Stories

The doll, returning to her first witch’s home, finds it barren and empty; the sprawling gardens overgrown, elegant flowers choked out by thorny weeds, junk littering the gate and the path beyond it—the great fountain, once golden with angelblood, now full of stinking trashbags. The doll picks her way up along the path, looking around in wonder at the changes decay has wrought; at the places where she once sat and played, at the broken trees and sculptures—tools of discipline which she once shivered to see, now nothing more than rubble and ash. ...

You were taken in the night from a dream of endless roses; when you woke you looked to your hands, thinking to see the depredations of thorns. Instead of bloodstained sheets you found smooth glossy walls and a space no larger than a coffin, lit by the rhythmic pulse of a single light—a rhythm which, it soon became clear, matched the frantic beating of your heart. When the lid finally opened you came out fighting, clawing at the smooth, featureless faces of the creatures attending you. You broke half your nails on them before they moved to restrain you, and was over as soon as they did. You could no more stay their motions or escape their grip than you could still your heart or quiet your panicked breaths; so you did what you could, and slipped away from your body to watch what would happen next. ...

Warm slime puddles thickly around your legs as you kneel before her, as her body emerges from all the tiny cracks in the walls where she’d hidden herself all, welling up from the gaps in the courtyard’s paving stones and the shadows beneath rocks. A tiny piece of her even emerges from the tight tie holding your hair back, leaving a warm trail down the small of your back as it descends to return to its proper home. ...

(this story hurt to write; I cannot say whether it will hurt to read, but please don’t force yourself to.) The witch treasured her dolls more than anything else, more than all her wealth and power. She crafted them from the finest components, beautiful souls carefully freed from failing flesh and woven through with threads of memory and love; each one a testament to her devotion. For a time this love was even reflected in the title the world gave her, that welled up from the strength of her workings and the marks she left around her. ...

There’s just something about the way it growls—that hungry, needy sound. It almost makes you want to unchain it, to let it feed the need roiling in its belly with your tender flesh. But the witch wouldn’t want you to. She put in so much effort to capture this beast, this strange shifting thing; to bind its wings and cuff its many limbs. So you don’t. No matter how it growls when you blend close—when you clip another flower from its antlers, or bring the shears to its fingers to harvest another bit of the precious sap inside—no matter what that noise stirs inside you. ...

“Hey babe”, said the witch, “mind helping me with this? I think I cracked a bone the other day.” The doll looked up from her book. “Sure, but isn’t that the third this month?” “… yeah.” “Shouldn’t you have someone look at your spells? Wood should last longer, even without plasticizing it.” “No, I’m fine. I just … look, give me a hand? It’s one of the supports in my chest, I’ve already got the replacement out.” ...

Someone has left a flower in the silence between moments, that secret place where you long ago learned to go to hide from the world. A place which you had always thought only you could access. Because, well. It’s inside your mind. Right? The flower is pale, almost immaterial. It looks like a pencil sketch. You gingerly pick it up and sniff. It doesn’t smell like anything. Which does make sense—smells have always been the hardest things to imagine with any sort of accuracy—but it’s still a bit disappointing. ...

As you raise the wand above your head and scream the magic words, something already feels different. The swirling ribbons burst forth from the wand’s gem, just as they always do, filling everything around you—but they are sharp and purple, not those familiar soft pastels. The ribbons fray as they stretch, and soon you are surrounding by a sharp-edged cloud, sparkling in the light seeping from your wand—that, at least, is familiar, though it trickles forth in anemic bursts. Gone is the brilliant guiding light that once blazed around you, as warm and overwhelming as the sun; the power that settles into you is broken, distorted, just as you will soon be—for the torn ribbons which were once the flesh and bone of your other form, that bouncing skirt and frilly gloves (that ridiculous half-cape and the thin leather strap around your neck), have not remembered their purpose. ...

When she offers you the chalice, the liquid within tastes like nothing you can recall tasting before—a heady blend of hothouse flowers, their sweetness tainted by the humid decay of their growth, and thunderstorm petrichor, all shot through with a thick and hungry musk. You swirl it on your tongue, trying to understand the scents seeping up into your mind; your eyes close for a moment, and when they open she has left your side, gone over to busy herself at the stove, suspiciously nonchalant. She doesn’t look at you, but she doesn’t need to. ...

When she first took a knife to herself, she did not think to find anything more than the release of pain; so she was quite surprised, not to say a bit taken aback, when the knife’s passage through too-rough flesh was interrupted by the wholly unexpected presence of a gearbox, a plastic-sheathed assemblage quietly ticking away just before her wrist’s joint. When she was done being astonished—done listening to the gears and seeing how her fingers twitched when she poked at it—she went looking for more. ...