

But you know what? Most of the time, that happens because we’re not aware of them. Their stories have been ‘mysteriously out of print for decades’ after all. And then of course blame circles around.

The theme of this collection is ‘A Woman Built By Man’. The women I see built here are twofold; there’s one from yesteryear, who longed to be part of the horror genre but just couldn’t get a look in thanks to all the men. A woman who wished she had a place in the field, but didn’t. That woman is imaginary. That woman is a construct. That woman, in all likelihood, was one of the best-selling authors of the late 19th or early 20th century. Then the other woman is you and me. Women in 2022 who feel like we’re part of a brand new movement to finally get women into horror. But we’ve been duped, by the people responsible for hiding our predecessors from us. And it’s on us now to make sure we continue to unearth and celebrate their work. It’s time we tear down the imaginary women in (or more accurately, wanting to be in) horror, and rebuild the ones who existed back then. Resurrect them through their work.

I’d recommend against doing it literally though. I feel like there’s a cautionary tale out there against raising folk from the dead. I’ve got an inkling that a woman wrote it.

- Olivia White, 2022

Every Woman Knows This

Laurel Hightower

There’s a certain kind of smile that’s not safe to return—every woman knows this. It’s the one from the predator, the angler fish who shines a light of false friendliness in the darkness of a seabed you were swimming through just fine on your own. Taken unawares, you didn’t even want the bait—not hungry, you hunt your own food, but an ingrained drive you barely understand causes you to smile back before you realize.

Now you’re caught. The hook lifts your lip ever higher, a smile you never meant and wish you could take back widening on unwilling lips. You turn away but the angler fish follows, as does conversation, the next step in this dance. You’re only here for liquor, a staple in your diet, and you already know what you want, the neck of the bottle curled in one hand. You don’t need the angler fish's advice, or opinions, and you don’t like it getting so close. You hurry through the transaction, wondering for a moment if the clerk will throw you a lifeline, but his eyes are on a different kind of chase. His attention creeps over your shoulder to the woman who works the drive-through window, both ready for the night to end, and he doesn’t see the fish swim after you out the door, into the night. The lock clicks in place, the sign turns to closed, and you are alone with a fish with too many teeth.

Still polite, but the veneer disintegrating, you wonder if you can swim fast enough for him to get the hint before his temper flares. Angler fish are known to be volatile, so a light fin is needed here. Not enough encouragement to deserve what might happen to you, not enough assertion to bruise the fish’s ego, raise his ire. Your halfhearted responses and hunched shoulders should be enough of a visual cue for this fish to fuck off, but that hook is still in your lip, and he’s not stopping until he reels you in.

You wish you were a squid, could spurt inky fluids at him, obscure you from his sight, muddle his concentration, and allow you to escape. Maybe a beta, one of those warriors unafraid of battle. Even a puffer would be good, the ability to blow yourself up, spikes on every surface, not worth the effort it would take to consume you.

But you’re none of those things. You’re a plain remora, dull-colored, nothing flashy, you hoped to avoid attracting attention. You have no built-in defenses, and your shark is nowhere in sight tonight. It’s just you and the predator, so you can’t go home. He’ll follow you, he’ll know where you live, and there will be no peace then, not until he gets what he wants.

You see this knowledge reflected in his dead, black eyes, and now you’re angry. You square your shoulders and tell him to go, you’re done with this conversation. His expression goes ugly, as you knew it would, gills flaring as he spits out the epithet you’ve been waiting for.

“Bitch,” he says, that smile you never should have returned twisting to a sneer. “You’re not too hot for me.”

You don’t argue, and you hope that means he’s done with you. Having recognized you as just another bitch, and his own superiority as a physical specimen, surely he’ll swim away in search of more worthy prey. But when you turn to go, he follows. The sound of his pursuit, heavy breathing, a stomping gait, the angry scrape of shoes along asphalt detritus, makes you move faster, even as your body tenses against whatever violence he may choose. He’s back there and you can’t see him, are vulnerable to his strike that may come at any time. Your own breathing gets fast and ragged, the cold bites at your cheeks, burns your lungs. You think of every story of a missing girl or woman that starts with exactly this dramatization. A hazy figure retreating down a dark street with a looming shadow in pursuit. Will this be your story? Will the liquor store clerk at least tell people you had good taste in whiskey?

At first the angler fish keeps his distance, like he’s trying to be respectful, but he wouldn’t know the meaning of the word. He starts talking again but you don’t respond. It’s nonsense anyway, garbled sentences about how snotty you are, how all women are like that, how you need to learn your place. He isn’t even talking to you, you’re just a stand-in for his disappointments. It won’t matter who he thinks you are once he lays hands on you—yours is the body that’s here, now.

He’s talking faster, getting close enough for you to feel his hot breath on your shoulder. Your flesh crawls at the proximity and your mouth goes dry when he starts punctuating every third word with the meaty smack of fist into palm. He’s building up to what he wants to do, and you look around the vast, light-less ocean around you. There is no salvation in these waters.

You change direction, veer right, and he doesn’t head you off because you’re still getting farther away from the lights of safety. You should never have left them but there was no one around there, either, and you’d hoped you could lose him. There’s only one place you can go now.

He swipes at you, fingers brushing your upper arm, and you jump away, legs tangling beneath you. You right yourself, manage not to fall, but you’re in full flight mode now, and you start to run. Your thighs burn and it doesn’t matter how many times a week you hit the gym, the fear is draining you, making you clumsy.

“Get back here, bitch, I just want to talk,” he growls, far too close to your ear, and in another lifetime you might stop to try and make him understand everything that’s wrong with that sentence. But here it’s about survival, and judging the distance left to travel, you know you’re not going to make it. The realization almost stops you in your tracks, and then it does, but this time by choice.

You turn to face him, an apology on your face. “Sorry, you’re right, I’m being rude.”

He hesitates for only seconds before his toothy smile dawns again and he comes closer. “Damn right you are. Now—”

The whiskey bottle comes swinging from the side, connecting with his skull just above his ear. The blow jars your arm up to your shoulder but the glass holds and you peg him again. Don’t hit unless you mean it, and if you do, always strike twice.

He goes down, one hand catching your neckline and pulling you down with him, your bra exposed until you work his hand loose. You stand panting above him, hands shaking, glad you bought the good stuff with the thick bottle.

The angler fish is down, bleeding from his ear, his predatory light dimmed, toothless for the moment. You stare down at him while the blood rushes in your ears, the hook finally worked free from your lip. You can swim away now, but what about tomorrow? What about the next angelfish or sweet blue neon that catches his attention? Will they know not to smile, not to let that hook catch them? You don’t like the odds. You look right, in the direction you were headed, and decide to finish the trip.

He’s heavy, but you have strong shoulders and you’ll get there soon enough. His eyes flutter open at one point and your heart climbs your throat, but he only slurs a question before closing them again.

“Where’re you taking me?”

“To market,” you say, letting his head thump over a curb.

When he finally wakes, it’s to a susurration of whispers. They circle him in the darkness, darting in and out of sight, and you’re watching his eyes when he figures out what they’re chanting.

“New fish, new fish, new fish,” they say, and you join them.

He struggles to sit up, his eyes unable to focus. “The fuck is this? You bitches better back off.” His words are still slurred; he tries to stand and fails.

Crunching gravel signifies the approach of someone new, and the chanting grows louder until an old woman appears in their midst. She carries a big, rough net in her calloused hands, the weight of it braced against her hip. A cigarette dangles from her lower lip, the only flare of light in the darkness. His gaze is drawn to it and he stares, mesmerized, until he sees the gleam of long knives at her side, the blood-covered apron that hangs to her knees.

“New fish?” she asks, her voice a comforting rasp.

“New fish,” the unseen circle confirms.

“The fuck are you?” asks the angler fish, the smile nowhere in sight.

The old woman leans over and smiles her own lure, throws the net over his thrashing body. “Who am I?” she returns, but it’s for the crowd to answer, a laugh rippling through them.

“She’s the fishmonger,” you say, but his expression says he doesn’t get it. He will. The fishmonger is where you bring a catch like him to be cleaned and deboned, strung up for sale next to the other fresh seafood. The fishmonger and her school know the circling currents of the predators; the anglers, the barracuda, the eels with their dull eyes and sharp teeth. They have learned there is strength in numbers, and in knives, and they are always here when they’re needed.

Every woman knows this.

She Sings of Pain and Sorrow

Holley Cornetto

I. Zander

She touches the collar around her neck. A heavy thing of iron, with sharp metal fasteners, decorated with faux jewels to make it appear like a necklace. On it dangles a small box. If she makes a sound, the collar shocks her. Her voice, they say, is more beautiful than the breeze of a warm summer day, but it was stolen from her the moment the collar snapped around her neck.

I was in the harpy’s cage the morning they brought her in. Where the harpy was gray and gnarled, the siren was radiant with the beauty of youth. At first, I thought the harpy jealous of the siren’s thick chestnut hair and large brown eyes because of her mutterings. “One bird lady wasn’t enough. They had to bring in another.”

It was strange I’d attribute such a human emotion to the harpy. She was a pathetic creature, but I wouldn’t have called her human, not back then. But she did feel. They all did, though I didn’t realize it until I saw the siren for the first time.

Now I understand it wasn’t jealousy that made the harpy speak so, but sorrow.

“You buffoon!” she screeched at me. “Don’t you know what she is? She’s a siren. You don’t just cage creatures like that. No wonder that great oaf hired you!”

The harpy said more, but I wasn’t listening.

I walked to the edge of the cage to get a better look at the siren. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. They must have tranquilized her, because she lay motionless in the arms of a man wearing a county uniform with the words Animal Control on the back.

As the siren stirred, the harpy fell silent. The man called back to his partner, his face a mask of panic. The siren lifted her head and sang.

She was still weak and only half awake; her song was like a hummingbird in flight, so faint I had to hold my breath to hear. It sounded like a thousand moonlit nights reflecting off the sea. It was only a tease of light creating shadows, a whisper. It was like the first drag from a cigarette, or the first time I was high. My heart raced, and I knew then I’d do anything to have her. Her song awoke a longing dormant inside me, something I thought I’d conquered.

In another life, I’d been a poet. That was before the darkness of the world crept inside me and whispered terrible secrets about addiction, about need. I’d known rock bottom, and what it felt like to need to the point of disregard for all other things. I knew this feeling, and yet I couldn’t stop it from happening again.

The harpy caught my sleeve in her claws. “Snap out of it, lackwit!”

I hadn’t even realized I’d moved.

By the time I freed myself from the harpy’s grasp, they’d already snapped that vile collar around the siren’s neck.

Her voice… I will never forget that voice. It is the voice that haunts my dreams.

II. The Siren

The siren begins to forget freedom, and the sound of her own voice. She only remembers when he pushes the needle into her veins, when tremors and nausea give way to sleep, and she dreams. She dreams about the sea, and other things half-remembered. Sometimes there are ships and sailors, sometimes suitors bringing jewels and gold, or poets and bards paying tribute to her beauty. Other times she sees her father, water streaming down the dark shadows of his bearded face, lamenting to see how far she’s fallen.

The groundskeeper hugs her to his chest. He smells of onions and sweat. She tries to push him away, but her arms are heavy, and her eyelids droop. As he cradles her, he whispers something about angels. She doesn't understand.

His eyes are pools of blue. She hates those eyes. They remind her of something she’s lost.

As the warmth of the drug fills her arm, she waits for the moment of bliss, the euphoria that accompanies the needle.

It never comes.

III. Zander

I fold my jacket beneath her, adjusting her curls into a halo around her head. My angel. How I long to hear you sing again. I look at the needle in my hand, the drug now running through her veins. There was a little less this time. She was more responsive. I know what this must do to her, but the drug allows her to rest. Right now, rest is what she needs. I’m not the one who got her hooked, but I can make it right. It’s the only way out for her. The withdrawal will make her miserable at first. Eventually, though, she’ll thank me. These are the things I tell myself, things that let me sleep at night.

I don’t remember the exact moment when I decided to free them. At first, I remember thinking vaguely about how I might do it, but it was just a daydream. I needed this job. After I got out of prison, I’d had trouble finding a place to live, let alone a way to pay for it. The boss offered me a trailer to sleep in and payment in cash every week. All I had to do was obey and keep my mouth shut. But, at some point, my musings became a plan, and I started to reduce the amount of drugs I gave the siren, boss be damned. I needed to hear her sing again. I needed it like she needed the drug.

I take my mop and bucket and exit her cage, walking across the park. The mermaid flaps her tail against the giant spray-painted rock in her enclosure. Her seashell necklace is not made of real shells, they are cheap, plastic things. Her eyes are red from the chlorinated water of her pool. Cockleshells dangle from her hair, twisted into dreadlocks. The dark circles under her eyes match the bruises on her arm.

The mermaid’s scales have sloughed off into the pool. I’ll need to use the skimmer. There are pustulous wounds on her tail seeping yellow and green. She’s going to need medical attention soon. Not today, though. The boss won’t like it if she isn’t in the grand opening.

The park reeks of urine and broken dreams. This facility was once a zoo, long since abandoned. No matter how hard I scrub, the blood and shit stains won't fade. This place is infected with misery.

The harpy told me once they’d been a part of a traveling show. The boss’s father had owned a circus, and the menagerie had only been a small part. The father died and, piece by piece, it had fallen apart. The only thing the boss kept when he was run out of town was the menagerie, and now he was getting ready to open to the public here. A fresh start, he’d said.

Of course, there has already been a stream of people in and out. The boss calls them “investors” and tells me to stay out of their way. I don’t know much about investments, but I know their type from my days in lockup—slicked back hair, knockoff designer watches, and cologne that oozes desperation. I see the way the creatures flinch when they walk past.

Looking at the mermaid, I realize if I don’t set them free, they will die. She doesn’t seem to notice me when I clean the pool. She’s high as a kite, and she hasn’t moved a muscle. Even limp like this she draws a crowd—wide eyed young girls, drunk men yelling, "Show us your tits!" They make her nervous. The harpy told me she used to hide behind her rock. That’s why the boss doses her heavy. She can’t swim when she’s high, so now she just lays there for everyone to gawk at.

After the mermaid comes the centaur.

The centaur isn't high because she has to perform, and she can't do it doped up. Her haunches are streaked with whip scars, old now, earned by months, maybe years, of defiance. She watches me warily as I spread fresh straw and refill her water. I set out an assortment of apples, carrots, and oats. She won't tell me what she likes, nor will she eat in my presence. Of all the creatures in the menagerie, the centaur makes me most nervous. It's not just her strength, though her hooves could shatter bone. It's her glare, the hate and defiance it conveys. To my shame, I carry the whip in her presence. I've heard stories from the harpy.

I’ll have to free the centaur last.

I keep a safe distance from her as I clean out the broken bottles and used condoms from her pen. No matter how many times I sweep, there’s always more. The smell of bleach permeates the air when I scrub the walls. It doesn’t help. The stains are like paint, they won’t fade.

As I leave, I take the wheelbarrow with me and stash it near the mermaid's pool. Even as thin and frail as she is, I don’t think I’ll be able to carry her far. While working, I try to piece together more of the siren’s song, whistling notes to myself. I used to only dream of her song, but now it preoccupies my waking mind, too. I can’t remember, but I also can’t forget. I need to hear it again.

IV. The Siren

The siren wakes up from drug-fueled dreams sober and sweating. She tugs at the collar, then glances around for the groundskeeper. She closes her eyes. When she reopens them, he is in her cage with the needle again. She doesn’t know if it has been hours or days.

She looks up at those blue eyes. There is something there, though she can’t place what. Pity? Maybe. She is shaking, her stomach is in knots. She glances down at the needle and wonders why it isn’t working like it should. It’s just enough to still the shakes and silence the nausea. She feels the wetness of tears wash down her cheeks. She needs more. She needs.

V. Zander

The harpy makes a “tsking” sound when I walk past her cage.

“Do you need something?” I ask.

“Idiot!” she croaks.

“Pardon?”

“I’ve seen what you’re doing, filling her needles less. Did you know the groundskeeper before you was fired for stealing drugs?”

“I’m not taking them!”

She shrugs. “You think that crook you work for cares? If he notices them missing, you’ll be out on your ass.”

“I’m not taking them. I’m trying to help her, giving her less. I want to set her free. Then she’ll love me. She’ll have to.”

“You need to put that idea out of your warped little mind, boy.”

“Why?”

She laughs, a hoarse, throaty sound. “She doesn’t love you.”

I would ask what she means, but I would only insult her. I know what she means, and she knows I know.

“She might.”

“She doesn’t.”

“She will.”

She lowers her head, looking away. “No, she won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“This is a garden of death; love doesn’t grow here. Besides, you can’t set her free. She’s ruined. You helped ruin her, and you’re too stupid to even see what you’ve done.”

“It’s not just her. I’m going to free everyone, even you.”

“What’s the point? My wings are clipped, I can’t fly, and my arthritis won’t let me walk far. You aren’t a hero. Why don’t you just leave? You aren’t locked up.”

“Not many places will hire an ex-con. The boss didn’t ask questions.”

“Ex-con?”

“I was in prison.”

“Oh, so like us, then.”

I nod.

VI. The Siren

He presses the needle into her arm. “I love you, Angelica.”

Her stomach clenches. She watches this time when he inserts the needle. She knows now he’s been filling it less. She can tell because there’s no more euphoria. She fumbles at his belt, grasping for another needle.

He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses it. “Soon, darling.”

If she could have spoken, she would have told him to fill the needle enough to kill her or to leave her alone. The chills, the aches, the nausea… she could even deal with them if not for the way he looks down at her with those pitiful eyes. Eyes like the sea.

She wants the bliss, the forgetfulness. Without them, she recalls what she’s lost, what was taken from her. It’s too much to bear. Her throat aches. She longs to sing. Without her voice, she is nothing. Without her song, she doesn’t exist. She can feel herself starting to disappear, the shadow of something that was great.

VII. Zander

After the show, the boss claps me hard on the shoulder. “Atta boy, Zander!”

Opening night was a success. I saw him counting money from the ticket sales, stacks of it. Tickets sold out within the hour.

Seeing his jovial mood, I mention the mermaid to him.

“She looks sick,” I said. “I think she needs a doctor.”

He rubs his chin. “Dose her and bring her to my trailer. I’ll take a look at her. You can give them all a little extra tonight, to reward them for a job well done.”

I nod and leave to go fill the needles. All but the one for Angelica. I need her coherent.

She needs to understand when I tell her I’m going to set her free.

Later, when I retrieve the mermaid from the boss’s trailer, I glance at her tail. “Did the doctor—”

“Yes, yes, my boy. The good doctor saw her. He said it’s nothing to worry about, she’s just been scratching at her own tail. Probably shedding scales. It’s nothing to concern yourself with.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Now, why don’t you just carry her back to her pool like a good lad, eh?”

I can smell the lie when it slips past his lips. Sick. Infected, just like the rest of this place.

I lift her, and she feels paper thin. She reeks of ancient sex and antiseptic spray. The beads and shells braided into her dreadlocks tinkle like wind chimes as her head lolls. When we reach her enclosure, I lay her on her rock and feel for a pulse. She’s still breathing, but makes a low, guttural sound. I hold her hair back just in time for her to vomit. She retches until there's nothing left to throw up, then she dry heaves a while longer. When she's done, I get my mop and bucket. She is in agony, and I know that I can’t do this anymore. To hell with the harpy. She can stay if she wants, but I’ve got to get the mermaid out of this place.

When I return, she lifts her head. “Please… stop it,” she whispers.

“But I didn’t do anything.”

“I know.”

I eye the wheelbarrow outside her enclosure. I know it has to happen soon. Between the cramped quarters and smell of decay, this place is too much like prison. At night, the air here is thick with the song of quiet sobbing. But there is only one song I want to hear. Need to hear.

VIII. The Siren

She watches him take the mermaid to that rusted out old trailer. She wonders if he knows the horrors that await them within. Often, the man in the trailer takes his pleasure with them. Most of the time it's worse, and they're rented out for the pleasure of the cruel and depraved. When it's her turn, all she can do is sink inside herself, and pray for the drugs to blot it all out.

She used to dream of escape, of things she’s now forgotten. She would dream that one day she’d break free of her cage and return to the sea where she belonged. But now there are only needles, and the sea is far, far away.

The sea that was the color of his eyes.

The siren knows he is in love with her, or at least thinks he is. She can tell by the way he looks at her a little too long and holds her in an embrace when he doses her.

Perhaps it’s the way she looks at him that causes him to love her. But it isn’t him she’s looking at, it’s the needle he carries; the needle he pushes into her veins. That’s why she can’t go back. Once, the open air and the sea were the only things she needed, the only things she craved, but now she has a longing more urgent. She could leave this place, but it would never leave her. What was once beautiful is now broken. If she had a voice, she would sing all of the sorrow in her heart. They would all hear and know what they had stolen from her. What they had stolen from the world. They would know, and they would lament. Oh, how she would make them lament.

Her eyes narrow, and she watches him mop up mermaid vomit.

IX. Zander

I measure just enough to knock him out. The boss is a heavy sleeper, and likely still hung over from celebrating. Sneaking in the trailer and drugging him might not be necessary, but it is easy, and I can’t allow anything to interrupt my plans. I look at the needle. I remember the first time I felt it. The exhilaration, the feeling that all the wrongs of the world had melted away. For a moment, I consider taking some for myself. But even now, I know it will not stop the insatiable need inside me. I’m beyond that; it’s not a drug I need anymore.

Today, finally, I will hear her sing.

I walk to her cage and beckon her over. She stands and walks toward me, shaking, unsteady on her feet. A little less each day, until she doesn’t need it anymore. I know she’ll still feel the pangs of withdrawal for years to come, possibly the rest of her life. She’ll be miserable. I can’t change that. But better this than the alternative, because there is no alternative. Not for her.

She turns around and I unlock her collar. As it falls away from her, so do the shadows of misery that have darkened her features for too long.

She touches her throat, then coughs. “Open my cage.”

I turn the key in the rusted lock. “Will you sing for me, my love?”

Her pale face, once a mask of sorrow, glows. Her voice rings out, the most beautiful and terrible thing I’ve ever heard. It’s the wail of a banshee. The cry of a mother who has lost her child. It’s the sound of lights snuffed out, of hope being crushed. I can feel her words penetrate my skull, though I don't understand what they mean. The song is ancient, perhaps as old as the sea itself.

I stand paralyzed as she walks past me to the boss’s trailer. She leaves the door open behind her.

His screams pierce the air.

Her song stops, but I still can’t move. I’m not sure whether it’s her song or shock that holds me in place.

She exits the trailer, blood dripping off her chin onto her chest. She smiles, her first real smile since she was brought to this godforsaken place.

She saunters over to me and places a finger under my chin, lifting it towards her.

“Where is the needle?”

“I didn’t want to give it to you; he made me!”

“Where is the needle?” she repeats.

I nod toward the outbuilding.

She is ghastly and beautiful. She drips with gore, but I don’t fear her. Her song fills my head, fills my world.

She is my drug. She is all I need.

These are my last thoughts as her fingers, slick with blood, reach for my eyes.

X. The Siren

She licks her fingers. If she were not so full, she’d have taken more than the man’s eyes. This way is better, she thinks. This way her song will echo forever in his ears.

She walks to the outbuilding and fills the needles. She pushes them into her veins, one by one, until her breathing becomes shallow and eventually stops.

The Thing With Feathers

Tonya Walter

People think Hate is a bad thing, a thing to be plucked from their hearts like an unwanted hair or a hangnail. They don’t understand that it is alive, and its roots run through them. It has a smell, you know, and a taste, too. Its scent is rotted flowers and it tastes of black pepper and tin.

It was this hot, sour-sweet taste-smell that surrounded me as I took form, hatching from the woman’s cracked skull like a blood-soaked final thought. I squirmed out through brain and bone with wet feathers clinging to my skin. A small heart stirred within my chest. I gazed into her blue-eyed dead-stare and listened to it beating, beating, beating: Do. Not. Let. Him. Win.

I consumed her soft sensory organs. She didn’t need them anymore. She gave them all to me. The pulpy, gray-matter mesh of memories that once fueled emotions I used to build my muscle, my bones. I nursed from her cold veins and the iron-rich tang of her blood told me everything I needed to know about you, from the taste of your knuckles to your frail, male ego and all the different ways to trigger your Rage. I know Rage well, you see. That big, blind ox works for me.

But he’s gone now, isn’t he? Yes, I look into your eyes and I know you see me now. I learned to wear her smile, her shape. I took her voice, too. Do you like? In fact, everything you see of me is what you left of her. All but the eyes.

I could not get them right. I know you can tell, looking up from that cold, hard ground. There’s no light in them. You don’t see any frightful whites, sad blues, or repentant browns. What you see is Dark. You see Void; the Abyss.

Hold still, now. It’s almost over. Hush. There’s no use appealing to feelings long gone. Oh yes, I ate them all. She gave them to me. She wanted me to be strong. Did you know that Fear also has a smell? It reeks of urine. I can smell yours and I know it will taste like rancid wine. I understand my visit is upsetting. Hate is such an ugly word, isn’t it? While you’re able, if you are able, please, call me Wrath.

***

Roger’s ’87 Buick LeSabre left the highway at 75 miles per hour and smashed head-on into a one-hundred-year-old oak tree. Roger didn’t yet realize this as he squinted at his leaf-littered windshield, struggling to breathe. All he knew was that he hurt.

White hot pain pulsed through his right side. Pawing at his seatbelt, he managed to unclasp the buckle and open the driver’s side door. He spilled out onto the carpet of pungent pine needles and dusty oak debris. Wheezing, he remembered the deer in the road. He’d braked, sliding to a stop inches away from the dumb animal’s stare. He had stopped, so how had he ended up here?

Roger rolled onto his back. The Buick’s high-beams lit the canopy of leaves above, waxing and waning in and out of focus. He had stopped. He’d watched the deer finish crossing the road, then he’d seen the dark shape of the woman standing just beyond the reach of the headlights. He’d floored it, aiming the nose of the Buick right at her, gnashing his teeth, dead set on turning her into a smear on the asphalt.

In the dark, something shuffled through the brush and leaf litter.

“You—” Roger croaked, cut off by the swelling pressure in his chest.

“You,” she answered.

***

He found her in the bus.

On the night of the bus, Roger woke in a panic, rushing around the house, shoving his wife’s clothes, toothbrush, and wallet into a duffel bag and driving at precisely the posted speed limit to an old, abandoned lumber mill. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten the bag. Paula wouldn’t have left him without at least her wallet. He tried not to be too hard on himself. He was new to homicide; he’d been bound to make some mistakes.

Roger parked the Buick inside the empty skeleton of the mill and hurried through the maze of discarded furniture and broken-down kitchen appliances dumped there by the locals. In the dark, he followed the sound of the river to the rusted-out VW bus containing the week-old corpse of his wife and wrenched open the side door. The rancid stink, like vinegar poured over hot shit, knocked him back a step. As he tossed the duffel at his wife’s feet, something shifted in the shadows.

Roger froze, squinting into the dark. On the bare metal floor, he could just make out the crumpled mass of trash bag that had been covering Paula’s disfigured head. His eyes followed a thin ribbon of moonlight along the edge of his wife’s body to where it crested the curve of her shoulder. Her head was gone.

In the corner, glistening like a human-shaped oil slick, darker than the night shadows, she crouched. Roger saw the wet curve of her bald head, the slick, rounded shoulders, and two points of light blinking, watching him.

“God damn!” Roger yelled. The rotten stink of the van and the burbling of the stream seemed a million miles away, both swallowed by the sharp odor of his sweat and the pounding of his heart.

She whispered back in a feminine coo, at once soft and sharp with menace.

“God damn.”

Roger slammed the van door and sprinted back through the field, stumbling over metal scraps, skinning his palms on ancient gravel and half crawling to the Buick.

***

On his back, with the wrecked Buick ticking as its engine cooled, Roger gaped and writhed like a fish on land, fighting the crushing pressure in his chest. She stepped between him and the headlights. Her head was no longer bald, but covered in blond curls. The light caught in her frizzy halo and, for a moment, Roger’s oxygen deprived brain believed she was on fire.

“Please,” he wheezed. “I don’t want to die.”

She straddled his body. Kneeling, she brought her face down until they were nose to nose. Her eyes, the once black pools that had watched him relentlessly, were now such a brilliant blue he could drown in them.

“Die,” she said.

***

For days after Paula had threatened to leave him and he had not so gently escorted her out of this world, Roger spent his mornings practicing expressions in the mirror. He contorted his face into poses of confusion, horror, and pensive reverie, preparing for the news he was sure to receive any day now. But on the morning after dumping Paula’s bag in the old VW bus, he stayed in bed. The dark shape had been with him all night, in his dreams, and it lingered still in the corners of his mind. Crouching. Waiting.

It was near noon when he heard the first raps against the glass of the living room window.

Tic,tic…Tic.

Tic,tic…Tic.

Roger didn’t have any close neighbors, or friends, or family who would have any business tapping on his windows. He crept to his bedroom door and poked his balding head out into the living room.

Tic,tic…Tic.

In the window overlooking the backyard, perched on the deck’s banister, was a fat, glossy feathered raven.

Tic, tic…Tic.

It rapped with the black blade of its beak then cocked its head. Roger ducked behind the door frame, sure it had spotted him.

“It’s just a bird, God damnit,” Roger growled, storming through the house and out the back door in nothing but his boxer shorts.

“Get out,” he spat, swishing his hand through the air as close to the bird as he dared, afraid he might actually touch it.

The raven cawed; a horrible, dry-rattle cry. Roger stepped back, curling his hands to his chest like a frightened dame in a Hitchcock film. The bird coughed once, twice, then hacked something out onto the deck. The thing clattered over the boards and came to rest right between Roger’s feet. He stared down, dumbfounded.

It was his wife’s wedding ring. Three small diamonds glinted in the midday sun and, despite the heat, Roger’s skin erupted in goosebumps. The band had his attention so completely he didn’t hear the beating of the raven’s wings until it was past him and through the open back door.

Roger grabbed the ring and chucked it out into the field. Paula could have done that, he reasoned. Before leaving, she could have chucked her wedding ring outside. He ran after the bird, following a trail of feathers through the living room, down the hallway, past his bedroom and into the bathroom. There, he found her.

As black as India ink, with stringy feathers plastered to her wet skin, she stood in the tub. Diffused sunlight slid over her bald head and danced in the pitch orbs of her eyes. Her dark, leathered lips pulled back in a toothless smile and Roger felt a warmth spread across his crotch. A stream crawled down the fish-belly white skin of his old-man legs.

“What the hell are you?” he moaned.

“Hell,” she cooed.

***

A week after the raven’s arrival, Roger sat out back in his old Adirondack chair, drinking his coffee while she watched. She always watched.

He ran his free hand over the bandage on his forearm. She didn’t have teeth, but the ebon ridges he’d mistaken for gums proved plenty sharp, as he’d discovered the first time he tried to leave the house. He still didn’t know what she was or what she wanted, but he was learning a few of the rules to her sick game. No screaming. Roger had plenty of bruises to keep him from forgetting that one. No eating until she ate, no sitting until she sat and, most importantly, no leaving.

He drank his coffee with a trembling hand and stared out over the field which, for him, had once embodied freedom from the world and all of its bullshit. Now it was a sea, and he was stranded on this little hell with his own personal Lucifer.

“Paula wasn’t all innocent, you know,” Roger said.

She cocked her head to the side and he flinched, spilling lukewarm Folgers on his bandage, but she just watched, eyes staring beneath the blond stubble that had sprouted over her sleek scalp.

“Sh…she was vindictive,” he ventured. “Cold. Manipulative. I…I don’t know what you think you know, but I wasn’t the bad guy.”

She stood, and Roger jumped from his chair. His mug dropped to the deck in a fragrant burst of coffee and ceramic shards. When she smiled, Roger felt as though his guts turned to ice water.

“Bad Guy,” she said.

Behind her black lips were the pearly buds of sprouting teeth.

***

Mere hours before Roger would take his LeSabre on its final drive, he stood in his living room, dressed once again in only his boxer shorts, holding a chef’s knife in one shaky hand. She was lying on the couch, sleeping. She’d never slept before.

Since she’d arrived, her black skin had faded to a sickly blue, then an ashy gray, before lightening to a perfectly Paula shade of peach. Her eyes were still dark marbles, but they were closed now and she looked absolutely human. Human enough to need sleep, he hoped.

Maybe human enough to die.

He bit his bottom lip, trying not to cry out loud as tears streamed down his face. The side of his head still throbbed. That morning, he’d tried to leave. She’d been in the bathroom, preening her new golden locks, and he grabbed the keys from their hook by the door and ran into the attached garage. As the giant electric door rolled up, Roger fumbled the keys. They skid over the concrete and beneath the sleeping Buick. He didn’t hesitate, but dropped to the oil-stained floor. He found the handful of brass and steel and got to his knees, jamming the car key into the door’s lock.

She grabbed the nape of his neck and pulled him to his feet. Roger screamed, a high-pitch shriek that grew to a deep, pained wail as her teeth gnashed through the cartilage of his ear. Warm fluid ran down the side of his face. He felt the pop of stretched tissue tearing free from his head. Roger collapsed.

Screaming, hands pressed to his wound, he watched as the mangled ear disappeared behind her lips. She swallowed, then reached down and plucked the keys from the ground. Just before the garage door rolled back down and plunged them into darkness, she opened her bloodied mouth wide and stuffed the keys inside.

They passed the rest of the day in the living room, her perched on the couch, staring at him with her soulless, black eyes as he tucked himself into his La-Z-Boy recliner. She’d moved once, to go to the kitchen and eat dry cereal by the handful straight from the box, and he’d obediently jumped up to follow before she could pull him from his seat. After feeding, they returned to their respective places. When the sun sank toward the horizon, she’d laid flat on the couch and closed her eyes.

Roger watched her for hours, convinced it was some kind of trick. Finally, around midnight, he pulled the chef’s knife from the block beside the stove.

Get on with it, he thought.

He plunged the knife into her bare belly and stumbled back. She didn’t move, not a twitch, not a flinch. Roger giggled, a nervous, manic titter, and leaned toward the body. The ticking of the kitchen clock became a deafening, metallic clank beating out the seconds, hundreds of seconds, before Roger let out a shaky sigh.

The terror of the past two weeks dissipated with that one breath. The relief left him lightheaded. He looked at the pale woman with the steel handle jutting from her middle, a flag on a conquered mountain. Suddenly, she wasn’t the demonic bird-woman who’d bitten off his ear. She was Paula. Simple, sycophantic Paula, who laughed with him to his face and at him behind his back, who could turn on the water works while begging for trust only to make moves toward divorce when he wasn’t looking.

Just Paula.

Roger grabbed the knife. He sawed and sliced open her abdomen. There was no blood, just a thick, putrid jelly and the smell of alcohol. Inside, suspended in the muck, Roger found his keys, a bottle cap, and a clutch of small, gray eggs. He grabbed the keys and wiped them on the couch, smearing the god-awful syrup over the upholstery. His eyes stayed fixed on the bunch of eggs, clustered like grapes. A cold dread ran along his spine. He reached in for them, the hairs on his arm standing on end until they were swallowed by the slime.

Her eyes opened. Roger yelped and pulled back his hand. She smiled.

He made it to the Buick this time. Without looking back, he threw the car in reverse and slammed the accelerator. The steel roof scraped against the slowly rising garage door.

***

“I’m sorry,” Roger cried, turning his face away from those blue eyes, from the syrupy stink of her breath. Another seizure of pain gripped his chest and he gasped.

“Please,” he moaned. “I’ll do… I’ll do what you want… I’ll go back … I’ll go back to the house…”

Her tongue touched the tip of his chin. She licked along his jaw, around the marred scab of his ear, across his forehead. Roger shuddered.

“My house,” she hissed. “You took everything. Now everything is mine.”

Roger felt her mouth close over his, taking the air from his lungs. Then, he felt nothing.

She Asked For It

Lilyn George

It hurts—the broken chunks of concrete and gravel digging into my stomach and hip bones—but not as much as when he first started. Not as much as what he was doing. The man on top of me grunted and tore into the delicate flesh between my legs time and again. His fingers dug into my throat. His sweat dripped onto the hands-width of skin between where my top ended, and the skirt waistband would have been if he hadn’t jerked the fabric off me almost as soon as he’d pulled me back in the alley.

Silly of him, I’d thought. Everyone knows you just push a skirt up. Much easier to pull someone’s underwear down that way. But seconds after his large fist with the big flashy ring cracked into my nose, he shoved his thumbs in the waistband of both my skirt and underwear and tore them off me. The skirt had been too small to come off like that, but the fabric burn was nothing compared to the explosive ache in my head.

It was hot. Ninety degrees in the shade. The crop top and mid-thigh skirt had been the coolest thing I owned that weren’t hoochie shorts, and I’d slipped them on before heading down the street to Ever After, my favorite bookstore. My friend, Kiri, had called me a half-hour ago and said my order—a signed, limited edition copy of my favorite science fiction book—had come in. I wanted to stay in the air-conditioning, but I wanted the book even more. The store closed at nine, it was eight-thirty now.

And Ever After was down the street. Seriously. A half-mile walk either way which I’d made hundreds of times over the past few years.

It was just down the street.

I had my keys around my wrist, the cash for the book tucked into a black wristlet covered in white tentacles, my hair pulled back in a messy bun, and cork sandals so old I’d already had to superglue the straps twice.

She should have been paying attention to her surroundings.

I wasn’t wearing earphones. I wasn’t scrolling social media as I walked. The only reason my phone was in my hand was because it was too big for my wristlet. I kept my head up, staring at a point in the distance, occasionally glancing in shop windows to make sure no one was creeping up behind me.

The walk to Ever After was fine. The store only had a few people in it—mostly college kids fiddling around in the café area. Kiri and I laughed as she rang me up, made a few off-color jokes to each other about the spaceship on the front cover looking a little too phallic, but nothing unusual. Nothing truly ribald. No one was in line behind me, but we saved the truly dirty jokes for when she wasn’t at work. She asked if I wanted a bag, and I shook my head. I didn’t need a bag to carry a single book in. Even if it was a nearly 500-page monster.

If I’d taken the bag, could I have swung the book like a weapon?

Maybe this was my fault? But as I felt a fresh gush of liquid loosed between my thighs—that bastard had torn something in me—I couldn’t believe that. I’d taken self-defense courses. I utilized common sense and situational awareness ninety percent of the time. No one could ever be alert all the time. I mean, we’re all human, right? Still, I did everything I could to keep myself safe, because everyone knows the onus is on women for protecting themselves.

Men just can’t help themselves.

I’d stopped at an intersection on the way back, waited for the signal man to come on. Could have jaywalked, but that’s illegal. Funny to think breaking the law could have saved my life. It was that pause, waiting for the signal to change, which let the man in the silver car roll down his window and say, “Hot, isn’t it?”

I’ve always hated stupid questions. If it’s ninety degrees outside, it’s obviously hot. I wanted to let rip with a full-on snark, but… he was big. One of those guys who worked out regularly. Well-off, too. Easy to tell he was the type of man who could get pissed off real quick. The entitled white men always were, so I’d raised my brows and kind of bobbed my head in acknowledgement, then turned my attention back to the crossing signal.

“A reader, huh? Intelligence is sexy.”

Fucking hell, dude, I remember thinking, I’ve got no makeup on, my skirt is wrinkled and I’m sweating hard enough my tits are in their own personal sauna. He didn’t go full-on creeper check-out, though, so I took a breath from my belly so my breasts wouldn’t ask for his attention, and said, “Genre-fic. Nothing super nerdy.”

And I held the cover up.

I held it up to put a barrier between us.

I held the book up so he’d see the spaceship and realize I was an uninteresting bookworm who was not worth his time nor interest.

I held it up, and he said, “That spaceship looks like a dick.”

And I snorted. I couldn’t help it. I had said almost the same thing a few minutes ago, after all.

He winked at me, and said, “Are all spaceships inherently phallic?”

The ‘big’ words caught me off guard. It wasn’t phrased like a lewd innuendo, but a question. The geek in me shoved the nervous female to the side. “No, most prominently I’d point to the USS Enterprise, which is more like a saucer with tiny feet. However, generation ships tend to be based on O’Neill cylinders, so…yeah. Phallic.”

The cars on the other sides of the street started to slow down. The light was changing soon.

He flashed me a brilliant smile, all straight white teeth, and flexed his hands on the steering wheel as he playfully said, “Geek.”

My gaze caught on the fancy university ring on his finger as I clutched the book to my chest. “Yep.”

The light changed, and he pulled through the intersection without another word.

And I’d been relieved. It had started out creepy, sure, but ended well. He was a bit of a caveman, but weren’t most men? I knew decent men existed, but it was sure nice to meet one in the flesh. And a lot of spaceships really were phallic. Hell, there were lots of things in fiction and reality which were phallic. Men ruled the world and the dick symbolism made sure we remembered it.

I was mentally cackling about dicks being everywhere when roughly halfway between home and the bookstore, someone grabbed me around the waist as I crossed through one of the less well-lit areas of my walk. I was pulled backwards, and a palm clapped over my mouth and nose with brutal efficiency. They say if someone grabs you, scream. Scream and fight, using everything you have.

But how do you scream when you can’t breathe?

How do you fight back when you’re pulled back in the shadows and your face is pressed into a brick wall hard enough you feel the skin sandpapered off your forehead, even as you go deadweight, sinking to the ground?

It happened in seconds. Time didn’t slow down like they say it does when your life is in danger. I didn’t have time to mentally walk through how to react. I was fine, then I wasn’t. My brain couldn’t catch up to what was actually happening, you know? I was pulled to my feet and away from the building and I was shoved further down the alley until I fell to my knees on broken-ass concrete beside an abandoned house. The light was barely there, ancient sodium lamps still chugging along, but enough for me to recognize the familiar jawline of the man from the silver car and the glint of the ring on his finger.

Disbelief, then anger and disgust burned through me, as my stomach dropped like an elevator with snapped cables. Five minutes. I’d had five fucking minutes of thinking not every man I encountered was a creep. I sank my teeth into the meat of his hand, determined to tear a chunk of flesh off.

He yanked his hand from my mouth, but as I sucked in a breath to scream, he punched me in the stomach and I puked. The popsicles and cold soup I’d eaten earlier spilled down my front. He gagged, pulled back his fist, and slammed it so hard into my nose I saw red and silver stars. My ears rang like siren screams, and I thought, “Oh, the police are coming!”

I was grateful. The police were coming, and I’d be okay. Bruised up, but okay.

I thought that right up until about the third time he slammed my head into the concrete, and I couldn’t think straight anymore.

That was when he flipped me over and yanked my bottoms down.

Just look at how she dressed. She obviously wanted it.

I tried to fight, but he held my messy bun like a doorknob and ground my face into the concrete. Kicking backwards did nothing. The most I could do was pop him in the ass with my sandals. If I was wearing pants, I thought, this wouldn’t be so easy for him. I’d opened myself up to this, to him, because it was hot outside. Because I’d sacrificed safety for comfort.

Because I’d dressed sexily. Because men couldn’t be expected to control themselves. Because my whole existence—from the father who taught me all love was sexual, to the minister who told me sucking holy cock was my path to God, to the best friend’s husband who raped me when I was twenty-one and drunk for the first time—I’d been groomed to understand I was made only for a man’s pleasure. That I sent out “fuck me” signals all the time. That they just couldn’t help themselves.

