The boys arrive with the changing of the weather, ushered in by winter’s cold. Once a year, at the beginning of December, those silly boys who think coming here means they are brave. All of them so eager to test their worth on the edge of my husband’s axe. For years and forever and for […]
This is not the story of how he killed me, thank fuck. You want that kind of horseshit, you don’t have to look far; half of modern human media revolves around it, lovingly detailed descriptions of sobbing women violated, victimized, left for the loam to cradle. Rippers, rapists, stalkers, serial killers. Real or imagined, their […]
Kamanti mindspoke to her swollen belly, Sekke Sekke. Then cooed and hummed. The precious gift given to women to hear the voice of their unborn child had thus far eluded her. Kamanti’s aunt had said the baby was very stubborn, and would only speak when it thought it had something worthy of saying. And so […]
For Lara West Tabitha walks, and thinks of shoes. She has been thinking about shoes for a very long time: the length of three and a half pairs, to be precise, though it’s hard to reckon in iron. Easier to reckon how many pairs are left: of the seven she set out with, three remain, […]
There isn’t a virus. He’s pretty sure of that. The radio, when the BBC news had come back every day for a week, before ceasing once more, had mentioned rumours of a virus motivating some of the big “refugee trains” that had got stuck in the West Country. But nobody who’d left from round here […]
Catalogued by Alibhai M. Moosajee of Mombasa February 1907 1. Apul Apul A male ogre of the Great Lakes region. A melancholy character, he eats crickets to sweeten his voice. His house burned down with all of his children inside. His enemy is the Hare. [My informant, a woman of the highlands who calls herself […]
(Content Note: Some readers may find elements of this story disturbing.) The greatest tragedy of Lydia’s life was when she broke her boyfriend during sex. Admittedly, he was a brain in a jar, but she’d been trying to make do. Ross hadn’t always been a brain in a jar, but he’d been cerebrally canned long […]
Once, on the edge of a stony scrub named for a star that fell burning from Orion a hundred years ago, there stood a hut with tin spangles strung from its rafters and ram bones mudded in its walls. Many witches had lived in the hut over the years, fair and foul, dark and light, […]
I always thought of the cabin on the lake as a magical place—which, in retrospect, seems a little ominous. The four of us arrived around mid–afternoon, and everything was as I remembered, not at all diminished by time: the long, shadowy dirt drive narrowed by looming fir trees, suddenly opening into a clearing saturated with […]
When the cave’s ceiling crumples, so do I. Through my body, stone kisses stone. I die. Afterward, footsteps pass by my head. I track them to the opposite wall, the one clear of debris. (If I’d been cowering there, I’d still be alive.) The bearer is wearing my dress, and when she reaches into the […]