The Widow Parkhurst stood at the door to the farmhouse, looking out into the moonlit prairie night. The farm seemed deserted. The wheat danced in the breeze. But somewhere out there her cat was yowling. The rest of the house was asleep, and all of the farmhands were in town, drinking, gambling, or otherwise frittering…
In my first death I died alone, pierced through the belly with a velociraptor talon. I bled out before I felt much of anything, floating into a black void. It was quiet and and peaceful and still, and then I pecked my way out of an egg, slimy and cold. By my third death, stomach…
The clink of gold against diamonds woke Artrullaxi the Magnificent from her slumber, and she held statue-still, listening. Someone had intruded on her lair. Another knight with more ambition than sense? Or a thief with a death wish? A shame that her belly was still full from the last one, her limbs heavy with satiety….
By the time dusk drapes over the banyan boughs, she can see her own heart. It peers from between the fabric of her chest that has unraveled over the day, a scarlet blossom caught behind criss-crossed threads, and flutters against the thrice re-embroidered fingers she presses against it. Though she has lost the flesh and…
A harp made of bones, they say, will only ever play a single song. Haunting, my listeners called my melody, and beautiful. My fingers glided over the sinuous strings and my voice, the harp’s voice, unveiled the story that made me a celebrated music-maker, that earned me my name: A brother betrayed, his life later…
The house is moribund, and the door closing behind me is shocking against the silent space. I hover in the hallway. You break away, move directly up the carpeted stairs. I can almost hear the gate at the top moan, just about hear your footsteps stop in her room. I hesitate, then follow. You sit…
Fifteen years. I count them by converting Standard to Gregorian badly while my feet move forward without me. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen another human and here’s one at the Stones on Ferocina underneath the glowing rings and stars, swirling a red gourd-bottle while he stares into the bonfire like a human would,…
The basement is brightly lit, long fluorescent lighting driving out any shadows in the anthropological centre she calls her tomb. The aisles are long, the carefully laid out shelves crowded with neatly labeled white boxes. She wonders if the boxes contain other ghosts, but she has never seen anyone else lingering here like she does….
Harriet was going slowly along the road, avoiding putting her feet on any cracks in the pavement, when she heard the man screaming. It was a long, loud scream – the kind of scream you might call blood-curdling – and she stumbled to a halt. Setting her foot down just before a crack she looked…
“They say you are the one who can attend to my needs.” A cloaked figure waits at my doorstep. Behind her, twilight drags its dark, feathered wing across the horizon. A fortnight ago, the sun might have lingered. But the seasons are turning; soon, there will be frost. For now, we endure only bitter winds,…