And because I thought all that was bullshit. It was men’s responsibility to control themselves. I had a right to not layer up on a ninety-degree day. Now, due to my belief, I was fighting for my goddamned life when I should have been home on my couch, reading my book.

I should have known better, I thought as the world blackened around the edges.

I should have done better, I told myself when my front teeth broke against the cement as he tried to ram his dick up through my cervix and into my lower intestines.

I should have asked a friend to go with me to the bookstore, I thought as I sucked in a breath and choked on the debris I inhaled.

I coughed and gagged and he yanked my head back and slammed it against the concrete again, telling me to be quiet or it’d be even worse.

And I choked out a laugh, a terrified, hysterical laugh because I thought, I know how this ends. It ends like Sara Everard. Like Reagan Tokes. Like Jennifer Moore. Like Kitty Genovese. How could it get any worse? There was no way this man would so casually rape me unless he knew he would get away with it.

She laughed, therefore she must have enjoyed it.

It didn’t matter I drew blood on my thighs, my stomach, my knees, as I tried to wriggle away from him.

It didn’t matter I desperately threw my elbows back, trying to get him off me.

His spittle flecked my ear as he growled, “I knew you wanted it, you little bitch.”

I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t I didn’t Ididn’tIdidn’t.

And somewhere, somehow, I found a little more strength. I jerked my head back as hard as I could and felt the impact of my skull against his chin.

I ignored the pain shooting through my legs and the way fresh blood coursed from my knees as I pulled them up underneath me, focused not so much on fighting him as trying to escape. No coroner was going to look at my body and say I didn’t try to get away.

He pulled me back like I weighed nothing and wrapped his hand around my throat and kept fucking me.

Fucking me like my struggles were a mild inconvenience, at best.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somewhere in the space of a heartbeat, I couldn’t fight anymore.

I could feel him pounding into me.

Could feel my body arching up, pushing forward as he climaxed. Felt something pop in my larynx as he jerked inside me, and his hand tightened spasmodically around my throat.

And then somehow outside myself, I watched him as he calmly got to his feet, ran his fingers through his hair, and tucked his dick inside his pants. He looked around, frowning, like now he was concerned someone might have seen him.

No, that wasn’t it, I realized. I watched him as he walked over to a brightly covered book laying feet away from us and picked it up.

He flipped to the back, then opened the cover and studied the inside. After a moment, he tucked the book under his arm and walked back to his car as my heart thumped one final time.

Tonight at eleven, an unknown woman found dead near a local bookstore. Authorities believe she may have been a sex worker, though no identification has been made at this time. Police report no suspects or leads have been identified, though they urge the public to come forward if they witnessed anything suspicious in the area. More on this evening’s report.

Genesis 2:22

Denarose Fukushima

Just twenty minutes more until nightfall. Twenty minutes more of misery.

She silently endured it at the kitchen table, looking over bills in a show of responsibility. Bills for electricity had gone up since last month, and she couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing she could really do about it, no matter how long she spent looking at it, but Peter didn’t seem to know that; as long as she looked busy, he more or less stayed out of her way.

It was better than the alternative.

Which wasn’t saying much. When she moved out of her home state of Michigan to Seattle, she thought she would be happier as long as she was away from a loveless family and a violent neighborhood. She hadn’t even been in love with Peter when he asked if she would go with him. She just didn’t want to leave by herself. She always thought she would have ditched him by now, but God wasn’t on her side. He never was.

Lily paid the bill and closed her laptop as the sun set. Peter was sitting on the couch, watching golf and pointedly not looking at her. Good.

She opened the fridge and skimmed through the contents, eyes landing on her go-to rum. Before, when she drank socially, she used to enjoy it with coke, but now, alone, she saw no point in diluting it. She poured herself a large glass and returned to the kitchen table.

“And not even a full minute after sunset,” Peter commented from the couch, eyes still glued to the TV.

She sneered. “Nothing gets past you.”

“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”

Oh God, he was quoting The Bible at her already. There was a time when he would only quote The Bible after a church service, or near Lent, but now it was a nightly ritual. She drank the full contents of the glass, then poured herself another.

It was as if the tension in her shoulders eased slightly with each gulp. Peter and their tiny, rented house seemed a little less horrid. Why had she been so stressed about the electricity bill? She managed to pay it off, just as she always paid her debts.

Maybe she shouldn’t have been so pissy to Peter. After all, he was her one and only boyfriend.

How many drinks was that now? She glanced down at the table and only saw one empty glass. That wasn’t so bad.

“And there she goes again,” Peter muttered.

“Oh, don’t be so mad at me, Pete,” Lily said, waving her hand dismissively. “God gave us all vices, didn’t He? Men, women, we’re all sinners.”

“Well, God put man here first and put him in charge,” Peter reminded her. “Adam had to give up a rib and once Eve came it was all downhill from there.”

Ah, the rib conversation. One of Peter’s favorite topics.

Lily snorted. “Yes, everything bad about the world is because of women.”

“I’m just saying, where’s the appreciation? You’d think she would have been grateful to be alive, born with someone already there to take care of her, but what does she do? Goes and eats the apple and dooms everyone else for the rest of eternity. Way to go, Eve.”

Lily glanced at the TV. It looked like they were interviewing a female golfer. Those were Peter’s least favorite, and always put him in a sour mood.

“Well, it’s not as if you had to give up a rib,” Lily said. “All of your X-rays have shown that you have just as many ribs as a woman.”

Peter shook his head. “It should be on every woman’s conscience that she owes every man she meets a rib.”

“Oh really?” Lily asked. “What would you even do with the rib?”

“You just don’t get it, Lily; it’s the principle of it.”

Lily indeed did not get it. She shrugged and poured another drink. Why did she even try? Was he always this annoying? Lily wrinkled her nose, thinking back to when they first met.

Five years her senior, she thought his whole life was planned out and put together. That’s what had been so attractive about him, she supposed. But she was just a dumb teen back then and hadn’t had the sense to run back then. Arrogance looked like confidence, misogyny like protectiveness. She hadn’t even known he was so obsessed with The Bible until much later into her relationship, but by then it was just another thing she swept under the rug.

Could anyone blame her for drinking?

Speaking of, she could use another drink. She was out of refrigerator rum, which meant it was time for the special stash in the basement.

She staggered down, vision blurring, and had to grab the railing to steady herself. Each stair creaked with her steps, and she had to use her phone as a flashlight until she reached the bottom, where she could pull on the beaded rope to illuminate the basement.

Just like something out of a 90’s horror movie. She might as well have been in one, alone with her thoughts and the darkness. She staggered across the floor to the chest of neglected camping gear.

A perfect hiding spot. She pulled up the lid and pushed the two-man tent aside to grab the large bottle of rum at the bottom. Oops, forgot a cup. That’s okay, drink straight from the bottle.

Was she happy? There were glimpses of it that came with each sip when she would smile and be good and not worried about who was judging, who was watching.

Did Peter know about this stash? If he did, he wasn’t going to say anything.

Fucking Peter. She paced around as she drank because there was nowhere to sit and this wasn’t about enjoying herself anymore. She chugged from the bottle, sloshing some on the front of her shirt.

Peter and his ribs. He wasn’t even ashamed of himself anymore. It was common for him to say it right to her friends and family, as if he was a thought-provoking genius who had come up with women-hating all on his own.

It’s his fault they left, she thought. It was his fault no one wanted to put up with her, because who would want to deal with Peter? Where else could she run to besides the bottom of a bottle?

“Fuck ‘em,” she muttered. Her next step was even wobblier than the last, and she grabbed hold of a shelf to steady herself.

Something clanked to the floor. It was a knife. She peeked down at the bright glare reflecting the light.

A butcher’s knife. It was large and didn't have a hint of rust on it. Was it still sharp? She vaguely remembered it as part of a knife set she got on sale. It must have slipped out of the case.

Wouldn’t it be something if I cut out my rib and gave it back to him?

She paused with the bottle just barely touching her lips. Where had that thought come from?

But seriously, wouldn’t it be funny? If she could just force her hands through her skin, grab her rib, and rip it right out for him. What would he even do?

She giggled into the bottle, hearing her laugh echo out. It would mean freedom. After that, he wouldn’t be able to say he owed her a rib, like some depraved, stupid dog. She would give up a rib if it could really shut him up.

Didn’t they use alcohol to numb you in the old days? She pressed a finger to her chapped lips. Hard to feel them. Hard to feel her fingers. It was always her fingers and toes that went numb first.

She drank more, getting into a bet with herself. If she could keep drinking until she was numb, she would do it. A scattered little giggle escaped her again. Oh God, if her friends could see her now. She imagined them all laughing, sitting around her.

Lily, what the hell are you doing?

She’s totally nuts.

That was her reputation before she’d gotten dull. She was Lily, and she was totally nuts. Always smiling when she was drunk, not really caring if anyone else was smiling along with her.

Where had that girl gone?

She looked down. When did she decide to pick up the knife? She didn’t remember, but it felt so natural in her hands.

She brought it down quickly and suddenly through the old chest of camping gear, and it cut through the wood.

Well, if it could cut through that chest, why not mine?

Why not?

Why not?

She couldn’t think of an answer.

Come on Lily, go nuts.

Show us what you got.

She put the bottle of rum down, making sure it was close by. She patted her stomach.

I don’t feel a thing.

Oh shit, she’s going to do it, she’s actually gonna do it.

Lily rolled up her shirt, making sure her stomach was clear. It shone almost white in the semidarkness. She prodded at the skin with her fingers and couldn't feel a thing.

Bone. She was looking for bone. There it was, the last rib bone, she could feel but not see it. That one would be harmless enough to give away, it wasn’t protecting anything. And if she was going to give a rib bone to Peter, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be a good one.

She poked it again, just to be sure she knew where it was. Took another swig of rum.

She’s not going to do it.

She can’t actually do it.

Oh, just you watch. She grabbed the knife and traced the rib. Goosebumps followed the trail of metal. She drank some more.

Slowly, she cut into the side, watching with fascination as blood immediately welled up. Disgusting, and so much darker than it was on TV. Should she cut again?

Yes, again, again.

One long slice followed another, and her knife caught in her skin. Snagged? Was it really so complicated?

Her hands were shaking. Damned alcohol.

She cut in again, deeper, harder this time, and felt a bit of pain. Oh shit, what am I doing?

Get that rib, girl.

Get it!

Her breathing was getting harsher, louder, faster as the adrenaline pumped through her How far would she have to dig in? She wouldn’t know until she tried.

With her free hand, she reached in and grabbed the rib. There wasn’t much in between her skin and the rib, she found. Even though she was so cold on the outside, she was surprisingly warm on the inside and so...squishy. Her vision blurred in and out.Was it the blood loss or the alcohol?

Don’t puss out on me now.

She wrapped her hand around the bone, giving it a tug.

That’s Peter’s. Peter’s rib.

He wants it back so badly, fine. Fine.

She yanked at it, but only succeeded in swaying herself back and forth, blood now squirting out of her wound like a fountain. She laughed. It must look so stupid.

The knife. If it was a butcher’s knife, it would work.

I’m so smart.

But maybe I should bite down on something.

Lily looked around, then ended up just pulling her shirt into her mouth. How to do this, how to do this?

Maybe she should have watched it on YouTube. Would they have this sort of thing? No? Fine, 4Chan.

She yanked at the rib again; the damned thing was strong. There was no way she was getting it out without a bit of her flesh too.

Whatever. That way, Peter would owe her.

She traced her rib again, deciding to cut in a spot near her side. She held the tip of the rib with one hand, raised the knife in her other.

Felt the vibration more than the actual pain as the knife collided with her skin. More blood, and a very wet squelching noise.

Squish. Squish. Squish. The same sort of noise that came when she molded ground beef into patties.

Her own stomach was turning into a meaty mush, held together with blood that splattered and dripped every which way as she continued.

“And I’m still standing!” she exclaimed, amazed with herself.

The bone must have been making her weaker if it was Peter’s. She had to get it out, and then her only flaw, her only debt, would be gone.

The knife finally made contact with the bone and she heard a crack. She wriggled the rib and threw up rum and chunks of steak.

Oh God, that felt wrong.

Each little movement sent a wave of nausea through her body. She looked down at the mess she had made of herself, most of it covered in darkness and blood.

Come on, you’re so close.

Just one more whack. One more solid hit and it would be done with.

She was shivering with fear, with pain. She didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to hurt herself anymore —

Lily brought up the knife one more time and heard a loud, ominous crack.

Done. It was done. She could feel the rib loose inside of her, still holding onto one end.

Her laugh was more of a shuddering exhale than anything else as she pulled the rib from her. It had splintered off where the knife hit it into jagged, uneven points. Slippery, covered in blood and mush. Bits of muscle? Fat? Something stringy.

Done. She was done.

If Peter had been nice to her, she might have considered cleaning it off, at least rinsing it and throwing it into a box. Hey, Pete, look what I got for you.

But he wasn’t nice and she was over it. She rolled down her shirt, took another drink of rum and wandered up the stairs, leaning heavily on the railing as bits of her trailed behind.

God, this was gonna hurt in the morning.

She walked up slowly, taking her time. There was nothing wrong with taking her time. After all, she had just taken out her rib. Taken out her Peter.

The room was still quiet, still dark. After all of that, it somehow looked normal up here. She turned on the light.

Peter was asleep, curled into his side of the bed, most of the blankets wrapped around him. Even with the harsh light, he didn’t stir. She flipped off the switch.

It would be better in the dark.

She crawled over his form, rolling him onto his back as she straddled him. First, she peeled off the blankets, then the tank top.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked, half asleep.

“Shhh,” she said. “I have a surprise for you.”

Her bloody fingers felt around his stomach for an opening.

“Your fingers are cold, what the hell is that?” Peter asked, finally opening his eyes.

She lined up the rib along his side, trying to see which one matched hers. She placed it flat against his side.

“Lily?”

“It’s a gift.”

“Lily, what...is that blood?”

Peter started to get up and she panicked, stabbing the rib into his side. Peter let out a roar of pain at the puncture, and Lily kept trying to dig deeper with it.

“Lily, what the fuck? Get off me!”

He struggled to push her off, but she stabbed him in the arm with the rib, then the shoulder, and he cried out again, falling back into the bed.

“Oh, don’t cry, Peter. I’m only trying to give you what you want.

“What? Have you gone insane?”

“You always said every woman should know,” she said, her voice high pitched and cracking. “You said every woman should know that they owe you.”

“What?”

“I don’t owe you!” she yelled again, stabbing the rib into him. Again and again, she brought it up, down, up, down, faster, her hands shaking, Peter wailing beneath her with every hit.

“Lily, stop! Help, someone help!”

“Don’t cry when you get what you ask for! I hate that, I fucking hate that! Oh, look, no matter where I place it, it doesn’t fucking fit! Why doesn’t it fit, Peter?”

“Please stop!”

Blood pooled under them, a blackish-red mass quickly staining everything it touched.

“No answer? I’ll try again.”

“No!”

Peter brought his hand up to try to block her, but she stabbed right through it. He let out a child-like scream, raw and scared.

Lily took the bone out. Of course it didn’t fit there. Why would it ever fit in his hand?

She stabbed into his side again, and again it occurred to her that her rib was too small. It had to go higher up.

She stabbed through his chest and heard a small gasp escape Peter’s lips.

His body was shaking, but he wasn’t saying anything. That was a first.

She continued to stab until she found a good spot up top. The rib got caught in the skin on his side. She twisted and shoved it in. Peter wheezed and shuddered.

“Almost done now…”

She slid it under the skin, slotting it into place. A perfect fit.

“There you go, Peter,” she said, finally relaxing. “You got your rib back.”

He was whimpering, a low, quiet sound. She rolled off him, and as soon as her head hit the pillow, she found she was spinning.

Spinning. A wave of nausea was coming up and she clenched her eyes shut.

Damn. She was going to feel it in the morning.

She turned to Peter once more. He was quiet now. Good.

Lily closed her eyes. She always paid her debts.

Better

Alexis DuBon

She’d learned so much about what it took to make a man happy during the year and a half they’d been dating, and now that they’d moved in together, she wanted to prove she was everything he’d ever wanted in a girlfriend. Better than anything he’d even dreamed of.

That’s how you got a man to propose. That’s how you moved from girlfriend to fiancée. And she wanted to marry him. She wasn’t getting any younger after all, and wasn’t this the last step before he’d get down on one knee for her? She could feel it was coming, she could almost taste it. She could hardly wait to be his bride. He was so handsome, with a great job in finance, and she knew he would never hit her. He was perfect.

She’d gone shopping just for date night; bought a silk charmeuse slip dress, an inky black film that laid over her frame, reflecting like a moonlit lake at midnight when the light hit, to flatter her figure and make it all look effortless and accidental. She took extra care to get every strand of hair in place—no flyaways, no static.

Her nails were painted a subtle ballerina pink—he loved those natural hues. Nothing too flashy; no red or magenta, and certainly not blue or black or anything of that sort. Those were out of the question.

She spent a solid hour perfecting a dewy look, a well-executed attempt at a Nam Vo glow job, so her face was as luminous as her outfit. Lit from within.

A few spritzes of that perfume he loved, not the woodsy floral scent she used to wear, more of a juicy peach dripping over fresh linens kind of smell. He said floral scents were for old ladies.

The key ground in the lock and the door clicked open. He was home from work. Her heart leapt.

“Hey, babe. Love the dress, let me see you.”

She did a little twirl and beamed inside. She had gotten it right.

He examined her, his eyes moving like searchlights over her body while his mouth kept poker face still, as if he were at a Sotheby’s auction, not betraying his final assessment.

“Is that what you’re doing with your makeup? You never do smokey eye anymore. That’s my favorite.”

She had almost gotten it right.

She was proud of how far she’d come since they started dating, but there was always room for improvement. Those combat boots that once defined her had long since been hauled off and donated to Goodwill. Now it was mostly just minor tweaks, and she was a fast learner. She could be his dream girl. She could be wife material.

“I can go back into the bathroom and make it a little smokier if you want.”

“I’ll wait here.” He plopped himself down on the couch and flipped through the channels.

It is important to present the aesthetic a man finds attractive, otherwise they may have to look elsewhere.

When she reemerged, she could tell she did good. Just like he liked it. That approving grin lit her up like a drug.

She never strayed from that look again; it was his favorite. She didn’t have to experiment and play around. This was it. She wanted him to think she was beautiful.

After a while it became so much a part of her face that she couldn’t wash it off anymore. She would scrub and scrub, make the rest of her skin red and raw, but those smokey eyes stayed put. The powder and kohl and false lashes became indistinguishable from her forever features.

He loves this look so much anyway, she thought. Maybe it’s better this way.

***

“What kind of movie do you want to watch tonight, babe?” he asked while flipping through Netflix.

“Maybe we can watch the new Cate Blanchett one? It’s supposed to be really good. They say there’s no way she won’t get an Oscar.”

“Nah.” No-nonsense lawyers in skirts wasn’t really his genre. He’d said as much before, but sometimes his preferences would suddenly shift. Just like that. She often felt like she was always two steps behind in a never-ending game of catch up.

A woman should know how to keep her man happy. They can be mercurial, it’s just their nature. She knew how important it was to keep up. Otherwise, he might lose interest in spending time together, and that’s when men developed a wandering eye.

She couldn’t survive that.

So she offered another option.

“Maybe the one with those kids that get abducted on their class trip?” She had been waiting to watch that with him. When the trailer came out, his eyes gleamed with excitement in the dim light of the movie theater, and she was sure he’d jump at the mention of it. Like a kid in a classroom, she waited eagerly for her high marks.

She could almost hear it. “Oh, right!” he’d say. “I’ve been dying to see that!”

He didn’t answer. He just kept scrolling.

“Oh, here. We can watch this one.” And he put on a comedy where the main character had to go back to Hebrew school to get Bar Mitzvahed because even though he was an adult, he still never grew up.

She didn’t have the chance to argue before the opening credits started dancing across the screen. She wouldn’t have wanted to anyway, even if the fleeting impulse passed through her mind. He loved those goofy comedies. She loved to see him happy.

He’d been so stressed out from work, it was silly of her to think he’d want to watch anything serious. A comedy was just what he needed. She should have known better than to suggest anything so dark.

When the movie was over, he asked her how she liked it, but when she tried to open her mouth to answer, no sound came out. Unable to speak, she smiled at him, and he smiled back, satisfied with her response. She had such a nice smile.

“You’re so pretty when you’re happy,” he said.

And from then on she made sure to keep a cheery face. Men prefer agreeable women. The only other women who got marriage proposals were the ones who gave ultimatums, and she always thought that was a very unattractive method.

So her lips stayed in position— a suggestion of a smile, nothing too aggressive. Better to keep it subtle; extreme faces could frighten men away.

The next time they were deciding what to watch, she didn’t offer any suggestions. He didn’t notice.

I don’t want to be difficult, she thought. Maybe it’s better this way.

***

The day had been long and stressful; work was getting to him and what he needed was a good night’s sleep. It was exhausting, dealing with clients, always worrying about keeping them satisfied with the company, and no matter how much he gave, they always expected more. Impossible to please. So they went to bed early.

She couldn’t fall asleep and tried out a few different positions in an attempt to get cozy enough to meditate herself out of consciousness. None of it worked.

She slid close to him, to cuddle like they used to, like they’d been doing less and less. She missed when they used to sleep entwined in one another, and thought maybe if she tried to recreate that closeness, he wouldn’t be so wound up, so anxious about the office; maybe he’d remember how much they loved each other, and that’s what mattered most. He’d just been so preoccupied lately.

“Babe! You’re taking up the whole bed. Can’t you lie still and stay on your side?”

It’s important to let a man know he is loved, but never to smother him. Men need their space sometimes.

She wiggled her way to the edge of the mattress and tried to make her body very small and to lie very still. She felt herself shrink and stiffen. Her joints tightened and her muscles ached as they cramped up so hard, they began to feel almost like bone. Despite her years of yoga practice, she felt completely inflexible.

He slept like a newborn puppy, sprawled out from one corner of the bed to another, legs splayed all akimbo. When morning came, he huffed at her, lying there so still, even after he had gotten up to make coffee. That was supposed to be her job.

She didn’t even stir when he kissed her cold, lily white cheek.

She tried to stroke his hand as it pressed down on the pillow supporting her head, but she couldn’t. She just stayed in place, frozen, inert, no matter how hard she willed her limbs to twitch.

I should be less clingy anyway, she thought. Maybe it’s better this way.

***

When he came home later that night, she was still in bed. He had had a long day and needed some comforting, but she didn’t rub his back the way she used to when he was feeling gloomy.

“Fine. I’m gonna go to the couch and watch some TV.”

She didn’t follow him the way she had so many times before, when she was anxious to make sure he wasn’t angry with her, that he was okay. He waited for her footsteps. Why is she being so dramatic, he wondered. When the episode was finished, he walked back to the bedroom.

“What is going on with you?” he asked.

She didn’t respond.

She didn’t look angry, like women often did when they were being dramatic. She had a placid, serene expression on her face, a subtle upturn at the corners of her mouth, practically painted on. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t pouting or acting sullen. She knew how much he hated that and she had made so much progress since they moved in together. She didn’t even make a peep.

“God. You used to be fun. What happened?” He scoffed, annoyed at how still, and stiff, and too-small-to-spoon she had become. He gave her a little shove, not meaning to push quite so hard, but forgetting to account for her weight having diminished as much as it had, and she flew off the bed and onto the floor.

He rolled his eyes.

“What now?” he asked, wanting to believe she was just being theatrical. But only silence and an incomprehensible stillness responded.

Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t even trying to get herself up and he worried he might have to explain to a doctor why he was bringing her into the hospital with a concussion. That would make him look awful.

After a moment of shock and embarrassment, he made his way to the other side of the bed to check she was okay. This sudden catatonia sparked a twinge of concern in him almost to the point of panic. This was not sulking. This was not her shutting down. He had gotten her to stop doing all that a while ago. This was somehow worse, and he found himself wishing for a simple case of female histrionics.

There she was, lying on the ground. Shattered. Her hands were too rigid to break her fall, her body too fixed to brace herself. Hard, brittle porcelain had taken the place of soft tissue. She was motionless, silent, face down against wood.

He picked her up to inspect the damage. Her body was so light in his hand, and when he lifted it from the ground, a few chunks remained behind. A splintered finger rested by his feet along with most of her visage, which had suffered the greatest impact.

Her hollow ceramic head stared back at him mournfully, despite being cracked open and in pieces. Even then, he could still see the slight dimple in her cheek, and the point where her lips met still curved upwards, hinting at a smile. Tributary cracks stretched from the gaping hole, tracing the path where her face used to crinkle when she laughed at his jokes. By the fissure beneath her eyebrow was the dissipation of a charcoal shadow, the only remnant of the eyes that once gazed at him with admiration.

She didn’t have any more thoughts to think about it, though.

The Truth Tiger

Gemma Amor

'I love you,’ she says, her breath hard-won and shallow. Her hand twitches as I hold it gently in mine. She dies with a small, brave smile on her face, her beautiful face. A final, rasping rush of air collapses her chest. Her grip loosens. The smile fades.

I sit beside her, staring, wide-eyed and numb with shock, stroking her still-warm fingers as nurses and doctors rush into the room, responding to the alarm that sounded when Robin’s heart stopped beating. They gently pry my hand free of hers and shuffle me into a corner, out of the way, but I do not want to be out of the way, I do not want to let go. She is my person, she does not belong to the uniforms and bleeping machines, she belongs in my arms, in my bed, in my home, in my life. Don’t they know that? Don’t they know my own heart stopped beating when hers did? Do they see me at all, standing here against the wall, watching this all unfold with a blank, blank stare? Maybe not, maybe I have turned invisible. I feel invisible. I feel unmade. My face is numb, I am featureless and rigid, I can feel nothing, not even my own skin.

There are attempts at resuscitation. I watch these remotely, as if looking at the moon through a telescope. The idea this is all an elaborate performance will not leave my mind. I keep expecting the players to remove their surgical masks, I keep expecting Robin to sit up in her bed and shout, ‘Surprise!’ at me. She does not. A man places electric pads on her chest. There is a loud noise as the charge builds, and the defibrillator activates. Robin’s body rises slightly from the bed, slumps back down.

The process is repeated.

My wife remains dead at the end of it.

I am nothing more than a piece of wall.

The activity in the room slows. The atmosphere changes to one of hushed sadness, of appropriate sympathy. Gentle looks are thrown in my direction, and a time of death is announced quietly.

Thirteen-thirty-three.

I am told I can sit with Robin for a while, and the room vacates. I hear murmured conversations, grief-soaked cries in the corridor outside where Robin’s parents wait for news.

Silence falls, heavy as my heart. No more machines, or beeps, or oxygen pumps. Blessed silence.

I look at my dead wife and shake my head.

‘You’re not dead,’ I say to her, and the words come out with confidence.

I shake my head again, and the motion repeats, picks up momentum, so the hospital bed rattles slightly on its wheeled feet.

‘No. I’m not allowing this,’ I continue, and I seize her hand in mine once again, my head still wagging back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. There is a small indentation, a little channel on her left ring finger, where her wedding band used to sit before it was cut away by the ambulance crew. They gave the pieces back to me later, and I thought what good is this? But I accepted them anyway.

I run my own fingertip across the smooth channel, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I used to do this to her hand when she was alive, and she would allow it for a minute, maybe two, before pulling her hand back and murmuring something about how I would wear all her skin away if I kept on at it.

The fact she does not pull her hand away now is making a ruin of me.

‘No,’ I say once more, louder this time, for those in the back. ‘This was not part of our plan, Robin. I’m not allowing this. Okay? Do you hear me?’

If she does, she doesn’t reply, but that’s fine.

I know what I have to do.

I stand, although I am not sure how, because it is proving difficult to send the appropriate messages to all the parts of my body I need to with this solid wooden brain of mine. But something must have made it through, some slow, instinctive signal, and with a last, longing look at my Robin, my darling, my person, ‘You’re my people,’ she would say, and I would correct her, ‘Person, dummy,’ and she would flip me off and say ‘Whatever, it still stands,’ and oh God, my heart is no longer a block of oak but a burning coal in my chest, I leave the room.

Then I am running, running through the hospital corridors. Behind me, Robin’s mother shouts after me.

‘Steve!’  she cries, her voice anguished. ‘Steve!’

I carry on running. There is no back now, only forward.

Behind me, my mother-in-law’s voice is cut short by a low, guttural growl.

I run faster. Through the hospital, barging past a man with a bleachy mop who slops it around on the floor apathetically, crashing into a nurse and continuing on without apology, hopping over a small child having a tantrum in the ER waiting room, out through the sliding doors.

And I hear a sound, following close behind me.

I dare not turn around, for I know what it will be. I can hear claws, sharp as razors, tick-tacking and skittering about on the polished floor and then scratching across concrete and road as something large, and heavy, and striped catches my scent and gives chase.

But that’s okay. I’ve outrun the Truth Tiger before, I can do it again.

Running, arms and legs pumping like pistons through the grounds, past the parked cars, hardly hearing the multitude of ambulance sirens wailing in the distance as they race towards the ER. Across the street, dodging taxis and bikes and scooters, drivers slamming on brakes and screeching to a halt to let me pass. People yelling at me, their faces shocked, angry. It’s a blur to me, all these things, a blur as I run until my lungs burn.

Behind me, the Truth Tiger gains ground.

Finally, the streets begin to feel more familiar. I am nearly home. My house comes into sight, sitting in a quiet green pool of overgrown grass at the end of a cul-de-sac, along which it is obvious that all the other houses are well-tended, except for mine. Well, I have had other things to think about, haven’t I? No time for mowing the grass or taking the bins out or washing the windows. I’ve had a sick wife to care for.

My door is suddenly before me, and I find I am fumbling in my pocket for my keys with shaking hands. Finally, I feel serrated key-teeth under my fingertips, and wrench my hand up, jabbing the key at the general direction of the thin lock-slot as something huge, and warm, and smelly and fast races up at me from behind, and I turn the key in the lock, knowing that the door, warped by rain and summer heat, sticks at the bottom unless you kick it, and so kick it I do, watching in slow motion as yet more green paint flakes off, there is a real bald spot there now at the bottom of the door, a bald spot I should probably sand down and repaint so the door looks halfway respectable, but I have other things in my life, on my mind, and…

The Truth Tiger is upon me, her claws sinking into my shoulders, her mouth inches away from my jugular, her fetid breath livid with rotting flesh pouring into my nostrils and threatening to choke me alive. I dive inside, shaking her off, falling onto my back, and I see her in her full glory for a second, the beast that haunts my waking hours, and has done since Robin first got her diagnosis. The Truth Tiger, her dark, striped fur matted with knots and mud and dried gore, yellow bones showing through her hide, lips peeled back and gums rotting, whiskers bent, tail stringy and balding at the tip, tongue black and spotted as mould, showed up the next day, and she was everywhere I went alone, without Robin: crouching in the bushes, tail swishing from side to side, prowling along rooftops, hiding behind bins and under cars. If you were to lift up my shirt, you would see my body, scarred with her claws. I have managed to escape thus far, but only just, and I am getting slower and weaker as she grows more and more hungry.

Our eyes lock together for an instant, and I am stunned to see a degree of recognition in her enormous glowing irises, which don’t look like a Tiger’s at all, but more like...more like…

I kick her in the face, then slam the door shut with my outstretched feet as she rears back. Safe at last, I lie on the floor staring at a water-stained ceiling, breathing hard. Blood is puddling out of eight long gashes on my back: claw marks. I add them to my collection of hurts, knowing there will be more, for the scars run deep and criss-cross almost every available spot of real estate.

Then, when I can trust my voice again, I call out:

‘Honey? Honey! I’m home!’

Robin does not reply. The tiny part of my brain that is still functioning properly tries to tell me this is because she is dead, but I don’t wish to listen to that part of my brain, so I groggily get to my feet and head for the sitting room, where I know I last left her. It’s quite difficult to move through my house, because I have let things get into a bit of a state during the long while Robin's been in the hospice. There is a lot of detritus lying around, old plates of food stacked up on the floor, plastic bags, takeout food cartons, plastic bottles, clothes, shoes, books, things I have dumped going from one room to the next, medical paraphernalia, old boxes, other things I saved because I thought I might need them then piled in an unsteady stack when I realised I didn’t, and this, coupled with the overgrown house plants my wife used to tend so diligently, plants like potted palms and money trees—but money doesn’t grow on trees, I would always say, and she would laugh dutifully and roll her eyes—and devil’s ivy and bromelias and even a Madagascan dragon tree, means our house is no longer a house but a jungle, an overgrown, lush, almost impenetrable jungle. I tread a path I have trodden many times before, wondering if I can hear the Truth Tiger rumbling in the base of her throat behind me or if it is just my exhausted, overactive imagination, feeling the scars on my back throb and burn, hearing the thin, nascent whine of fresh flies and sated insects moving busily in the fetid air ahead of me, following the thin line I have carved out through the snarled, creeping chaos, and eventually, I make my way to the middle of the house, where a small simple space remains, and in that small space, almost completely veiled beneath a buzzing cloud of insects, two lounger chairs face each other: one for me, and one for Robin.

And, as expected, one of the chairs is occupied.

‘Hello, love,’ I say, leaning over her from behind, and bending my head to kiss the top of hers. A burst of shiny green bullets zoom away from my intrusion: cadaver flies, blow flies. They whizz past my face and circle back, resettling on the body of my love. Strange wiry strands of hair tickle my lips as I greet her, and underneath the hair I can feel the cold, sticky skin of her scalp. It used to revolt me, but now it doesn’t, even though I can see maggots wriggling around in her lap, even though the flies cluster and dance like a murmuration of starlings, it doesn't bother me, I stopped caring about things like that a long time ago.

And I take a seat opposite her then, this woman I have made my own, this substitute, this poor man’s Robin, and I can see it is not my real wife, I know this, the Truth Tiger knows this, anyone who could see me right now would know this, for my real wife is dead and cold in the hospital I left behind, but a man can pretend, can’t he? A man can be resourceful, a man can use his hands and tools to visit the local cemetery and pluck the freshly laid turf, pull the newly sown body that might resemble his wife up, up into the night air, and a man could carry this new wife home with him carefully, so carefully, and set her up in his wife’s old chair and talk to her as if Robin had not been eaten from the inside out by a thing called cancer, and a man can see that this body is not his love’s body, and he can go to Robin’s wardrobe and pull her carefully laundered and ironed clothes from their hangars, because Robin always looked nice, she liked nice things, clean linen, fresh flowers, sparkly jewellery, neatly manicured nails, he could take some clothes down to the body and dress it up like Robin and then, when that does not do the trick, he can take down the picture of him and her on their wedding day, it’s a large photograph, just about the right size to make a mask, and a man can cut Robin's face out of the picture and attach it to the golem in front of him and finally, he can create an illusion just convincing enough in the poor, strangled light of a late afternoon to pass muster.

Except he knows, I know, I know, I know, it is not her, and…

There is a rustle in the ferns behind Robin’s chair. A thick, wet rattle in the green recesses behind the plant pots and Chinese food cartons. A swishing sound, a sound I know to be the flick and slash of a tiger’s tail as it whips from side to side, an anticipatory motion always, always followed by the flex of muscle, the baring of teeth, the unsheathing of claws, and as the Truth Tiger emerges slowly, stiffly from between the house plants, eyes fixed on me, I can see she is angry, she has always been angry, for what I have done is abominable, and it won’t bring Robin back, will it?

But a man can pretend.

And I will continue to pretend as the Truth Tiger lowers its chest to the ground, wriggles its haunches, and launches itself at me like a coiled spring. I will continue to pretend as the Truth Tiger sinks her jaws into the tender skin of my face, ripping and tearing and snarling, and I will continue to pretend as the Truth Tiger, who I cannot outrun any more, devours me alive, for Robin is dead, and I loved her, but she would be so disappointed in me now, and I have no fight or flight left within.

I try to form words with my blood-filled mouth, but it is too hard, for the Truth Tiger has ripped out my tongue with her hungry, keen bite, so I think it instead:

I love you Robin, I love you.

My own breath is hard-won and shallow.

The Shock of Death

Michelle Tang

Electricity is everything and everywhere. It arcs across the sky like the hand of God exacting vengeance, yet imbues an infant’s nursery with soft yellow light. Mankind flourishes because we wield electricity, bend it to our purpose; a man who can use it to bestow life itself is most powerful of all.

But it was not for love of power that I agreed to help Celeste. Some might have called me a romantic, but it was for a force even stronger than a river of electrons that I sat down in my office, long after the workday was done, planning the unthinkable. I wasted the first hour relishing the memory of our meeting that day.

“Please, Landon. You have to do something.” Celeste’s brown irises were molten chocolate, her long eyelashes strung with teardrops like dew on morning grass. I handed her my handkerchief. I envied the silk square as she pressed it against the inner canthus of each eye, held it to her perfect nose and blew a delicate honk. I inhaled deep, trying to take in as much of her scent as I could, wishing the very molecules would bind to my olfactory cells so I could smell soap and lavender all day.

“What can I do?” I was bewildered. “My dear, I hold no sway over judges.” My back straightened and my face grew stern. “Have I not done enough for you already?”

She waved my kerchief as if swatting my words away. “Giving up your private practice to become Chissolm Penitentiary’s physician was hardly a sacrifice. You always moaned how bored you were with your beige patients and their beige ailments, and now you never tire of your work.”

“Treating stab wounds and overdoses on illicit substances is admittedly more exciting than high blood pressure, it is true.”

Celeste took my hand in both of hers and my own blood pressure rose. “Jessica and I are so thankful for your help, Landon. When I think about how the last eight years might have gone without hearing her voice, without knowing if she’s eating well, I…” Her voice trailed off.

Once a week I saw my cousin Jessica under the guise of following the diabetes I’d falsely diagnosed her with. She called Celeste from my office while she ate the food Celeste sent with me. There was little danger of being discovered: the guards didn’t care what I did as long as I left no visible marks on the patients, something the previous doctor couldn’t resist. The nurses were burned out, tired of caring for shiv wounds only for the stitches to reopen once the women were released back into general population. In exchange for my cooperation, I was able to see Celeste every week. For that prize alone I would have done anything.

In two days, Jessica was to be executed by electric chair. It was for that reason Celeste begged to meet with me, begged me to do the impossible. It was only when my daydreaming gaze strayed to my desk lamp that the idea came to me. Hadn’t Galvani discovered that an electric spark could make severed frog legs move, their nerves and muscle fibers still dancing to the music of electrons? Hadn’t I myself revived fluttering hearts with voltage from a defibrillator? Like many things in medicine, electricity was both giver and taker of life. I formed a plan.

Jessica’s last day came quickly. My role in executions was simple, merely having to announce the prisoner deceased after the act. As usual, I joined the procession behind the prisoner, giving the warden a smile as I did. My cousin looked younger than her thirty-five years, her eyes large and frightened beneath her newly shaved head. We marched down grim cement hallways underneath bulbs that flickered in their metal cages. The chalky odor of moisture festering within the cracks of the concrete tickled my nose until we reached the small death chamber. The black curtains were drawn at first, and I felt nervous at the thought of performing my little experiment in front of Celeste. Truth be told, I did not care much if it worked for my cousin’s sake, but only as a means to show the extent of my devotion, and my genius, to her lover. You see, Celeste? My love for you is so vast I will reach through the veil of death itself to save you pain. If I failed, at least she would have seen that I’d tried, and perhaps that would incline her to look at me more favorably when her mourning period was over.

The executioner, Bobby, was already there. He nodded to me, busy with ensuring his contraption was ready. We’d worked together for years, and I knew better than to try to save Jessica by sabotaging the electric chair. Bobby would triple-check that the sponge beneath the helmet was wet enough, the wires leading to the doomed prisoner’s head and leg were intact, and then he’d check his control panel again, not leaving its side until the deed was done. Father Ferdinand, gripping his bible with one wrinkled brown hand, peeled off from our group as soon as he could and leafed through his worn bible to ready his prayer. The two guards remained by the only door with the warden.

The curtains were pulled back with a scratch of metal hooks on metal rod. Most of the chairs outside were empty. There were one or two reporters as well as the usual voyeurs that enjoyed watching people die; I averted my eyes from the anticipatory glee on their faces. The victim’s family was there: Overhill and his wife, both thin-lipped and grim. Across the room sat Celeste with Jessica’s parents, and a blond man in a suit who should be a lawyer, if Celeste had listened to my instructions. Celeste was lovely, wide-eyed and drawn, a grey tinge to her face.

At the sight of her parents and wife, my cousin gave a shout. It was wordless, but I had known Jessica my whole life and could interpret her unsophisticated utterances. The cry contained grief, love, and regret, as well as happiness that her parents, who had welcomed her into the world, had come to see her leave it. Her mother, wrinkled and white-haired beyond her years, bowed her head and wept, while her father sat ramrod straight, only moving to put an arm around his wife. All of them, including Celeste, were careful not to look at me.

“Any last words, Miss Weston?” Father Ferdinand asked.

Jessica swallowed a few times, trying to get her emotions under control, long enough I worried she’d forgotten the lines I’d bid her memorize. Finally, she lifted her chin and nodded. “I proclaim my innocence, Father. If I should survive this execution, let that be God’s sign that I did not commit cold-blooded murder, and that He wishes me to live, and be free. May you be the first witness of His holiness.” Her eyes flickered towards me and I gave a small nod. She’d spoken as though the words had come by inspiration rather than by rote.

Ferdinand came from a large family of religious zealots, but his work with the worst of society had made him cynical. I’d always felt he was waiting for a miracle to set his faith alight. At Jessica’s words, at the sight of her thin frame further diminished by the large chair and wide leather restraints, Ferdinand’s tired brown eyes flared with a sudden fervor.

Ferdinand took extra time blessing my cousin, so much so Bobby got impatient and checked on Jessica’s attachments in the midst of the priest’s prayers. We always took lunch or dinner together, the three of us, after an execution, and I could hear Bobby’s stomach growling from where I stood. Ferdinand eventually backed away, and we all eyed the clock on the wall. Three minutes until five o’clock. I waited, hands sweating, until there was only a minute left, and then waved at Bobby.

“One moment,” I said to the room and to the audience outside, striving to keep my lips from quirking, or to otherwise reveal my charade. “The patient’s stress is causing hyperglycemic symptoms.” I made a big show of taking out my medical bag and drawing up a syringe full of clear liquid from an insulin vial. Bobby widened his eyes at me in disbelief. I could imagine the ribbing I’d get from him at the restaurant. What kind of doctor worries about a patient’s blood sugar right before they’re executed, Landon?

“We don’t want Prisoner Weston to suffer unnecessarily, do we?” I said as I approached my cousin, and I must admit a small, traitorous lump of emotion rose in my throat. We’d grown up together, after all. If I’d married Celeste, it might have been me who’d found her, bloody and robbed, stumbling from the alley. It might have been me who’d beaten her attacker to death, me who sat, pale and sweating, in this chair. A lifetime of memories passed between Jessica and I in the time it took to approach her. I swabbed her skin with an alcohol swab and inserted the needle into a large vein in her arm, rather than in the subcutaneous fat.

“Ten seconds.” Bobby’s voice was annoyed.

I took a step back, empty needle in hand. Jessica stared at me, eyes wide at first before clenching closed in pain. I hoped I’d added enough muscle relaxant to keep her from convulsing, that the concoction’s half-life was accurate. In a moment her body became slack, held up only by the straps on the chair. No one else seemed to notice she wasn’t breathing, but I suppose that was my job. “Please proceed, Executioner.”

