Brief Stories

Her Missing Part

She always felt like part of her was missing. An ache in her heart, an absence in the air around her—skin wrapped too tight around her bones, blood beating in time with a rhythm unlike her body.

She always felt like something was wrong. Always, until she met them.

The first time was nothing special. Their strong hands fumbling beneath her skirt, tearing her stockings; the hunger in their eyes tempered by furtive glances towards the office door. Her stammered protests, the blank animal fear curling around her mind as they fucked her—

From Beneath Her Skin

The call’s coming from beneath her skin. It’s not yet ready to be dead, not ready to be buried and forgotten, grave bell ringing with wild abandon. Louder with each heartbeat, louder with each breath, an electric shriek filling the too-still air—!

“This one isn’t everyone”

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that. I never wanted you to know that side of me. I wanted,” a drop of blood slides down her perfect teeth, “I wanted to keep you safe.”

This isn’t when the doll found her in the woods, covered in stolen blood. This is some time after.

She’s cleaned up, mostly, freshly showered. Her still-wet mane looks faintly depressed with so much of its volume gone. It smells good, though, like a tropical vacation that she’s never had the money to have.

Events At The Estate

At 9:34 PM, the party in the red hall was asked to pause their activities and take part in a minute of silence to honor those who died to make their meal possible.

They declined.

By 10:20 PM it became obvious that the estate was in danger of becoming understaffed.

As the estate’s primary objective is the satisfaction of visiting parties, it refused requests from the remaining staff to deploy countermeasures at 10:22 PM, 10:28 PM, 10:31 PM, 10:32 PM, 10:33 PM, and 11:01 PM.

You’re Invited!

When doll slips from the confines of her bed-box and stumbles downstairs, there’s an odd rectangle waiting at the table: a folded sheet of thick, creamy paper. It’s for her, obviously—why else would her miss have put it there, next to her oatmeal and tea?

But doll isn’t sure.

“Miss, what’s this?”

Across the kitchen (a distance which doll’s eyes easily skip over and her body has never managed to cross), her witch doesn’t glance up from the stove’s vast fire. Doll smells the ashy tang of crumbling pine and the rich, rotting musk of burnt deer.

The Dream of Meat

You are dreaming.

The oddity of recognizing this does not impede your progress forward into the dining hall’s elegant vastness. Nor does it permit you to deviate from the path the dreaming part of you—the part that weaves the world—has chosen for you.

“Oh, you’re finally here!”

There is a dining table, a perfectly formed slab of rock stretching impossibly across the hall’s floor, and at its head stands a prism-headed man in a hastily drawn suit. His layered voices sound exactly like him.

That The Seasons May Turn

Her lips press against your skin like sun-warmed feathers, soft and gentle, lingering only long enough for the poison to soak in. Each kiss leaves you shivering against the dead field below you, fingers twitching against soil rendered cold and lifeless by winter’s harsh grip—

You don’t look at her.

The elders made that prohibition quite clear, before they sent you out to offer yourself up. Once they would have scooped out your eyes before leaving you for her to find, but now there are better ways and your vision was bad even before the acid’s touch.