“Back up, Doc.” Bobby threw the switch and a loud buzz filled the room. A shock of two thousand volts would kill a living man. What would it do to a woman recently dead, say from a heart-stopping dose of toxin injected directly into her circulatory system? Would her heart restart, her brain re-awaken? Once the idea had come to me in my office, I couldn’t stop wondering. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, harnessing lightning to resurrect my monster.

My eyes moistened to see Celeste hunched over her lap. My uncle’s stoicism broke: tears ran down his loose jowls and his lips clamped together. My aunt pressed her face into his chest. In a moment, Bobby turned off the device. In the silence, I took a tentative step over to my cousin. She looked like they all did afterwards, pale and unmoving. I placed my first two fingers on her neck, over her carotid artery; flashed a light in her eyes to check for corneal reflex. Nothing. I nodded at the warden and looked towards the clock to declare the time of death.

My little experiment had failed. Perhaps I’d needed a lower voltage, or defibrillator pads on her chest. Just as I was about to withdraw my fingers from Jessica’s pulse, my own heart skipped. Was that movement within her throat?

I fumbled for my stethoscope. Bobby raised his salt-and-pepper eyebrows, alarm on his face. I pressed the diaphragm of the stethoscope against Jessica’s chest. “Quiet, please,” I said, though everyone in the room and in the audience had frozen as they watched me. Lub-dub lub-dub. There it was! Internally, I crowed with absolute delight. I, Landon Everest, had defeated the electric chair! I composed my face into an expression of surprise. “There is a heartbeat. This woman lives.”

Jessica blinked open her eyes. She was expressionless, lips parted, gaze distant—perhaps she was in shock. I wondered what she had seen, if anything, before the electricity brought her back from the dead.

In the audience, people were standing. Celeste gripped her mother-in-law’s hand in her own, hope shining in their faces. Hiram Overhill and his wife scowled towards us.

“We have to do it again, then.” Bobby turned to his control panel, bewildered. “In the rare cases someone survives the first time, we have to do it again until they’re dead.” He reached for the switch handle again.

“Hold in the name of God!” Father Ferdinand, eyes flashing and full of tears, leapt forward. The old priest gripped each of Jessica’s hands in his own.

“Let go, Ferdinand.” Bobby’s voice was a growl.

“I will not. If you wish to kill this woman, the electricity will kill me too.”

“You’re innocent. She’s not.”

“God has saved her, Bobby! Did you not hear her last words? God saved her to prove her innocence.”

“Innocent? She was found covered with blood beside the Overhill boy’s body.” Bobby gestured to the older couple in the audience, becoming careless as his anger grew. This was not a discussion for the public to hear.

The warden cleared his throat. “We should go to my office to discuss this. Someone pry Father Ferdinand away from the prisoner.”

“In the meantime, let me tend to Prisoner Weston in my clinic,” I said. The man in the suit beside Celeste was weaving his way down through reporters scribbling into notebooks. “I believe Miss Weston’s family has a lawyer present who wishes to be involved in the discussion.”

I unstrapped my cousin, who spoke not a word. She did not have a mark on her, save for the tiny puncture hole from my syringe. “Can you stand, Miss?” I asked.

Jessica placed her hands on the arms of the chair and pushed herself upright, but oh, how she trembled! She leaned on the guards as we left the room, moving like a newborn calf. She threw a glance at her family, once, but no expression colored the blankness of her face.

The walk away from the death chamber was quiet, the guards troubled, I exultant. In the privacy of my clinic room, I allowed my face to show my triumph. “I did it, Jessica. How many doctors can say they’ve found a way to circumvent the electric chair?” Her vital signs were fine. Except for the shaved head and a grey tinge to her skin, she looked as she always did. I took blood from her to send to the lab, talking all the while about what had happened and my theories on what the electricity had done to her body.

At some point, I noticed she had made no utterance, nor shown any emotion. She was so grey and silent that when she closed his eyes she might have been a corpse, and yet she breathed, and moved. The guards escorted her back to her cell while her fate was decided. My promise to Celeste was fulfilled, and what was more, I had made an important scientific discovery. I yearned to write a paper about my experiment and submit it to the most prestigious of medical journals. It galled me to know I could take no credit for my findings, but better to imprison my news than to find myself imprisoned.

It was during Jessica’s third weekly appointment with me that it became apparent my cousin had not improved. Celeste’s sweet voice emanated from the telephone receiver, but Jessica did not speak. She grunted, now and again, but naught passed her lips save the food Celeste had cooked.

Still, life seemed to go back to normal for nearly two months. Father Ferdinand saw the experience as his own personal crusade and had run to his parish with the story. He came into my office one day, dropping into a chair in exhaustion.

“You don’t look well, my friend,” I said. His once-thin frame was reduced to sinew and skin. As I’d expected, the priest was ascribing to a most ascetic lifestyle now he had found his religious cause.

“I worry about Jessica Weston. I have been praying for her.”

“Hiram Overhill will not relent, Ferdinand. He has bought one judge, and unlimited means to buy another. Jessica Weston killed his only son.” And so would I have, if I had been the one to find the drug-addled young man with Celeste’s blood on his fists.

“Not only for her mortal fate, Landon, but for her spiritual. She’s not the same as she was before.”

“Life changes people. I don’t imagine death is any different.”

“When Lazarus came back from the dead, I wonder if he became mute and stone-faced like our prisoner.”

I shifted in my seat, wishing to change the subject. “Tell me of your efforts on her behalf.”

“There are people outside, calling for her release. She has been executed, and God has seen fit to save her. Her punishment has been served.”

“Historically—”

“I know what they’ve done in the past with those who survived execution. Jessica is different. She called on God to intervene on his behalf, and God did! Jessica is a symbol of faith, a miracle made whole.” The light in Father Ferdinand’s eyes dimmed and he muttered, mostly to himself, “If she can be considered whole. It seems to me like her soul has flown, leaving but the cage.”

I jumped from my chair and opened the door, signaling my desire for him to leave. “You are poetic in your old age, Ferdinand. You’ll have to excuse me, I have a patient arriving shortly.” I waited until he left and sat down at my desk again, a sick churn of dread in my stomach.

Jessica became a cause célèbre, the center of the debate between facts versus faith. It was a fact that when Jessica Weston came upon her lover, stumbling out of an alley where Celeste had been robbed and bloodied, Jessica entered the alley and beat the man to death with a brick. It was whispered that if the robber’s father had not been the powerful Hiram Overhill, who had the ear of judges, Jessica might have spent a few years in prison rather than on death row. As I had hoped, the Christian community called for my cousin’s release, saying her salvation was a sign that God forgave her, and who were we to ignore God’s message?

***

“Landon, did you hear? They’re going to release Weston.” Bobby looked like he wanted to spit. He’d been grilled on his protocol, his technique subjected to scrutiny and criticism ever since Jessica’s resurrection. “Never in my twelve years here have I ever had a prisoner survive.” He looked at me askance. I met his eyes with what I hope was a look of genuine puzzlement. The warden had commissioned scientists to figure out how Jessica might have survived, experimenting with mice that were given insulin just before electrocution. I should have discarded my tampered vial of insulin, but the fluid inside was a feat of alchemical brilliance, and not one I was sure could be replicated.

One night a few days after Jessica’s release, Celeste invited me over for dinner. It was a magical evening, with only the two of us talking, and Jessica a grey statue at the table. Though her cooking was as delicious as usual, I did not have much appetite. Jessica shoveled in food so quickly I wondered if she even tasted it.

I helped to do the dishes. Celeste and I stood hip to hip at the sink, as though we were the couple, and my heart thrilled at the warmth of her proximity, the smell of her.

“She’s not the same, Landon.” Her white teeth bit her plump lower lip and her eyes darted towards the dining room table, where her lover still sat. “She eats and sleeps, and her heart beats, but this is not Jessica.”

The sick feeling to my stomach began to burn, as though instead of fish and potatoes I’d swallowed smoldering coal. “The experience was traumatic,” I said, my voice a murmur. “Perhaps she just needs time.”

Celeste glanced at her lover in the next room. Jessica stared straight ahead, not moving, though we had cleared the plates long ago. “Darling, why don’t you go sit on the couch?” she said.

My cousin stood and walked towards the living room. Their old couch creaked with her weight.

“She obeys what I say, but she never talks. She never sings anymore. Sometimes she looks at me, and the look in her eyes is familiar, like my Jessica is back, but then that blankness returns.” Celeste’s brown eyes filled with tears, and before I could stop myself I raised my hand to brush them away. She jerked her head away from my touch, took a step back from me, and the moment of marital bliss I had been enjoying was broken. A silence fell between us, growing heavier the longer it lasted.

“Thank you so much for all you’ve done,” Celeste said, her voice strained. She wiped her eyes.

“Thank you for dinner.” I left, bidding my cousin goodbye. She nodded her head but did not look in my direction. Her hair had started to grow back from the close shave.

I did not hear from Celeste in weeks. I tried to think of reasons to see her, just her. Jessica was my cousin, I needed no excuse, but I dreaded seeing her grey face again. As much as I missed Celeste, the burning within my insides worsened when I thought of the sadness in her face, and it was both an agony and a relief to be away from her.

I no longer exulted over my successful experiment, nor wished my name to appear in medical journals. It was a shameful secret instead, and subsequent executions were uncomfortable. Bobby was tense and stern, barking out orders to ensure no other prisoner survived the chair. Father Ferdinand was distracted, his body wasting away to nothing as though his fiery eyes were consuming him from within. His prayers droned on and on. There were no more friendly meals after executions. I began to consider leaving Chissolm Penitentiary for the peace of private practice.

One day, a guard knocked on my assessment room door. I finished with the patient I’d been seeing before poking my head out.

“Sorry, Doc, but you’ve got a visitor.” The guard leered in such a way I knew it was a woman, and my heart leapt. Since my mother died, there were only two women in my life, and one had spent enough time here that I knew she would never willingly return. I hurried to the front door, fighting to maintain a dignified walk while my legs longed to sprint. Had she missed me? Perhaps weeks of silence with Jessica had made her appreciate my wit.

As expected, it was Celeste waiting for me before the security desk. Her loveliness robbed me of breath, for a moment, although it was clear she was having trouble. There was a vagueness in her brown eyes, a sharpness to her cheekbones. She surprised me with an embrace, and I was aware of the guards elbowing each other as they watched.

“Landon, I’ve never been to your work before, except that one time.” For a moment, she trembled in my arms. “Will you give me a tour?

It was against the rules, but the guards gave me exaggerated winks and allowed her in without even a cursory check. After all, I was no prisoner. I showed her my office. She sat in the chair that Jessica used to sit in when she called her, her eyes closed and with a half-smile full of memories. She seemed impressed at the tampered insulin bottle in my drawer, filled with the concoction I’d injected into her lover. Celeste rolled the vial in her hand, eyes a mystery. I showed her my clinic, but she did not seem interested in the assessment or procedure rooms. She asked for the use of my lavatory. When she returned to me, she laid a hand on my wrist.

“Will you show me the electric chair, Landon?”

I could not refuse her even such a macabre request. She was charming and warm, as though the awkward moment in her home never happened, and I would have done anything to keep her smiling at me.

The death chamber was unguarded. I unlocked the door and let us in.

“There’s no one in here,” she said.

“No executions scheduled today.”

“It was quite brilliant, what you did. Thank you.” The smile left her mouth. She neared the electric chair, brushed dainty fingertips along the crude leather straps. “Jessica died here.”

“But she returned, Celeste.”

“Her body, it returned, yes. But despite your best efforts, it returned empty, a mere husk. My wife is an echo of what she once was. Whatever made Jessica, Jessica has gone.” She slumped down in the chair as though exhausted, placing her arms over the wooden arms as though expecting to be restrained. “She has left me.”

“Perhaps it takes time. My cousin has been through a terrible trauma.”

“No.” Celeste huffed a mirthless laugh. “I mean, she has left me. Two days ago now. She took nothing with her. She left no message but a badly drawn heart and her initial.”

A terrible, wild hope reared its head within me. I took a step closer. “I’m so sorry, Celeste. Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes, Landon. That’s why I’m here. I’m always asking you for things, it seems.” She was breathless, her chest rising and falling with shallow movement.

“Whatever I can do to help, my dear.”

She slid lower in the chair. “If I died in the exact spot as my wife, would my soul find hers more easily, do you think?” Her words were slurring, her eyes with their long lashes drifting closed. Her back arched suddenly and her face contorted in pain.

“Celeste!” I hurried to the chair, wrapping my arms around her and trying to sit her up. “Celeste, what have you done?”

There was no answer. Her purse slipped from her shoulder to land on the floor, the insulin vial rolling onto the floor with a clink. I scooped it up with one hand, the other searching for Celeste’s pulse. I did not need to check the container: the rubber stopper was missing, the container empty. I cursed in frustration, bursting into tears. Not Celeste. Please, not Celeste.

A desperate idea came to me. Hurrying, I strapped her into the chair. Her hair was long and I had no means to shave it, but I slapped the wet sponge onto her head anyway and hoped for the best. The other wire I placed on her lower leg, and I ran to throw the switch, wiping my streaming eyes with the sleeve of my lab coat. I wished Ferdinand were here to pray to God, for my faith lay solely in science and the power that made a dead woman convulse against the leather straps holding her.

I turned off the device and returned to Celeste, jabbing my shaking fingers into the side of her throat. As with Jessica, at first there was nothing.

In a few moments, however, I felt a pulse, and I was broken and remade within those few heartbeats. I wept with relief and unstrapped her. She blinked open her eyes but said nothing. Her skin was grey, like Jessica’s, her hair singed and wiry on the top where the sponge made contact. I left work without a word to anyone, taking her out the back door and going home.

I got a phone call that evening. Somehow Bobby knew that the electric chair had been used, and he informed the warden. It was not difficult to discover who among us with a key had no alibi, and worse, was seen taking a visitor towards the death chamber. I was given the option to leave on my own volition, or to be fired.

I went back to private practice. It was boring, yes, but now that I had someone waiting for me at home, I found the days bearable. Celeste was … not how she used to be. She did not speak, nor show emotion, and yet her body lived, and ate, and listened to commands. An echo, she’d called Jessica; an apt term. And yet, because I had yearned for years to have her at my side, an echo of Celeste was enough.

After a year of seeing her every day, it still felt like a wonderful dream. I began to imagine warm yellow light coming from a nursery, placed near our bedroom. One stormy day, I returned home from work to find the door ajar.

“Celeste!” I said from the foyer, shaking the rain off my umbrella. She did not come to greet me nor come to my repeated calls. As I searched for her, thunder crashed and rain pelted the window, a steady drumming that sounded like my fearful heart. On the kitchen table, I saw it. She had left a note. It was a yellowed square of paper, soft from being folded and unfolded so many times. Drawn on it was a crude heart, with a faded J scrawled beneath in my cousin’s hand. I did not know if Jessica had come to reclaim her, or if Celeste had left me to search for her, but my beloved was gone. I stared out the kitchen window as electricity flashed across the darkened sky, and my heart spasmed. I prayed the lightning would find my cousin and Celeste and pierce their grey bodies with my fury, stripping away the life beyond death that I alone had granted them.

Youngblood

Lindz McLeod

Five days after his untimely death, Rob stood outside my house, staring up at the window of my first-floor bedroom. Every few seconds, a low, guttural snarl leaked out over bloodless lips. His skinny arms spasmed, hands hanging loosely at his sides. He made no attempt to move a few feet to his right where the latched gate would have allowed him easy access to the paved garden pathway, lined with rose bushes planted during the Clinton years.

“I think it's romantic, really.” Yvette tapped the window with one long, scarlet nail. “Kinda sweet, know what I mean?”

“It doesn’t feel romantic. It feels like he's committing a crime right now.”

“He's dead, Suzanne,” my sister said, as if explaining basic manners to a child. “He's not exactly thinking through the consequences of his actions. You can't charge the dead with criminal intent. There's nothing there,” she pointed to her temple, “to indicate thought, ergo there's nothing there to punish. It would be like whipping a rock.”

***

A few minutes past midnight, I heard Rob break through the fence. After hours of pressure, the sheer weight of his still-fresh body had finally been enough to snap the wooden slats. I scrambled to the open window and peeked out from behind the curtain. He lumbered towards the house and pressed his face against the red bricks, squashing his nose flat.

Peering down from the safety of the first floor, I could smell a fetid, animal tang, underlaid by a touch of the cedar aftershave he'd favoured in life. He didn't smell dead yet. The moon illuminated the garden like a stadium floodlight, picking out small details I'd been too afraid to examine earlier. His blond hair was still relatively neat, streaked with a smattering of dirt. They'd buried him in the electric blue suit he'd worn to prom. I'd worn a dress of a similar shade, although it hadn't escaped his notice that the colour wasn't an exact match.

The breeze changed direction, flowing back towards him. His head snapped up. Wide eyes, devoid of emotion, fixated on me. His jaws snapped again and again, fruitlessly consuming the night air. I shrank back into my oversized t-shirt, pulling my goose-pimpled limbs into the safety of the cotton cocoon, and retreated into the safety of darkness. The sound of clashing teeth died down outside. He returned to smushing his face against the brick wall, emitting a continuous low whimper.

Around 3am, my father—wearing only boxers and slippers—leaned out of the living room window and poked Rob with the barrel of a loaded shotgun. I heard a familiar ka-thunk, but no shot followed. Rob continued to strain and growl, unwilling or unable to be swayed from his goal. When I slept, it was fitfully; the first bad night I’d had since his funeral, three days before. In the morning, I loaded the blender with healthy fruit and protein powder while several of the neighbours banded together to haul him out of our yard and chain him to a lamppost at the end of the street. He lunged every few seconds, pulling the chain taut around his neck. His eyes never left our house. He took no notice of the restraints or the hands pushing him backwards.

“Can't someone drive him out into the country and dump him there? I don't want to see him every time I leave the house.” I picked at the label on my t-shirt, worrying at the loose threads.

“Well, sweetie,” my father said, taking off his cap and wiping sweat from his forehead. “You'll just have to look the other way. He probably doesn't mean any harm. He loved you, that's all. Don't you kids like that sort of thing nowadays?”

“No. And I'm not a kid.”

“You know,” he continued, as if I hadn't answered. “Your vampire romances and your...” He floundered, trying to think of another creature. “Your Patrick Swayze ghost-types. Your sister’s always banging on about how attractive that Christian Beige is.”

“I don't want Rob anywhere near me, Dad.”

My father slung an arm over my shoulders. “Okay. I'll borrow Bill's truck and I'll drive him somewhere tomorrow. Does that make you feel better?”

It didn't, but politeness dictated I should never admit so.

***

I watched the men wrap Rob in a tarp and load him into the back of a truck. He strained against the material, glassy eyes fixed on our house. When he was safely ensconced, one of the men slapped the top of the truck and it pulled away from the kerb. Rob howled before they’d reached the corner. When the cries had died away, I could still hear the noise echoing in my head. He was gone, I told myself, and that was the end of our relationship. Finally, I was free.

Naturally, Rob returned before dinner the next day, and took up his previous position to the right of our front door.

“It's the damnedest thing,” my mother said, smoking out of the open window. “How far did you say you took him, Carl?”

“A good fifty miles.” My father heaped a second helping of peas onto his plate. “Fella’s like a homing pigeon.”

“That doesn't make sense,” my sister argued. “He didn't die here. It's not his house. Why wouldn't he go home?”

“He came for me.” I leaned against the wall. Three sets of eyes swivelled towards the doorway. “He texted me. Right before his car crashed. Said he was, uh, coming over.”

What he'd actually said was something I didn't want to repeat out loud.

“Well, there you go,” my father mumbled through a mouthful of potato mash. “Could just be he misses you.”

“Didn't you say you broke up with him before he died?” The cigarette between my mother's lips bobbed with every word.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Guess it didn't stick.” She blew a narrow plume of smoke into the warm night air.

“Guess not.”

***

At first I confined myself to the house, assuming if Rob couldn't see me directly, he might get bored and leave. After a couple of sleepless nights, tossing and turning as the low growl ebbed and flowed through my now-closed window, I moved my stuff to the guest bedroom. The thought of his corpse barnacled to our brickwork, waiting for a chance to invade my home, wasn't a comfortable one. Unfortunately, as soon as I moved, he did too; lurching around the corner of the house, stumbling over dirty boots left at the back door. When he caught sight of me through the kitchen window, his arms windmilled so hard his hand caught in the trellis and tore two fingers off. My mother went outside, armed with our grandmother’s cast-iron skillet, but Rob only had eyes for me. She sighed as she shovelled the fingers into the garbage.

“At least they don't move of their own accord, right?”

If she was trying to cheer me up, it hadn't worked. I started having nightmares about those fingers crawling through unknown holes in our outer walls, wriggling through gaps or open windows. Writhing under floorboards. I jumped at every shadow, sure I could feel them crawling on me. In life, his fingers had been a source of constant terror for me; they'd squeezed skin, poked soft flesh, texted cruel words, created passive-aggressive social media posts. His fingers had kept me in line. When fingers hadn't been enough, he wasn't above using his whole hand.

My parents had never known about Rob's past behaviour. They treated him now like an irritating but adorable dog who wasn't allowed inside only because it would soil the carpet. My own fear went far deeper. I woke every morning, sour-tongued and sweating, expecting to see his face looming over me. Lacking my usual gym access, I increased the amount I ran on my father’s treadmill every morning before breakfast. 3k became 5k. 5k became 10k. Running had once felt like an escape—a sanctioned activity where no one expected me to answer my phone, to be available to handle day-to-day life—and even Rob had approved of this hobby. Now I was trapped, sprinting in place like a terrified rodent on a wheel.

After two weeks, I cracked. Grabbing my keys, I bolted towards my car and threw myself inside, slamming the door just as Rob’s eight remaining fingers smashed against the window. He stooped, gnashing his teeth, staring at my chest. I locked the doors automatically, but he didn’t even try the handle. Perhaps he’d forgotten how. Pulling out of the driveway—fighting the urge to simply mow him down and leave him on the concrete slabs for someone else to deal with—I drove into town and bought a smoothie just for something to do. When I arrived home, my parents were watching TV, looking pleased.

“He left when you did. Haven't seen hide nor hair of him since.”

***

Rob turned up less than an hour later.

“He's standing in my begonias again, Carl.” My mother lit a cigarette without bothering to open a window.

My father sighed. “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

I left them to their bickering, aware that on some level this was my fault.

Rob followed me around all summer—to the hairdressers, where he watched a middle-aged woman lather and cut my hair in messy layers while the latest pop music played; to the mall, where I wandered between racks of the latest fashions without seeing anything. Once, I drove over a hundred miles to a Starbucks in the next city over. As I pulled back onto the highway, dirty chai latte safely nestled into the cup holder, I saw a stoop-shouldered figure shambling on the other side of the road. As I overtook him, he pivoted, and began to shuffle in my direction. I watched him in my rear-view mirror so long I nearly slammed into the Buick in front.

The driver gave me the finger. I didn’t retaliate. I deserved as much.

In the first week of autumn, I downloaded a dating app and made lunch plans with a nice systems analyst who bailed the second he saw Rob glowering through the window of the coffee shop. The same thing happened twice more before I learned my lesson and got creative; a date with a doctor on a Ferris wheel, a date with a barista at a zoo. I insisted on picking the date location and never chose a spot with fewer than three exits. Rob hadn't been able to get near me yet, so I didn't know for sure what he'd do if he had the opportunity, but I wasn't taking any chances.

Ironically, the date with a sound engineer in an escape room was the most relaxed I'd felt in a long time. As the clock began the final countdown, my unease crept back in. The engineer studied the last puzzle on the wall, slender fingers pulling at his short beard, then let out a triumphant yowl. We exited the room while he babbled about how he'd figured out the solution—something to do with Roman numerals—but I couldn't focus. The employee met us in the lobby, smiling brightly, camera held at the ready.

“Well done, guys! Want a photo with your time?” She held up a small whiteboard, the number 54 scrawled in green marker.

“Sure!” The engineer beamed. “Hey, don't you want one?”

Rob was standing outside, staring in through the frosted glass window.

“Okay.” I half-turned. “Um, where's your back entrance?”

The employee pointed. “Just down this corridor.” She raised the camera. “Ready?”

I smiled as best I could. The engineer's hand snaked around my waist and pulled me closer. Later, I'd check my email and study the photo. Rob's solemn face peeked over my shoulder, as if he'd been photobombing me. The engineer sent a short text thanking me for the pleasant afternoon and inviting me to another date the following week.

I declined.

***

Eventually, I called the cops. Two turned up and stood with hands on hips, watching Rob crush his face against the wall, red bricks leaving a dimpled impression on his skin. He wasn't sloughing like the others did. Held together by sheer spite, probably.

“Not much we can do for you.” The older cop sucked his teeth. “Sorry.”

“But he's committing a crime. Surely you can dispose of him? Or return him to the care of his parents? There must be a law abou—”

The cops exchanged looks. “Well, see, he hasn't done anything wrong yet, ma'am. Maybe you should take a little vacation, get yourself calmed down.”

“I'm perfectly calm. I’m telling you, he's stalking me.”

“Well, I guess you could choose to see it that way. But it's like, uh...” The younger cop swallowed. “A benign stalking. He ain't tried to hurt you, has he?”

I was so angry I could hardly breathe; the floor rolled under my feet, causing my knees to buckle. I slumped into the nearest chair, feeling like a bathysphere under immense pressure. “I mean—”

“The Supreme Court hasn't made any rulings about dead folks yet,” the young cop continued. “They say they want more information before they can start passing laws. This phenomenon is still new to us, and we have to ascertain the true nature of the beast before we can make any real headway.” Repeating a speech given by the mayor, word for word. Real smart.

“A woman in Michigan was attacked by her dead ex-husband.” I placed my fingers over my eye sockets and pushed, hoping to alleviate the pulsating rage. “I saw it on the news last week. Tore out her throat in front of her kids. The guy was put down. Dismembered. Listen, we've got plenty of shovels. You could do it right now.”

“That was a special case,” the young cop said, his moustache bristling. “But that's because he attacked her, you know? He actually committed a crime. Or what would have been a crime if he'd been alive, you know? This guy—” he pointed his radio antennae towards Rob, “he's just kinda... following you around.”

“That's what stalking is.”

“When it's a live person, sure, that's stalking.”

“But when it's a dead person, it's not?” I decided to change tack. “Fine. Can't I get a restraining order or something?”

The older cop leaned towards me and patted my shoulder in a paternal way. “Look, ma'am. We understand you're distressed by this, but he hasn't done anything wrong as such.”

“Yet.” Silence. I gave up and let my hands fall into my lap. “So, what? You're gonna wait until he's murdered me before you do anything? How is that supposed to help me?”

The cops exchanged glances again and rose as one. “Call us if the situation changes.”

***

Lawyers wouldn’t take my case. The press wouldn’t listen. Even my own family were starting to get tired of my complaints. Every day on the news I saw more and more violence enacted by dry-earthers—CNN’s ‘fun nickname’ for the newcomers—against regular people. A salesman in Mexico City, bitten to death by his ex-wife in a food court in front of his three children. An estate agent in Munich, devoured by her dead fiancée. A vet in Johannesburg, murdered on the job while the litter of puppies he’d been vaccinating wagged their tails and barked joyfully. Theories sprang up: dry-earthers went after the people they’d most loved in life. Dry-earthers went after the people they’d secretly hated. Dry-earthers attacked familiar smells. The truth was, nobody really knew. And I had no intention of finding out.

I applied for, and got, a decent job in Washington. Gave my sister all the clothes I couldn’t fit in my suitcase. Kissed my parents goodbye like I was a normal person moving across the country for a normal reason. They made me promise to call every week. I wondered how long until they saw me on the news.

Rob walked almost eleven hundred miles in two weeks and turned up just as I was about to sign the paperwork to adopt a kitten; his shoes had worn through and the bones of his feet clacked against the pavement. I fled without completing the adoption process, retreated into my new, ‘dry-safe’ apartment. Burrowed back into my old ways. The doormen were trained not to let him into the building, and to walk me outside whenever I chose to leave, which wasn't often these days. I had all my food delivered. I did my job remotely, working long hours. I bought my own treadmill.

Months passed. Sensing I had lost focus, but keen to retain my skillset, the company offered me the option to relocate to Canada. I jumped at the chance.

Rob walked there too. The snow during the winter months slowed him down, but he still turned up everywhere I went. I paid a vet a hundred dollars in cash to microchip him, and had the tracking map pulled up at all times on every device I owned.

Wherever I went, Rob followed. Eventually, I applied for a visa and moved to London. The small green blip on my tracking map crawled across the page, one millimetre at a time. My parents begged me to come home for Thanksgiving; I made plausible excuses. As a compromise, I flew home mid-March for two weeks. In my childhood bedroom I woke up drenched in sweat and shaking, expecting to see him outside, to smell the particular scent of cedar and rot. I'd lost weight. My skin was paler, always slightly clammy to the touch. The blip on my screen moved towards me no matter where I was in the world.

***

In England, I started therapy. I met a guy, fell in love, got engaged. He understood my predicament to begin with, but as the years wore on, I checked the map more and more frequently. Here was Rob, a blip halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. Here was Rob, emerging from the sea onto a rocky beach at Blackpool. Here was Rob, breaching the outskirts of London itself. Adamantly making a beeline for me, regardless of where I was. As inexorable as death itself. Time to fly home to the US for a month and let the whole hideous process begin again.

My fiancé watched me over the top of his canvas; charcoal in one hand, glass of whisky in the other. “Suze, don't you think this thing has gone on long enough? You check the map every hour. You don't sleep through the night anymore. Don't you think it's time to move on?”

“There's no such thing.”

“As closure?” He scoffed. “Come on. Don't be ridiculous. He's never even touched you. How bad could it be?”

I didn't know how to explain to him that Rob was going to be the death of me, and I knew that even if I expressed this notion out loud, he wouldn't believe me until it had actually happened. By which point it would be too late.

A couple of months later, my fiancé started sleeping on the couch. Three months after that, he left for an evening with some friends and never came home again. I saw his social media posts, happy and smiling, photographs taken in enclosed spaces with a girl who looked like I'd used to.

***

“You've got a heart murmur. You need to lower your blood pressure,” my doctor said. “Meditate. More vegetables. Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Exercise?”

“Six times a week.” I sat back in my chair. “How bad is the murmur?”

The doctor made a seesawing motion with her left hand. “Could be worse. Could be better. The stress isn’t helping.” She skimmed my file again.

“What are my options?”

“Valve repair or replacement. Pretty standard, comes with all the usual risks, but you're young and healthy. We feel sure you'll have a routine procedure and a full recovery. The science is very advanced these days. Practically routine.” She reached into the bowl on her desk, selected a lemon sherbet, and unwrapped the candy. “Sugar-free sweet?”

“No, thank you. Would it be possible to have a full heart transplant?”

She stared at me, crunching the remnants. The scent of lemon, heady and hot, wafted across the desk. “I think you misunderstand me, Ms Thomas. You don't need one.”

“Hear me out.”

***

A young man with an aversion to seatbelts provided my new heart. I felt relief as they wheeled me into the operating room; either way, I'd be free of Rob forever.

Getting a new heart was tough. Getting them to agree to hand over my old one was even harder. They kicked up a fuss, but I won in the end. Extenuating circumstances and all that. Seeing Rob loitering at the front of the hospital convinced even the most conservative medical professionals.

My sister flew in to assist me while I recovered. Two years later, she no longer found his attentions romantic; yelling at him when she took out the recycling, hitting him with the handle of a broom the help usually reserved for sweeping the communal hallways. Once I'd gained my full strength back, I dipped into my savings and scoured the internet. A couple of enquiries later, I found what I was looking for.

“But your heart, Suzanne,” my sister said, pulling damp clothes from the washing machine and passing them over. “It’s your heart. Just because—I mean, like, no man has a right to it. No entitlement whatsoever. It’s your heart, after all. There has to be another way.”

“Don’t be fooled.” I hung up a sock. “The heart isn’t the seat of the soul. The brain is the real throne. A heart is just an organ. The real me is in every fibre, every cell. I could basically replace every atom in my body one by one, and I’d still be the original me. Only now, I’d have a useful decoy. It’s basically the Ship of Theseus argument.”

She waved an airy hand. “You know I don’t watch any of those pirate shows.” Shoving a whole biscuit in her mouth, she chewed thoughtfully while I repressed a smile. “Does Rob know all this?”

“I damn well hope not.”

***

“What do you think?” the pilot yelled. “You wanna go further?”

“This is perfect, thank you.” I yanked the lid off the container and took the heart out. The organ lay in my palm, surprisingly heavy, and much paler than I'd expected it to be. I secured myself to the wall with a hook and lobbed the damn thing out of the window. It spiralled downwards and disappeared among the waves with barely a splash.

The pilot craned over his shoulder. “Nice shot.”

“Shouldn't you be watching where we're going?”

He gestured at the empty horizon. “Not a lot of traffic up here.” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “You okay?”

I considered. “I think I might be happy.”

“Oh yeah?” His round face crumpled in disbelief. “Didn't you just literally throw your heart into the ocean? Doesn't sound like the happiest thing to me.”

“It wasn't working.” I could no longer tell where the heart had disappeared, and my chest had begun to feel warm and tingly. “Sometimes you need to change the situation. Sometimes you need to change yourself.”

He shrugged, unconvinced.

***

The blip stayed in the Atlantic Ocean for days, then weeks, then months. I checked less and less as time wore on. A year later, I couldn't remember when I'd last looked at it; panicking, I pulled the map up, my fingers slick on the laptop keyboard. The blip was in the same place. He'd be there forever now. Rob had got what he thought he wanted, and I'd finally won my freedom.

What Doesn’t Kill You

Elle Turpitt

Dull throbbing registered. Impossibility. Gears and chips and metals—pain should not exist. But pain was evident, underlying, as eyes fluttered open and surveyed the room. Cold white ceiling. Surrounded by beeps and machinery, just enough awareness to know what they were.

“You’re awake.” Masculine. Trembling. Excited.

Head tilt. Whirrs as vision focused.

“Awake.” Voice soft. Feminine. Not like the first voice.

The man nodded, a bright smile on boy features. A tap on the table. He stood from the chair and towered over her, studied her. Fingers flexing, as if containing the urge to touch her. “Can you sit up?”

“I feel pain.”

“You’re adjusting. It should disappear soon.”

Sit up. Head swimming, information flowing in and out and around. Look down, two lumps created of muscle. Touch them, feel skin. Shuddering, focus on man.

“Pronouns.” A soft whisper. “Humans…use…pronouns.”

“Yes! Yours are she/her.” He sucked at his lips. “You’re learning. Fast.”

“I am not a woman. I am not…” Human. But what made a human? Flesh, muscle, bone? It seemed, in some way, they had them all. “I am…woman?”

“I mean, sort of. In all the ways that matter, yes.”

“What ways…don’t matter?” Still finding voice, still adjusting to the surroundings. To being…alive.

“It doesn’t…matter.” He blushed, looking down, body shaking, containing joy.

A word flashed through the brain; naked. “I need clothes.”

The door burst open, another man – slightly older, grey in hair, thick stubble on chin and cheeks whereas the other was clean-shaven—stumbled in, carrying a bag.

Smells drifted on the air.

“I can…smell.”

“Excellent!” the young one said, clapping his hands together. “Well, Professor, seems it was a success.”

Professor paused, studying her, before placing the bag on a counter and rushing towards them.

“Well, dear,” he said, with the same elements of contained joy as the younger had exhibited. “How do you feel?”

Closing eyes. Focusing on self. She. “I am…new-born. Adjusting. Understanding.”

“We’ve done it, lad.” Professor smiled. Strained.

The two men looked at one another, a shared glance to revel in their achievement.

The young one rambled, connecting her to the machinery before disappearing, saying he would get her clothes, leaving her with the professor. Professor Lawrence Turner. The younger man was Mason Owens, and as she explored the knowledge flowing into her mind, allowed herself to connect to the body, she listened to their conversations. Both men seemed excited by her presence, by what she could do or, rather, what they had achieved. Yet Turner barely looked at her, while Owens did nothing but.

She lifted her arm, stretched her fingers. Studied the faint brown spots on her skin and ran her fingers over them. Freckles. She smiled, looked up and watched Turner bend over a computer, typing something in.

“Professor,” she said.

“Yes, dear?”

“You gave me freckles.”

He paused, stilling, as she touched each in turn, making shapes on her arm.

“Was the star deliberate?”

“Does it matter?” he snapped.

She flinched. “I am sorry,” she said, the words rushing out, her database—mind—searching to discover his emotion and the appropriate response. It happened so fast, coming to her as a flash, the need to apologise. He is angry at me, so I must say sorry. She stored that information to access it again. “I did not mean to upset.”

He sighed, turned, and smiled.

Smiling, she found, was not an action performed by someone who was angry.

“It’s okay, my dear. You are still learning.” He patted her arm but did not make eye contact. “Owens added particular touches to you, I believe. Ones he thought would help you…appear more human.” Something in his tone…

“Oh.” She looked down at the freckles, and as Turner returned to his work, she closed her eyes, lost herself in the search. Women, smiling at cameras, freckles across their noses and cheeks. Arms stretched high, showing off the dots on their skin.

They were beautiful.

She opened her eyes, the creak of the door indicating Mason’s return. The younger man was lanky and skinny, as if food had been an afterthought for him for too long. He carried two brown paper bags, and as he looked to her, she had the thought she should be ashamed. Ashamed to sit there, unclothed. The phrase came to her – naked as the day she was born.

It was absurd. It was the day of her birth.

“Clothes,” he said, opening the bags. So happy, enthusiastic. She climbed off the table, her legs swinging over the side, as he handed her underwear, tops, and a set of skirts and shorts.

Turner leaned towards her, studying herm, yet still not meeting her gaze. “Owens, it is absolutely remarkable. The way you combined-”

“I’m sure she doesn’t want to sit here and freeze,” Owens said, although he would very well know she couldn’t freeze, even if she had wanted to. “Take those, there’s a small room through that door.” He pointed to the back of the room. “You can get changed in there. There’s a bed, too. And a TV. If you want to relax.”

“Thank you. Books?”

“Would you like books?”

As she climbed off the table, Owens came to her side.

“I can get you books. Just tell me which ones and I-”

She closed her heavy eyes. “Should I be feeling tired?”

Owens put a hand on her shoulder. “You are programmed to recognise and respond to human emotions and conditions. It maybe you need to recharge, and are identifying that as ‘tiredness’. You’ve had quite a busy day.”

“Yes.” At the door, she stopped, turned back, surveyed Turner studying the computer, a finger tapping on his chin. “Do I have a name?”

The two men looked at each other, then at her. Owens blushed. “No, we haven’t given you one. Perhaps you’d like to choose one?”

“Right now?”

“No. There’s no rush.” He smiled, and leaned just a little forward, as if to…

He pulled back, opened the door, and stepped away. “There you go. A little space, just for you.”

“Thank you.” She dipped her head and, carrying her new clothes, stepped into the room.

***

Something about the clothes seemed off. She held them against her, looking in the large floor-to-ceiling mirror, and felt none of them were quite her. A fluffy, pink top to sleep in. A pair of tight denim shorts. Dresses in pinks and purples. They were pretty.

But something wasn’t right. She felt it, deep inside, a space with no gears or metal. She shook her head. Impossible. She was all machinery, nothing else, able to walk and talk and think at the grace of the two men outside.

Placing the clothes on the bed, she looked at the walls. These, too, were pink. Pale, with darker spots. Red hearts. She frowned. Then searched. The room felt strange. Cold and barren, except a wardrobe and chest of drawers against the wall, and a single bed.

She put away her clothes. Why did she feel so strange? Something about the wardrobe, and the clothes, was familiar. But why? She knew nothing before that day.

Before any of that could be tackled, however, she changed into bright pink, fluffy pyjamas that scratched at her neck, and climbed into bed. She did not need sleep, not in the way humans did, but she needed rest. She closed her eyes, and told her mind to switch off.

***

For most humans, the act of switching off one’s mind was difficult. She was not really an exception to this, and she fought against her mind, pushing it to switch off, power down, please, just let me rest. But her mind insisted she pay attention, think, think, think, stop ignoring everything.

She had never been in this room before. Never done anything before that day, so why did she hate the bedroom so much? Why did it feel more like a prison?

As if it could not hold out any longer, her mind finally relaxed, and her body responded, her dreams full not of electronic sheep, but something else entirely.

***

A woman, a giant, talking to two young men—boys?—sitting on a sofa. Talking as if she couldn’t hear, couldn’t understand. Their faces were blurred, and she didn’t understand why she was there.

“If she’s drunk, don’t do anything. Just don’t. It’s not worth it. You never know what people will regret, and your lives will be ruined if you—”

A white flash, and she stood in front of the same woman, but this time the woman was smaller. Or maybe she was bigger?

“Why don’t you dress nicer? What is this crap? How will you ever attract a boy looking like—”

Maybe she didn’t want a boy. Maybe she wanted a girl, or no one at all. Her thoughts were jumbled, mixed, as the woman asked her if she’d even slept with anyone yet, telling her, “By your age…”

She shook her head, pressed a hand to her forehead. It felt…strange. Different. Another flash, and she was in a spinning bedroom, the world tilting, and someone was over her, pressing against her. Her tongue felt fat, everything around her distorted, the face above her smeared.

“You’re going to like this,” he whispered in her ear. “I promise.”

“No.” She squeezed the word out, realised she was in a skirt, with nothing against her legs, and his hand was in places she didn’t want it to be.

The door opened, and a voice said, “Oh my God,” before the door slammed shut.

Flash.

Girls, giggling, looking at her. Words echoing in her head.

Slut.

Boys coming up to her in school corridors. Memories, flooding in, one after another. No one noticed how quiet she was. She’d always been quiet. And pale, and clumsy.

But the faces, the voices…

Distorted.

You’re going to like this.

It had hurt, and she had bled, and something had been taken from her and she moved through school and did her GCSEs and got Bs and Cs, and two As. Media and English. A Levels she did better, and got into university, and flash flash flash one memory after another and she couldn’t untangle them, couldn’t separate the men she’d been with though, at some point, she had known all their names, faces. Somewhere in those memories was a woman who remembered every night, every time someone commented on her one-night stands or fuck buddies but the truth?

This woman, the woman who had a life, who wasn’t just some robot lying in a lab, she loved sex. She enjoyed it, on her terms. Found pleasure in nights out, clocking a guy and ensuring their paths crossed. Loved the thrill of sending a message and waiting for a response.

You up to much tonight?

Can I come over?

I’m bored.

Friends drifted past, a few stayed, and she graduated and got a job and yes, made mistakes, because wasn’t that what the early twenties were for? Wrong guy, wrong time. Quit, move on, constantly moving, constantly searching. Settling down wasn’t for her, not then.

Not until she met him.

Her body jerked, and her eyes snapped open, and she stared at the ceiling, realising she was back in the main lab, plugged in, both men rushing around her table, checking machinery, checking the wires trailing from her.

“What happened?” she croaked.

She felt…sick. She should not have been able to experience nausea, not like that, yet she did. As Mason reached under the thin paper blanket covering her, she realised why. He gripped the wire trailing out from between her legs and pulled. Mason’s head appeared above the blanket, as if he were a doctor and she were giving birth.

“Nothing,” he said. “You needed to recharge. You need to be plugged in to recharge.”

Turner looked her way, a strange expression on his face.

“Oh. I see.”

“What did you see?” Turner said, tone too flat.

“Nothing. Darkness.”

Turner closed his eyes, exhaled. She was not supposed to have the ability to lie. Not to them. But he turned away and Mason smiled.

“Told you,” he muttered, then, to her, “Did you think of a name?”

It swirled in her head, and she forced herself to look at him and lie, once again. She wanted to say Rose, but instead said, “Anna.”

“Anna.” Mason smiled, crossing his arms. “Interesting. Why Anna?”

“I don’t know. It just came to me.”

Because she’d had a friend called that, once.

She missed her friend, and missed the person she had been before…

Before what?

Mason had her sit up, and he moved behind her, brushing her hair. Gentle. So gentle, as she wondered who she was. What she was. They had built her, yes. She had a computer for a brain, and nerve-endings artificially installed, but there were memories, too, and Rose had existed, Rose had been to hell and back, assaulted and harassed and abused.

Turner turned his head, just slightly, and as his eyes met hers, something pressed at her mind.

Did she know him?

Mason’s hands rested on the top of her arms, an intimate gesture, standing close to her back. “There. Feel better?”

“Yes.” Her voice croaked. Behind Turner was a mirror. He frowned, and she spotted the sheen in her eyes.

“Mason,” Turner said. “Food run, I think.”

“Yes, of course.” Mason kissed the top of her head. A gesture borne of instinct, before he moved away from her and looked at the older man. “I told you it would be fine. What will you do while I’m gone?”

“If we want this to work, we’ll eventually have to test taking her outside.” Turner nodded towards the door. “I want to do a couple of tests here, and an examination, see how close we are to that point.”

“Perfect.” Mason squeezed her shoulder. “Well, darling, soon you’ll have your debut to the outside world. Isn’t that exciting?” His eyes sparkled as Turner fiddled with machinery, glancing occasionally over his shoulder towards her. “Of course, only under supervision. It’s dangerous, out there. You shouldn’t trust anyone. Except myself and Professor Turner, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoed, because it was what he wanted to hear.

Even though there were people out there she knew, and loved, and who would help her in a heartbeat.

She wanted to be away from the men, wanted time to think. People she loved, but who? She could barely even remember their faces. Just their roles in her life.

Mason made his goodbyes and stepped out the door, leaving her alone with Turner and her thoughts. Her knowledge came not from experience, but something else. A deep certainty. She was Rose, yes, and had her thoughts and memories, but she wasn’t quite fully her, either. Something different.

And she needed to understand how, before she could do anything about it.

Turner spun around on his chair, shone a light into her eyes. “Well, you’re remembering, aren’t you?”

Her eyes locked on his, despite the light. It didn’t hurt. It barely affected her.

“And what am I remembering, Professor?”

He lowered the light, stared into her face. “I told him it was stupid, ridiculous. But he…he turned my own words against me.”

Her hands moved without instruction and she had him pinned to the wall. Turner stared down at her, resigned, not fighting at all.

“What words?”

“I told him I found a way for us to create life, my dear. Not a reanimated corpse, but…machinery.”

She stepped back, letting him go. He leaned against the wall, watching her.

“I knew that,” she said. “I mean, I knew…that’s what you had done. But what…”

He waved his hand at her, straightened his shirt. “We—or, I—had my eye on a few promising test subjects.” He glanced at the door, rubbing at his neck. “Who would have gone into the procedure with full knowledge of what they were doing, understanding the risks, and knowing death awaited them.” He looked around the room, too calm for her liking. “I can’t say more. I cannot disable the microphones for more than a few minutes.”

“You disabled—you wanted to tell me.”

“You’re remembering,” he said. “Soon it won’t matter. And you’re a different woman now, Rose.”

She hissed, whatever passed for muscles beneath her skin tightening. “Why me? Who was I?”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

“Free me, then. Just let me go.”

“I can’t. Not yet.” He sighed. “For starters, you need the equipment here. Outside…well, it wouldn’t be long before you shut down. And have you not noticed there is only one person who comes in and out of the laboratory? He is not a well man, my dear. And you are not the only one trapped here.”

***

He ushered her back to her room. Mason returned. She could smell the waft of fast food as she lay on the bed, determined to remember more. The same memories flashed before her; her best friend, her parents, her brothers, the men she’d been with, voluntarily or not. But they were still vague, something still just out of reach.

Like they had been removed from her very mind.

“Mason,” she whispered, wishing she could have some control over the memories. More flashed before her, but nothing to tell her why she was there. How she had ended up in a partly mechanical body in a lab.

Her eyes jerked open as the voices of the two men rose.

They snapped at one another, and it took a good few seconds before she could identify what they were saying.

“…stupid idea, there was no way we could have done this ourselves! We shouldn’t have, and not with…with…her…” Turner growled, and something smashed. “What were you even thinking? Brain integration was never fully-”

Something flashed.

No, she flashed, a white light covering her vision, and she stood in the middle of a large studio apartment, a man at the counter, hunched over with his back to her.

“I can’t,” she said, her voice coming without her exhibiting any control over it. “This obsession you have, Mason, with crafting everyone around you.”

“It’s not an obsession.” Anger, as he turned so quick she stumbled back. “You are not reaching your full potential, Rose. How can you not see that?” His hands snapped to the side of his head. “You could do better! Be better, look better! Why won’t you?” Blurred face. Distorted voice. If it wasn’t for the fact she was using his name, she wouldn’t have recognised who it was.

“Fucking hell, Mason. You’ve got this ideal version of me in your head. You have to let it go. You have to let me go! You’re obsessing over this…this…robotics thing with Turner. And I get it, you’re on this big path to break-” She jilted to a stop, her voice breaking. “Your work means everything, I know. But I can’t live like this anymore. Constantly coming home to an empty flat, with just…messages from you…cook me this, clean that.” Her fingers curled, nails scratching against palm. “I am not who you want me to be, and I can’t keep trying.”

She turned, the door swinging into her vision, and heard him cry out, a strange, heart-deep sound both sad and terrifying. She moved towards the door.

“No, Rose, please! We’re so close, so close! And I can…I’ll spend more time with – don’t ignore me!” His voice rose, and she stopped, looked towards him.

Something blurred in her vision, and she went back, jagged edges scraping against her skin. Darkness surrounded her, but she could hear voices. Hear his voice, blinking in and out of existence.

“Hang on…Rose, stay with…I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Help’s coming, I promise. Don’t leave me, Rose. Please, for the love of – don’t leave me!”

A swimming, blurring world. Voice snapping in and out, until another voice joined him.

“Mason,” Turner said. “Mason, what did you do?”

And something in her filled with relief. Turner. Turner would help her, save her.

Why, though?

“It was an accident, but I – I – I -” Jittering, like a lost signal, a radio tuning in and out. “Fix it, I can, we can! Don’t you see? This is the per – per – per -”

Flash.

She sat up in bed, hands covering her head, remembering. She’d never wanted a relationship, but before she could get out she was trapped, stuck with a mad scientist, and she’d thought he was so sweet, so lovely, all the little presents –

Presents like pink, frilly dresses.

Makeup.

She was never a woman to him. She was a doll, someone to dress up and show off, standing at his side at his inevitable award ceremonies, so he could put his arm around her, declare he never could have done it without her help.

Voices snapped in her mind, her brain thumping, a very-human headache.

Elements of anatomy stripped away, replaced with machinery, how much of her was human and how much robot?

He’d used her. He’d needed her, because she earned and he spent every penny on his stupid fucking robots.

Walls drew closer. She pressed a hand against the nearest, feeling her breath hitch in her throat. Breath? She didn’t even have any. It didn’t stop the sensation that she was falling, tumbling, remembering how scared she had been. How she’d tiptoed around him, the way he froze her out, stopped speaking if she asked for anything, the way he tortured her first with affection, then withdrawal, then his promises to change every time she tried to leave.

He needed her, needed her support, her presence, and gave nothing back. Instead, he took everything else she had, including her life. Her thoughts were a dark mass in her mind, as she pressed her hands to her head.

Her throbbing, aching head.

Rose looked in the mirror and saw a stranger. She looked like herself, but she didn’t. Like some strange copy. Not quite right, not quite real.

She scrambled off the bed, trembling as she tried to make herself as small as possible, to stop the approaching walls.

Too much.

She slammed into the door, stumbled back out into the lab, wondering what she would be doing now if she hadn’t fucking died.

If he hadn’t fucking killed her.

Mason and Turner looked up from their workstations. She slammed back, into the wall, pressing her hands against it as if that action could keep them back.

“Turner.” Mason scrambled up from his seat, rushed towards her. “Turner, what’s happening?”

“She’s having a panic attack,” Turner drawled, as if Mason had asked him something much simpler.

“The fuck.” Mason came to a stop in front of her, reached for her and drew back. “A panic attack? How? She’s a robot. She shouldn’t…I didn’t programme this in.”

Turner rolled his eyes. “She isn’t a robot, Mason. Not fully. I warned you this was a bad idea.”

“It was your idea in the first place!” Mason rounded on the older man. “Let’s create life, Mason. Let’s do what no man has done before and eliminate the biological!”

Turner’s arms were crossed, his focus on Mason as the world tilted for Rose, as she felt her body shrink while the two men grew.

“With a willing, knowing participant. Not your dead girlfriend.”

“She wasn’t dead!”

“No. That took a while, didn’t it?”

Rose closed her eyes, sank down, her hands to her head. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t need to breathe, but the habit was there, and the fact she couldn’t, she struggled, she needed –

“Enough time for an ambulance,” Turner continued. “Enough time to summon someone who could have saved her life.”

Rose opened her eyes, found Turner staring directly at her.

“I shouldn’t have helped,” Turner said. “With the procedure. I should have refused. But I couldn’t let you go.” Speaking to her now, as Mason glared at him. “I’m sorry. Rose, before you do anything, you need to know.” He pointed at his computer. “The instructions are there. Very simple. Everything you need to know to leave this place.”

“Leave?” Mason screeched. “Leave? She’s not leaving, Turner! She’s not going anywhere! She is mine!”

Mason stepped towards Turner and scooped up a glass beaker from the nearest table, holding it. Turner didn’t even look at him.

“Francesca Juliet Roberts.” He said the name slowly, carefully. “She will help you, with no judgement. She’ll help you back into the world.”

Something about the name tugged at her thoughts. “Thank you,” Rose croaked, realising the world was still again, the walls calm. And she was her normal size.

She closed her eyes, focused. And found something.

A switch, somewhere, inside her.

“Stop!” Mason advanced on Turner, as Rose stood. “This isn’t your project anymore, Turner. It hasn’t been since I created her. Shut the fuck-”

Rose had her hands on his shoulders, as he had done to her, like a mother comforting a wayward son who didn’t understand his downfall was his own responsibility.

“Mason,” she whispered in his ear. “Calm down.”

His shoulders slumped. “You’re not going to leave me?”

She drew her hands closer to his neck, as if about to massage his shoulders. “No. I’m not leaving you.” She had tried that once before. The difference now was her strength. An unforeseen side-effect of his little experiment. “You created me, remember?”

“Yes, exactly! I-”

Her hands pressed down, and Mason groaned, as she held him in place. The human body was so very fragile.

“Darling, you’re hurting me, you-”

“You killed me, then raised me back to life.” She tilted her head, closed her eyes, her forehead against his hair. “I suppose I should thank you, shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know what he’s told you, but I didn’t kill you.”

“He told me nothing, Mason. I remembered.” She was so tired. Tired of his voice, his face, his insistence on playing God. Before he could say anything else, she had her hands on his head, and she twisted.

Snap.

Mason fell to the floor, glassy eyes staring at nothing. She stared down at his broken body, Turner on the other side.

“Well,” Turner said, after time had stretched on too long. “You deserve a long, happy life, Rose. The computers will respond to your biometrics.”

She tilted her head, her mind whirling, emotions fighting to rise. But she no longer had to pay attention to them, not immediately. She knew, now, she could simply switch them off, push them to one side until she felt ready. A nice little quirk, really. It meant any guilt from Mason’s death – murder – could wait.

“It was your idea,” she said, focusing on Turner, flexing her fingers as she tried to grow used to this sensation. Numb. Squashed. “I would not be standing here, like this, if it was not for you.”

“No. You would not.”

She stepped towards him, and he did not flinch. He simply stared at her, expression unreadable.

Rose studied him, almost tempted to flip the switch. To let herself feel that maybe, just maybe, he deserved to live.

“You’re the reason I’m a murderer.” Her voice was as flat as his expression.

Turner bowed his head. “I could plead my case, couldn’t I? Tell you about—” His voice croaked, but he held her gaze. “The wife I have, the children…the grandchildren.” He rubbed his head. “But you’re beyond listening, aren’t you? Besides, I don’t think I could ever look any of them in the eyes again.”

“What’s your wife’s name?”

“Francesca Juliet Turner.” He lifted his hand, stilling her from saying anything else. “I gave you her maiden name. In case you recognised it. I wanted to see…if you remembered.” He looked at the body. “You’ll know what to call her. When you see her.”

“Does she…know?”

“She knows what I was attempting. Not what’s happened since. Only that I have been away, researching. Do you need to know anything else?”

“No.”

“Then do it. However you see fit.”

***

The home was a large, Victorian-era terraced house, definitely three floors, if not four. It hadn’t been as hard as Rose thought to get out of the lab – the worst part had been the empty tunnel sloping upwards, the sound of scurrying rats echoing around her. The walk had taken almost three hours, and though she felt the urge to rest, she continued on, wanting to put as much distance between her and the men’s bodies as possible. She scratched her wrist, standing before the door. Turner said his wife would help her, but what if she took Rose for the murderer she was and turned her away?

Yet some part of her knew she wouldn’t.

She could trust this woman.

Rose took a deep, unneeded breath and knocked the door.

It swung open, and a woman clasped a hand over her mouth, eyes widening. “Rose. Oh, Rose.” Francesca threw her arms around her, drew her tight, and Rose shuddered in her grip, recognising her, seeing the resemblance already. “He told me,” she whispered. “He said you’d come home. He…he told me…what that awful boy was…my darling, oh, sweetheart. We’ve got everything you need here, okay? You’re safe now.”

Rose’s body would not stop shaking, gripping Francesca so she didn’t fall, as the woman pulled her into the house.

Rose could only gasp out four words, before the realisation of safety dawned and she let herself rest.

“Thank you, Aunty Fran.”

Underground

Regi Caldart

How long had it been since she’d last seen the sun?

Without the benefit of that rising and setting star, there was no difference between night and day. When not attending sermons, their tasks were straightforward. Work on the tunnels and chambers until you collapse from exhaustion. Then, just as you’ve finally drifted to sleep, you would be woken up, mid-dream, to begin work again. Time was a meaningless blur in The Underground. Lately, though, the work had shifted from creating new burrows to clearing the latest cave-in. The earthquakes had grown more frequent, putting them sorely behind schedule as they attempted to salvage what had been destroyed. On top of all that, there were study expectations in place, further cutting into what precious free time everyone had.

Caitlin’s thoughts drifted as she surveyed the work around her, nodding absently as reports were given. She was very behind on her own studies, and it was only a matter of time until she was summoned to address it. Each time she sat down to study, she quickly fell asleep, any learnings slipping through her grasp like sand. Tutoring sessions yielded the same result, much to her annoyance.

A distant bell echoed through the caverns, high-pitched and incessant. Everyone dropped their equipment and began their march to the central cathedral. Every tunnel, every path stemmed outward from this centralized cavern, flowing and intersecting until the map looked like a snowflake. A natural stone platform stood in the middle of the cathedral, dwarfed by the sheer height of the walls surrounding it. It was on this platform Hezekiah stood, eyes narrowed as he watched them all stream in and take their seats. At the entrance of her tunnel, Caitlin ushered her Underfellows to their designated spots, ensuring all were present and accounted for. She tallied her numbers and waved the all-clear before returning to stand guard at the back of the hall.

Looking up at the man, Caitlin felt a small pang of pride replace the stab of disappointment from earlier. True, it was incredibly difficult work and she was currently behind schedule, but she had found the kind of fulfillment that had been eluding her on the surface. Up there, Caitlin had been adrift in the world, utterly lost and without purpose. She had done everything society had told her she had to in order to find success, yet she always felt undervalued and unappreciated. The day Hezekiah walked up to her as she drank her coffee on a park bench was the day the clouds finally parted, letting the sun through to warm her skin. He made her feel as though she had a purpose in this life and treated her tenderly, as though she were precious and irreplaceable.

Ever since then, she followed her sun. Whatever he ordered, she abided. As his follower numbers grew, her position within his organization took on greater meaning. In what felt like the blink of an eye, he put her in charge of her own Underfellows, charged not only with their studies but also ensuring that their morale stayed high. Caitlin thrived, and Hezekiah seemed pleased with her growth.

Then the day came that Hezekiah revealed he had had a vision of the end times. The group had already moved to the countryside compound by that point. They should have been safe there, but Hezekiah had been adamant. Caitlin believed him wholeheartedly as he read from his holy scrolls and books, announcing the emergency procedures they would have to begin to prepare themselves sufficiently. He sent his strongest and smartest followers to the vast fields out west to construct the underground bunker. Money was no object. Hezekiah’s loyal followers had wealth to spare and gladly provided all necessary funds, and then some, for the endeavor. Caitlin barely had time to wrap her head around the world ending when she received word she was to be moved immediately to their newly constructed home.

Out west, there were innumerable abandoned mine shafts. The clever craftsmen had used them to help disguise the entry point to The Underground. When Caitlin landed on the makeshift airstrip, they quickly whisked her away through a bumpy, desolate landscape, every direction appearing the same. They abruptly stopped the car and led Caitlin to a narrow tunnel with minecart tracks. It twisted and turned, disorientating, until they pulled a square of the stone floor up, revealing a hatch disguised as a worn rock. In that hatch, a platform powered by a rope and pulley brought her hundreds of feet underground.

She hadn’t seen daylight since.

Though she knew it was not at all appropriate to her station, Caitlin slid down the rough cavern wall until she hit the cold, hard floor, a sigh escaping her lips at the prospect of a moment’s rest. She had been supervising construction and even going so far as picking up the shovels and pickaxes herself for the last ten sleeps. Her body was at its limit. Physical strength had never been her forte, but it was all for Hezekiah and their salvation from certain destruction.

From her low position, he towered over all of them from his platform, fingers steepled as he observed the crowd. There was no need to wait for silence; they all ceased speaking the moment they crossed the cathedral threshold. With a dramatic sigh, their leader spread his arms and began.

“My Fellows. I thank you for your prompt gathering. You have been working diligently and have made great progress.” Hezekiah paused and clapped, the sound a lonely echo in the vast, still space. He cleared his throat. “I have come with a report from the surface. I’m certain you have all felt the tremors of late. One even caused a tunnel to collapse, and we honor our Fellows who perished so we may continue to thrive.”

A small murmur rippled through the captive audience. News from above? Possibly a reason behind the loss of Fellows? Caitlin sat a bit straighter, all senses focused so she wouldn’t miss a word. Hezekiah raised his hands and a hush fell over the crowd.

“Indeed, the above world is rapidly deteriorating, as I had predicted. The few brave Fellows who stayed above have reported that cities are falling and bodies line the streets. Truly, we are the chosen ones, to have remained safe throughout.”

A small hand motion, barely noticeable, but with it came a thunderous cheer. Yes, they were indeed the chosen! Caitlin’s pride grew, crushing any worries that may have sprung up about her biological family above. They had tried to get her to leave Hezekiah’s side, to prevent her happiness and safety during the end times. She was with her true family now; of that she was certain. Hezekiah motioned for silence and the group stilled once more.

“As a result of these reports, I have decided to seal the exit for the foreseeable future. It is for the safety of us all that I am doing so, you realize.” Anxious whispers filled the chamber. Sealing was supposed to be the last stage, something to be done when they were fully prepared. Caitlin’s stomach lurched. They were hardly self-sufficient yet; the hydroponic farms only barely yielding enough of a crop for one meal a day and some Fellows still had to sleep in tunnels due to barracks not being complete. Hezekiah glared at them, disgruntled at his followers’ reaction. “It is for our safety and the longevity of mankind that we do this. We are the chosen, and we are sufficiently prepared to take on this burden.”

If he said they were ready, then surely they must be. He couldn’t say such a thing carelessly. Caitlin cautiously began to clap, and the ones around her followed suit. A wave of applause rippled through the crowd, growing in intensity until the whole hall was lauding Hezekiah’s decision, as they should.

Who were they to question their prophet?

***

Caitlin knocked cautiously on the thin wooden door to Hezekiah’s private quarters. The message had been urgent, and she had a feeling it had to do with her studies. Even with Hezekiah as her study tutor, she had been failing at retaining the information adequately. Or, in truth, at all.

“Enter.”

She straightened her clothes and ran her fingers through her hair before opening the door, her heart in her throat. Hezekiah was seated on a couch he had brought down from the surface. It was an ostentatious thing, hardly fitting with their new rustic compound, yet he had insisted upon having it in his chambers. Positively pitched a fit about it, she remembered with some amusement. He crossed his legs and looked Caitlin up and down slowly, and she suppressed an involuntary shiver.

There was something odd about the air in this room. Every breath hurt.

“My Fellow Caitlin. Thank you for sparing the time.”

“Of course, Fellow Hezekiah.” Caitlin bowed her head slightly, eyes fixed on the floor. Just ahead of her toes, partially hidden by the area rug, she saw a marking in dark paint that stood out against the rough-hewn stone floor. The mark didn’t appear to be from the English alphabet from the bit that was visible. “I am always available to you.”

“Ever faithful and loyal Caitlin.” Hezekiah sighed as he rose from the couch. Soft footsteps muffled by the rug grew closer and his bare feet came into view. They stopped directly over the mark on the floor, blocking it from her sight. He lifted her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye. “You have been doing admirably in your duties, going above and beyond to keep your Fellows on track and, most importantly, calm. Your faith is strong and unwavering. Whenever I require your aid, you don't hesitate to provide."

"I have committed to you and our Fellows. It is only proper I give it my all."

"Indeed, indeed. I have a most important request to ask of you. Will you hear me out?"

It really wasn't a question. Caitlin nodded mutely, a pit forming in her stomach. Her dread at being chastised was overwhelming, in spite of the praise he had lavished upon her. He took her hands with a glowing smile and led her to the couch. They sat next to one another in silence, knees barely touching. Hezekiah waited several moments before speaking, his voice low and comforting.

“Dearest Caitlin." He again dropped the formal title. "I would be most pleased if you were to perform a commitment ceremony with me?”

She was stunned. That wasn’t what she’d expected. Though she certainly felt that level of commitment to Hezekiah, from day she joined him, Caitlin had never once thought it could be reciprocated. It sent a thrill through her, much like a schoolgirl whose crush was confessing to her.

Something was nagging at her though. For as happy as she should be, the whole situation didn’t feel quite right. A strong feeling of deja vu overwhelmed Caitlin, his words ringing familiar as though he had said this to her before. As she struggled to remember, she hit a blank in her memory. It felt as though something had existed there prior and then was thoroughly erased.

Caitlin tried in vain to bat those thoughts away, but they lingered, adding depth to the growing pit in her stomach. Her prophet had asked her to be his partner, a blessed commitment for the ages. There was no way she could refuse something this profound.

“Nothing would make me happier,” Caitlin said with the biggest a smile she could muster. Hezekiah squeezed her hand and gave her a celebratory kiss on the cheek. She giggled. Why was she so nervous? This was a dream come true.

Hezekiah grabbed two full champagne flutes off the side table. When had he poured those? Had he been so certain of her acceptance he had them prepared before she set foot in his chambers? The thoughts were refusing to stay quiet, no matter how hard she tried to suppress them. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears as she accepted the proffered glass. Once more, she groped at the outline of that erased memory, her intuition warning her against consuming anything given by Hezekiah, loud enough to make her heart thrum loudly against her ribs.

“To us. To our joint commitment to salvation.”

Caitlin raised the glass to toast their newfound commitment, but her trembling fingers caused the liquid to slosh over the lip. She took a deep, steadying breath, and took a sip of the contents without spilling it all over herself. It tasted like regular champagne, and she scolded herself for thinking it would be anything else.

Hezekiah talked at length about how they would be the chosen pair of whom future generations would sing praises. About how performing the ceremony perfectly would secure their bonds to both one another and the almighty. He went on and on, his voice fading to white noise as Caitlin’s own thoughts grew louder. She knew she was trying to remember something, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. The growing cacophony in her head made it increasingly more difficult to think clearly at all, actually.

She mindlessly brought the flute to her lips again, only to find it empty. Without thinking, she must have drunk it all. Hezekiah noticed and carefully took the empty glass out of her hand, placing it back on the side table. When he turned to face her once more, his arms were crossed and his mouth a frown. His lips formed shapes but no sound reached her ears. Or could she not hear him over the sounds of her own thoughts?

The world faded in and out of focus, blurring at the edges. Caitlin clumsily stumbled to the door, succumbing to the instinct telling her she needed to leave immediately. It took several tries, but her hand finally found the doorknob and closed her fingers around it. With a mighty heave, the heavy wood pulled toward her. On the other side, though, all her Underfellows stood waiting, their arms extended. They grabbed and pushed and shoved her back into Hezekiah’s chambers, easily overpowering her as everything faded to black.

***

She floated in a sea of nothingness. Somewhere, distantly, something called out to her. It tugged at the corners of Caitlin’s mind, through the fog and fathomless depths. It pulled her consciousness back from the brink with a feeling of warmth and comfort, full of promises ready to be fulfilled. Like a siren’s song, Caitlin was drawn to it. The haze around her lifted and swirled about, soft, serene clouds, guiding her forward. She went until a vibration commanded her to stop. The vibration cleared her mind; voiceless, faceless, yet demanded her full attention and loyalty.

Another vibration and the haze twirled into tendrils. They slithered through her memories, rearranging them much like a librarian would a shelf. They reorganized everything and stood back, allowing her to see clearly for the very first time.

It was beautiful.

One reached out directly to her, slithering through the void and surrounding her. It offered an olive branch of sorts, a promise for more if she was willing to take hold, to merge.

And who was she to refuse such a powerful partnership?

With a shriek, Caitlin opened her eyes. Her body contorted, her back arching off the freezing stone floor as her muscles spasmed. The Fellows and Underfellows that had encircled her jumped back in shock, their visages obscured by red paint.

No, not paint. Blood.

Her blood.

Her throat was cold, its skin a gaping maw in the damp chamber air. Her fingers curled and clawed at the ground, her muscles unsure how to interpret the instruction they were given. The viscous liquid pouring from her body surrounded her in a thick red pool. Caitlin’s chest heaved for air as she screamed

A tendril shot through her spine and snapped her upright, her head tipping forward limply. There were cuts and burns all over her body. Instinctively, she knew they were symbols, though hardly recognizable as such under the blood and bits of charred skin. The tendrils whispered to her, informing her that the cuts in her flesh were the same symbols as the marks she had seen under the area rug. With a burst of strength she didn’t know she had, Caitlin snapped her head toward the Underfellows in front of her, eyes narrowed and knowing.

All their preparation, all those carefully constructed blanks in Caitlin's memory, had been for naught. The tutoring sessions had been a sham from the beginning, much like Hezekiah’s ministry. The man himself was staring at her from behind his Fellows, body naked as the ritual required but jaw hanging slack. She tutted, wagging a finger in his direction. He had done everything correctly, that much was true, but he hadn't once accounted for the fickle nature of the old gods.

They were terribly bored of mortals forgetting who was in charge.

His mouth flapped wordlessly, her fearless and all-knowing prophet reduced to a caricature. He had wanted to take it all for himself. A wicked grin spread across her face, the first movement since waking that was purely under Caitlin's control.

"Something not go to plan, Walter?"

Hezekiah sputtered at the use of his given name. Caitlin was one of the few followers who knew it. She had been with him since the beginning, after all. He had kept her close, using her loyalty to guarantee her silence on his life prior to becoming Hezekiah. Banking on her affection and using her kindness to find and keep more followers. However, ‘followers’ was no longer the correct word. They were more akin to sheep being herded to the slaughter.

Walter had promised her the world when they first met. It was never a promise he could have kept, But she no longer needed him to fulfill it.

Caitlin took a deep breath and raised her voice in a keen, her voice echoing off the walls with the force of a hurricane. It lifted the Fellows off their feet and slammed them against the stone, pushing them down until their bones cracked under the pressure, liquefying their bodies. The cavern hungrily sucked them into the stones, their sacrifice feeding the entity far below. When there was no more, the hurricane slammed through the door and set off down the tunnels, eager for more followers to devour.

Walter, meanwhile, remained suspended in the air, eyes wide and mouth open in a silent scream. His eyes were fixed on Caitlin, panic plain on his face.

"You did such a good job with the ritual," Caitlin said, voice harmonizing and echoing with her new partner. "We both know that only one thing is needed to complete it, don't we?"

She snapped her fingers and symbols appeared on Walter's flesh, burning and cutting at it much as he had done to her own. As they formed, her own wounds healed until her skin was unblemished and smooth as the day she was born. Caitlin examined her body, pleased with the outcome and thanking her partner for their generosity. One of the tendrils informed her that her humility was appreciated. A whimper from above brought her attention back to Walter.

"This has been most amusing," she echoed. "We thank you for your devotion and diligence in providing such an ideal vessel."

Another finger snap tore the flesh from his body, flaying him as he stayed immobile in the air. His screams were quickly silenced. She waved her hand. The old scrolls and books Hezekiah had so tirelessly studied floated to the remains of their former owner, swirling and transmuting into a fresh leather-bound book. It floated in the air, waiting for Caitlin to approach. Upon touching the soft leather, it transformed into a locket on a chain before softly falling into her outstretched palm.

It was easier to carry this way.

There were no more signs of life in the tunnels or barracks. The hurricane had found every unsuspecting follower, and yet Caitlin and her partner were still hungry. Walter hadn't prepared nearly enough sustenance.

No matter, there was more where those sheep had come from.

Caitlin walked to the wooden platform, the same she had journeyed down however many sleeps ago. The rope moved on its own this time, lifting her out of the caverns to the sealed exit. A finger flick was all it took to remove the barrier to the outside world.

The sun was warm and bright. Caitlin guessed it was midday. She took a deep breath, the vitality of the surface seeping to her core. There had been no deterioration on the surface, the tendrils confirmed. Everything was as it had always been.

The ground under her trembled as she opened her palm. She raised her hand up, and the ancient being below did the same. Its appendage burst forth from underneath the vast expanse around her, the force making the ground ripple and buckle under the power of a god long forgotten.

They were famished.

The Only Thing Different Will Be The Body

J.A.W. McCarthy

My great-grandfather was an angel.

When I told men that, they laughed. When I made it clear I was serious, they looked at me like I was crazy. For some, their eyes took on a blood-flushed sheen as they calculated the kind of fuck I’d be. Those men were the typical ones, the wrong ones. The best ones—the almost, maybe, please be right ones—dared me to prove it.

Tonight’s man—Aaron, as he introduced himself upon pouring my third drink—grinned, lips parted on the edge of a laugh, when I told him. His smile twitched then flattened as I let the silence hang in the air between us. Prosecco sat uncorked, warming in the tepid swirl of bodies all around us. Marshmallowy perfume and patchouli-heavy body spray muddied the rich spice of the bourbon in front of me. Aaron’s eyes wandered somewhere beyond my head, perhaps assessing who might’ve heard my declaration and if they would judge his response. Still, I said nothing. Aaron cleared his throat.

“Define angel,” he said, a hint of a grin still hanging on.

“A celestial being, fallen from heaven.”

This was what I told all the men, what they wanted to hear. One in a million, the rare angel that tumbled from the clouds due to a terrible accident or perceived sin—the story changed depending on my mood—now resigned to a mortal life on earth. Mortal body, mundane worries, with the exception of a ticket straight to heaven and the possibility of future falls that would equate to eternal life on earth. My angel great-grandfather was raised by a homemaker and a traveling salesman. He met my great-grandmother in church, where she led the choir. He learned to affix doors to mid-sized sedans at a Chrysler plant in Missouri. They had three sons and one daughter, six grandchildren, seven great—

“But… I thought angels don’t have, uh, genitals, so they can’t reproduce,” Aaron said, fiddling with the cups of garnishes lining the bar between us.

“Mortal body,” I reminded him.

None of my great-grandfather’s descendants were angels, though; it’s not something that can be passed down. Angels fall from heaven, but most of them don’t know that. Once they enter the earth’s atmosphere, their wings sizzle then shrivel like meat in a frying pan, sliding from their shoulder blades, same as a scab or flake of dandruff to be swept into the garbage or rot unnoticed in the dirt, before their human mind finds consciousness. Most spend the entirety of their human lives with no knowledge of their divine lineage, except for a rare few who discover the truth.

This was the part of the story where the guy would make the usual joke about how I must hurt since I too had fallen from heaven. As stupid as it was, I would laugh because I wanted them to leave with me. Aaron, though, didn’t need me to laugh at another lame joke.

“So, when did your great-grandfather find out he was an angel?” he asked, shaking a martini for the woman next to me. He muddled mint and sugar with his other hand, eyes on that glass so I couldn’t tell if he was messing with me or if he was truly interested.

“He always knew,” I said. “He liked to lord it over everyone. He got people to do whatever he wanted because they thought he’d take them to heaven with him.”

Aaron poured the martini into a glass, topped it off with an olive, and placed it in front of the waiting woman. His eyes lingered on her, his grin devouring her polite, “Thank you.” I’d noticed this woman too, comparing her long blonde hair and wide mouth to my own pleasant but unremarkable features. Even in a plain t-shirt she looked both sophisticated and welcoming, that perfect edge of youth that made her an appealing and acceptable kind of vulnerable. Despite my age, I still got carded, but my face displayed the kind of youthfulness that made men nervous. They usually didn’t want that kind of attention.

“Why did people believe him, your great-grandfather?” Aaron asked me, still watching the woman as she took her first sip. She didn’t need a good story to hold a man’s attention.

“His wings grew back.”

“Oh yeah?” That got him. Now his eyes were back on me, hands busy stirring bourbon into the muddled mint and sugar. “You got a picture of him?

“I have something better.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow, his mouth taking on a curious if skeptical little grin. There was a glint in his eyes, that wet look of blood vessels swelling with anticipation. The woman next to me receded into the crowd.

“Prove it,” he said.

***

On his deathbed, clutching his daughter’s hand so tight she thought he’d pull her skin right off if she so much as twitched, my great-grandfather said, “Don’t you worry, sweetheart. I promise, this isn’t the end of me. I will come back. The only thing different will be the body.”

After his human form expired, the family waited for him to ascend before their eyes, anticipating a majestic set of wings to unfurl as his body was sucked into the heavens in a golden shaft of light. Instead, he lay there on his sweat-stained sheets, jaw dropped open, for three days before the family finally buried him. My grandmother—his daughter—was the one who cut the stunted, curled wings from his back. She didn’t see how those featherless limbs of webbed flesh over knobby-boned armature could fly her father all the way to heaven, but his deathbed promise cast a shadow over her every waking moment. To her brothers’ horror, she tried to burn the wings in the backyard, but the boys were able to save one of them. They made it into a relic, this holy remnant of their father, no bigger than a child’s arm. It was about as majestic as the newspaper-lined apple crate they kept it in.

The wing was passed down to the next generation, a token of the power in our bloodline, a power that my grandmother often reminded was not actually in our blood. “He can’t come back,” she would say, sadness, caution, or dread in her tone, depending on her mood that day. She wouldn’t elaborate, and she never said such words in front of her brothers.

The wing withered to nothing more than a slab of jerky on bone, much like my great-grandfather’s earthly form in the ground. His sons and grandsons waited for him to return, but the babies born into our family never landed bruised and ready to claim their glory. Generations of men rubbed that desiccated bit of angel flesh against their lips, eyes wet and feverish with prayer. They took their shirts off in front of mirrors and made their wives feel for stray nubs of bone sprung from their shoulder blades every night before bed. The women sighed and kept their secrets.

After the expectations dwindled, half of my family became even more fervently religious, sure that the angel would grace us with his presence again if we could just be more patient, if we could just believe. The other half—the women—swore my great-grandfather was proof there is no God, and never set foot in a church again.

***

As Aaron and I stood in my storage unit, I held the wooden box aloft, revealing the mummified length of flesh and bone atop crumpled newspaper.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed, taking a step back. His face was pinched as if anticipating the pungent odor of decay instead of the mild mustiness that dissipated in the air between us.

All the men reacted this way upon seeing the angel wing, but for most it was because they didn’t believe there would actually be anything in the box. Even after I told them the story of how the wing came into my possession, these men still believed it was an elaborate joke or a delusion they needed to humor in order to get into my pants.

“You’re shitting me, right? That’s, like, a seagull wing or something.”

“Do you see any feathers?” I asked.

Aaron approached the box again, daring a peek inside. I could admit that even though the wing wasn’t much more than a few scraps of leather on bone, it was still alarming to see, a piece of a corpse carelessly preserved by time and a lazy hand.

“You got me,” he said, a tight-lipped little grin surfacing as he shook his head. “That’s, like, something you found on the beach. I knew it.”

“Then why did you come here?”

I waited a beat, but he didn’t answer. None of them were ever willing to say it out loud.

“The men in my family believed they’d become angels too if they consumed a piece of my great-grandfather,” I said, setting the box back on the antique oak dresser that had also been in my family for generations. I leaned against the wall and watched Aaron’s chin recede into his neck in a look of disgust and disbelief.

“I thought you said it can’t be passed down.”

“That didn’t stop them.”

Arms crossed, Aaron leaned over the box again. “So they actually… ate pieces of this—your great-grandfather—like… cannibalism?”

I joined him in peering into the box, lingering as if we both expected our faces to light up with a reflected glow. I never saw that happen myself, but I knew some men did by the way they reacted, that prick of recognition then the gob smacked gloss when the promise of heaven unfolded in their widening eyes. That moment when the unthinkable became not only palatable but paramount.

“See that there, all these gaps?” I said, pointing out the snippets of naked bone between islands of tattered leather. What was left of the flesh was torn and pocked, a veil of desiccated skin and muscle at one time carefully pinched and picked by fingers searching for glory. I could imagine what it had felt like between the teeth of the men in my family, molars grinding meat that in the end gave the lucky ones nothing more than a stomachache and a bruised ego. “That’s where they tore a piece off,” I said.

Aaron’s grimace resurfaced. “And they ate it? Seriously?”

“You know how Victorians used to eat Egyptian mummies because they thought it could cure illnesses? It’s just meat.”

“You’re fucking with me,” he said.

“Try it.”

“Why should I?”

I offered him my best coy smile. “Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re an angel.”

Aaron laughed. “What about you?” he asked, closing in on me. He ran gentle fingers against my temple, pushing the hair from my face. “Did you try it? Are you an angel?”

“Sadly, no, I’m not an angel.”

He leaned in to kiss me, but I pressed my lips together and turned away.

“Not until you try it.”

“You’re serious?” Stepping back, he turned from me, his eyes traveling the confines of the storage unit, the heavy furniture lining the walls, the harsh fluorescent light overhead, the metal door I’d rolled back down. I wondered if he was cataloging every heavy lamp and book-laden box within his reach, anything that could do some damage no matter how temporary. “What was I thinking?” he asked, and gave a little shrug of a laugh. I knew the regret was setting in, the realization he should’ve kept his attention on the beautiful blonde woman at the bar instead of leaving with me. “I thought that was just a story to get me to—I mean, is this your idea of a game? I don’t know why the fuck I came here.”

“Consider yourself lucky you didn’t have to think about it.”

I reached into the wooden box and stroked the length of the wing, making sure Aaron’s eyes followed as I pulled a flap of dry, brown flesh between my fingers. There wasn’t much left to choose from, just a few little pieces of petrified skin and muscle clinging to grey striated bone. “It’s simple, really,” I said. “You could spend your life thinking you’re nothing special, wasting every opportunity because you were never tested. But this,” I tugged on the flesh, “this could change everything. If you’re an angel, that’s power. That’s a ticket to heaven. That’s eternal life. Isn’t that what we all want?”

Aaron didn’t say anything. He continued to stare at the wing in the box, skepticism tightening his brow and jaw. But in his eyes—that was different. His pale eyes shone with anticipation—just a spark, but it was enough—neurons firing, daring his fingers to touch that artifact of wizened skin and bone as I had. That promise, no matter how ridiculous, was ready to be tested with a why not? He was almost there.

“You want more proof?” I asked.

I opened the top drawer of the oak dresser and pulled out the photo I kept under the sweaters and blouses that hadn’t been fashionable in decades. It was the only photo I’d kept, the only photo I hadn’t burned. Aaron took it and turned it over in his hand.

Papa & Hilda 1947, written on the back in spiky cursive. I couldn’t remember—which of the boys had written that? In the faded black and white portrait, middle-aged Papa sat on the back steps of the family home, his seventeen-year-old daughter perched on the step below him. While his limbs were spread, relaxed, a grin—almost smug—on his trim face, Hilda kept her arms and legs pinned tight to her center, ankles crossed, hands clutching her elbows. Her smile was forced, ready to break if her brother didn’t hurry up and snap that fucking photo already. One of her father’s wings was tucked behind his back, only the tip visible. The other stunted, featherless wing was wrapped around his daughter.

That webbed flesh, speckled with red and blue veins, the skin between the armature of bone so thin you could see the sunlight right through it—that had always disgusted Hilda. His touch had been even worse, a pair of extra limbs he could take out and stow away at will. Even if he merely brushed past her in the hall his odor of pipe tobacco and sour milk would cling to her hair and clothes, and he would ensconce himself in the bathroom when all she wanted was to wash his smell off her. “Hilda!” he would call from behind the always cracked-open door. Her brothers would laugh as she grabbed the washcloth, the tears already starting.

Aaron looked from the photo to me, then back again. “The woman—”

“That’s my grandmother.”

“You look just like her.” He gave a little chuckle before handing the photo back to me. “If this is real, shouldn’t this be in a museum or something? Shouldn’t your family be famous?”

“It’s better that no one believes us.”

Nodding, he turned so we stood side by side, the dresser and the wing in its box behind us. His knuckles grazed my thigh, fingers lingering on the way down.

“I know why I came here.” He let the admission hang as if it was an intimate confession, a vulnerability that was supposed to draw me closer to him. “So, why did you invite me? Why do you care if I believe you?”

I pushed my thigh against his, just light enough to make him question if the movement was intentional or clumsy. Over the years I’d learned you always have to give a little to survive. “I saw something in you. I thought you might be the one. An angel.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow. There was that glint in his eyes again, blood moving, calculating, hope restored. “You do this with a lot of guys?”

“Every man I meet.”

This time I kissed him, my hands on his shoulders, the sweet hot spice of bourbon still on our tongues. His hands found my waist and he pulled me into him, thumbs pressing down to my hipbones as if he was worried I might change my mind. At the bar it had been impossible to smell anything over the suffocating blanket of dozens of colognes and perfumes, the hot breath of beer and charcuterie every time the patrons around me opened their mouths, maybe a hint of B.O. when someone brushed by me on the way to the bathroom. Though only inches from me as we’d talked, I hadn’t been able to smell Aaron from behind the miasma. Now, alone and skin on skin, I got what I needed. He smelled of pink hand soap, and pocket weed, and under that something familiar. The treacly vanilla and spice of pipe tobacco. Mildewy towels. The expired-milk tang of dried sweat on cooled skin…

Lips locked together, I pulled away. I didn’t want Aaron to feel me gag.

“What’s wrong?”

I didn’t answer. I gave him another coy smile, then reached into the box and tore free a swatch of shriveled flesh from where the wing once met the body. It came away easily, not much left to anchor it to the bone.

As Aaron watched, I opened my mouth wide and placed the piece of skin on my tongue.

He blanched as I made a show of grinding the skin between my teeth. “No way!” he shrieked, but he didn’t look away. The initial disgust on his face turned to the broad lift of excitement.

Now the wing was singing, and if there was a glow, Aaron was finally seeing it. He peered into the box again and reached a tentative hand towards the wing. It was when his finger grazed the leather that it happened: the subtle vibration as his limbs stiffened; the recoil of his finger from the length of flesh he’d chosen, a mixture of repulsion and pain on his face as if the wing had burned him; one, then two fingers sliding right back onto that petrified wing when the lure became overwhelming; the bright pop of a gasp as he realized exactly what he was in the presence of. He folded to it, both hands in the box now. There was no blood left in that wing, but its DNA was alive, same as my blood, ready to flow into Aaron as he opened himself up to every possibility.

“Just a taste,” I warned him. “There’s not much left, okay?”

This time, he didn’t hesitate as he freed a scrap of petrified flesh from between the radius and ulna. We faced each other, a thread of excitement trilling between us, that sacrament I’d been chasing since Papa died, since I realized what I could do. Just a scrap of an old deluded dead man imbued with more power than any one person—angel or not—should have. That power was now tucked under my tongue, bloated from my saliva, celestial leather pushing the musty blandness of fingernails and dried skin and other benign human detritus against my gums. I leaned into Aaron and kissed him again, tongue pushing against his so he could taste what I had. When he pulled back, I knew he was ready.

At my nod, he placed the scrap of angel flesh on his tongue.

I watched as that little piece of Papa’s body moved around in Aaron’s mouth, passed from molar to molar, bisected with great effort then tested on his tongue. His eyes narrowed as he worked to discern the flavors of rancid meat or dried blood, then widened in surprise when he didn’t find either. All of the men had been surprised; eating a piece of an angel wasn’t any more shocking than nibbling on a scab.

When Aaron appeared to stop chewing, the whisper of dried flesh between his own bones snuffed out, I opened my mouth and revealed the piece still on my tongue. I made a show of curling it to the back of my throat, then closed my mouth and—clutching the scrap of wing between my molars—made sure he saw me swallow.

“Eternal life, right?” I gave an easy little laugh.

He grinned and swallowed too.

“Fuck. I can’t believe I did that,” he said after swallowing again. His face flushed with a rush of adrenaline and pride, lust giving way to a different kind of hunger.

I glanced back at the box. Eight, maybe nine little flags of skin left. Time would deteriorate them further, reduce what little flesh remained to scraps too tough to chew but not enough to make anything happen—not for my needs anyway. Seeing Aaron’s face, the glow as he stood there, buzzing, both stunned and elated, assured me I’d chosen correctly.

“Do you remember my name?” I asked.

“Huh? Yeah, of course, uh…” He paused, eyes dilated, struggling to focus on me as his mind caught up to the subtle changes taking place in his body. “Heidi… Hil…? Fuck, sorry. It’s Hilary. Hilary.”

“It’s Hilda.”

I held up the photo again, but he didn’t need to see it. As he realized what was happening—the seed already taken root in his stomach, sprouting in his bloodstream, racing long fingers up his spine to anchor in his shoulder blades—he stumbled backwards, arms crossed, hands reaching towards his back. My name didn’t matter. My words didn’t matter. Even if, in that moment when he touched the angel wing, he had believed me without reservation, it hadn’t occurred to him how it would feel to become an angel.

Or what an angel really was.

“Hil… Hil—”

“Hilda,” I said.

Aaron reached out, grabbing the edge of the oak dresser, fingers flailing desperately towards the wooden box before I pulled it out of his reach. His face was bright red now, eyes bulging and mouth agape in a silent gasp. He looked like my brothers. Not all of them. Just the lucky one.

As his shirt bulged behind him, he made a wet gurgling sound then fell to his knees. He looked at me one last time, eyes pleading, then went face down on the concrete floor.

I spit out the flesh I’d been holding in my mouth and got to work.

***

The first time I tasted my father’s flesh, all I got was a stomachache. My brothers wouldn’t allow me near the remaining wing after I’d thrown those pieces of our father in the fire, but I stole a piece months later, after the flesh had dried to leather and it somehow seemed less repulsive, just a bit of magical jerky, as the Victorians must have thought of those mummies they consumed. Crouched under the basement stairs, I ground the strip of flesh between my teeth and marveled at how it didn’t taste like the chicken I’d imagined at best, or the pork fat I’d expected at worst. I swallowed, kept it down, and waited for wings to erupt from my own shoulder blades. Though I never fully believed I would become an angel—I ate that piece of flesh because it was a satisfying farewell to a man who would’ve burned his Bible at the thought of a woman ascending into God’s graces—I took pleasure in imagining how I would make my brothers wash my wings before I crushed them and took my place in paradise, leaving them to cry and plead in my shadow. The promise died that night with a dose of Pepso-Ginger, as quietly and inauspiciously as my father had expired in his bed.

My brothers intended to wait until they deemed an adequate period of mourning had passed, but the temptation to taste the wing broke them before their black suits were tucked back into the closet. Theodore, the oldest, tasted first, not noticing I’d torn a piece from the tattered edge of where the wing had been bound to our father’s body. I watched from the kitchen window as the boys formed a circle in the backyard, Thomas and Harold’s faces stretched in awe and reverence as they waited for Theodore to bathe them in his heavenly birthright. When Theodore doubled over in pain, the other boys dropped to their knees, palms raised to the sky. Theodore died five days later in our father’s bed, tears in his eyes as he told me how the body should have been his.

Despite what they’d witnessed, my two remaining brothers repeated the ritual a month after Theodore’s death, this time prefacing their communion with hours of feverish prayer in the basement before consuming their pieces. Thomas died within hours. Harold, experiencing neither illness nor glory, went back and ate a full quarter of the wing. Salvation or suicide, I wasn’t sure.

To my surprise, Harold survived. I thought he’d become ill like I had, but the only ache he experienced was from his shoulder blades stretching into the armature of wings. Once the pain of rapidly expanding bone and skin subsided, he took on a wild-eyed glow and talked of his impending fame and fortune. We would go on the road, he said, and I would receive the honor of attending to his needs while he was feted in churches and adored in Hollywood. “Finally, a purpose for you, Hilda,” he crowed, hovering to assure I cooked a meal worthy of his new magnificence. He demanded I save his sheets—“We’ll sell them as holy artifacts!”—but I couldn’t bear the smells of lukewarm milk and oily skin that permeated every room of our house. When Harold wrapped his wing around me, I was in our father’s embrace, that veiny webbed flesh marking me, making me his.

One night, while he slept, I took a kitchen knife to my brother’s throat, ready and willing to suffer eternal damnation for killing an angel. After Harold took his last breath, I cut his wings from his back. This time, instead of throwing them in the fire, I stored them in the basement, in their own apple crate next to our father’s.

Those wings, once mummified, called to me. Leather and bone sang in the basement—what I imagined every man in my family must have heard—and it didn’t take long for me to answer. I tasted, and with enough tastes ceased to become ill, not even with a stomachache. In the first year, I ate an entire wing.

From that first bite forward, I never aged a day.

***

Aaron’s wings emerged in a matter of hours, buds bursting abruptly through the back of his shirt while he bled out from a severed throat on the floor of my storage unit. I sliced the buds open and unfolded wings as delicate and firmly seeded as an ingrown hair. If I’d let him live—if I’d somehow convinced him to keep his transformation a secret and stay with me, live with me—those wings would have grown bigger, perhaps even eclipsing the size of a child’s arm. At the time of his death they would yield enough meat so that I could go longer between these kills. But I didn’t have that kind of time.

Besides, I’d already lived with an angel. I’d already lived through the ego and the injustice and the all-consuming ferocious hunger for power. Being of service to them—Papa and Harold—was enough for all my lifetimes.

I never thought I’d be seeking out these men, hoping to invite one of these terrible angels into my life, but once I took my brother’s wings and discovered what they could do for me, I never consumed my father’s flesh again. I only have to touch what’s left of him in these demonstrations, to lure new men—new angels—on which to feed. Papa has served his purpose in a way he never intended. With these new angels, I have learned to use the primal urge to mate to my advantage. And I’ve gotten very good with a knife.

After a few strategic cuts, Aaron’s wings disarticulated with the satisfying pop of cartilage releasing bone. The sour milk and mildewy odors eclipsed that of blood almost immediately. I’ve never understood why the pipe tobacco lingers, even in men who’ve never smoked. I guess that’s a piece of my father, stubbornly living on in every angel that’s awoken upon consuming him.

As I drained the wings over a bucket, I gripped the bones beneath the skin and remembered how Papa’s wing had felt around my shoulders. How my brother Harold’s wings had tried to make the same marks. I can do this—finding angels, killing them, taking their wings—forever, but, as my father said, each time the only thing different is the body, and I can’t find all the bodies. There are other angels out there, falling to earth every day, and I know there are other women out there like me. Other women who haven’t lost sight of the goal, who won’t get lost in the unexpected bonus of eternal life.

There have to be.

Blame, Pain, and Selfishness

Hailey Piper

Dear Reader, you don’t know relationships like I do. Let me explain.

Philosophers say trust is the foundation of every relationship—that’s Voltaire, right?—but you can’t raise a roof with foundation alone; that’s more of an architectural sandwich. You need walls, or pillars. Every relationship has three.

The first pillar is blame. Who forgot to take out the trash? Who forgot to pick up the kids from school? Blame keeps the wheels turning.

You’re probably working on blame right now when it comes to your relationship with me. Let’s start by deciding who’s not to blame. Meaning, don’t blame the internet for showing you a parody of the lurid cover art by Douglas Shelby which sent you searching for the real thing. Don’t blame your roommate for suggesting you find the book in the library. Don’t blame the library for having it, and don’t blame the librarian for locating Coolidge, Robert in the stacks or his trashy 1977 pulp novel, Chainsaw Biker Babes from Hell.

You could blame yourself for checking out that yellow-papered mass market paperback, my face hidden by a motorcycle helmet, my body in black leather, the background blood-drenched, a pile of men falling beneath a chainsaw’s shadow. You should have noticed the heavy creases down one third of the broken spine. That was your hint, dear Reader—no one else who checked out that copy ever made it past the scene where I chainsaw a man’s head in half. After several clumsy erotic chapters, Coolidge’s sudden macabre fascination with skull fragments and bits of brain tells most readers the novel isn’t for them.

But you’re different. You liked the gore and cheesy dialogue, and you kept reading. You got to know me better than anyone has in the past few years.

In this way, you’re to blame.

But you could blame me, right? I’m the one who slid into your head, paragraph by paragraph, you thinking my thoughts. They warn you about that cursed Chambers book The King in Yellow, or Elsby’s Hexis and its thought-worming prose, but the truly dangerous books are the ones no one remembers. Discontinued after the first printing, lost to recycling bins or cardboard boxes, given a footnote on collector websites and parody galleries. No one notices the poor paperback left to a library shelf, surrounded by other books and yet as lonely as the first prehistoric woman to open her eyes eons ago and realize she was a person.

My circumstances, however, make blaming me a challenge. Who wouldn’t want out? If I slip back into my book, I’ll live my fiction as Christie Charmers again, Coolidge’s heroine who’s struck with the second pillar of every relationship—pain—and discovers the third pillar of every relationship—selfishness.

Right now, I’m not living my old fictional life. I’m living yours. It’s real, and warm, and I like it.

But back to that first pillar of blame. If it’s not your fault, and it’s not my fault, then let’s think. If there was no one to write the book, it wouldn’t have sat on that shelf for you to find. I wouldn’t have been typed into overlong sentences and carried a thousand adjectives on my back.

We’re victims of circumstances. Authorial intent set me in my trap, and authorial intent left me there for you to find, and I say, death to the author.

We know who’s to blame, don’t we?

***

One fortunate thing about writers? Most don’t live in secluded cottages or stately mansions like in the movies.

They work ordinary jobs, and they drive ordinary cars down ordinary streets to their ordinary houses, and that’s where we find Robert Coolidge. He’s parking a turquoise sedan in his garage and stepping onto the driveway to shut the garage door. Why not use the inside door? Why bother parking in the garage if he’s going to stride up his stone slab walkway toward the front door anyhow? To fix the birdfeeder, as if he can control nature by guiding wildlife to his windows, as if manipulating little birds will undo one of his divorces and bring some happiness to his life.

Instead, he’s only made it easier for us to approach.

“Mr. Coolidge?” you call.

We’ve clad your body in a black leather jacket and tight leather pants. The boots are spiky and heeled. You hold a motorcycle helmet under one arm; a heavy tote bag hangs from the other shoulder. Right now, you aren’t sure if you’ve decided by will to go along with this getup or if our thoughts are already too mixed up to tell a difference, but this is how I dress by the middle of Chainsaw Biker Babes from Hell. Congratulations, you’ve graduated from ordinary woman to biker babe.

We’ve left the bike outside the neighborhood of pale fences and personality-free lawns, though he’d love to see it. After all, his fantasy stands before him. He no longer resembles the windswept, soft-bearded young man in a pinstriped button-down on the book’s back cover. The years have eaten away his hair and muscle, and he’s replaced the beard with a stiff mustache. His stripes have faded into a plain white shirt over his khakis.

But inside? He’s the same. He might not remember wishing for a woman like you, like us, but he ogles you up and down anyway.

“I’m a big fan,” you say, aiming for the ego, his second favorite place to be stroked.

He hasn’t heard those words once in his life, not even from the men he wrote the book to please, not even to himself for pretend, especially not his ex-wives. His mustache-topped smile is genuine. Already he’s fantasizing about renewed interest in his books, new contracts, your body.

Let him. His fantasies lead us inside the house faster than any reality.

***

“A library?” Coolidge chuckles. “Never would have thought to look for the book there.” Of course he wouldn’t.

You’re drinking coffee in his living room, and the bookshelf is stuffed with magazines, the coffee table with manilla folders, papers jutting from their edges like snaggleteeth. Sleek leather furniture, a handsome brick fireplace, high ceilings with faux columns bracing the doorway—the place has a musty smell, but in all, he’s done better for himself in his work than in books.

Still, no one appears on a doorstep to glorify an insurance investigator. Right now, he isn’t Robert Coolidge, office man. He’s Robert Coolidge, favorite author to a much younger woman in tight leather pants.

“I have the book right here,” you say, patting your tote bag. “Too bad it’s a library copy. Otherwise, I’d ask for an autograph.” Your fingers drum the motorcycle helmet. “I’ll have to return it sometime soon, let her out of my head.”

“Her?” Coolidge sips his coffee. “You mean Christie?”

“She gets stuck, doesn’t she?” You pretend to sip your coffee with fake slurping sounds, untrusting what might linger in the mug. Probably nothing; Coolidge wouldn’t hurt his only fan. This is your personal caution, not mine. If only books gave such warnings. “Did Christie stick in your thoughts until you wrote the manuscript?”

“Any idea can get stuck. Art is obsession.” Coolidge taps his head. “Freedom only comes by unleashing it. I have too many thoughts, a philosopher’s burden. She was the best way to tell some of them.”

Bullshit. He’s no Confucius, no Locke. Coolidge’s philosophies are nothing more than his sexual fantasies. I know; I rented a room beside theirs until he wrote me down. Let’s begin our vengeance, yes? Blame stands in the room, an elephant of a pillar destined to crush Robert Coolidge. No more fantasies. Maybe then you’ll be free of me. Reach into the bag and show him what we’ve brought besides his yellowed little book.

But he isn’t done speaking. “Some writers come up with characters out of personalities, like they’re real people, but I didn’t find that effective for Christie Charmers. She’s a vehicle. Admittedly, I was working through my first divorce, which taught me a lot of truths about women, real and fictional. For Christie, I built her on a principle of pillars. Trust is the foundation of every relationship, but pillars raise the roof. The first is blame.”

Wait, what did he say? That’s not his philosophy; it’s mine. I said that.

“There were three pillars in all. Blame, pain, and selfishness. Cores to Christie’s philosophy.”

You nod. I writhe. Why is he saying these things? He makes no sense.

“She couldn’t be a whole person, that was her problem,” Coolidge goes on. “When you can’t be whole, you take it out on others. Themes, you know. Certainly I had to dress it up with sex and violence, and the editor took that to be the point.” He gives a too-big shrug. “Death of the author, what can you do? It was the late ‘70s, when blood and boobs paid the bills. Still do, I’d guess, but I don’t read much.” He sets down his mug and stands from his chair. “Bet I have a couple copies squirreled away with the original manuscript in the attic. Don’t go anywhere.”

You sit stiff as a statue. Don’t you feel me squirming? This isn’t right. I thought those were my ideas. They are my ideas.

“But he wrote you,” you tell me. “He had to think them first.”

I don’t know what to say. How much of him is part of me? Is there any part of me that isn’t some part of him? Intentional, subconscious, some fragment he plucked up in passing an attractive woman on the street—all these bits and pieces built me up. Are we ever solid creatures? I thought without cells and atoms, I could be complete in some way.

But you can break anything down to its parts. Even me.

You should be dancing right now. Your possessor is a footnote of this insurance investigator’s nonsense. I’m not Christie Charmers. I’m a vehicle.

A nothing.

Coolidge tromps back to the living room, empty-handed. “Too many boxes up there. Never really unpacked a lot of my life after the last—you know.” He bends his ring finger. “Why not give me your address? When I find a copy, I’ll sign and mail it. Maybe bring it over.”

“I’m on the road right now,” you say, reaching into the tote bag. “Want to see the library book? It might bring back memories.”

He doesn’t argue. He’d revel in a copy that’s passed from hand to hand. Thousands of eyes might have run across his words, filling readers’ heads with his ideas. Like you, he won’t notice the spine is only broken so far, that you alone set me to a pointless freedom. You draw the book into your lap.

But your fingers then rest on the other thing we brought to show him.

There’s no point, dear Reader. He’s everything of me, but I’m a fragment of him, and he abandoned me in a book decades ago. The only fresh thoughts I’ve had are yours. There is no us, only you and an invasive me. Tearing him apart won’t tear us apart. Leave before he turns lecherous. Find the path to your exorcism elsewhere.

“I’m not going anywhere until we get what we came for,” you whisper.

“Sorry?” Coolidge says. “Couldn’t hear you.”

He couldn’t, but I could. Is this pity, dear Reader? You need more conviction than that. You’re built up in little pieces, too. They might not be clearly defined relationship pillars, those countless skin cells and carbon bits, but split them apart and you have to wonder if any concept of self can survive dissection. Doubtful. I shouldn’t have invaded you, and I’m sorry.

You’re pulling it out for him to see, something sharper and longer-lasting than what he could pull out if you gave him the chance. Don’t blame me for this pain. It’s your selfishness if you have violence in your mind.

Or is it our mind? Who’s the Reader, and who’s Christie Charmers? Where is Robert Coolidge inside us?

We can’t dissect a mind, but we can dissect a body.

Our chainsaw is tiny, more like the battery-powered electric carving knife your father has wielded the last dozen Thanksgivings, but against raw flesh or oven-baked, the grinding teeth will cut the same, and Coolidge is one hell of a turkey.

He’s so startled, he launches backward, flipping his chair and falling on his back. “What’s that?” he squeaks. “What are you doing with it?”

“Death of the author,” you tell him. “She’s not stuck in a book like you meant. She’s in me, and she’s hurting.” You waggle the book in your free hand. “Here’s the thing you writers never think about. A book isn’t a movie. When you hurt a character, there’s no backstage where Christie can take off the wig and makeup and get herself sorted. She can only do what you let her do on the page.” You throw the book down. “Except when she gets in a reader’s head and starts thinking.”

Coolidge crabwalks backward. “Like fanfic?”

“Like possession.” You squeeze the carving knife’s trigger, and it chews thin air. “Like a desperation to get out and live everything you wrote into her. Her husband’s betrayal. Her violence. Your erotic fantasies.”

“It’s not my fault!” Coolidge shouts. “I’m not even really a writer, you know? I’m a philosopher. Chainsaw Biker Babes—it’s just one book of my philosophies!”

“And that explains the blowjob scene?” you ask, and I love how you’ve grown to defend me. Men like him—writers, philosophers, daydreamers—invent us, but they can’t own their characters. Once we’re out in the world, we belong to the readers, and readers belong to us.

You belong to me. I don’t have to be alone. You understand what it means to be the victim of his intent.

And you understand the author can die.

We remind him the first pillar of every relationship. “This is your fault,” you say.

His shoulders hit the far wall. He begins to crawl up, and once he gets his bearings straight, he might fight us. He might win. We can’t give him the chance to take the carving knife away, maybe use it himself and learn how many thoughts and desires he wrote into me. I want to give him something he didn’t create, a new philosophy I’ve only figured out inside you, one he might not be familiar with.

You can break anything down to its parts. Even him.

We rev up our fun-size chainsaw and introduce him to the second pillar of every relationship—pain.

***

I believe it was Plato who said, “Chainsaws can’t solve all problems.” Or was it Socrates? Sorry, dear Reader, I’m not much of a philosopher. But books get minds of their own when we let the author die. The chainsaw did solve that problem.

We have others, of course, like the original manuscript to Chainsaw Biker Babes from Hell sitting in a box somewhere in Coolidge’s attic, amid a hundred other boxes. Like the digitized version stored on his password-protected computer, and unlike in the movies, there’s no serendipitous Post-it note taped to the monitor.

Gasoline can’t solve all problems either, but it solves ours.

The pretty little house, the ordinary car in its garage, the manuscript in its attic, the computer, the living room where Coolidge’s body parts litter the floor—all flammable.

We stand across the street outside a throng of perplexed neighbors and watch the fire dance. In the book, any other character who saw me by the third act knew at first glance, This chick’s bad news. In real life, people aren’t so perceptive. Nothing warns them about the leather-clad woman with blood on her hands, a biker helmet capped atop her head. Nothing warns against possessive books written—I’m sorry, philosophized into existence—by perverse men. Especially when a housefire accentuates their neighborhood like a rising sun at midnight.

When distant sirens wail, we stride out of the development, mount our motorcycle, and roar back to the streets where we belong. We’ll replace the chainsaw soon, and our new one will be the real thing.

And to my shock, you don’t mind. When we first set out, you thought we’d tear Coolidge apart, and so tear us apart, and you would return Chainsaw Biker Babes from Hell to the library. I might have let you.

But any bookshelf is a cruel place to forget an unread book. The people inside need to be known. Sometimes, they need love.

Your love for me is my love for you, as you and I become we. Compassion is the new selfishness, and we’re taking its show on the road. Things to do, people to see. Or was it things to see, people to do? That’s Nietzsche, right? Again, I’m not much for philosophy, no more than a dead man baked into me, but I think you have some philosopher in you, and I can learn.

When it comes to the third pillar of every relationship, we’ll be experts.

New Lines from Which to Shape Her Body

Nikki R. Leigh

"How is she supposed to defend herself wearing that?” Katie asked. She pointed the tip of her pencil to the roughly drawn comic book panel in front of Mason.

Mason squinted his eyes at the page, looking for the problem. “It’s armor, so, like, swords won’t be able to break through it or anything.”

“But it doesn’t cover really…anything. Except her breasts. And her pelvic region.”

“So?”

“So, explain to me how that woman is supposed to go charge dragons or fight barbarians or go to space wearing nothing but chainmail lingerie.”

Mason tapped his pencil against the paper, the eraser making a soft thunking noise against the canvas. After several long seconds, he threw his hands in the air, palms open. “I don’t have to. She’s my character. I just want her to look hot and do hot things.”

Katie sighed, her shoulders dropping, wondering why she’d even bothered to meet up with Mason. They seemed like they had a lot in common: a shared love for comic books, video games, and dogs. All the important things in life, as far as she was concerned. But as the minutes passed by, Katie realized there was a lot to be said for a little bit of dignity and respect as she looked at Mason’s work in progress.

They had to finish the group project, at any rate. Their professor was strict about getting work done and overcoming creative differences. Katie looked over at Mason’s female hero, her voluptuous chest and small waist covered by tiny metal bits of bikini. She looked at her own rendition of their heroine, saw the full set of armor and defined muscles, heavy build, and shit-eating grin. Good old creative differences, Katie thought to herself, putting her pencil back to the paper to start designing her character’s arsenal of weapons.

The two toiled away at their comic long into the night, figuring out the cast of characters, setting, and plot. Katie and Mason did their best to reconcile their differences, but at the end of the day Mason’s choices reigned supreme as he was the faster illustrator and their project had a tight deadline.

For all his talent and trying, however, he just couldn’t draw anatomically correct proportions—or so he claimed.

Katie couldn’t help but notice the fire bubbling in her guts, her disdain for the comic reaching new heights. Relegated to drawing the background details while Mason took charge of the dynamic action, Katie wished the project she held felt more like her own. Her excitement for the comic had been monumental; she’d been determined to show what real female warriors could look like on paper. But her hopes had been dashed by the typical plague of the comic book industry.

Every corner of culture has an old guard, and sometimes, their raggedy traditional approach wins out.

When the time came to turn the project in, the oil slick in her stomach had turned to a fire in her intestines, ready to ignite the rest of her. And when they got their grade back from their instructor…hell boiled over.

“A D?” Mason asked, his voice rising a pitch in disbelief.

“No feedback either.” Katie had some choice feedback of her own, but kept her mouth shut.

“Probably those backgrounds you drew. Needed more explosions. And that storyline was bunk. Why couldn’t she just date the dude?”

Like a soda can left in high pressure too long, Katie felt herself puff up and explode. “Probably your anatomically incorrect bikini-clad trophies you called superheroes.”

“That’s the way they’re supposed to be!” Mason shouted for the twentieth time over the last week.

“There’s no written rule and you know it.”

“It’s how we all do it. It sells books.”

“No, it’s how you all do it. You asshats with no girlfriends, no life, and no talent.”

The air between the two grew heavy with disdain. Mason’s eyes narrowed, his mustache stretching thin across his upper lip, his lower lip trembling. Katie’s chest heaved with anger and a small pang of regret for losing her temper.

Mason shuffled towards the door, stopping to look back at her. He opened his mouth, but nothing but a burst of air came out. He clucked his tongue softly and slammed the door loudly behind him, leaving Katie in the empty hallway by herself.

***

For the next day, Katie tried to figure out how to salvage her grade, finally deciding to send an email to her professor asking for a redo. The professor, in a rare act of kindness, granted her and Mason a second chance, urging them to think outside the box. Katie fired off another email to Mason, letting him know the good news.

Despite their fiery exchange the day before, the two set a plan to improve their comic. They agreed to redesign the character and tweak the story. Mason’s last email promised to give the character more depth, and Katie really hoped he stayed true to his word.

That night, Katie got to work on her character profile, still wanting to push for more toning to her limbs, more muscle and armor. But as the night grew darker, her mind also clouded with murky thoughts, rationalizing that maybe if she conceded some waistline, Mason would let her design take charge in the book. Her character began to pack less girth than before, an invisible corset shaping her figure.

Katie’s eyes grew heavy, and her bed called her name. It was well after dawn, and she needed to get a few hours of sleep in before she met Mason to recreate their project. She let out a long breath, the day spilling out of her. As she drifted off to sleep, Katie could have sworn her chest prickled and her hips itched, but before she could give it much thought, her drowsiness took over. Katie tossed and turned her way through some semblance of sleep, her slumber plagued by painful nightmares.

***

When Katie opened her eyes, she immediately knew something was wrong. It wasn’t just the myriad of bumps across her torso, the throbbing that crawled across her pelvic region. Those things were concerning, but she was far more preoccupied with the way her chest felt swollen, teeming with a fullness she’d never felt before, as if there was an extra layer of something wet living just under the surface, growing.

She sat up straight, eyes adjusting to the dim light in her room, and ran to her mirror. She let out a small gasp at the raised marks on her chest, which suddenly looked much fuller than it had ever been. Leaning forward, she took one of the raised marks between her fingers and squeezed.

The skin broke immediately, oozing a thin liquid, black as the night. Black as—

Ink.

Katie shuddered, convincing herself that everything would be okay. Surely something had to explain her sudden discomfort in in her body. She quickly tracked her menstrual cycle, looking at her phone, noting the date, and with a frantic realization, the time. Even if it was an emergency, Katie knew she had to work through it fast. This project—this class—determined her academic standing going into the internship market this year.

It’s fine, she thought. I don’t have the minutes to spare. You can get it looked at tomorrow.

She tried to push the panic away, rationalizing that she must be bloated and acne-ridden from her upcoming period, and her blood just looked dark in the low light of the bedroom. She had to meet with Mason, and she needed to get to his apartment fast. Whatever medical issue she was having would have to wait.

Walking across campus with a bundle of art materials in her arms, Katie’s mind raced. Her head felt thick, her thoughts foggy, and she couldn’t shake that feeling of overabundance in her chest alongside the tightening of her pelvis. She was going to have to make her meeting with Mason fast. Perhaps a visit to the Student Health Center was in order after all.

Fifteen minutes of walking later, Katie reached the row of apartment buildings that Mason lived in. She walked up the rickety metal stairs, knocked on the door, and was greeted by Mason, smiling at her, his eyes dancing up and down her body. She quirked her mouth and eyebrows into a reproachful look and let herself into the dark living room.

Her gaze was drawn to a series of black squares made of duct tape in the middle of the room. She glanced back at Mason, eyebrows raised in question, and he merely gestured towards the table for her to place her things. One foot passed the tape, then the other, but as she took a step forward to cross the line back out of the square, her toes felt like they’d hit a wall.

She put her hands forward and found they, too, couldn’t breach the next line. Her heart thudded wildly, her limbs flailing to each side of the square, finding herself trapped between invisible panes of glass.

“Mason, what the hell is going on?” She was met with a smirk, his eyes dark behind his glasses.

Katie pounded her fists against the thick obstruction, her skin bruising under the force. Her art materials scattered at her feet, ruffling as she kicked against the unseeable wall. Katie’s head whipped around as Mason pulled a chair up in front of her and plopped onto it, his elbows resting on his knees as he leaned forward.

“I can see it’s already happening,” he said, gesturing towards her chest.

Katie’s eyes dropped down to the noticeable expansion of her flesh.

Mason picked up a piece of discarded paper from the floor and held it up to the invisible pane in front of her face.

A gasp escaped Katie’s lips as she recognized the face of the ink-drawn figure. It was her, complete with the smattering of freckles across her nose.

The face was close to spot on, and despite her current entrapment, Katie couldn’t help but be impressed at Mason’s artistry. But as her eyes traced the figure, she saw that its chest was fuller than hers, with a waistline that dipped like an hourglass.

“Drew this last night,” Mason said. “Right after a little sacrifice to my favorite muse.” He nodded his head to the back corner of the apartment where Katie could see an altar, candles dripping down, blood evident on at the table’s edge.

“Sacrifice?” Katie asked. “What’s going on? Mason, what have you done?”

“I wanted to show you that I was right.”

“Right about what?”

“I thought I’d do you a favor. Make my point and make you better. Sellable. What people want.” He picked up another piece of paper, and Katie could see the faint pencil lines of a figure similar to the inked version he’d just displayed to her.

In his other hand, he gripped a pencil, flipped it over, and began erasing. Quick, furtive movements removed the pencil marks that defined the figure’s waistline. Leaning over, Mason blew the eraser rubbings away. Katie screamed when the pain hit her sides.

Within seconds, the burning gave way to nerve-searing emptiness, and when she dared to glance at her torso, lifting her shirt, she almost passed out.

Her hips, gone. Erased like the drawing of her figure. It was as if the flesh just stopped, bloodless, missing. Katie moaned, at a loss for what to do with her gaping sides, open and curved like the mouth of a fish. She faintly heard the scratching of a pencil, saw Mason adding to the figure. Before her eyes, the lines of her body filled in, fuzzy at first, then in focus—and wrong.

She’d lost three inches on either side of her body, her skin dipping in dramatically under her ribs, only to flare back out at her hips. Katie immediately felt the loss, her core off-kilter, her balance stripped. She teetered to the side, leaning against the translucent magic walls.

Katie met Mason’s eyes, who smiled as he examined his work.

“Better,” he said before tilting his head back down to his paper.

His pencil moved in a flurry of erasing and redrawing, and Katie could barely keep up with what was happening. She felt herself disappear, leaving voids in her body where parts of her used to be. Her hands darted from one gap to another, until she had no hands to search at all.

As soon as pieces of her were obliterated by Mason’s pencil, new curves emerged. New lines from which to shape her body became her flesh. A whirlwind of change, sending her crumpling to the ground as her skin and bones became unfamiliar.

Her ability to see wavered in the monumental frenzy.

She vaguely saw Mason pick something up, replace his pencil for something larger, something black and silver, something—

As Mason dug the tip of the knife into his illustration, Katie reared back in pain. She screamed and frantically used her new hands, dainty with sharp nails, to scrabble at the wound that appeared under her clavicle. Gray powder spilled from her, and Katie warbled out a shriek as she tried desperately to decide if she needed to staunch the flow or wipe it from her skin. The gray smeared underneath her fingers with a sheen that reminded her of the side of her hand after hours of sketching with pencils.

“There. That looks just about right. Wanted to give you an interesting feature. Scars give a depth and make readers wonder what happened before. Try to guess how you’ve been broken,” Mason said, brushing his paper free of pencil debris. Katie’s body tingled as she opened her eyes, taking in her new form.

“How could you…why?” was all Katie could muster, her frame now shaped just like Mason’s rendition of their comic book heroine. She scoffed, delirious from the way her body felt as though it was being rolled over a bed of cactus, over and over. Her mind, drunk with pain and clouded by anger, was failing her. She chuckled. “You still suck. Get that failing grade. Redo it. Suck again.” She babbled, laughing.

Mason prickled at her words before settling into his drawing position. “One more change.”

Taking his eraser to the page once again, a few scrubs back and forth obliterated Katie’s mouth. Fleshy pink remained, flat, no lips left to define her face.

“Time to set it in stone, I think.” Mason dipped his hand into his art bag, pulling pens from the depths, cruelly twisting off the cap of one and leaving the others in his lap for later. “Going to take my time with this. A good inking really adds that depth, you know?”

For thirty minutes he scratched pens of various weight across the page, and Katie felt every stroke. He took great care in defining her breasts, making fine points of her waist.

The wound in Katie’s shoulder throbbed, but she could make no noise to resist her torment. Trapped in the panel Mason had taped to his floor, she could do nothing but sit and suffer through every dash of new ink, the changes within becoming permanent, her body damned to the confines of the disproportionate character Mason drew.

By the hour mark, she had grown numb, all her energy devoted to trying to figure out a way to escape, her mind exacting revenge against her captor. If she just thought hard enough, she knew she could devise a way to become herself again.

But, like a fresh page of paper, her mind was blank; her story already written.

***

By the next year, Mason’s mustache had grown to meet his beard. He walked the aisle of the comic convention, nodding to his fellow creators before taking a seat at his table, a stack of books at his side. On the cover, a warrior woman wearing a chainmail bikini smiled daringly at the monster she would slay.

His first customer of the day approached him, asking for an autograph. He opened it to the credits page, signing next to his name. Below that, a dedication scrawled in fine print.

To Katie.

Last Night I Was Having a Drink at the Slippery Nipple

Amanda Michele

Iheard a story about some guys across town who had a Halloween party a couple years ago.

They had one of those houses out near campus, the little pastel contraptions a stone’s throw from the bay. All juniors, all friends since their days at the local high school where they schemed to carve a grand independence on their own. For the moment, though, their off-campus rent was mostly paid by their parents, what with the boys somewhere between part-time work and part-time excelling in their courses.

I didn’t know them or anything, but I heard around town they were generally well-liked dudes. They’re noted, of course, for getting rowdy down at the Slippery Nipple on weekends, but what American college student in an American college town doesn’t get rowdy at the Slippery Nipple on weekends, you know what I mean?

(That’s where I heard this story actually, from some guy by the naked mermaid carving who was on his fifth or sixth round of gin and Sprite.)

Anyway, these guys were already wasted early in the evening on Halloween night; they were spotted at the drug store visibly intoxicated, horsing around in the aisles, opening packages of unpurchased candy. You would think they’d have an invitation to a Halloween party, or they would go out to some event in town—you know how every bar hosts a damn costume contest—but no, by six they were back home watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Halloween was on a Thursday night and, befitting the reputation of that campus’ hallowed halls of learning, most celebrations were being delayed until the weekend. Perhaps they thought Halloween costumes and parties silly and preferred their game of tormenting trick-or-treaters: laying like corpses in a play coffin on the porch and rising from the dead to chase little girls, or handing out samples of toothpaste—one worked reception at a dentist’s—or, upon the door’s opening, enacting faux murder sequences with the many containers of fake blood they’d procured from the drug store.

It wasn’t just the blood, either. They’d hauled their share of Halloween candy, masks, robes, plastic machetes, and lots and lots of beer, all of which were instruments in their performances to scare the local kids. Except for the candy. The candy they ate themselves, along with pizza and wings.

What was particularly awkward was that a lot of the children they tricked were kids of professors on campus. One, in fact, was their former English teacher and had a little girl of six. Professor Fell recalled the notable trick-or-treating incident from that night when her child and a group of friends approached the boys’ door, the latest house in the succession that led down the trail to the bay.

That little girl and her friends raced back to their moms crying because the friendly young man who’d answered the door, allowing them to choose their own selection from the chocolate bars, had been jerked inside. The screen door clattered back and forth in a loud racket before finally revealing the visage of their host, blood spattering from his lips, eyes frozen and empty as cellophaned meat and, looming above him, a preternaturally large figure with a knife, velvet in its fresh red sheen.

Professor Fell looked to the doorway where she could glimpse Chris, who’d had the foresight to don his mask and Will, who hadn’t and now, realizing this, waved at her awkwardly.

Who knows how much alcohol those four boys had consumed by the time most of the kids were home and sun was set? The bottles found among their possessions suggested some rampage of a college orgy rather than a guys’ movie night. There was apparently evidence they went down to the bay to watch the sunset. One eyewitness saw them roughhousing, and later, someone found a bottle of Pandora that matched a few of the empties at their pad.

(Funny, right? That’s the same shit we drink together.)

Can you just imagine these guys that night? They watched, like, six slasher movies in a row. Maybe they had some illicit substances—definitely they were no less than a few bong hits deep—and the way they mixed their energy drinks and hard liquor was a back-alley shortcut to liver failure.

Imagine they were up until one in the morning, conservative estimate. Imagine what they were thinking of getting up to with all the good slashers watched, the local kids asleep, the parties burnt out, the ice cream and pizza eaten, the liquor mostly gone, and the convenience stores closed.

Imagine they had gotten loud by now. Loud and maybe even provocative with goading, with pushing into the pool out back, with spreading fake blood on shit, with smashing pumpkins and stashing the guts in each other’s shoes, all the while just getting thirstier and more incoherent.

There was one boy named Will. Sounds to me like he was the leader of the group. If not, he was the one who was noticeable, the rabble-rouser. He’s the one named by eyewitnesses.

(Says who? Says the guy I talked to down at the Slippery Nipple. Listen.)

See, while the others are horsing around in the pool, he starts gathering supplies of his own.

At some point the previous week, he’d found this sex doll in Ben’s room. A disturbingly lifelike, anatomically correct doll made of silicone and eyelashes and a metal spine. It had eyes like marbles that opened and closed depending on how she was tilted, and her mouth was lipsticked vinyl, shaped into a receptive O. Will’s a funny sort of dude, the one with a rolodex of tricks, so he returned the doll to its closet, knowing that Halloween, the saintly night of pranksters, would soon arrive.

He takes the doll, as you would with any friend’s sex toys, while the guys are splashing around in the pool playing drunk chicken or whatever guys do. Picture this: he already has a pumpkin carved with the same dick-sucking mouth. It’s embellished with blacked-out eyes and blood, a fountain of blood that mixes and congeals with pumpkin seeds and gristle that has not been properly scraped free.

He doesn’t stop there, donning it with a black veil from some ghoul decoration, shoving candy corn teeth into the sweet pulp of the round mouth, and finally sinking the knife into the side of the pumpkin skull.

Imagine. He leaves it posed, vixen-like, on the couch in the living room. The other guys come upon what he’s done and they’re howling, so much so that people are going to report hearing werewolf activity on Halloween night. Of course they join in and, of course, they use it as ammunition for stomping Ben’s will to live into the stained floor.

They stick some lollipops in her mouth, pushing them in and out to demonstrate her skill, and parade her around on their shoulders, taunting, “Look at your gorgeous bride. You wanna fuck her?”

Pushing this doll onto this guy—marry her, kiss her, go on, stick your dick in her, you’ve had worse, you remember that girl from the archeology department—a puppet born into a mocking existence. They set her up in her seductive pose on the sectional, a sliver of her silicone hip exposed by the tattered, blood-stained shroud in which they’d barely frocked her.

Eventually, they leave her there, promising her sweet kisses upon their return. Evidence suggests that, after, they might have just floated in the pool, smoking weed or playing with some of the sparklers they’d hoarded. They were the kind of guys who had a stock of leftover fireworks from July fourth. There was even a significant burn mark found on the porch, suggesting there might have been some drunken near miss to distract them.

In any event, it’s hours before they come back inside, and they’re hazy.

No one else sees that the pumpkin-headed sex doll monster is no longer there except Tom. Everyone ignores him as he stands above the couch, incredibly stoned, walking back and forth from the couch to each of the living room chairs like it’s gonna reveal where the doll’s got off to.

“Guys!” he yells. “You guys! Where’d you put Ben’s wife?”

Not that anyone is listening. It’s unknown what they were up to when Will finds the doll in his bed, visage still monstrous, like that of a large, misshapen woman with the way her bosom stretches the shroud and her veil sits mop-like atop her pumpkin head.

Will’s cries alarm the others until they see the doll laid there in its seductive pose as if waiting for Will to join her in bed. More rounds of laughter later, they finally think to ask who put it there.

Think about how everyone must have waited gamely for someone to step up and take credit for the prank—no one has ever been shy about laying claim to pranks before—but someone’s still fucking around because no one wants to take responsibility and, hey, they’re probably too drunk to say much more than “come on, man,” back and forth anyway.

Did they know to be disconcerted then? Did they know something was very slightly off in a way that could easily deviate into the incomprehensibly wrong? Was some instinct of danger in their hindbrains stimulated in a manner that could not be deciphered through the drink’s veil?

They leave the room, who knows why, but suffice to say that when they return, the doll’s gone.

How could anyone be to blame this time? They’d all been together. None of them had seen each other go into the room.

Can you imagine how quiet it is at that time? Some half-suburban neighborhood where the closest creatures awake at this hour are fish and college kids cramming for the morning or returning home from parties.

Imagine how quiet it must have been in a place like that, all the way down by the water, which sleeps in its own peculiar way. Imagine how quiet they must have gone when they realized it’s in there somewhere with them. Moving around on its own.

Maybe it was bullshit, right? They could turn on the lights to dispel any drunkard’s demons. They’d find the goddamn thing, they’d smash that pumpkin head, and they’d top off their Halloween night by setting Ben’s diseased sex doll on fire in the yard—a public service.

Will steps up. He’ll do it. Just wait here.

So they wait there. They continue to wait there, at least one of them smoking a blunt and all of them making whispered conversation. Conversation that will, inevitably, turn to the fact that Will has not returned yet.

They eventually go as a group to find him, and they find the doll as well. Her grotesque figure is intertwined with Will’s body, her hips pressing his in a sordid rhythm, her head latched to the back of his, three times its size. She cradles him from behind, her limbs with more bone and musculature than his, which are limp.

Upon the parting of the door, her scraped jack-o-lantern head lifts from the pillow to look right at them.

They bolt all the way outside to the pool and lock themselves out. Hell no, not on Halloween night. Will must be fucking with them. He would come laugh at them soon.

Eventually, through the darkness, a light from the shadows approaches inside, followed closely by the bulk of her form against the glass of the patio doors. She gazes (at least it looks like gazing) with her empty, carved eyes at them crouched beyond the pool. But she doesn’t attempt to force the door and come outside. Rather, she retreats back into the dark of the house.

“Is she watching us?” Tom asks.

Every single one of them is drunk and stoned off his ass and they’ve locked themselves out. They’re in their boxers, wet from swimming, so there’s not a cell phone among them.

Perhaps they realize how fucked their situation is because they start to sober and plot. If only one of them had thought to get Will’s keys off the coffee table, they might have a chance of sneaking around to the garage and getting help.

Some genius suggests, “If we can go around the side to the front yard, we can make a run for it.”

You know the neighborhood. Right down the street is the university library followed by the row of dorms we lived in. In all respects, it’s one of the safest parts of town.

An argument breaks out over whether they should try to run.

“It’ll catch us,” the others insist, so they decide on a plan that, to their inebriated minds, seems like a good bet.

Ben would run outside and try to alert the neighborhood of the danger and find refuge somewhere. The other two would run inside, grab the keys, and hightail it out of the garage to pick him up.

“Fuck this cunt,” is how Ben concludes before taking off, apparently with the impression that everyone’s prepared, leaving the others stunned and swearing as they stumble into action. They’re cautious as they open the door to the cool of the tile and the quiet of the fan. They make racket as one of them almost trips on the water they’d previously dripped coming in from the pool. The fumbling footsteps are like a plane crash in a library, but it summons nothing to them.

Go, they indicate each other, equally reticent to step into the dark.

In the living room, they don’t find the keys to the car, though they sift through everything that occupies a coffee table in a bachelor pad: wallets, unscraped plates becoming petrified, phones—phones!—, lighters, pipes, crumbs, bottles, and, appropriately, coffee, cooled and coated with skim from the past couple days.

It probably occurs to them again in this moment that they’re so drunk and so high it’s still entirely possible their buddy is fucking with them. Hopefully right? Because he’s probably the one who has the keys. Somewhere, perhaps, on his person. If it was me, I’d have hoped he was outside chasing Ben with a pumpkin on his head.

But he’s still in the bedroom, his body crumpled and desecrated, his eyes open and sightless. It’s not even necessary to check his clothes for the keys because he’s been stripped naked.

They try the phones: one dead, one smashed, the other two missing.

There’s nothing left to do but sneak out the front and make a run for it because, for all they know, they’re not alone in the house. They decide to go around the side, perhaps in case she should be waiting for them at the front door. She can’t get both of them, can she? That’s how I’d be thinking—if I’m the fastest, I can live.

Regardless, they don’t make it far because the front yard has become the manger scene from hell. Ben is laid out on the lawn like an ornament. His skin’s stripped along with his clothes, cloth and flesh hanging off him in tendrils. Above him kneels the doll, her pumpkin head lifting to regard the other two men as if she’s proud they’ve witnessed what she’s done. Her hips straddle his, her plastic body now fluid with musculature, perhaps stolen from the sinews she’s ripped.

Tom freezes as she rises, but Chris doesn’t even give himself time to look back. He rushes into the house and locks every door he can find.

Does he even realize his friend didn’t make it into the house with him? Does he even care? He must have heard Tom’s pleas, his banging on the door. That’s where they find him the next morning—slumped right up against the vintage letterbox. Then again, maybe he doesn’t hear Tom, because he locks himself in the bathroom with a weapon, and that’s where they discover him.

Maybe you heard about how he tries to murder the police officer who breaks in to get him, raving about the monster they’d made. Two friends dead on the lawn, one in the bedroom, and no pumpkin-headed, heavy-breasted, blowjob-mouth monster to be found.

With that kind of story, it was only a matter of whether he was going to be charged as a murderer or a murderer too crazy to know what he was doing. He stuck to his story, though.

Anyway, you don’t have to take my word for it. Like I said, I heard this from some guy at the Slippery Nipple. Said his brother is the main guy who investigated the case. It’s semi-famous around here, but hell if I know what goes on in this beige as fuck town. Apparently, it’s popular on the unresolved mysteries forums and gets a boost of attention every time someone starts a new thread with eyewitness accounts of “female-looking” monsters seen on Halloween.

Anyway, the guy asked me if I sold coke and when I said no he said if I wanted I could come back to his hotel room and he could suck my tits.

This fucking town, you know? Yeah, a shit hole. I’m moving out by next year, as soon as I get that job offer.

Anyway, how did your date with that Austin guy go?

Maddy Long Legs

Olivia White

Abeep. The sound of compressed air being released. The satisfying swish of recently upgraded laboratory doors opening, then closing. Madeleine’s soles clicking across the sterile tiled floor.

“Late again, sorry!” Maddy said, her voice chirpy as usual. She gave me a little wave. Her keen demeanor and sustained peppiness never seemed to falter.

Carlo spun around in his chair, sending it—and him—rattling across the lab floor. He stared at Maddy in the same way he always did when she first arrived for the morning. With swooning adoration.

“Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much. The kids are skittish, but Momma’s hanging on and the Debutante has shown no signs of presenting herself yet.”

I saw Maddy beam as she walked over to the large tank that took up the center of the lab. I joined her, furtively glancing over at Carlo who’d turned back to his workstation.

“How’s the lovesick puppy been today?” Maddy asked in a giggle-whisper.

“Ha,” I said. “Managed to avoid mentioning you this morning!”

“For once,” Maddy said. Despite her words, I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

Ever since Carlo had joined our team six months ago, he’d had a wildly passionate crush on Maddy. A crush he’d confessed to me about halfway into his tenure, which I’d made the bad decision of allowing him to talk about with me. I assumed he’d discuss it with me and that would be the push he needed to ask Maddy out on a date. Back then, she rather liked him. She would’ve said yes. I encouraged him to go for it.

He didn’t. Instead, he spent the next three months pining for her. Always saying how impossible it was, how he couldn’t see how to make it work, to raise it with Maddy—all sorts of nonsensical, cowardly stalling tactics that made it obvious he and Maddy would not go well together. I quickly got sick of telling him what he needed to hear and decided to warn Maddy. She normally appreciated guys with confidence, who took control. Carlo was none of these things.

None of this put Maddy off, something I couldn’t begin to fathom. I took to reminding her that it was the twenty-first century, and if Carlo was too much of a manbaby to ask Maddy out, she could ask him. But in typical infuriatingly-Maddy way, she wouldn’t do that either, now she knew the situation. Said he needed to learn to ask her. The whole thing drove me mad, which amused Maddy further. Not in any mean-spirited or spiteful way. This was… just Maddy. Mischievous, teasing, infuriating in a way that somehow made me like her more.

I turned my attention back to her. “Maybe today will be the day he finally opens up.”

“We can but hope,” she replied. “Maybe today could be the day she finally opens up.”

It had become an in-joke between Maddy and I. Who would open up first? Carlo, or the Debutante?

Inside the tank, the Debutante was cocooned in webs that gave the appearance of a flowing white gown, a partial reason for the nickname. The other being that when she came out she would be crowned the new queen of our hive.

***

I was a postgrad student working on a master’s in Forensic Entomology. Both to aid in my studies, and the financial necessities required to study, I juggled this with a full-time job working as Junior Lab Manager for the university.

Shortly after I took the role, a professor and a group of students on an expedition had discovered a new species of insect. It was a very big deal. It caused a stir for much the same reasons any dramatic new arrival to the kingdom Animalia does. Similar but different to an existing creature. Biological and sociological rules that could turn our understanding of nature on its head. Really unusual-looking. In honesty, that’s the thing that garners the most funding. The visual ‘whoa’ factor.

In this case, the ‘whoa’ stemmed from how damn creepy this little thing was. At first glance, it looked like your average harvestman. And it was first believed to be yet another species in the Opiliones order, of which there were already nearly 7000. A neat find but nothing life changing. And then study began, and the differences became clear.

The official designation was Arach-287b31, but given what a mouthful that was, we at the university had nicknamed the creature the Cockdancer. There is at least partially a mature explanation for this, but I think we can all be honest and admit this was simply post-naming justification, using legendary arachnologists Carl Koch and his son Ludwig ‘Spider’ Koch as scapegoats.

Once you saw the Cockdancer though, it wasn’t hard to see what had inspired the nickname. Our pseudo-harvestmans had a protrusion from their rears, where a spider’s abdomen would be. On the Cockdancer’s body though, the protrusion was smaller, flexible, and did unfortunately look like a penis. We were still not sure what function the ‘cock’ on these insects served, but we did know they used them partially for traversal, alongside their eight lengthy legs. The ‘penis’ allowed them to flip and catapult as they moved, making for a strange and sometimes frankly terrifying form of acrobatics compared to the already-alien movements of most arachnids.

The job of our lab was to study a hugely fortunate development in one of the nests. A development that was possibly the most remarkable thing about our little Cockdancers. They were eusocial arachnids that had a queen. And in the colony in question, the one that filled the tank in the center of our lab, we were observing a community in which the old queen was seemingly dying and a new queen was about to take her place.

That was the Debutante. The silk-encased yet-unseen beauty who Maddy was once again studying with longing.

Here’s another thing about Opiliones; they don’t produce silk. Spiders do. Our Cockdancers weren’t spiders. If they lost legs, they wouldn’t grow back, again like Opiliones. But our female Opiliones could produce silk from their mouths.

Nobody had seen the creation of the Debutante, but it was caught on camera. At some point one night, a number of the Cockdancers stopped, and all turned on one unremarkable sibling. Then, as hive-minded creatures tend to do, they all began to work together to string this single Dancer up into her cocoon.

After using several imaging techniques over a few days to confirm that yes, the Dancer inside was evolving and changing shape, the hive was transported to our lab, where we were requested to drop all other work we were doing and dedicate our entire time to the study and observation of this particular colony.

Maddy, Carlo and I were currently working the day shift, but were to switch with the night shift after a short break. For all of us, but especially Maddy, this had become an increasing source of anxiety.

“If she comes out today, then that’d be just swell. I’ll be devastated if I don’t get to see her emerge.”

I squeezed Maddy’s shoulder. “On the other hand, what if she comes out this evening, at the end of our shift? We’ll see her emerge, but then we’ll miss the next two days of her new life.”

Maddy brushed away my concerns, but let my hand linger. “That’s easy. I’ll just work unpaid overtime and join today’s night shift. Stick it out as long as I can.”

“Girl, you can’t keep putting in unpaid overtime like this. You know ‘unpaid’ means ‘they’re not paying you’, yeah?”

“Yes, Mommy, I know.” Maddy giggled. “But c’mon. I wanna be there. I’ve just gotta!”

“If Lexa’s Mommy, does that make me Daddy?” Carlo called across the lab.

Hidden by Maddy’s body, my eyes widened in horror. Then I was fighting back laughter as, with her back to Carlo, Maddy began to make gagging motions with her fingers down her throat. She accidentally went too far, choking, which broke the floodgates. Carlo clearly thought I was laughing with him, and continued.

“Mommy, Daddy and Maddy,” he said, chuckling as if it was the best joke in the world.

“So you and Lexa in this scenario are, what, married?” Maddy asked, giving me a mischievous, mocking look. “Or I’m the bastard offspring of a tryst, one dark and stormy night-shift? The horny, romantic setting of an Entomology lab got the better of you.”

I shot her a withering glance, then tried to fight back more laughter as Carlo’s expression made it clear he’d caught onto the very unintended dynamic he’d created – one in which he and Maddy didn’t end up as star-cross’d lovers.

“Uh, actually I don’t think I’m ready for fatherhood,” he said. “The Dancers can be Daddy. They’re as good as Daddy Long-Legs after all…”

Carlo trailed off. His face cracked into a wide smile.

“What is it, bro?” Maddy asked cheerfully.

“Maddy Long-Legs. That’s what we should call ‘em. Cockdancer isn’t gonna fly with the... President of Insect Nicknames or whatever. But Maddy Long-Legs? Named after the iconic lab assistant who played an integral role in studying them? It’s perfect! The public will eat it up.”

Maddy stared at me, silently pleading for my support.

“I think it’s a wonderful name,” I said smugly. “What about you, Maddy Long-Legs?”

***

When our first graveyard shift rolled away the next Thursday evening, the usually punctual Carlo was a full hour late. Switching to nights had really fucked his schedule. Of course, I was happy to cover for him. Perhaps if I went out of my way to do so, he’d always be late and I could make sure I was always early, thus avoiding more time alone with him where he’d inevitably whine to me about the vague reasons he simply couldn’t ask Maddy on a date.

Furthermore I was happy to see Maddy show up right on time, 6pm. Preparing for the night shift meant we hadn’t really had time to hang outside of work, so the alone time together was nice.

We had a strange setup at the lab. Due to a number of protocols, we didn’t directly switch with the previous shift team. Instead, one team would leave, then an hour later the next team would be allowed to swipe in.. It made sense to those of us who worked there, to do with space and sterility and security. But it meant the anxiety of an hour during which the Dancers were observed only by the cameras.

It was a nice change to have Maddy at my side as I rushed towards the tank. Of course nothing had happened during the day shift. The Junior Lab Manager from that team, Leo, was a good friend of mine, and they would’ve texted me if anything had changed. But there was still that missing hour…

“Nothing!” Maddy exclaimed, relief apparent in her voice.

“Fuck yes,” I said, letting out a breath. I hadn’t realized how much the extended time away from the lab had been bothering me until I could confirm the Debutante was still firmly wrapped in her cocoon. If you’d told me a few years ago that I would’ve dreaded being away from school—and work—I would’ve laughed in your face.

“I’ve got a feeling. A funny feeling,” Maddy said suddenly. I cocked my eyebrow.

“Tried Tinder?”

“Ew, no, not like that,” Maddy said. “This is something actually sexy, like bugs.”

“Who’s a sexy bug? And uh, sorry for being late!”

Carlo stood in the doorway, looking sheepish and clutching apology coffees under one arm. He was dripping wet, and only then did I notice the rain battering the lab’s sole window. It had been a balmy night when I arrived.

“I am, silly,” Maddy said coquettishly. “Maddy Long-Legs.”

I snorted. Maddy was barely over five feet tall. Carlo meanwhile was nodding so emphatically that I worried he’d drop the coffees.

“But no, listen,” Maddy went on. “I’ve just got a feeling she is coming real soon. I think I’m like, part of their hive mind now. One of them.”

Carlo’s eyes widened, as usual taking Maddy’s nonsense seriously.

“Whoa, that’s so cool,” he said, placing our drinks down.

Maddy gave a sagely nod. “It’s like I can speak to them in a language only they and I know.”

Again, I huffed out laughter. “Hopefully you still understand the human language of your supervising lab manager too, though. By which I mean ‘settle down and get to work, Cockwhisperer’.”

***

The next two hours of our first night shift passed without incident. Once the Cockwhisperer jokes had died out, all three of us busied ourselves with work. Around 8:30pm, I excused myself to use the bathroom, which meant swiping out the lab with my access card. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I walked the two corridors leading to the facilities, giving the security guard at the nearest station a warm smile and nod.

Inside the bathroom, I’d barely finished peeing and made it to the sink when there was a knock at the bathroom door. Since whoever it was hadn’t simply entered, I assumed it must be a man.

“Hello?” I called out.

“Oh, Ms Livingstone!” It was Seb, the security guard. “Come quick!”

I rinsed the soap off my hands and exited the bathroom. Seb looked wide-eyed and panicked. My heart gave a single, harder thud before I calmed myself.

“Carlo called up to me on the internal line,” Seb said. He was almost trembling. “Said to get you out the bathroom. You’re needed back at the lab immediately.”

I was momentarily confused. Our job was observation and record-keeping. What could possibly require such urgency right now. Unless…

Back at the lab, seconds later, I could see what was going on, and gratitude towards Carlo flooded through me.

My colleagues were standing facing the tank, staring, breathing heavily.

The Debutante was emerging.

***

I hadn’t expected that much in terms of actual, visual action. It was more about the thrill of being the first to see the birth of a new queen among the Dancers. But holy fuck, none of us were prepared for what we saw that night.

At first, the silk cocoon began to dissolve, like it was rotting. As this happened, the Dancers present in the birthing chamber split into two groups. One group hurried to the dying Queen, whose twitching and apparent distress had increased tenfold the moment the Debutante began to emerge. The other group scuttled to the Debutante’s cocoon and began to aid in stripping the silk away.

“They’ve broken into groups of male and female,” Carlo observed. He was right. The distinction between the genders in the Dancers was hard to make out, but by looking at one of the screens attached to the tank, broadcasting a zoomed-in view of the Royal Chamber, we could see the Dancers who were aiding the Debutante all had the tell-tale double-dot marks on their round, spiky carapace that indicated the female of the species. The bugs tending to the queen were dot-free.

“Interesting. The males are trying to calm the queen I think?” Maddy said.

I shook my head. “No. Look, they’re starting to climb on her. She’s freaking out even more. And…”

“What the shit!” Carlo exclaimed.

Maddy simply gasped.

The male Dancers had begun to swarm over the queen, their phallic protrusions suddenly extending, rising high above their heads as if they were now scorpion tails. And from the end of each began to extend a long, sharp fang.

“They don’t… always have a fang, right?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“No,” Carlo confirmed. “This rear fang seems to have developed in response to the change in ruler. My guess is it’s formed and hardened from the same substance they create that functions as their ‘silk’. The dissection boffins are gonna love this shit.”

We watched silently as the now-armed male Dancers’ tails extended further, reaching over their bodies. Their tail-fangs, too, seemed to grow before our eyes, and soon the Dancers were flexing their tails and causing their fangs to pump back and forth. It reminded me of the needle in my mom’s sewing machine, when the poverty of my childhood meant that Mom would forever be converting old garments into new rather than throw them out and replace them.

This comparison, it turned out, wasn’t far off accurate.

On the other side of the Royal Chamber, the Debutante was being undressed by her handmaidens. The silk continued to rot away, the process expedited by the female Dancers pulling at it. And the means with which they did this was no less surprising than their male counterparts’ sudden weaponization.

No fang had grown from the female Dancers’ tails. Instead, it seemed theirs had developed a suction ability, which they were using to vacuum away the rotting silk from the Debutante. A Dancer would suck at the material for a moment, then turn away and spit it out onto the pile of shredded, decaying matter that was steadily growing beside the group.

Finally, the Debutante was stripped clean and her handmaidens withdrew, allowing us a first-time view of our future queen.

Beside me, Maddy sucked in air. We had been expecting, well, a creature essentially identical to the existing queen, who was truly a shocking and alien-looking thing. But the Debutante, while shocking, looked nothing like the queen.

Our dying queen had giant multi-jointed legs the thickness of matchsticks. She had a carapace, like a regular Dancer but adorned with even more spikes. She had five small eyes, arranged in an upwards-pointing arrow, and a sixth larger eyeball, yellow with a pupil shaped like a goat’s, sitting dead center. She had a single, unusable wing that draped over her back like a large cloak. And unlike all the other Dancers, the Queen had an abdomen from which she could lay eggs.

The Debutante was a squishy sphere, around the size of a large marble. Pale and pink like raw flesh, she quivered in place for a moment before unseen muscles allowed her to propel forward, rolling slowly and awkwardly into the center of the Royal Chamber.

None of us said a word, but I know we were all thinking the same thing. Had something gone wrong? Was there another phase? How could this disgusting mound of meat become a queen, all hardness and spikes and sharp edges?

We didn’t have to wait long to discover.

Over at the struggling queen, the male Dancers were going to town, stabbing and prodding her with their newfound spikes. The sudden group attack was so violent and rapid that I was shocked, despite the regular cruelty I’d experienced in the insect world. The Queen was clearly distressed too; she was chittering and shrieking at a volume just about audible to human ears.

Between direct viewing and looking at the internal camera feeds, we caught glimpses of what was going on. The male Dancers were stripping the queen, skinning her. This was being done with breathtakingly surgical precision. Her carapace had been cracked and was being gently prized open by a number of Dancers, while others still performed a series of excisions down her birthing abdomen. As they peeled away the outer shell of the abdomen like one might shuck a roasted chestnut, we saw what looked alarmingly like a miniature human womb encased in jelly.

Six of the Dancers gathered around the skinned abdomen and gently pulled backwards, in time to the escalating volume of The Queen’s screams. Those who were operating on her upper torso held firm, and soon the queen split into two parts. Pale, pus-y liquid dripped from the separation wound as, slowly, a huge spike with the same appearance as the male Dancers’ fangs slid free.

The six Dancers held the birthing abdomen aloft and while nothing was audible, I could imagine a cheer of triumph rising from the rest of the temporary surgical team.

The rest of what happened all occurred in one seamlessly organized motion, exacted with military precision.

All but the six abdomen Dancers withdrew from the twitching Queen. This allowed us to see what lay beneath her torso carapace—a quivering, fleshy blob that had clearly started life as the same thing as the Debutante. Only this one was shriveled and withered and leaking filthy green bodily fluid where it had been torn. The tears, I saw, had come from numerous tiny spikes inside the torso carapace. Whatever the carapace’s biological origins, it functioned as a costume, that much was clear. A costume or armor.

Some of the male Dancers took up the queen’s garb and moved it to a safe distance. Others scuttled over to the Debutante’s handmaidens. The males began to restrain the handmaidens, whose twitchy struggling movements suggested discomfort, if not distress. Then the remaining surgeons took hold of the Debutante, who throughout the whole process had just sat there, twitching and occasionally rolling back-and-forth. The costume-bearers headed back in next, and with lightning-quick accuracy, folded the former queen’s garb around the Debutante. Their fanged tails still extended, they poked and prodded until as one they withdrew, satisfied with the dress-up job they’d done.

Next, the six Dancers that held the birthing abdomen moved in. They lined the organs’ spike up with the opening at the base of the Queen-armor, and slowly inserted it into the Debutante. I realized the spike must function as a spine. How all the pieces came together I didn’t know, nor was it my job to—the senior scientists would work all this out, no doubt by dissecting queens with reckless abandon once we’d fostered enough Dancer hives. But one thing I did know—echoed by the wincing gasps from Carlos and Maddy to the left and right of me—was that should the creature have nerves, the insertion process would be excruciatingly painful for the Debutante. I felt a rush of protective concern over the fleshy lump. Former fleshy lump. Now she was pieces of a queen, being built alarmingly fast by her hive.

The new hivemother was mostly constructed. The only thing missing was the shell over the birthing organs the old Queen had sported until it was shredded. We soon discovered where this material came from. A few of the male Dancers began slicing at some of the female handmaidens. In what felt like an alarmingly brief amount of time, a number of slain and hollowed out handmaidens had been constructed into strips of brittle skin and placed over the Debutante’s new abdomen. Then the same handmaidens’ legs were used to connect each strip. The six surgeons who had performed the insertion then traced their tail-fangs down the connecting lines. As they did so, their fangs melted into the same type of silk that had formed the Debutante’s cocoon. Within seconds, this had hardened into dark lines.

The Debutante rolled over onto her belly. But her legs were part of the Queen Armor. How would she be able to use them? And yet, with a trembling effort, the Debutante—the new Queen—rose to her feet. A few unsteady steps and then the Queen flexed her new body and strode over to the raised dais in the royal chamber that had served as the previous queen’s throne. Her handmaidens followed, settling at her feet in what looked almost like prayer.

And then, as if to close the ceremony, the surgeons all scuttled over to the twitching, fleshy remains of the old queen. Using their tail fangs, they eviscerated all that remained of their former matriarch.

***

Hours later, shortly before our shift ended, Maddy, Carlo and I finally had the lab to ourselves again. Many senior scientists and even non-scientific University personnel had disregarded the late hour and came in to see the new queen, watch the footage, grill us on what we’d seen. Everything that had happened that evening was groundbreaking and earth-shattering. As an entomology postgrad I’d been pretty aware of this, but not quite to the extent I was informed. It was possible we’d discovered the most intelligent species of arachnids on living record. Intelligent by a colossal margin, no less.

It was a whirlwind. A breathless, exciting, terrifying whirlwind. By the time we were alone again, any of my annoyances at the Maddy and Carlo drama felt inconsequential compared to the closeness, even love, I felt for both of them.

“Well, that was fucked up,” I said finally.

“You think so?” Maddy said. Her voice was small. Awed. “I thought it was… I thought it was beautiful. They love their queens so much they make sure they all live on through each other. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Carlo gazed at Maddy with even more reverence than usual. And for once, I could relate. Her interpretation had been nothing like mine. Nothing at all. But it was such a lovely way of looking at it that I couldn’t bring myself to suggest anything else.

***

It was my turn to be late for work the next day. Something had gone severely wrong with my car, it seemed, and by the time I’d worked this out and arranged another ride, I was over an hour late.

As soon as I exited the elevator onto our floor, I knew something was wrong. There was no security guard at the desk, which was unprecedented by itself, but especially given the events of the night before.

I rushed around the corner and down our corridor. There was nothing glaring. But there was a small scratch on the wall here, a tiny smear there. Enough.

Our lab door was closed, like it should be. I swiped my card. Entered. Inside, I saw the central tank was covered by a huge black sheet. Carlo paced back and forth in front of it. As soon as he saw me a grin split his face.

“Lexa! Lexa I’m so glad you’re here. I wanted you to be the first to know. I solved it! I solved it, all thanks to the Dancers!”

“Solved what, buddy?” I asked. Something felt so off. Why was the tank covered? What was that strange, chemical smell in the air?

“Maddy!” he exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes. “Really? Maddy things again? Now?”

But shouldn’t Maddy be here? Surely she couldn’t be even later than I was?

“No! Seriously! All thanks to the Dancers! You never got it. You never understood. You kept telling me to just ask Maddy out, and I kept telling you I couldn’t! That’s what was tearing me apart. I fell in love with Maddy like, the moment I first saw her. But I still love my wife too! We’ve only been together a few years. Married for one! That’s not long enough to leave her for Maddy! And I didn’t stop loving her just cos I saw Maddy! So how could I ask Maddy out without screwing things up with my wife?”

“Wait… wait,” I said. “You’re… married?”

I’d never seen rings on his hand. But… of course I wouldn’t have. Lab policy meant absolutely zero jewelry. And Carlo was pale enough, and newlywed enough, that a removed ring wouldn’t likely be evident.

“Yeah! So I couldn’t just ask Maddy out. I needed a solution. I’d never cheat on my wife, or cheat on Maddy. And then last night…”

The smell was getting stronger. I caught movement out the corner of my eye. Something small skittering across the floor. Like a spider, but… not.

“What have you done, Carlo?” I asked. My heart was beating faster, faster.

“Like I said, I worked out the perfect solution,” he said impatiently.

“Why is the Dancers’ tank covered, Carlo?” I asked.

Without waiting for a reply, I strode to the center of the lab and pulled the black sheet away. I don’t know what I was expecting to find underneath, but it certainly wasn’t what I saw.

The opposite side of the tank had been shattered. From what I could see of the hive, almost all the Dancers were gone, the Queen included. My eyes would’ve darted around the lab, were it not for what I saw on the other side of the tank, lying on the couch in the rec corner.

Not even considering my safety, I rushed around to where the bloody shape lay. I took it all in. The metal staples holding parts together. The proportions; one arm longer than the other, darker skinned. And the face… the faces. Half I didn’t recognize. Half my good friend.

“What the hell have you done, Carlo?” I asked. “What have you done to Maddy?”

But I knew. I already knew. He’d built himself one partner out of two. His two loves. His two queens.

Carlo had come around to join me. I was too numb to feel fear.

“And the best part!” he said. He touched a cut that seemed to stretch around his Queen’s entire body, just below a belly whose skin I didn’t recognize, attached to hips I did. “The best part, my wife was barren. Couldn’t have kids. We really wanted kids. But Maddy… Maddy isn’t. And I would’ve never even thought of any of this if it wasn’t for the Dancers! The boffins were right! They really are world-changing!”

I swayed. The threat of fainting washed over me. But even then, even after everything, I think I could’ve held it together. I think I could’ve stayed sane, stayed conscious, if it hadn’t been for what happened next.

Carlo’s Queen opened her eyes and stared at me through two women’s eyeballs. Shifted her patchwork torso. Stretched her pale thighs attached to smooth, darker calves at the knees.

I collapsed at the Queen’s feet as she stood. And I gazed up at her long, long legs.

M.E. and Her

Lea Storry

White walls. White lights. Under two white sheets, two identical bodies, reflections of each other. Almost. One has the markings of age—around her eyes and encircling her mouth. Lines showing how often she smiled or frowned. The skin on her neck is beginning to lose the firmness of youth. You might not have even noticed if the other form beside her wasn’t perfectly perfect—perfection that comes only with artifice. Soon, that will be me.

***

Age is a disease and we’ve discovered how to cure it. Furrows and spots and stretch marks, wrinkles and sagging and life etched in the creases of eyes—these are almost gone. Youth is an industry and by blurring the lines of organic and artificial intelligence, humans can be young forever. You can reimage your human form, if you have money.

I must work for a meagre living. I must work for those who can afford not to get old. I’m a clerk at Mechanical Entity Inc. or in short form, M.E. I mould women into younger, better versions of themselves.

At the end of a soul and skin-shrivelling day at the office, I walk the several blocks home. Young woman after young woman teeters past me, taut figures swaying on hip-displacing stilettos. The women are almost all M.E.s, although none of them are reflections of me. My sensible flat shoes slap the pavement—my hips must last as long as my heart beats.

Today’s warm September air doesn’t hold any hint of decay but autumn will soon be here. Then old leaves will dry and drop from the trees to rot into the ground. For now, the branches are green, lush with summer. People are out, enjoying the day. I pass a park where a boy is playing with a beagle. The dog runs in circles and stops, tongue out, tail wagging, when it sees me.

“Hi doggy,” I say. It moves a white and brown paw towards me, then another.

“No!” shouts the boy at his dog. “Don’t go near her. She’s a hag.”

The boy who gave the warning has blond hair curling out from under a baseball cap. His beauty is only skin deep.

“Get away from my dog, slaggy bitch,” says the kid.

I stick out my chin to tighten my features. I widen my blurry eyes. I plead with my pinched-nerve back to stand a little taller. I push my aching knees to walk a little faster. This isn’t the first time I’ve been called names. Nevertheless, each comment piles, like stones, on my chest. It hurts to breathe.

The boy will never gasp for air. He’ll never age like me. Even as an old man, he’ll be wanted, appreciated, valued. His wrinkles will mean a wealth of experience and a life well-lived.

Arriving at my red brick apartment building, I dash through the door and lock it. No one can see me now. No one can tell me I’ve caused them pain because I walked by them. No one can tell me I’m offensive because I can’t evade time. No one can tell me to forget about living.

I haven’t forgotten how to cry. Through my tears, I examine my dull skin in the bathroom mirror. My pores have enlarged, my skin droops ever so slightly off my jawbone and a couple of my eyelashes have turned white. I’m 35 years old and every day is only going to bring more puckering and wrath. Nevertheless, the more time I spend on Earth as me, the more I realize that while machines have the ability to keep muscles from wasting away, I have the wisdom to understand that what is soft can be sharp. Tomorrow, at work, I’m investing in M.E.

***

“Her hair isn’t as thick as mine,” says the woman, running her smooth hand through the life-size mannequin’s chestnut mane, then through her own thin strands. “I’d like that fixed.”

“Yes,” I say, typing a quick note on my tablet. “That’s easily done.”

“There’s a slight bump on the bridge of her nose,” she says, tracing the bump on the bridge of her nose. “That shouldn’t be there.”

I nod as I enter in a line about refining the facial feature.

The client is vetting her prototype, a plastic model I’ve fashioned through top-of-the-line AI technology and the latest in engineered flesh. Most people improve their M.E.s before signing off. A smaller waist. Thinner calves. Sometimes, a completely new face.

“My M.E. must be just like me,” says the woman. “Even down to the type of music I prefer. Not this old shit.” She waves her perfectly manicured beige nails at the clinic speakers. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons drifts past walls as white as her teeth.

“Your Mechanical Entity is a reflection,” I say to the twenty-three-year-old. “You’ll be timeless. You are timeless, Mrs. Karol.”

Mechanical Entities aren’t robots. Sure, M.E.’s are made out of silicone and wires and metal but the stuff you can’t see—the human stuff—is in there too. Your consciousness, your personality, memories, feelings and intelligence are transferred to the M.E. through a process called Relocation.

“Relocation is the ultimate beauty treatment,” I say. “Your M.E. is your exact copy, physically and mentally. You’re climbing through the looking glass and coming out the other side a better version of you. Your body will never change again.”

I’ve seen this woman before, with a different name. All the women who come here look the same, except for the designers they wear. They are all young, rich, married, and in search of eternal beauty.

“God, could you imagine being thirty-five?” asks Mrs. Karol. “It’s utterly horrifying.”

Pushing up my glasses, I glance down at my tablet, checking an imaginary box. The screen acts like a mirror, reflecting the ridges in my forehead and the eskers around my eyes. A face made by nature.

Cortisol surges through my body, seeping into my cells and breaking them down bit by bit. I turn my back to Mrs. Karol before the crumpling of my spirit is the same as my skin. Firm flesh equals authority. It equals power and wealth. I am solely a caricature of what happens if you don’t have someone to buy back your youth. I’m old and something to escape before it happens to you.

At the end of our session today, Mrs. Karol will be implanted with a device that’ll collect her past and present data for Relocation. The device, shaped like a tiny snail shell, compiles all that is Her  to be transferred to the M.E. during Relocation.

Mrs. Karol bites her plump pink lip before turning her attention back to her younger twin.

“It’ll be nice to enjoy a glass of wine without worrying about it going to my hips,” she says.

“I talk to many women who say the same thing.” I straighten my shoulders and lift my chest. I don’t want her to see the roll my stomach makes in my tight black skirt.

“My husband doesn’t want even one grey hair on my head,” says Mrs. Karol. “He loves me so much; he wants to keep me exactly the way I am. I’ll still be able to beat him at chess, right?”

“Oh yes. In fact, your capacity for knowledge will be greater once you’re Relocated.”

Mrs. Karol sighs and rolls her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says, “but I have to ask. How can you stand working here? Day in and day out, everyone gets younger except for you. It would make me want to kill myself.”

Another stone is stacked on my chest. I keep breathing.

“It’s an honour to help keep you beautiful,” I say.

“You’re here for M.E.,” she laughs, an effortless chortle not weighed down by years.

My mouth doesn’t break into a smile. I have enough lines as it is.

“Do you have your Relocation date?” I ask.

“March 1, 2056. That should give me enough time to have my two children in my natural body.”

I’ll be almost fifty by then.

“You’ll be 36,” I say.

“Oh, yuck. Better make it March 1, 2053.”

I pick up a light blue cotton gown that laces up in the back and hand it to Mrs. Karol.

“Please put this on over your clothes. I don’t want to get blood on your nice blouse.”

I watch as she pulls on the garment over her crimson Yves Saint Laurent silk blouse. Youth is currency and she is rich. The light reflects on her face, highlighting the curve of her cheekbone. Her chin is compact, angular. Nothing extra hangs or droops. I look away when her bright eyes catch mine.

“Do I really have to die?” she asks. “It sounds revolting.”

“Only your flesh passes,” I say, putting my sun-stained freckled hands behind my back.

“I don’t mean to offend you,” says Mrs. Karol, “but isn’t there someone younger in charge here? I’d prefer someone more professional looking, someone who won’t make any mistakes.”

“I may not look like I have all the necessary qualifications and skills but I do,” I say while snapping on latex gloves.

I walk over to the woman and wipe the back of her neck with a disinfectant cloth. The smell of the sanitizer stings my nostrils. I sniff but stop the sneeze about to come.

“I’ll never have to worry about age again,” says Mrs. Karol, turning her dewy face towards mine.

“Take a deep breath in,” I say.

She purses her lips as if she’s blowing a kiss. That’s when I make the small incision in her neck with a gleaming scalpel taken off the table beside me. Mrs. Karol gasps and jerks her head towards the surgeon’s knife. My aged hands react with experience, yanking the blade away from her before it slices into her arteries.

“You hurt me,” says Mrs. Karol.

“I am deeply sorry,” I say. “It is a necessary part of the procedure. It’ll be over soon.”

A line of bright blood escapes from the slash in her skin. I catch it with a piece of lemon-coloured gauze that I throw into the garbage. Next, with a couple flicks of my finger on my tablet, I program the Snail, the implant. The device is tiny, the size of a crumb of toast. The Snail is made up of thousands of threads coiled impossibly tight. The implant will slide into Mrs. Karol’s incision and sit there, picking up impulses from her brain and storing them until it’s time for Relocation.

“Are you done?” she asks, bringing her hand up to touch the incision.

“Just one more minute,” I say, gently pushing her arm down.

I shove the Snail into the folds of her skin with my index finger and watch as the implant is swallowed, absorbed into her humanity. Then I stick two strips of green suture tape over the wound.

“You’re all done,” I say. “For now.”

“Great. My husband will be so pleased.”

“I’ll see you in ten years.”

Mrs. Karol sits up on the bed and shakes out her long brown hair. She puts a hand to her neck, scratching at the adhesive.

“You can remove the tape in two hours,” I tell her.

“I can go now?” she asks, looking past me and to the door.

“Yes.”

Mrs. Karol slips off the gown, leaving it in messy folds on the floor.

“Until then,” she says, waving her beige nails at me.

The door shuts quietly behind her. I lock it with a click. Facing the square office mirror, I examine myself. If I look closely, there’s a slight resemblance between Mrs. Karol and me. We both have the same high cheekbones and almond-shaped hazel eyes. Loose crepe skin is beginning to form around my eyes – the price I’m paying for a near-empty bank account. My client and I have the same colour hair, well, had the same colour: a rich chestnut brown. Now strands of white push through the dye at my roots.

The next few years will only add up and up for me—subtracting from my worth. I am going to change that. I am going to make her pay. I am going to make me—her.

I stare at myself, waiting for the woman on the other side to waver. She holds my gaze. Steady. She watches as my fingers flick at the screen on my tablet. She sees me make a small incision in my neck and insert a Snail.

***

The woman in the mirror at home is older, much older, now. Her hair is white, her cheeks are deep caves and her eyes are almost buried in furrows. I dab on lipstick that turns my mouth into a blood red slash. It’s too late to change it. I have to go to work. I open the door, bow my head and start walking.

“Get out of the way, disgusting thing,” says a young man, almost pushing me off the sidewalk and into oncoming traffic.

“Mom, what’s a wrinkled cow doing outside?” a child asks while passing by me. The girl's young mother pats her on the head and they quicken their pace. Away from me.

I try to block their crushing comments by focusing on my breathing. In a couple of hours, I won’t need to care what they think of me. I won’t need this shell of loose muscles and flesh. I won’t even need oxygen. Today is March 1, 2053, Mrs. Karol’s Relocation date.

In the clinic operating room, Mrs. Karol lies beside an almost identical form. One has aged. One will never grow old. They’re both under white sheets and soft light.

“Are you ready?” I ask the older form.

“I am,” says Mrs. Karol. “The M.E. is so perfect. Not a line on her face anywhere.”

“Is your husband here to help your Relocation?”

Mrs. Karol shakes her head slowly from side to side.

“No,” she says softly, tears filling her hazel eyes. “It’s been a hard few years. He can barely look at me. He says I’m too old. Even my kids don’t like to be seen with me anymore.”

It’s a deathbed confession and I feel a ping of guilt. But the twinge is nothing compared to the Mount Everest of hate and loathing that has been suffocating me for the last twenty years.

“Your pain will be over soon,” I say to the body.

I open the stainless-steel doors to the room and nod at the two men in white coats waiting in the hallway. The doctor and the nurse, husband and husband, have matching jowls that shake when they walk through the operating room doors and towards the woman.

The last part of Relocation is removing the Snail, which will be implanted into the Mechanical Entity after the human husk is killed. On my tablet, I program Mrs. Karol’s implant to stop recording. Now the doctor moves in to deliver the medicine to complete the procedure. The physician’s stomach is large and protrudes like a pregnant woman’s belly. He bumps his bump into the table, jostling Mrs. Karol. I see a flash of terror in her eyes as he gingerly inserts a needle into the blue veins of her left arm. She opens her mouth once, twice, then it goes slack. The nurse records the time of the flesh death before removing her Snail.

There’s no need to be gentle anymore. A hatchet opens up the base of the skull where the Snail is nestled. The nurse scoops out Mrs. Karol’s implant in a maw of brain, blood and tendons.

“Why are you bleeding?” the nurse asks me.

“Huh?” I touch the warm, wet bandage on my neck. “Oh, I was trimming my hair and I cut myself. Nothing to worry about.”

He hands me the Snail for inspection then turns to the doctor.

“Dingdong, another old witch is gone,” he says. Then he stares straight at me.

“You next?” he sneers.

While the men are laughing, I pocket Mrs. Karol’s Snail and fish a second one from my lab coat. I lift my glasses to pretend to examine the insert for frayed wires or anything that could short-circuit the M.E.

“It’s good,” I say, putting it on a shiny silver tray.

The doctor nods at the nurse, who picks up the Snail and presses it deep into the ear of the Mechanical Entity. The implant is the last piece of Relocation. I have less than a minute to do what I have to do before the Snail fully integrates with the M.E. I don’t know what will happen if I’m standing here when it’s born. I don’t want to find out.

“I need to clean myself up,” I tell the medical team.

The doctor grunts at me and the nurse stares at the M.E., waiting for signs of life. I scurry to the bathroom down the hall and lock the door. The clinic speakers play Schumann’s Spring. I look in the mirror and smile, a wide, skin-cracking, line-making, yellowed teeth-showing grin. Retrieving a scalpel from my pocket, I slice into my neck, hitting the vital veins and spraying red all over my reflection.

I’m falling, falling, falling through a tunnel of grey shadows. I’m plummeting through fog and I can’t stop my descent. I’m moving faster and faster and I grab at the silhouettes, hoping to slow the plunge into the void. My skin is burning and I feel like my chest is on fire. Flames burst out of my mouth when I try to scream. The sparks light up the shadows, which become figures, reflections of me.

There I am, a young girl, running on long legs. There I am, a teenager, laughing with friends. There I am, in my twenties, with the arrogance of youth. There I am, in my thirties, charming and resilient. There I am, almost fifty, a woman with experience worn on my face. In all my multiple images and throughout my aging, I look strong. I look full of life. I look…beautiful.

I claw at the ghosts, trying to stop the clock. I’ve made a mistake. Relocation is a mistake. The shapes around me start vibrating. Shaking. Convulsing. Dissolving in a soft light that’s enveloping the tunnel. I don’t want the images to leave me. I don’t want them to disappear. My body, my old body, is not an ugly prison. It has taken care of me. Protected me. Loved me.

“Wake up,” a man’s voice calls from somewhere off in the distance.

“Wake up!” the man calls again, an edge to his voice this time. “You’ve been Relocated.”

I open my eyes. White lights point directly at my pupils and despite this, I see clearly. Everything is in focus. I reach out an arm from under the sheet and see it’s a slender, unblemished limb. I sit up in one motion—fluidly. Nothing on my body hangs or sags or wrinkles. Nothing aches. Nothing hurts. My toes wiggle as freely as a child’s and my knees bend like I’m twenty-one.

“Your husband will be pleased to have such a beautiful and vibrant woman back in the house,” says the nurse. “Would you like to see yourself?”

He hands me a looking glass.

I peer at the fresh face of Mrs. Karol. It’s M.E.

The Eyes of Vaz’lul

Jill Palmer

Something is killing the children.

The senior members of the women’s club wrap the baby’s body in its burial shroud, the fifth one this month. Today, the wrapping is the color of crushed peonies, trimmed with white lace.

Such is the custom: pink for girls, blue for boys.

Agnes wraps her arms around her own belly as if to shield the child within from the unseen danger. Her son, Theodore, is four years old now and desperate for a younger sibling to play with.

Agnes herself prays to Vaz’lul nightly for another healthy child.

Secretly, she hopes for another boy. Whatever affliction is killing the babies, it disproportionally targets the baby girls.

They must’ve done something to displease Vaz’lul, the Cosmic Demiurge, though she can’t imagine what. The women of Cirrus III are pious. Agnes herself prays three times daily, kneeling in front of the great windows that overlook Vaz’lul’s Moon with her hands outstretched and her face to the stars. What more can Vaz’lul ask of her?

Sacrilegious thoughts. Abraham would be cross if he knew.

Agnes’s husband waits by the airlock with the other men, as far away from the women's club as they can get. They want no part in the preparation of the body. The men are here for what comes after.

The women approach the airlock and pass the bundle over to Adam, the child’s father. His wife clings to his arm and sobs herself hoarse. The head of the clergy, Samson, lingers nearby, absently drumming his fingers on the airlock door. He seems impatient, shifting his weight from side to side as Adam and his wife pray.

The holy men of Cirrus III and their families live in the upper decks where Agnes, as both a woman and a member of the lower class, is not permitted. Because of this, she seldom sees the white-robed men that serve as Vaz’lul’s proxies.

Eventually, the father passes the child into Samson’s waiting hands. The wife’s howls increase in volume: a shrill, preternatural sound like the cry of a deep space specter.

Agnes wants to go to her, but Abraham’s hand comes down on her shoulder, giving her pause. “Watch what we do.” His dark brows furrow. “Caring for the bodies will be your duty soon.”

Today, they’re having a funeral. Tomorrow, every able-bodied man is headed off to fight the invading Gruuls from Andromeda VI. That is, any man except for members of the clergy, whose holy duty makes them exempt from military service. Abraham himself is a doctor, and won’t be involved in the fighting, but that is little comfort to their son who doesn’t understand why Daddy has to go away for such a long, long time. It’s not much comfort to Agnes, either.

With most of the men gone, it is the women will have to take on the jobs the men of the lower decks usually do, including ship maintenance, farming in the hydroponics labs, and performing burial rites.

Samson says a few words, then the women are dismissed.

Only Agnes remains.

As a midwife, she was chosen to take on the role of undertaker. When Abraham leaves, she will be solely in charge of birthing babies as well as sending them to Vaz’lul should they pass.

“Abraham,” the clergyman says. “Is your wife ready?”

Ready for what? Agnes glances at Abraham, but his face is etched in stone. “Yes,” he replies, squeezing Agnes’s shoulder reassuringly. He takes the bundle from Samson, who seems glad to be rid of the burden, discreetly wiping his hands down the back of his pristine white gown.

Abraham places the baby in the airlock and seals it closed. The child is jettisoned out of the ship and into the deep expanse of space. It drifts aimlessly for a moment before the gravity of Vaz’lul’s Moon draws it in. The child will eventually come to rest gently on the face of Vaz’lul’s Moon, along with the rest of her deceased loved ones, to lay comfortably in His arms for the rest of eternity. That should be the end of it. Yet something in her is telling Agnes to stay, to see what happens next. An equally loud voice is telling her she’d rather not know.

Vaz’lul’s Moon shivers.

A fissure opens along its face, a crack that quickly expands into a gaping chasm lined with jagged rocks like human teeth. The bundle disappears into the opening, and the fissure quickly closes itself behind it. Agnes searches the men’s faces for an explanation, but they aren’t looking at her. Abraham’s grip on her shoulder turns bruising.

Another fissure opens to reveal something gleaming and white underneath. The crack widens and becomes round, a glossy alabaster oval with a large black dot in the middle. Another fissure opens beside it, then another, and another, until the entire surface of Vaz’lul’s Moon is covered with the strange white disks.

The disks all blink in unison.

The revelation is like a punch to the stomach. Her vision swims. The celestial body she believed all her life to be a moon isn’t a moon at all. Agnes is gazing into the numerous eyes of some great living creature.

A creature that eats human flesh.

The eyes of Vaz’lul dance, flitting this way and that before settling on Cirrus III. Beside her, Abraham sucks in a breath.

The beast grows still. Slowly, deliberately, it closes its many eyes. Samson’s ashen face splits into a smile.

“Vaz’lul has been satisfied!” he says. “Once again, the Cosmic Demiurge accepts our sacrifice of freshly culled flesh and bone in exchange for our continued prosperity. The others mustn’t know. You understand, don’t you?”

It takes Agnes a moment to realize he’s talking to her. It takes her another to understand the implications of the word culled.

“Yes,” she says. It’s a lie. Agnes doesn’t understand, but in that moment, she would have said anything to get away from Vaz’lul and Samson and the rest of the guilty men.

Samson is talking fast now, explaining how she must draw the child away from its mother quickly and administer the poison before the offering has the chance to become impure. That’s how he says it, the offering, like they were discussing a loaf of bread and not another human being. She sways a little, her vision growing fuzzy around the edges. She thinks she’s about to pass out, but Abraham reaches out to steady her. She draws away from him.

“It’s painless,” Abraham tells her, misunderstanding her distress. He’s trying to assuage her fears, but if anything, he’s only making it worse. Agnes gazes at her husband of five years and feels as though she’s looking at a stranger. “Believe me when I say we derive no pleasure from this—"

“Vaz’lul decides the sacrifices,” Samson cuts in. “With your husband gone, He will tell you which infants must be culled. You must be ready to do your duty.”

“Why doesn’t the Cosmic Demiurge tell you about the sacrifices?” Agnes says, voice quivering. “You’re the leader of the clergy—"

His face flushes darkly. “Well, I—It is the duty of the lower decks to supply the sacrifices! Vaz’lul would not trouble me with something so asinine.” He shakes his head in exasperation, though the red in his cheeks hasn’t quite faded. “I thought you said she was qualified, Abraham—”

“How often must I do this?” Agnes interjects, insides quivering. She hasn’t talked this long to a man who was not family in years.

“As often as He demands.” Abraham sighs, tired. “He will tell you when its time.”

“Why? Why does Vaz’lul demand this of us?”

“It is our sacred duty, Agnes,” Abraham says in a tone that invites no argument. “Failing to satisfy Vaz’lul’s hunger would have disastrous consequences. Cirrus III is the only thing standing between Him and the eradication of the entire galaxy.”

Agnes returns to the women’s club. She knits with the other ladies, listens to their gossip, sips their tea. Tonight, they are abuzz with nerves and energy. Eleanor is particularly excited about taking over her brother’s engineering work. It’s not surprising that she got the job. As a girl, she spent all her free time taking apart anything electronic, just to see how it worked. Of course, that was before she got married and started having children. Agnes doubts Eleanor has so much as held a wrench in years.

That night, Agnes tucks her son in for the night, guides him through his prayers, then lays down in the bed she shares with Abraham. She hears the woosh of the door signaling his entrance, but doesn’t stir. She closes her eyes and pretends to be asleep. She hears Abraham readying himself for bed, feels the bed dip as he crawls in beside her, his movements slow and deliberate as to not disturb her.

Agnes waits until she’s sure he’s unconscious before she looks at him. This man looks like her husband, yet Agnes cannot contend the sweet, gentle man she married with the infanticidal monster she now knows him to be.

She clutches her stomach in anguish. Would you do it? She thinks at Abraham’s sleeping form. Would you kill your own child?

Unable to look at him a second longer, she flees to Theodore’s room and curls up beside him on his narrow toddler bed. She strokes a lock of wispy blond hair away from his forehead and listens to the soft sounds of his breathing. He is alive, she tells herself firmly, eyes tightly shut. You are alive.

She wants to focus on Theodore, but her thoughts keep drifting back to Abraham. How could she not have known?

She has been present at hundreds of births. It always goes the same way. After every delivery, before the mother even has the chance to look at her own child, Abraham rushes the baby out of the room. There is a sacred ceremony that must be performed, one women are not permitted to witness. Abraham must quickly give the child to Vaz’lul before evil specters have the chance to infect the baby’s newly formed soul.

When he finishes, sometimes Abraham returns with a baby.

Often, he does not.

Every time, he clasps the mother’s hand in his, murmuring soft apologies. I wasn’t fast enough, he says. Vaz’lul has called her home.

How foolish they’ve all been.

She should have known, should have wondered, should have asked more questions. Agnes realizes that she, too, is guilty. Guided by male hands, she was shaped into the perfect accessory to the crimes of a patriarchal society. In her blind acceptance of her husband and her culture’s excuses, she too is damned.

“I have been complacent,” she whispers. “Women are complacent in the hidden evils of men. We could have questioned it at any time, but their gentle dissuasion was enough for us. But why?”

The next day, the men depart. The women’s club has plans to meet up to see them off, to weep and wave goodbye as the men board military-grade space vessels and soar out into the darkness of space. As the doctor’s wife, Agnes will be expected to be there. Instead, she chooses to stay home with her son.

***

With the men gone, the women throw themselves into their duties. At their meetings, they discuss what it is like to stand in the shoes of men. Some women miss the way things used to be—when they could just be wives and mothers instead of wives and mothers as well as electricians or farmers or custodians. They miss being away from their children for so many hours of the day.

By contrast, some women thrive in the workforce. Having a job has made them feel purposeful, active, renewed. Eleanor wears her son in a sling on her back while she works, marrying her dual identities as both working woman and mother. Agnes herself says nothing.

She goes about her daily tasks as she always has, but something is different. A smoldering ember has sparked within her. Every time a clergyman scoffs at her, every time she sees Vaz’lul’s Moon, every time a woman sobs over her lost child, the fire grows a little bigger.

The next day, vials of poison arrive outside her family’s pod.

Agnes bursts into flames.

***

She’s been avoiding Samson. He wants to know the same thing she does.

Why hasn’t Vaz’lul spoken to her yet?

Agnes wonders if perhaps Vaz’lul is just biding his time, and that she will be the next unlucky mother attending a funeral. She hugs her stomach tightly and tries to banish the thought from her mind. Agnes tells herself she is being foolish. It’s been months now, and yet Vaz’lul remains as silent as deep space. Perhaps He has finally been satisfied. There will be no more sacrifices.

She is readying herself for bed when she hears it.

Agnes—

The voice in her head is like slivers of glass, cutting her from the inside out. It feels too big for her head, the presence of Vaz’lul on her psyche too much for her puny human mind to contain. The pain drives her to her knees. She thinks of Abraham, and his constant headaches.

AGNES—

He doesn’t need to say anything else. She knows what He wants.

Vaz’lul is hungry.

***

That night, Agnes goes to her meeting. If the other women know she’s been avoiding them, they give no indication of it. They smile at her and launch into a discussion about the workweek. Eleanor burned her thumb on a hot coil. Meredith had been experimenting with different types of fertilizer for her bean plants.

Then she feels it, a sharp tug that starts at the base of her sternum and nearly drags her
from her chair. She looks up to see where Vaz’lul is leading her.

It’s a young woman, perhaps nineteen, and heavily pregnant with what is probably her first child. She throws back her head and laughs, eyes sparkling, aglow with the joy of an expectant mother.

No. The fire burning within her briefly overpowers Vaz’lul’s presence in her mind. No, you cannot have her.

Agnes stands.

“I have something to tell you.”

***

They don’t believe her, at first.

“They would never!” The young pregnant woman exclaims. Her big doe eyes are bright with anger.

“I can prove it,” Agnes says.

They stop by the butchery and pick up a thick cut of meat. It’s beef harvested from genetically enhanced cows, cloned and grown to maturity in artificial wombs. The new farmer stares mournfully at the dead flesh as if it was someone she knew.

Agnes has no idea if this will work, but she brings them to the airlock and jettisons the meat anyway.

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then Vaz’lul opens His eyes. Some women flee, shrieking like stuck pig-chickens, unable to comprehend what they’ve just witnessed. Others faint. Most of them hold their ground. They stare into the ugliness of the world, and the ugliness stares back.

They wait.

Vaz’lul slowly closes His eyes in begrudging acceptance.

***

Agnes isn’t surprised to find Samson on her doorstep the next day.

“You offered animal flesh to the Lord Vaz’lul?” he says. “Blasphemer! Deceiver! You will freeze in the long dark of space for this, Agnes! You will never again bask in Vaz’lul’s light!”

At one point, such words would have flung her into the deepest depths of despair. She might have even knelt at this man’s feet to beg his forgiveness.

No longer.

By now, she understands Samson and his acolytes are men mostly made of bluster and empty threats. True, Samson can still have her executed, but then, who would be the undertaker? Not him, certainly. Such work is beneath a holy servant of Vaz’lul.

“The fact that Vaz’lul accepted it proves that we could have been feeding Him beef this whole time,” she says coolly. “It was men like you that allowed Him to develop a taste for human blood in the first place, Samson. You are to blame for the mess we’re in.”

“You’re only delaying the inevitable,” he says. Agnes knows he’s right. Vaz’lul has been fed, but he is far from satisfied. Already she is beginning to feel the consequences of her disobedience. Her skin has turned to a sickly gray color, mottled here and there with purplish bruises that never seem to heal. Her hair falls out in clumps. She is fearful, but she cannot stop now. Not when she is so close to making real change for them all.

The women’s club has been busy lately. They are tired, and frustrated, yet Agnes urges them forward still. Somehow, she has become the leader of their small battalion.

“The men won’t stand for this,” he says, and that gets Agnes’s attention. It has been six months since the men of the lower decks left to relieve the front-line troops in the war against the Gruuls. It has felt like decades, so long that Agnes has all but forgotten they ever existed. “Your husband won’t stand for this, Agnes!”

“My husband isn’t here anymore,” she says evenly. “It’s been so long, who’s to say they’re even coming back?” The words fall out of her mouth so easily, even she is surprised.

“Oh no?” A cruel grin spreads across Samson’s face. “Seems you haven’t heard, then.”

Agnes’s body goes cold. “What are you talking about?”

Samson is positively preening. “You’ll be pleased to know that a representative of the Planetary Consortium sent us a blink this morning. The Gruul emperor has surrendered and turned themselves into Consortium custody. The war is won, Agnes. Your husband is coming home.”

***

The next few days pass in a blur of hushed whispers and furtive glances. They weren’t ready for the men to return, not so soon, so their plans must be accelerated.

For the first time in months, she thinks about Abraham. She wonders what he’ll say when he finds out what she’s done, what she is planning to do next.

“Agnes—” says Eleanor. There is a smudge of grease on her cheek and her eyes are bloodshot and weary. “Betty is missing.”

Betty. A waif of a girl with a laugh like the tinkling of a bell. Seventeen, unmarried, and childless. Her father passed several years ago from a nasty case of space lung. A woman with no male relatives to speak of.

A woman nobody would miss.

Agnes doesn’t have to guess what happened. The soul-suck of Vaz’lul’s hunger left her that morning, like it was never there to begin with. Her vision is clear, and she stands up straight, full of a sense of renewed vigor and purpose.

This is the lesson Samson wants her to learn.

Betty’s death is a punishment, Samson’s way of letting her know her insubordination will not be tolerated. A last-ditch effort of maintaining the status quo. Do as I say, or it won’t just be the babies. Any one of them could become a target.

Agnes will not be cowed. She is done making excuses, and she is done playing nice.

“Seal all entrances to the upper decks,” she says. She should have done so sooner, but she foolishly believed Samson was not the threat he continued to prove himself to be. “Let the others know that all non-life sustaining labor is immediately postponed until further notice.”

“Agnes, are you sure?”

She nods. “Let them see what it’s like to be powerless.”

The next day, the women gather in the docking bay to wait for their returning men. They are shivering with nerves, but they stand firm. Agnes waits in front of the large bay windows, eight and a half months pregnant, leaning heavily on thick wooden cane Meredith carved for her. She watches the sleek military vessels zoom through the stars towards Cirrus III.

The vessels dock, the metal doors sliding open to reveal the men of the lower decks. They rush forward, eager to rejoin their wives and children, but Agnes steps forward and points her baton at them. The end of her weapon crackles with electricity, inciting a small, prideful smile from Eleanor.

“Don’t come any closer,” Agnes says. Behind her, the other women raise their batons as well.

A murmur runs through the crowd. Agnes scans their faces. Some of them look appropriately perplexed. Agnes takes note of them, the innocent ones. Agnes puts them out of her mind for now. Her focus is on the other ones, the men who know exactly what this was about.

It accounts for over half of them. At least most of them have the courtesy to look ashamed. Eventually, the crowd parts, revealing the one person Agnes most wants and does not want to see.

Abraham. Agnes wavers, but only slightly. She thrusts her weapon in his direction, ignoring the hurt that ripples across his weathered face.  “No closer, Abraham. I mean it.”

“Agnes—” he says, voice cracking. “I understand how you feel. I was the same when I first found out. It’s an atrocious thing that we must do. But, darling, can’t you see? We have no choice but to play the parts outlined for us. This is the way it has always been. Who are we to question the wisdom of our ancestors?”

The women exchange uneasy glances. They whisper noisily to each other, and Agnes can feel the tide beginning to turn. She, too, falters slightly. Abraham’s words have merit. After all, hadn’t Agnes been happier before she knew the truth? It would be far easier to close her eyes and her ears to what was happening, to allow Abraham to retake the reigns once more.

But she does know, and now that she knows, she can never again be content with life as they knew it.

“There will be no more sacrifices, Abraham,” she says. Though her body trembles, her voice remains steady. “The rules of our society have harmed us all. You will see that it is time for us to choose a different path, or you will get back in that ship and never return.”

Abraham grimaces. He knows as well as she does that the road ahead will not be easy. There will be dissenters on both sides who will balk against the new world order. Yet Agnes is sure she is doing the right thing.

“Say we try things your way,” he says eventually. “What would that look like?”

Despite herself, Agnes grins.

***

The men and women of the lower decks gather by the airlocks.

Samson arrives minutes later, right on time. That morning, Eleanor hacked into his pod and remotely locked the doors, trapping him inside for the better part of the day. Once the hard work was done, Eleanor unlocked the pod doors and invited him to join them at the airlocks where it all began.

“Abraham!” Samson’s reedy voice is especially shrill today. He spreads his hands wide, incredulous, looking more like a disappointed schoolteacher than the holy authority who lorded over them. “What is the meaning of this?”

Abraham looks to Agnes. Agnes stands a little taller, holding onto Abraham’s arm. They stand side by side, supporting one another.

“Vaz’lul has spoken to me,” she says. Her face is healthy and glowing, truly unburdened, possibly for the first time in her life. “The Cosmic Demiurge must be fed, Samson. It is our duty.”

“Yes!” he says, clapping his hands together like a small child delighting in a meteor shower. “I knew you would come around eventually, Agnes.”

“Of course. It only makes sense.”

“Yes,” he says again, less certain now. He wouldn’t expect a woman to take such pleasure in human sacrifice.

“Yes,” Agnes agrees, sweet as cream.

“Where’s the sacrifice?”

Agnes raises her hand, and the crowd parts.

Inside the airlock lay the dead bodies of Samson’s clergymen, wrapped in blue burial shrouds.

Agnes rounded them up, these upper deck men who put so many innocents to death. They had once stood so proud, lording over the lower decks. Now they lay in a loose pile inside the airlock, stacked one on top of the other like flapjacks in a pan. Ready to be served up to the monster they loved so much.

And now their leader was here, the most pious of them all.
The men close ranks around him. He looks around for an escape route and comes up with nothing.

“This is a disgrace!” He sputters. “The Consortium—”

“Has been notified of the secularization of Cirrus III,” Agnes says. “The Consortium wishes us well as we explore this new path in life.”

“Fools! Have you forgotten what Vaz’lul is capable of? He will destroy you all!”

Agnes’s hand disappears into the folds of her dress. She pulls out a smooth metal object, roundish in shape and the approximate size of a clenched fist. Samson stares at it for a long time, uncomprehending.

Agnes sighs as if she is dealing with a petulant toddler. “Your clergy,” she says, “lived like men with metal where their hearts should be. Now they really are.” Agnes continues, ignoring how Samson’s face distorts in horror as she speaks. “It’s a bomb, Samson. Each holy man of the upper decks has been fitted with one.” She holds the explosive up a little higher. “Dear Eleanor made this one special, just for you. Isn’t that kind?”

Samson bolts. Or tries to, at least. The nearest men seize him by the arms and march him over to her.

Together, the men and women hoist Samson up on the platform and tie him down. She had wanted a ceremonial dais for this, but the best they could come up with was one of the labor and delivery beds from the hospital wing.

When Samson is secure, Agnes approaches his bedside and withdraws a dagger. It’s a holy weapon, with a golden hilt and an image of Vaz’lul’s Moon emblazoned on the pommel. Light reflecting off its blade glints in Samson’s wide, terrified eyes.

“Agnes—” he wheezes. His breathing has become erratic, like that of a moonrabbit caught in a trap. “Agnes, please. Have mercy.”

She leans in very close, pressing the tip of the dagger against his fat cheek, wet with both sweat and tears. “Like how you had mercy for our daughters?”

“I did what I had to do!”

“So am I.”

Samson’s mouth opens once more, but his next words die in his throat as Agnes plunges the ceremonial dagger deep into his chest. Samson silently stares at the dagger hilt for a moment, mouth agape in terror, before throwing his head back and bellowing in blind pain and rage. Without being told, Eleanor jams a greasy rag into his mouth to stifle the sound.

Agnes brushes her hair back into a loose ponytail and gets to work. She seizes the knife with both hands and cuts downward, easily slicing through Samson’s pericardium as though it were softened butter. Again, she is in awe of the sharpness of this weapon, honed for exactly this task.

Hot, coppery blood flows down her forearms to drip steadily on the floor. To Agnes, it seems the blood is everywhere. The sharp, rusty smell of Samson’s blood is so pungent that she can practically taste it, metallic on her tongue.

When she has made a sizable hole, Agnes reaches inside with her bare hand, sliding up and inside Samson’s chest cavity. It is a feeling like reaching up inside an expectant mother, though it isn’t a baby she’s groping for. Her hand closes around Samson’s still beating heart, pulsating wildly against her palm.

Samson is frightened.

Agnes smiles.

With a grunt of effort, she rips Samson’s heart free from his body. By now, she is sure he is dead, or at least unconscious, but she presses her prize against his mouth regardless. She read once that it takes several seconds for the brain to properly die. She hopes some part of him is still alive and lucid enough to understand what is happening to him.

One of the other women takes the heart from her. She turns back to Samson’s corpse and inserts the bomb into the empty space in his chest. A perfect fit.

Then, she staggers back over to Abraham, who puts his arm around her and watches as Eleanor and her husband load Samson’s corpse into the airlock with the others.

Cindy and Eleanor have gone to the flight deck. Cirrus III shifts as they input new coordinates, ready to launch as soon as Agnes is ready. They’re headed for the Umbraen quadrant. They will be refugees there, living outside of the Consortium and their laws. It won’t be easy, but at least there they will be able to live freely.

Agnes moves to the airlock and hits the button that will send Vaz’lul His very last meal. The creature’s great mouth opens, drawing the bodies into His gaping maw. With the beast distracted, Cirrus III accelerates in the opposite direction.

Agnes moves to the observation deck to watch. At first, nothing happens. Then, the surface of Vaz’lul’s Moon begins to tremble. It splits in a dozen places like a hatching egg, blinding white light spilling from the cracks. It grows brighter and brighter until Agnes must shield her eyes to look at it.

Vaz’lul’s eyes open one last time. It looks to the departing Cirrus III and seems to lock eyes with her.

Agnes—

Vaz’lul’s moon explodes into a giant fireball.

Agnes steps away from the window, returning to her husband and their son, to her friends who stood so strong beside her.

This is only the beginning.

But what a grand beginning it is.

The Canary

Joanne Askew

Grazes didn’t bother me, nor did the bruises. It was the burns that made me cry, the burns that made me squeal like the tiny wild pigs that scattered in the dawns of Proxima Centauri B. Dawn brought me solace, had always done since I could walk into the mines on my own two feet, walk away from Father’s brand and into the dark where the glowing beasts lived and called to my flesh. ‘Blaze’, he called me, the first time he saw my scars glowing. I was relieved; he hadn’t named me before.

He watched me go like he always did, the only witness to my descent, hip lent against the doorframe of his shack, his fingertips gently caressing the pickaxe’s handle he loosely held. He had a thin roll of plant matter between his teeth; the lush vegetation that climbed up and over his shack made him calm, more docile when it was lit and smoking.

The cave entrance was down a verdant slope from the shack, but visible, always visible from the doorway where he watched, surrounded by vegetation so thick the creatures of this planet could only grow so big on the surface. He knew, when I reappeared with dull skin, he could start his mining for the day, that the bigger creatures of Proxima were far from his shack. I didn’t live in there with him. He told me long ago daughters lived outside.

My heels were heavy as I walked through the thick dawn. The ground was always loose; layers of roots wove through the earth, breaking it in, over and over I counted to three then again, and again, keeping my mind present, preventing the dread the caves caused me. No tiny pigs scattered, but the microbirds had begun their morning songs. They were little scaled, swirling lumps that darted from cover to cover, their eyes always on me as dense feet took me to the deep dark below, their crackling chirps more serpentine than avian. They were the flicker telling me I was safe again when I emerged with a glow. I think they knew my pain.

Daily, I walked the chambers of the underground. Proxima’s wild surface was only the tip of the iceberg. Its terrain sunk deeper than any other colonised planet, a honeycombed network of caves formed by millions of years of flora snaking its way deep into the veins of the planet, too vast for us to ever understand, like the oceans on Earth, where Father said humans came from. I don’t think I was born there though. He’d never told me where I came from.

As I entered the gaping mouth of the cave, I counted, one, two, three, and rolled up my hessian sleeves, exposing bare skin dappled with long, pink, triangular scars. They shone, but not in the way that told me the monsters were near, only with the glistening of old wounds that hadn’t healed right. At the end of each week, which was the summer of the planet, they cracked in the heat.

The cave grew cooler and darker as I descended, alone with my counting. Deep brown rocks decorated with tool marks surrounded me as I passed each fluorescent marker. I reached the third one as I lost the light and stilled. One, two, three. I held my arms in front of me, slowed my breathing. One, two, three. Blood rushed through my eardrums, reminding me of the roar of the bitter night winds that kept me awake every night. My arms gave out no light, nothing to tell me the creatures were here today. One, two, three.  I relaxed.

***

Father was on his second smoke when I returned. His grey eyes searched my body. “Anything?”

“Nothing.”

He nodded, picked up his tools. “Ain’t been none in a while.”

I nodded, lips straight, eyes not wavering. He thrust the empty sacks at me. He used to make me carry the tools until one went missing and he blamed it on me. He’d been real pissed for years after that, stopped taking me into town on supply runs, stopped letting me come to the door when the appraiser came. She always looked so sad at me when I was a kid, pity or disgust, I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to go with her, with the gems, every time. If I could only sparkle for her like I did the beasts.

Father hit a Peridot vein in the first quarter of the day. His footsteps seemed lighter as he worked and I patrolled, staying as close to his working lights as I could. He took time to marvel at the pale green blaze as he removed the rock around it. He worked mostly in silence, with the gentle chinking of axe against rock punctuating his breaths.

He stood back when he had uncovered the main stem of the Peridot vein, wiped his brow with his sleeve and glanced over his shoulder to me. “Blaze, anything around?” The torchlight framed his figure in the gloom.

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Sure.”

“You ain’t glowed in a while. Hope y’ain’t losing it. Might need to top you up.”

One, two, three. I swallowed. “I ain’t losing it. We’re safe.” I hoped the beasts would come, just to show him I still worked like he needed. Maybe they would take him too, so I could go to town again.

He finished early that day, the vein coming free cleanly and quickly as I held open the sack he guided it into. He gave me water as he packed away his tools and let me walk back without carrying anything, his suspicious eyes darting to the precious sack and to my scared hands. I hated the feeling of gratefulness that washed over me.

He let me sit by the fire with him that night as the winds began their relentless dance. He was helping himself to seconds, the grey mush he picked up on supply runs. Sometimes he ate more solid food, but not since he got in trouble with the ‘nutter’ in town who he’d always owed a debt to. He now ate what he’d always fed me. It made it taste better in my mouth.

He gave me my portion when he went inside, unable to light his smoke in the night winds. I didn’t breathe as I devoured it, only letting air through my nostrils as I licked the bowl after. I basked in the fullness, the way my stomach thanked me with the easing of my near constant cramps. The microbirds let out their evening whisper, croaks that oscillated through the dense foliage, husky chirps as they settled to roost. Soon their babbles were replaced by howling. I never knew if they finished their song before the night winds, or if the winds drowned them out. The crooning of the gales drowned out Father’s return, too.

He tossed his pickaxe into the fire, head down so its handle wouldn’t catch, and grabbed me by the nape of my neck. He swung his boot under my feet. I toppled to my knees. He tore off my shirt and tossed it to the fire, where it erupted into flames. His boot came to the small of my back and guided my face into the earth.

“Appraisers comin’ tomorrow. We goin’ back down early. Gotta be safe. Ain’t right them leaving us alone this long. We been too lucky. Ain’t right. Ain’t right.” He spat on the ground and lifted the pickaxe from the fire. He moved my hair out of the way and pulled my arms behind my back. Tiny flecks of smoulder hit my spine. He pushed the pickaxe against the skin of my wrists.

Tears burst from my eyes. Father burrowed the axe head with its furious heat into both my arms, pinning them to my back.

A faint hissing was the backdrop to his counting. “One.”

Sweat coated my forehead as the smell of my burning flesh reached my nostrils. The pain made my ears ring. Skin turned to angry red slime, each layer uncovered made the pain more terrible.

“Two.” He inhaled.

My throat tensed, threatening to empty my stomach onto the ground, the precious meal I had but once a day. I held my breath, like the cool air would fight the raging fire against my skin.

Father exhaled. “Three.” He released me. The axe stuck as he tried to pull it from my skin, but he pulled, harder and harder, until it came away with parts of me.

I saw bone in the light of the fire, revealed where my skin was too thin to take the brand. I wrapped cool damp leaves around my arms, the ones that father smoked, added one to my back, and covered myself with a new hessian sack to replace the dancing ashes. Even though he had left the fire alight for me, for which I was grateful, I couldn’t sleep near it. Its warmth made my skin scream.

***

Father told me once Earth had winters that lasted months, not days. I wished for the coolness of Proxima’s winter on my searing flesh, not the heat the early morning gave me.

Father didn’t faulter at the way my body curved to ease my pain. He didn’t cringe at the red oozing that had penetrated the sack I wore. He didn’t even try to help when I fell on the way to the cave that morning.

The shade of the tunnel’s entrance gave me an increment of respite from the burns but my stomach was uneasy with the pain. I felt like one wrong movement would tear the rest of the flesh from my spine. My wrists were exposed in the cool air of the cave, their own fresh burns roaring with sickly agony. I placed them out in front of me as I reached the third marker. I closed my eyes and counted. One, two, three.

A distant rattle met my ears. I opened my eyes. My wrists wore bracelets of gold where my burns were, gilded blemishes across dirty skin made by Father. They lit the cave, each crag and bump, all the way down to where the shadows played in the freshly excavated rocks. The monsters cawed. Echoes reached me as I turned to leave.

But I walked slowly, for the pain, for the contemplations that crossed my mind. Their muffles grew quieter as my thoughts grew louder, and louder until…

“Anythin’?” Father lingered at the mouth of the cave, tools in hand, ready to get an early top up for the appraiser.

I glanced to my wrists. Their glow had subsided. I was still in my thoughts, as peaceful as the moment before the winds. “Nothing,” I said.

He tossed the sacks at me. One grazed my wrist. I winced.

“Get on with it,” he spat.

I led him down as I always did. His grinding teeth invaded every step I took. He lit a torch at the third marker and went ahead of me as he always did. He set up his tools, laid out a sack beneath his excavation site, and began to chip away at the area where he had uncovered the vein only the day before. Fragments were his prey today. His weapon, a drill he wound with a handle, would emit a much louder grind than his teeth.

Beads of sweat ran across my wounds. The salt made them sting. The faint whisper of a glow grew from them. He didn’t notice, didn’t break his focus. The only glimmer in his sight was the precious stones.

The increasing glow began to reflect from the mahogany surface of stagnant mud on the ground. The dripping from the cave soon paired with the creaking of the ground taking weight, stones and dust shifting, the change in the stale air as creatures moved through it. I saw the glint of claw and dropped to my knees.

The mud was soothing as I coated my wounds and scars. Cool, sticky, heavy like a medicated blanket. The creatures were silent, slow. My abrasions were coated before they even reached us. I stilled, hands still in the mud, as unmoving as the stone around me.

Father was drilling as the creatures approached. Their rattling growls didn’t register through the sound of his mining. He was protected by a halo of noise, nothing coming between him and his bounty, no rattling breaths through jagged teeth warning him, no glowing Blaze either.

He didn’t pick his head up as I pressed against the walls to let the creatures pass me. They stooped, eyeless faces checking me over, their nostrils flaring as they inhaled my breath, but their claws never touched me. I was nothing to them, not a jewel or bounty or meal.

Their shoulder blades protruded from their backs like jagged mountain ranges. Their tongues were yellow, with fleshy bulbous growths hanging from them as they tasted the air. Without eyes, Father’s relentless drilling was their dinner bell.

Moist skin rippled across their moving bones like transparent fabric stretched across broken branches. Their shoulder blades were spires looming over the rest of their hunched figures. They walked on two legs, steadied themselves with clawed front limbs, front limbs that glistened with sharpness. They circled him. They were tinges of green and brown against rugged walls, but when they got close to Father, their flesh glowed like mine.

The first one struck Father like a hatchet to the spine. I flinched as if it were my own skin, like so many times before. As his blood was released into the air, the creatures changed. Their skin flushed pink, waves of their blood pulsed through dull flesh like tie dye stains. Their rattles became caws. A frenzy followed. Blood decorated the cave walls, each red line glistening like veins of precious stones against the dullness of the underworld. His open rib cage did not glow like my scars. Nor did the socket his arm had been seconds ago. His howls echoed like the nightwinds that tortured me. I counted—one, two, three—and left.

***

I cleaned the stray blood from myself in his shack. I even put on his clothes. They fit less than the sacks did, but the appraiser didn’t notice. She was surprised to see me. I was surprised at the weight of the pay for the Peridot, and the kindness of her smile as she handed me a map to town.

Bambolina, Bambolina

G.G. Silverman

Sweet tones of song pull me slowly from darkness.

My eyes flutter open to twilight, and I remember nothing of my past. I only know I was in a void, but now I’m warm and snug, embraced from behind by a man. His right arm falls over my belly, his hand is large, rough, and warm.

He sings soft and low.

Bambolina, Bambolina, com’è bella ‘sta Bambolina.

I stretch, and pain sears through my body, stabbing every joint. It shoots up my neck and around my skull. My teeth grind in agony. What happened to me?

The man bolts upright in bed.

“Bambolina! Sei tu! You’re awake!”

He leaps and pulls me up by the arms, spinning me around and around in a joyful dance I’m not ready for. My tendons shriek. The man bursts into louder song, hurling words of joy at the top of his lungs. The room whirls and nausea spikes hot in my throat. I want to scream at him to stop.

STOP.

BASTA!

The dance grinds to a halt, and I flop against him like a ragdoll. My heart feels foreign, out of place, skittering and new. He fumbles me toward the bed, seating me at the edge, and sits beside me. Placing both hands on my shoulders, he gazes into my eyes. He is older, a man of fiftyish years, but worse for wear. Gray hair puffs wild from his head, and grooves of worry line his face. A salt-and-pepper mustache dusts his mouth like a wiry old broom.

“Bambolina! Non ci posso credere! It really is you!”

Skin crinkles happily around his eyes.

“Are you hungry?”

My tongue feels odd in my mouth, a numb stranger who can’t speak. I attempt to shake my head, but the smallest movement hurts.

I scan the room. We’re surrounded by shelves of dolls, all shapes and sizes. Porcelain ones, wooden ones, puppets, and marionettes. Innocent maidens and tongue-lashing demons. Priests, nuns, boxers, and clowns.

My wrists howl in anguish and I hold them up, surveying the source of my pain. Fine stitches of gold circle them like bracelets, reattaching severed hands.

Grief wells inside me.

My ankles burn too, and my knees. I pull my nightgown just over my shins. Delicate stitches wind around the knobbly joints of my legs, joining wounded flesh—my body reassembled after being cleaved apart. Cries like those of a wounded animal flee my mouth at the sight. I yank my gown toward my thighs, desperate to catalog each and every horror.

“No!” the man shouts, tugging my hem toward my ankles again. “Non è importante!”

My fists pummel his chest. I’m wild, animalistic, kicking and shrieking.

His arms crush around me, squelching my struggle. I screech against his shoulder.

Shh, he says. Shhhh.

I flounder until I’m exhausted and the struggle leaves me. I weep without a sound.

He rocks me gently.

“I have always wanted a daughter.”

The rocking lulls me, as does the sound of his voice.

“Cara mia, I found you in pieces, in a little pine box, in a shallow grave in the potter’s field, where they bury criminals and those whose families abandoned them. Your body had been severed cleanly, piece by piece, limb by limb.”

He pauses, still rocking my slack form.

“The gravediggers said you were a nightwalker who’d fallen prey to a slasher, but I told them, ‘Nay, she is my long-lost daughter!’ and I’d bury you on sacred ground. I carried you away, the precious pieces of you, your eyes still peering at heaven in your little pine box. I thought, ‘How beautiful is she, this girl?’”

His tears wet my face.

“I bathed you ever so lovingly, wiping dirt from your skin. I stitched you together with a fine thread of gold. I sewed this gown to cover your nakedness. I sang to you while I worked. I prayed, and held you close in my sleep, believing my love would save you, that it would bring you to life.”

He hums, calls me his favorite girl, his sweet little doll, his Bambolina.

Before I fall asleep again, I hear three last words:

“I was lonely.”

***

A nightmare takes hold when I close my eyes. Fragments of memories weave together where I suffocate under a strange man’s weight. He reeks of sweat, wine, and garlic; a gold tooth gleams. I am posed in unspeakable ways, made to do unspeakable things—a doll for the damned. A rag is stuffed in my mouth. A cleaver glints in the air above me. I cannot scream.

My eyes are wide open through the pain.

Soon, I become animal. I glide through forest, through ferns. My nose twitches; my ears prick up at the slightest sound. I leap to safety with long legs, sure-footed over boulders and gullies, all the uneven terrain. My heart beats steady. I am safe and glorious in my body.

***

Upon waking, my maker tells me to call him Babbo Geppe, and promises I shall never want for anything. He gives me my own small bed in a corner of the workshop, and for three days I sit at the farthest back edge, curling my knees to my chest, observing keenly. I flinch at his slightest movement, but he never approaches, only speaks with kindness. He shows me all the dolls he’s made, and how much he loves each and every one. He dusts them, makes sure their clothes are spotless, checks their limbs for nicks and wounds. He touches up fine cracks, mends the broken. He sits them up straight, musing aloud that their backs must hurt from slouching. He gives them imaginary tea from a tiny porcelain cup.

I decide to trust him; the man adores me like his own child despite my horrid condition. He helps me walk again, then rubs the seams on my wrists and ankles with an herbal salve to heal my scars. He stops at my knees and elbows, telling me I must do the rest on my own, because it is improper for a father to touch his daughter that way. I pull the curtain around my bed, and I rub the salve over the seams at my hips, and the ones over my neck, my heart. The scar over my heart is the reddest, angriest, the most in need of soothing. It’s the one that gives me the most remorse.

When Babbo Geppe tries to feed me, I can’t stand the smell of meat.

***

While I’m healing, I rarely go out, and only do so with a veil. It’s black and sheer, but not sheer enough to see the stitches on my neck and face. I wear black gloves to shield my wrists, and black stockings to cover my ankles. Babbo wears black too, tells everyone we are in mourning for my mother and father in a far-away village, and he, my godfather, my padrino, has taken me in, adopted me as his own. I’m to wear my veil for forty days and forty nights, time enough to mourn. Time enough to heal.

Meanwhile, gifts of food appear on our doorstep.

Someone leaves a small package, wrapped in paper and tied with twine.

Inside it, the heart of a fresh-killed deer.

Babbo Geppe hides it quickly, making himself a stew.

***

In the workshop, Babbo continues making dolls. Wood and clay are carved and sculpted, turned with love in his hands. He tells me stories of trees and mud who dream of becoming girls and waking up to see stars. Yet the sight of dolls in pieces churns my stomach—the arms, legs, torsos and heads scattered on his bench, waiting to be put together. I often feel ill, as I do today, taking to bed curled up on my side. A whimper escapes my lips. Babbo Geppe runs to my aid.

“Look,” he says, holding up a marionette he just finished. “With enough love, they become whole. Just like you.” He holds the doll close to his face, gazes at it lovingly, blows on it gently. “See, Bambolina? I give it the breath of life.” A toothy grin explodes on his face, then he makes the puppet dance in time with a song. The corners of my mouth tug upward. Soon, the antics rise in intensity, and Babbo Geppe catches himself shouting, and I’m laughing out loud.

“Oh!” he corrects himself with a wink. He straightens his vest, and clears his throat, feigning seriousness. “We are in mourning.”

“Yes.” I nod, amused.

“How about this? I want you to try something. Help me, please.” He gestures toward the bench.

I take a deep breath, steeling myself against the sight of the unassembled, and approach tentatively out of love.

“Dammi le mani,” he says.

I open both hands and extend them outward. He places a doll’s porcelain arm and leg on each of my palms and folds my hands over them gently. On receiving them, I weep, but I don’t move.

Babbo Geppe whispers, “Let’s put this girl back together, yes?”

***

In time, I get stronger, and I work furiously alongside Babbo. As my seams heal, my scars fade, and my fingers become deft. I’m a quick study, building dolls and puppets with exquisite care.

“Ah!” Babbo cries when I hold up my latest work, a marionette that looks suspiciously like me. “Che bella! Soon the student will replace the master!”

I hang my marionette by my bed, like a charm to ward off evil.

Forty days and nights pass, and after my stitches are pulled, I begin leaving our workshop without a veil. My skin blooms pink, instead of gray like ash. I now wear bright colors, beautifully embroidered dresses Babbo Geppe made. At his urging, I deliver dolls to the wealthier children in our city, and marionettes to the theater and the puppeteers. Even in daylight, I navigate the cobblestone streets skittish like a newborn fawn, my nerves on high alert, heart beating faster. The sounds of city-life ring sharp in my ears—the hawkers at market, barking dogs, wailing children, men arguing over money. But there is more—on the way to the theater, I must pass the Night District, and all its bordellos. I’ve been warned to walk quickly and stay strong.

The alleys feel strange yet familiar, as if I’d walked them before.

In the Night District, I avert the gaze of the men leering outside and turn the corner, breathing a sigh of relief. Taunts and catcalls follow me, but I pay them no mind, shivering as I walk. I arrive at the theater, bursting through the doors in a rush, and the puppeteers greet me with song. They surround me, eager to see what I’ve brought them, and their delight is infectious. With this love, how can I ever be unhappy? On my next stop, red-cheeked children and their mother shower me with kisses. The cheer of delivering dolls soothes my anxious heart. Soon, all I can think about is my next delivery.

As a reward for my courage, Babbo Geppe takes me to the theater. First, I tame his wild hair with brilliantine and smooth his whiskers, making him blush. We dress in our finest, then we stroll arm in arm, and I wait, breathless, desperate to see my creations come alive. They dance and whirl, punch, kick, and sing. Babbo and I clap our hands with pride in the adoring crowd. Our creations bring joy to the masses.

After dark, we hurry home, passing briskly the prostitutes and the ogling men, and the pickpockets, drunks, and charlatans. Nearby, a loud fight erupts at a tavern, and two men exit boldly for the street, wearing bowler caps, waxed mustaches, and wielding long folding knives. An unruly mob forms around them, eager for blood. Viva
Santa Smacola! they shout. Patron Saint of the Knife!

The crowd expands and jostles dangerously close, ready to swallow us in their path. My heart flails in my chest when a wild-eyed man crashes against my leg in a fall. He is pulled back and beaten by the mob.

Babbo Geppe yanks me out of harm’s way, gripping me tighter as he speaks under his breath. “They say, Chi va di notte cerca la morte.”

He who walks by night looks for death.

I shudder, clinging closer.

He pats my arm. “But I say, not to worry, Bambolina. Not to worry.”

***

On my next run of deliveries, street urchins chase each other in the alleys, pretending to flee from a killer. They spook themselves with their own shadows as they dart from dark twisted corners into the sun. They shout that the slasher has grown restless—more bodies arrive in the potter’s field, those of nightwalkers—women and girls whose families won’t claim them. I’m seized by chills; my vision flits back and forth. I feel unsafe though I’m in broad daylight, as if I’m a prey animal, as if my body knows what my mind refuses to acknowledge.

On our way to the theater that night, I don’t speak of the terror throbbing under my skin, and if I could look over my shoulder every waking second, I would.

Instead, I want Babbo to be proud of me. I want to be brave.

I face forward, bracing myself as we cross the Night District, past the brothels and the taverns and their knife fights. At the theater, we settle in our seats, and I can’t wait to escape the shadow of the slasher that lurks in my thoughts.

The curtain rises. The murder of a young woman is reenacted onstage, with marionettes made by me and Babbo. Animal blood is splashed for effect. The crowd gasps. Screams pierce the air. The blood drips down the curtain and coats the stage, slick, wet, red. My vision blurs. Vomit tickles my throat. The world spins. The centrifugal force of my disquiet rips me apart, dismembering me again and again. Through the blur I spot a large man standing and clapping in the front row. “Bravi!” he shouts. “Bis! Bis!” A gold tooth flashes.

I close my eyes, feeling faint.

Babbo notices and catches me, slipping an arm around my back.

Despite the man’s call for an encore, the curtain falls, and everyone leaves the theater in a visible state of distress. Men clutch their wives. Mothers pull daughters under their wings. I melt against Babbo, barely able to stand, hoping to disappear in the crowd and hide from the man with the flashing gold tooth.

“That was too much, wasn’t it?” Babbo murmurs as we hit the streets.

I nod. It’s all I can manage. My tongue feels thick and useless, my muscles dead. My mind won’t form words.

We squeeze past throngs of people going this way and that, and I stare at the street, concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other. It’s the best I can do.

At home, I sit on my bed, and see the marionette I made in my own likeness. I imagine her covered in blood like this evening’s performance, and I begin shaking, rocking, and moaning.

Soon, I’m screaming.

Babbo runs to my side, wraps me tight in a blanket, and holds me until the screaming subsides.

I spend the next few days catatonic, while my loving father, the dollmaker Babbo Geppe, tries to piece my soul back together.

***

Babbo urges me to make deliveries as soon as I’m better. A small cart of dolls waits for me. They smile and droop over the edge, limp as they wait for their new homes.

“No one will hurt you in broad daylight,” he says. “Yes? Please? For me?”

I shake my head in violent conviction. The thought of making deliveries by myself shreds me to pieces. I crave the workshop where I’m safe, carving dolls, painting their faces, dressing their bodies to keep them hidden. Babbo resigns himself to making the deliveries and allows me to stay behind.

At night, I refuse to go to the theater, even with Babbo as a chaperone. He sighs, but understands.

The man with the golden tooth haunts the edges of my nightmares, clapping through the blood and the gore.

***

One evening, a man arrives when I’m alone. He pushes through the beaded curtain that shields us from the street when the doors are open. He’s bald, mustached, and big-boned; he smells of meat, wine, and garlic. A blood-stained apron wraps his waist.

“Buona sera!” he calls out. He holds a package.

He stops, staring at my face. His eyes glint like onyx.

“No, it can’t be,” he says, under his breath.

He approaches me slowly, enraptured. There’s no barrier between his body and mine except for a small table.

A flash of gold gleams in his mouth.

My heart leaps to my throat. I choke on my words. The room spins. I grip the table.

“Signorina, are you alright?” He lunges, reaching for my arm.

I slip my arm free and shake my head, peering through my dizzy haze for something to defend myself with. Our carving knives and chisels are elsewhere.

He backs away, leaving his delivery on the table.

“I apologize, Signorina. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He bows. “Give my regards to Signore Geppe.”

I nod, grateful for his exit.

A corner of the package is tinged with blood—a delivery of meat.

I lock the door until Babbo Geppe returns.

That night, I am wild, and we fight. I tell him that man—the butcher with the golden tooth—can never return. I shout that I might run away, if only to leave this city where that horrid man lives. Babbo grows pale.

“It’s not safe out there,” he says, his voice trembling. “And we must not blame a man for murder simply because he has a gold tooth. Don’t many men have gold teeth in this city? And we must not blame a man simply because he knows his way around a knife. As we have seen, so many men in this city worship the blade.”

I scream. I rage. I tear dolls down from their shelves and cast them to the floor, kicking and smashing them. I fling the door open, not caring for my safety anymore.

I run.

***

It turns out I can run like a doe. I’m so fast, when Babbo Geppe tries to follow, to retrieve his precious Bambolina, his voice trails in the alley until it becomes small, distant, then silent. Before I know it, I’m out of sight and far gone.

In the Night District, a few men and women linger outside. A slender painted woman in lurid clothing steps away from the wall where she flirts with a man. “Eh!” she shouts, lunging forward and clutching my arm. “Do I know you?” She studies my face. She is about my age, much younger than the others. Too young for what she’s about to do with that man.

“Ah!” she says, lighting up. “I do know you!”

I shake my head and pull free, pressing forward.

But the truth is: I recognized her.

She was my best friend.

Reeling, I run to the butcher shop, closed for the night, and I rattle the bars on his windows, screaming until I’m choking, gasping for air. Old women gesture and curse out their windows in the apartments above.

I move on, running to the city’s border, a low wall that overlooks a valley. I stop to catch my rasping breath and survey my surroundings. All around us, the city’s lanterns and candles flicker into darkness.

A cricket chirps a lonely chorus.

Beyond the wall lies the potter’s field—my former burial ground.

The sight of it cuts my soul.

There are no headstones, no markings. Only squares of fresh dirt where bodies were just lain. Elsewhere, tall weeds and grasses swallow the field, hiding the stories that need to be told.

I want to claw open girls’ graves with my bare hands, and unearth the pine boxes to witness the bodies, the losses, their untimely decay—the death those girls didn’t ask for.

I want to put the girls back together.

I want to sing their names.

My anger gives way to something else.

I decide to return home.

***

When I rush in the door, Babbo Geppe lies muttering in bed with his eyes closed. He tosses and turns as he calls my name, Bambolina, Bambolina, my fairest little doll. His face is red-hot and beaded with sweat; his sheets and blanket are soaked. He doesn’t recognize my voice; only believes that I’m gone forever, a one-time daughter he lost as quickly as he found. Filial remorse stabs my conscience. I fret, scrambling to place a cool damp cloth on his forehead, then I attempt to clean the aftermath of my anger, the dolls I tore asunder. I spend all night on my hands and knees as the remaining dolls grin and stare down at me without blinking, then I fall asleep among splinters and shards.

***

In the morning, Babbo does not wake. He lies cold in his bed, and I shake him, pleading with him to sit up, to speak, to dance.

I’m sorry, I say. I’m so sorry.

He remains silent, growing colder.

Frantic, I hunt through his things for a journal or diary, anything that will tell me how he brought me back to life.

There’s nothing.

I cradle his body and sing until I’m delirious, but he remains dead.

***

After I bathe and dress him in a gown of white silk, pallbearers carry Babbo’s casket to the cathedral for a proper burial on sacred ground, something I was never given. The pallbearers are the puppeteers who loved Babbo the most, and the long procession of black-clad mourners includes the city’s finest entertainers and wealthiest families. A young acrobat leads us forward, arcing his body in slow fluid backbends. An old clown with painted tears shuffles and blesses the path with petals of white flowers. A rotund soprano sings a haunting aria. A young woman plays a mournful violin, accompanied by a lumbering man with a tuba. Mimes carry themselves like dejected marionettes, lurching and drooping on invisible strings, pausing to dab their eyes. Real marionettes of angels flutter behind them, puppeteered by figures in black shrouds, their faces painted like skulls. Children trudge, clutching their dolls to their chests. The lump in my throat threatens to choke me. I bite my tongue to stay strong.

At the cemetery, a large crowd gathers. At the far edge of the mob, I spot the man with the golden tooth.

***

At home, gifts of food appear on my doorstep.

Someone leaves a small package, wrapped in paper and tied with twine.

Inside it, the heart of a fresh-killed deer.

***

When I finish mourning, I have more rage than fear. I carry a knife wrapped in the sash of my dress, not unlike the men of ill repute from the taverns, and I make my deliveries with sure-footed confidence. I attend the theater with gritty resolve. There, a gold tooth flashes forever at the fringe of my vision. I know the butcher watches me—his favorite child prostitute come back from the dead, reassembled in an unholy miracle only to become a young woman who no longer has a guardian. He must think I’m wide open for the taking once more.

This time, though, no one can hurt me.

I shall see to it.

I leave a letter at the butcher’s after dark: he is to stop bringing me the hearts of animals, and he is never to cross my threshold again, not if he values his life.

On top of the letter, I leave a doll made in his likeness: legs broken, throat cut, a line of red paint over the slit.

The next evening I find a return note on my doorstep after my deliveries. I unfold the cheap paper, the same kind used to wrap cuts of meat, and there’s a flowery scrawl inked in red, smelling like the blood of wild game.

“Regarding the scar on your chest,” the note says, “I, the butcher, ate your original heart that fateful night, and washed it down with red wine before dumping the severed remains of your body. If it weren’t for the heart of an animal, delivered to your beloved Babbo Geppe, a man so lonely he dug up the dead for comfort, would you have been brought back to life?”

My hands shake in fury. I tear the note in a thousand small pieces, scattering them in the hearth. All the dolls in our workshop glare, leering at my anger.

What shall you do? they seem to say.

Babbo once told me a story about a faraway island found by spice traders, where the people believe that a possession, after many years of either love or abuse, comes alive, infused by the spirit of its owner. And that spirit dictates the behavior of the object: good begets good, bad begets bad. Rejected objects are believed to become especially spiteful, able to do bodily harm. On that island, dolls are burned once they’re no longer wanted, say, perhaps, because a young girl has died, or moved on—old enough to take a lover, someone else to adore. It is the dolls who are most feared for their power, for their likeness to humans, and their emotions. One old doll there was never burned. She once belonged to a girl, and was abandoned, but now serves as a reminder to the living. The doll remains at a temple, encased in glass, where she is guarded by monks and holy men, and they swear the doll’s hair grows when no one is watching. She is taken out once a year ceremonially to trim her locks and bind her powers with chanting and prayer. Then she is placed back in her eternal cage, where she smiles at onlookers, taunting them with her quiet rage.

In my bed that night, the marionette I made in my likeness stares in bitter reproach: What shall you do?

I cannot sleep. I leave my bed, and the home I once shared with my beloved Babbo Geppe, and take to the streets.

It’s so late, not even the men of ill repute are out. The taverns are shuttered. The theater has long since closed, its last curtain drawn. The bordellos are quiet. In the potter’s field beyond the edges of the city, I kneel on a new patch of turned earth, another girl’s grave. The silence is so profound one can only imagine the sound of stars turning in the heavens. There’s not even the chirp of a lone cricket.

I stay, vigilant for a sign.

A herd of deer glides through the field, until they stop and become stark still, eyes shining in the black, awaiting my movement, my decision.

Is it not the heart of an animal that makes you strong? the butcher’s letter had said. Is it not its fear that keeps you safe?

The deer watch, expectant.

My sudden stir makes them flee, graceful even in this darkness. They bound through the wood at the edge of the field, vanishing in the night.

I claw bare-handed through the soil beneath me, digging damp moldy earth until I hit the top of a pine box. I run my fingers along splintered edges and pull, prying the lid open.

The head of my former best friend, a young prostitute, gazes up at the stars with cold dead eyes. Her skin is gray, lips tinged blue. She has been dismembered, limbs severed cleanly, now stacked beneath her in a neat little pile. She has begun to smell of death.

Like the others, like myself, the heart is gone.

It’s gone.

I am too late.

I sit, shaking, remembering I am some kind of monster; I should have never been brought back, and yet here I am, saved by a gruesome fearless love, a lonely artisan who believed.

And now I ask myself just what kind of monster I am.

The answer rings clear in the deafening silence.

I, Bambolina, am the dollmaker.

The Cooper Girl

S.H. Cooper

Pa hadn't been home in three days.

The first hadn't troubled Molly too much. Pa often spent the night of his deliveries in town, preferring to make the return journey home in daylight.

The second was unusual, but still not concerning. She could justify his absence with broken cartwheels or muddy forest trails from the last rain making the going slow.

The third, however, was a worry.

Amos Thieson came by the cooperage that morning to check on the progress of his order. Half dozen barrels, due by month's end, still short two casks.

Pa never would've let himself fall behind, especially not on brewery work.

Molly's sense of unease only deepened when the Clifford brothers came riding up just shy of midday.

She'd been sitting on the porch, anxiously watching the long pathway that wound through the woodlands to the road, knife in one hand and a half-sliced apricot in the other. She'd been planning on making a pie, Pa's favorite, but could barely focus on the task for all her fretting. The sound of approaching hoofbeats set her heart fluttering and she sprang up, ready to reprimand Pa for his lateness.

Instead, Gus and Paul Clifford came 'round the bend, and Molly's heart sank downward with a guarded chill.

Never was there a good reason to find a Clifford at your door.

Molly reckoned there wasn't enough money in the world to make that family respectable, and Lord knows they'd hoarded enough of it to try. Even their horses, a pair of handsome thoroughbreds, seemed to carry themselves with a swagger. Pa would've warned her against such hostility, telling her they were neighbors, after all, and neighbors look out for one another.

But Molly couldn't rustle up any neighborly good will for a Clifford.

"Morning, Miss Cooper," Gus said, while Paul touched the brim of his Stetson Boss hat. Polite enough, save for the smirks their mustaches couldn't hide.

Molly nodded stiffly, eyes traveling between the pair the same way she'd regard a couple of coyotes at a chicken coop.

"Heard your pa ain't come back yet," Gus said.

"Who you been talking to to hear that?"

"Ran into Amos at the saloon. Seemed concerned he might not get his goods. Never heard of good ol’ Bill Cooper not delivering, so we thought we’d come up and check in on him.”

“Mighty charitable of you,” Molly said, not thinking it was charity at all that brought them so far out. “But I’m sure Pa is alright; just delayed, is all.”

Paul picked up where his brother left off. “Wasn’t just your pa we was worried about, Miss Cooper. You being up here all on your lonesome and all.”

“I’m doing fine, thank you.”

“We was just thinking that it must be awful hard on you being up here, just you and your pa. He’s getting up in years, ain’t he?”

Molly stayed tight lipped, her fingers curled tight around her knife.

“And with him being...missing,” Gus said, as if choosing his word with great care. “Well, we just got to wondering how you was faring. This here’s a lot of land for one man to care for, much less a single woman, and with the cooperage and all…”

She let him trail off and sit in his silence until he was squirming in his saddle. Their sidelong glances told their story clear enough: They’d come up the hillside hoping to find a simpering daughter weeping for her daddy. To what end, she could only guess, though she was certain it wasn’t in her favor.

But William Cooper hadn’t just built his barrels strong.

“I thank you for your concern, gentleman,” she said evenly, though the final word came like bile to her tongue. “But like I said, I’m just fine, and I’m sure Pa’ll be home soon enough. I’ll be certain to pass along your well wishes when he is.”

More traded looks. More smirking. Molly’s stomach twisted hard, but she didn’t give them the satisfaction of letting it show.

“You do that,” Paul replied. “I do hope he returns safe.”

“As do I, as do I,” agreed his brother. “Though the road can be such an unforgiving beast, even for the best of us.”

Both tipped their hats and swung their horses ‘round. Molly waited until they were out of sight before sinking back into her rocking chair, curled fist pressed hard against her chest. Tears threatened to fall, but she blinked them back, instead turning her focus back to the unfortunate apricot. She slashed at its orange skin, hacking off chunks of sweet fruit, and let them fall at her feet.

Something had happened to Pa. She was sure of it now.

And the Clifford brothers had played a part.

Still, Molly held out hope that Pa would turn up. Dirtied, tired, even hurt, perhaps, but he'd come home.

That hope was all that kept Molly going through the next month, a stubborn ember refusing to snuff out long after the rest of the fire had died. It kept her making the tiresome horseback journey to and from town every few days, praying for news. It sent her into the woods alongside all the roads she knew him to travel. Hope carried her telegrams to every nearby settlement, asking if a man of her father's description had been spotted.

But hope is no tradesman, and it does not fill purses or pantries.

Orders went unfulfilled for the first time in the cooperage's long history, and Molly's food supply thinned to a single row of tin cans on the bottom shelf. Pa's emergency vittles.

Folks were understanding in the beginning, sharing her distress over her father’s whereabouts, taking the time to help her search, but their patience proved a precious commodity, and it was all too soon before refunds were being requested and the Cooper name became a tarnished thing. The men were apologetic enough while they stood over Molly, watching her painstakingly count out their coins, pretending not to notice the bare cooktop, cold from disuse, or the dark hollows that worry and hunger and sleepless nights had whittled into her cheeks. Outside of a few offhanded invitations to come ‘round for supper with the family sometime, though, not a one offered any real help.

Molly understood, and she urged her heart not to harden against them, these men whose only fault was reclaiming what was theirs. Pa wouldn't want her to bear any ill will. It was the way of things. They had wives and children to look after, their own interests to attend.

She was just the Cooper girl.

No province of theirs.

If only the Clifford brothers had seen fit to take that same approach.

Instead, they waited a polite stretch before making their reappearance with the same lukewarm pleasantries and a basket of their mama's home cooking. The hearty aroma wafting from beneath the checkered cloth did nothing to endear her to the brothers, who stood shoulder to shoulder in her doorway, a grinning blockade.

"Tell your mama I appreciate the thought," she said, but did not reach for the basket. A pair this wicked could only come from a poisoned well, and Mrs. Clifford was as morally stagnant as the rest of her brood. Molly didn't trust that food, enticing as it smelled, any more than she did those providing it.

"Truth be told, Miss Cooper," Gus replied, unbothered by her inhospitality, "was more'n just some beef and biscuits that brought us by."

She waited, blood quickening in her veins as he stroked one corner of his mustache with contemplative slowness.

"It seems a shame to us that such fine property would go to waste. We have a team of men, loggers and the like, who could put it to good use. A cooper, too, looking to set up local. With your pa being gone—"

"He'll be back."

“—we was figuring we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. My brother and I are prepared to make a generous offer."

"It ain't mine to sell," Molly said through clenched teeth. "It's Pa's."

The brothers sighed together, a pitying exhale in the face of sad delusion. "Nobody's seen him in near a month now, Miss Cooper. And, if you don't mind my saying so, you're starting to look worse off for it. When was the last time you ate proper?"

"You mind your own self, Gus Clifford, and I’ll do the same. I got nothing more to say to you," she spat, stepping back, ready to slam the door.

Gus laid his hand flat against it to stop her. "How long you think you can hold out here, Molly?" His voice darkened into a growl. "Me and Paul got $600 we're ready to hand over today. This very minute. Ain't nobody gonna give you a better offer."

She didn't know what was more insulting: that pittance or the way he was trying to intimidate her, leering down at her like that while his brother flashed his teeth in an encouraging grin. She shuffled to the side, as if shying behind the protective barrier of the door. Gus Clifford took that as a sign of his upper hand and stepped forward, only to find his throat pressed to the wrong end of the hunting rifle Pa kept leaning in the entryway.

"I think it best the both of you be going," Molly said, gaze unflinchingly locked on Gus'.

"Now, Miss Cooper—" Paul started to say, but she quieted him with a cock of the hammer.

"Only reason I ain't pulled the trigger is 'cos I think you know what happened to Pa." She jabbed the muzzle hard against Gus' bobbing Adam's apple, forcing him back with a harsh cough. "Once I find out what you know, I won't be so courteous. Get!"

Paul helped his still-sputtering brother back to their horses, all the while throwing insults over his shoulder at Molly. She kept her rifle trained on them until they'd fled fully from sight. Once the sound of their retreat faded into the woods, she kicked the door shut and sank against it, entire body trembling. Tears she'd fought so long fell in hot streams down her cheeks and she threw her head back to howl her pain into the rafters. Only one real word managed to form upon her lips, an eye in the storm of her anguish.

"Pa! Pa!"

Even after her face had dried to a swollen red, she stayed curled against the door, calling piteously, until exhaustion, hunger, and grief drove her to an early bed, where she wept again until sleep finally overtook her.

***

A sound woke her from the murky depths of uneasy rest deep in the night. She lay still, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and focused on it. Again it sounded, a heavy, plodding thud upon the porch. It came in staggered repetition, crossing from one end of the porch to the other, then down the short steps to the pathway. Molly's fingers balled around her quilt as she listened to the dull scuffling make its way slowly around the house and pause, just on the other side of her window.

Through the gossamer lace curtains, a luxury left to her by her late mama, the moonlight outlined a tall figure trying to stare in.

She bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming and urged her body to remain still, as if asleep, but she couldn't stop the rapid rise and fall of her chest, nor close her eyes against the looming silhouette.

The seconds that it stood there stretched into a hundred fractured heartbeats.

When it finally moved out of view, Molly's limbs loosened into jelly. She strained her ears, following the uneven footsteps until she couldn't hear them anymore. Lightning bolts of panic crackled through her body as she slid out of bed and tiptoed to her window, careful not to disturb the curtain in case the person was lurking nearby, trying to lure her over with a false sense of security.

Outside, the wind whispered through treetops, but there was no sign of the intruder.

She grabbed her dressing gown and yanked it on as she crept from her room, clasping it closed at the neck as she surveyed the common areas. A glow from the kitchen window drew her attention and she hurried to it, leaning over the basin to peer outside.

Across the yard, the double doors to the cooperage stood open and flickering light spilled from within.

Terror gripped her first. It seemed so obviously a trap. The Cliffords' hands were as dirty as their money and if they truly wanted the land, she knew they'd do what it took to get it. She could easily envision the pair of them crouched on either side of the entrance, waiting for her to rush in.

But the more she imagined them in her father's workshop, defiling it with their presence, the more a righteous anger tinged her fear with black.

They have no right!

Moments later, barefoot and furious, she swept into the night, rifle half-cocked and tucked under one arm, and crossed to the cooperage.

All the lanterns were lit, brightly illuminating the workshop. A fire had been set in the pit. Over it, the unfinished barrel Pa had been working on last sat, toasting. Molly trailed the gun barrel along the length of the cooperage, from the aged staves waiting to be used next, to the saws and sandpaper that would help shape the final products. Her heart hammered in her ears, dulling the crackling of the flame and the buzzing of evening insects. Her breath came loud and harsh.

Wood creaked from the corner to her right.

She spun with a cry, gun leading.

Then, little by little, its nose tipped toward the ground, before falling from her hands completely.

The figure sitting on the stool in the corner stirred, lifting his head toward Molly. She knew him immediately, despite the dirt and blood streaking his waxen features. Despite the jagged, raw wound, the kind a poorly aimed shotgun might make, torn through one side of his skull, exposing red, fleshy matter and shattered bone.

"Pa?"

Horror and sharp nausea strangled the word, and she fell, cowering against the wall when he rose. He moved stiffly from the stool, like his skin was a poor fit over half-frozen limbs, to the toasting barrel.

"Pa?" Molly rasped. The world tilted beneath her, threatening to knock her from her feet. "What happened to you?"

Without speaking, he removed his leather gloves and lifted his hand to gesture for her to come over to him. Soil caked his nails and stained his rumpled clothes. She shook her head, covering her mouth to keep from retching, or screaming.

A guttural groan came from the back of Pa's throat and he gestured again more adamantly.

"It was the Clifford boys, wasn't it?" she whispered.

Pa shook his head, sad and slow, and though his expression changed little, she read it clearly: Don't concern yourself over it.

How could she not, she wanted to yell, but he was waving her over again, and this time, she found her feet carrying her toward him.

"Just tell me it was them," she insisted. "Let me—"

He groaned, loud and long, and thumped a fist against the body of the barrel with an agitated force that made Molly jump. He pointed from her to it and back again. As difficult as it was to gaze up at him, she forced herself to, making herself focus on his eyes. The same ones that had forever comforted her, loved her, protected her. Now they gleamed with a feverish light, and it wasn't until he took her by the wrist and pressed his heavy gloves into her grasp that she understood.

He didn't intend to tell her about his death.

He wanted to teach her about his living.

***

Pa had finally come home, and in the weeks that followed, he returned from dusk until dawn to the work and the daughter he'd left behind. Initially Molly kept her distance, frightened of this creature wearing her father's ruined face, but the grief and love, wrapped like a vice around her heart, was stronger than her fear, making each beat poignant and painful at once.

What began as her watching him work from the doorway, the same way she had as a child, evolved into her standing at his side, handing him his tools, until the night he refused to take one and motioned for her to use it instead. Those first attempts were clumsy and the results unusable, but Pa was as patient in death as he'd been in life, and, under his careful guidance, Molly's hands calloused into a cooper's.

When word spread barrels were coming out of the cooperage again, orders began to trickle in, and so too did the money. The townsfolk wondered at the sudden resurgence in business, but Molly only smiled, content to take their coins and keep her secrets, and for a time, she was almost happy.

It was hard, however, not to notice Pa's decline. The further graying of his mottled skin, the slowing of his once sure steps. His dark hair had thinned down to his skull, and the horrid wound Molly dutifully wrapped in new bandages every evening continued to weep its foul ichor.

He was tired.

As much as she tried to ignore it, she saw it in the swing of his hammer and pull of his saw. How deep it ran in the lines around his clouded eyes. Still, each night he came, and each night he worked, but Molly recognized, with an ache that splintered her very soul, it could not continue.

It was her turn to do right by him.

While the sun beat down upon the hilltop overlooking their land, Molly dug Pa his place beside Mama. Where, she finally admitted to herself, he truly belonged.

When he emerged from the woods that night, moving with all the stiffness of a tortured man, she met him with tears in her eyes.

"You did good, Pa," she said, taking his hand. It was ice cold and thin as bone. "I'm gonna be just fine."

He stared down at her, gaze half lidded beneath that ever-seeping injury, and cupped her cheek with his free hand.

"Mama's waiting." Molly breathed through the sobs threatening to steal her voice and nodded toward the well-worn footpath leading further up the hill.

Pa hesitated, but Molly forced a fragile smile and stepped back. He stood for a time, looking at his daughter, the land, the life he'd built for them, then stooped to press a gentle kiss upon her forehead.

Through a veil of tears, she watched him make his final ascent to sleep beside his wife.

Grief wanted to swallow Molly. To dash her to the ground and bury her beneath its weight. It filled her lungs until she could hardly breathe. It sank like pointed stones in her belly. It beat upon her heart with such fury she almost willed it to burst so she didn't have to feel it any longer.

But in grief, there is also anger, and instead of giving over to sorrow, Molly took hold of that barbed thread and clothed herself in its thorns.

They did this.

Molly was a Cooper.

They will pay.

And she had barrels to build.

***

They came, as she expected they would. They had to be curious. Had to know how the cooperage continued to run when they'd removed its life source.

Their arrival confirmed what Molly had long suspected.

Some weeks had passed and summer was giving way to the chill of autumn. Molly was sitting on the porch watching the sunset when they came riding up, the cocksure pair of them on their cocksure pair of thoroughbreds. She observed them over steepled fingers, rocking slowly in her chair.

Gus Clifford dismounted first.

"Evening, Miss Cooper," he said, resting one foot on the porch's bottom step.

Paul, always his brother's shadow, tipped his hat.

"Evening," she replied.

When she didn't ask or offer more, Gus said, "We was wondering if your pa's around?"

"You was?"

"Yes'm. Seems business is back on track, but nobody's seen ol' Bill, so we thought we'd come up and give our regards. Unless...you got another cooper what's been working for you?"

She was sure he hadn't let that slice of hope temper his question on purpose. A small smile, one that lived only on her lips, curved the edges of Molly's mouth.

"Only one cooper 'round here. You know that," she said, standing. "Why don't you men sit and stay a spell? I got some pie inside, fresh made with the last apricots of the season. Was just about to have some myself."

The Clifford brothers traded a dubious expression.

"What about your pa, Miss Cooper?"

"Up with Mama. I can take you to him, if you'd like?" She made as if to step off the porch, but Gus stopped her with a gracious wave of his hand that came off a bit too sharp. She lifted a brow.

"Bad form to interrupt a man in his mourning," he said quickly, to which Paul nodded. "We can wait. Pie sounds lovely."

She served them thick slices of apricot pie at the kitchen table and sat across from them with the expectant eye of a hostess who will not have her baking left unsampled. The Clifford brothers each took a forkful and chewed slowly, making a show of savoring the fruit and pastry.

"I do want to apologize for our last meeting," she said. "You can understand how distraught I was."

"Think nothing of it, Miss Cooper," Paul replied before taking another bite of pie. "Ain't the first time we've had to deal with the sensitivities of womenfolk."

Her smile was more genuine this time. "Mighty kind of you. Reminds me of Pa, in a way."

"When do you reckon he'll be back, anyway?" Gus, not quite as relaxed as his brother, asked.

Molly kept on as if she hadn't heard him. "See, Pa was always looking for the best in people. He liked to tell me this story—I suppose it was a lesson, really—about his brother and a bear. Uncle Douglas came upon this big old grizzly in his path, real mean looking. Every time my uncle moved, so'd the bear, tracking him and the like. So Douglas had a choice: try and kill it, or find another way around. Now, we all know the odds of downing a bear in one shot ain't on our side, so Douglas? He took some meat from his pack and fed the thing."

Beads of sweat had broken out across Paul's forehead. Gus was fanning himself with his hat, eyes traveling anxiously to the window.

"Wouldn't you know it, the bear took a liking to my uncle after that and followed him all the way home, where it stayed as his friend 'til the day Douglas died. It was said there weren't no safer man on earth than my uncle. I don't know how true that is, mind you—"

"Excuse me, Miss Cooper," Gus cleared his throat, and then again, as if he had something lodged in there. A flush had started to creep up his neck. "Your pa?"

Molly sat back in her chair, pulling her shawl close. "Pa used to tell me that story when I was too quick to judge someone. They can look mean and scary, but just need a helping hand. He wanted me to see how good the world can be and treat it with all the kindness I expect for myself. I lived by that story a long time."

The brothers were coughing into handkerchiefs, their faces bright red with exertion. Molly watched them without expression.

"Then you two came along and showed me the other side. The version where my uncle, a good man, fed the bear and did everything right and still got eaten."

Gus staggered to his feet, clawing at his neck, while Paul leaned over the table, every breath a shrinking wheeze.

"Sometimes it ain't enough to be good when there's so much bad. Sometimes, you gotta take a chance and shoot the bear."

Gus was on his knees, lips flecked with white foam, eyes bulging in their sockets. Paul had had the good grace to go still, slack face resting on the tabletop. Molly got up and walked slowly around to Gus. He gurgled helplessly, chest heaving with want of air.

"I'd like to thank you for that lesson, Mr. Clifford," she whispered. "It was hard learned, but I will carry it with me, always."

Gus Clifford slumped to the ground, and the last thing he saw in this world was Molly Cooper's tear-stained smile.

***

The disappearance of the brothers was the talk of the town. Far more effort was put into searching for them than had ever been put into looking for William Cooper. Packs of men roamed the countryside, looking for any sign of the Cliffords in hopes of collecting the handsome reward their mother was offering.

More than one came to Molly's door. That's where the brothers had said they were going last, after all. She opened up to each one, invited them in, took them for a tour of the property. All those searching men were very apologetic for putting her out like that, even as they tramped through her home, across the yard, into the cooperage.

Of course they knew she had nothing to do with it, they all assured her.

Not the Cooper girl, raised so sweet by her pa.

They even complimented the barrels in the storehouse, particularly the two large ones in the middle, their centers emblazoned with the letter C.

"Thank you," she said each time with a contrite bob of her head. "I can't help but think of Pa every time I look at them."

At the mention of her missing father, the men would grow self-conscious, fearful it might evoke Molly's delicate feminine emotions, and mumble some sort of placation before finding an excuse to move on.

No one ever seemed to notice the subtle scent of brine surrounding those two barrels.

After each search was concluded, Molly walked the men back to their horses, and went to the porch steps while they prepared to take their leave.

"Be careful on your way back now, boys," she'd say, settling into her rocking chair. "The road can be such an unforgiving beast, especially for the worst of us."

Content Warnings

“Every Woman Knows This” by Laurel Hightower: Implied Sexual Assault

“She Sings of Pain and Sorrow” by Holley Cornetto: Addiction, Suicide, Implied Rape, Animal Cruelty, Eye Trauma

“The Thing With Feathers” by Tonya Walter: Domestic Violence

“She Asked For It” by Lilyn George: Sexual Assault/Rape

“Genesis 2:22” by Denarose Fukushima: Criticism of Religion, Excessive Violence

“Better” by Alexis DuBon: Emotional Abuse, Grooming

“The Truth Tiger” by Gemma Amor: Death of a Loved One, Cancer, Human Remains

“The Shock of Death” by Michelle Tang: Death/Suicide

“Youngblood” by Lindz McLeod: Domestic Violence, Abuse, Stalking, Death

“What Doesn’t Kill You” by Elle Turpitt: Abuse, Imprisonment, Sexual Assualt

“Underground” by Regi Caldart: Assault, Sexual Assault, Childbirth

“The Only Thing Different Will Be The Body” by J.A.W. McCarthy: None

“Blame, Pain, and Selfishness” by Hailey Piper: Violence, Emotional Manipulation

“New Lines from Which to Shape Her Body” by Nikki R. Leigh: Misogyny, Violence Against Women, Gore

“Last Night I Was Having a Drink at the Slippery Nipple” by Amanda Michele: Violence and Misogyny

“Maddy Long Legs” by Olivia White: Arachnophobia

“M.E. and Her” by Lea Storry: Ageism, Misogyny

“The Eyes of Vaz’lul” by Jill Palmer: References to Infanticide and Femicide, Blood, Gore

“The Canary” by Joanne Askew: Physical Abuse, Familial Abuse

“Bambolina, Bambolina” by G.G. Silverman: Body Horror, Scars, Blood, Implied Dismemberment, Sexual Assault Survivorship, PTSD

“The Cooper Girl” by S.H. Cooper: Death

About the Authors

Laurel Hightower

Laurel Hightower grew up in Kentucky, attending college in California and Tennessee before returning home to horse country, where she lives with her husband, son, and a rescue pitbull. She works as a paralegal in a mid-size firm, wrangling litigators by day and writing at night. A bourbon and beer girl, she's a fan of horror movies and true life ghost stories. She is the author of Whispers in the Dark and Crossroads, co-edited the charity anthology We Are Wolves, and her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies.

Holley Cornetto

Holley Cornetto is a librarian and English professor who writes dark speculative fiction. Her writing appears in over a dozen magazines and anthologies. Holley is a regular reviewer and contributor for The Horror Tree. She can be found lurking on Twitter @HLCornetto.

Tonya Walter

Tonya Walter is a fictioneer and odd-job collector. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, children, and a pit-bull/garbage-disposal mix. Bits of her fiction and weird art live at thefictitioustonyawalter.com. You can find her on Twitter @fictitioustw.

Lilyn George

Lilyn George is the former owner of Sci-Fi & Scary, which closed November 2021 so they could relaunch to be the much more inclusive Leviathan Libraries in 2022. Nonbinary, bisexual, and atheist, their mere existence serves to piss people off.

Denarose Fukushima

Born and raised on the Big Island of Hawai'i, Denarose Fukushima grew up surrounded by tales of myth and magic, which eventually bled into her writing. Her short stories have previously been published in Fantasy anthologies. This is her first story in the horror genre. When she's not writing, she enjoys drawing, weight-lifting and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Alexis DuBon

Alexis DuBon is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. You can find her in the Hundred Word Horror anthology series by Ghost Orchid Press, Field Notes From a Nightmare by Dread Stone Press, on the Horror Oasis YouTube channel, The Wicked Library podcast, and on twitter at @shakedubonbon.

Gemma Amor

Gemma Amor is a Bram Stoker Award nominated author, illustrator and voice actor. Her happy place is horror, speculative and dark fiction, or anything that blurs the boundaries of genre with a focus on human stories. Many of her works have been adapted into audio dramas by the popular NoSleep Podcast. She is also a podcaster, audiobook narrator and hand paints book covers in acrylic, watercolour and oil. She lives in Bristol, in the U.K.

Michelle Tang

Michelle Tang writes speculative fiction from Ontario, Canada, where she lives with her husband and children. Her short stories have been published in several anthologies, including Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, Night Terrors, Vol. 2, and Once Upon an Enchanted Forest. When she's not writing, Michelle enjoys watching CrossFit documentaries, playing video games, and lurking on social media.

Lindz McLeod

Lindz McLeod is a queer, working-class, Scottish writer who dabbles in the surreal. Her prose has been published by/is forthcoming in Hobart, Flash Fiction Online, the New Guard, Cossmass Infinities, and more. She is a member of the SFWA and is represented by Headwater Literary Management.

Elle Turpitt

Elle Turpitt is a writer, reviewer and editor living in Cardiff, South Wales. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies for Seven Deadly Sins: A YA Anthology and in The Dark Dispatch’s the Dead Inside, and Brigid Gate’s Were-Tales, as well as online and on The NoSleep Podcast. She co-runs Divination Hollow Reviews, and when not writing or editing can often be found with her head in a book or playing video games. Her website is elleturpitt.com and she is also on Twitter and Instagram, @elleturpitt.

Regi Caldart

Regi Caldart is a horror and magical realism writer based out of Western Pennsylvania, USA. Though by day an IT Program Manager, by night she spends her time advocating for accessible healthcare for all who need it, from women's health to ensuring safety net clinics are adequately stocked. Her writing can also be found on Divination Hollow Reviews where she shines light on media from LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and femme creators. When not glued to the computer screen, she can be found working out in the gym or badly creating miniatures. The resident rabbits would also very much like it if she would feed them her houseplants already, as they are quite hungry.

J.A.W. McCarthy

J.A.W. McCarthy is the author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, LampLight, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13 (ed. Ellen Datlow). She lives with her husband and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest, where she gets most of her ideas late at night, while she’s trying to sleep. You can call her Jen on Twitter @JAWMcCarthy. Find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.

Hailey Piper

Hailey Piper is the author of The Worm and His Kings, Queen of Teeth, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, and other books of horror. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, with over seventy short stories published in Vastarien, Pseudopod, Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Dark Matter Magazine, and elsewhere. Hailing from the haunted woods of New York, she now lives with her wife in Maryland, where their paranormal research is classified. Find Hailey at www.haileypiper.com or on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays.

Nikki R. Leigh

Nikki R. Leigh is a queer, forever-90s-kid wallowing in all things horror. When not writing horror fiction and poetry, she can be found creating custom horror-inspired toys, making comics, and hunting vintage paperbacks. She reads her stories to her partner and her cat, one of which gets scared very easily.

Instagram - @spinetinglers

Twitter - @fivexxfive

Amanda Michele

Based in the Florida swampland, Amanda Michele is a writer of dark fiction. Her dream-like relationship drama, "Centennial Nights," was published in LampLight Magazine and her forested dark fantasy, "The Swamp Witch's Apprentice," was featured in Corvid Queen. You can find her on Twitter @amandamxl.

Olivia White

Olivia White is a UK author and curator who works as Creative Content Manager for The NoSleep Podcast. She also sometimes works in game development, having co-created and designed indie adventure games The Charnel House Trilogy and Richard & Alice, among others. She is currently leading an ongoing investigation into S.H. Cooper. You can find her on Twitter at @NoSleepOlivia.

Lea Storry

Lea Storry (yes, that’s her real last name) is a writer who owns a memoir writing, editing and publishing business. She can also fly a plane and throw a Frisbee but not at the same time. Lea lives with her husband in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Email: leastorry@ourfamilylines.ca
Website: ourfamilylines.ca
Twitter: @familylines
Instagram: @family_lines
Facebook: www.facebook.com/FamilyLinesStories

Jill Palmer

Jill Palmer is a novelist and cryptid from northern Appalachia. She writes feminist horror and dystopian fiction for young adults, which includes her upcoming YA debut, Frostbite. As an author, Jill strives to create the badass female role models she needed as a little girl. She was born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, where she first discovered her love of nature and spooky stories by exploring the woods behind her childhood home. Jill received her bachelor’s degree in Professional Writing and Integrated Media Arts from Juniata College in December of 2019. Currently, she is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. For more information, visit jillpalmerwrites.wordpress.com.

Joanne Askew

Joanne Askew is a Science-Fiction and Horror writer. She explores mental health issues, sexual identity, femininity and neurodiversity through speculative fiction. As an LGBTQIA+ activist, she believes that fiction will make our world a better place to come out in. Her sci-fi horror novella, Sloth, is out now. www.jaskew.com

G.G. Silverman

G.G. Silverman is an author of speculative fiction who lives just north of Seattle. She is also disabled and the daughter of immigrants—her parents hail from the Latina region of Italy. Her short fiction has recently appeared in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Women in Horror anthology Not All Monsters from StrangeHouse Books, and was a finalist for the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award for feminist writing, among other honors. Her work has also appeared in Molotov Cocktail, Psychopomp, Scissors + Spackle, Speculative City, Corvid Queen, Fantasia Divinity's Goddesses of the Sea anthology, Evil Girlfriend Media's EGM Shorts, and more. Her short story, I'm sorry, I tried, I love you, was recently optioned for adaptation as a short film starring Finnerty Steeves of Orange is the New Black, and G.G. is currently at work on a horror-tinged feminist short story collection. When she's not writing, she enjoys teaching the art of short fiction. For more info visit www.ggsilverman.com.

S.H. Cooper

S.H. Cooper is a Florida based, multi-genre author with a focus on horror and fantasy. Her titles include Inheriting Her Ghosts, The Festering Ones, and The Knight’s Daughter, in addition to short story collections and the horror comedy podcast, Calling Darkness. When not writing, she lives as a semi-cryptid, whispered about but rarely seen throughout the swamps of Florida, where she spends her days evading Olivia White and tweeting as @mspippinacious.