Stories

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. ...

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. ...

Poor little thing without a proper name sitting in the corner of a diner, sipping a cup of coffee bought with stolen money that’s running out so much faster than she hoped it would. Victim-coded, trying not to let her body shake; the waitress keeps on glancing over at her, seems halfway to offering her some sort of help or calling the cops. She can’t tell which, hopes it’s neither.

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. ...

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. ...

He’s rock-hard already when she stops teasing him to fetch the gorgon, dolldick waving proudly (or perhaps desperately, if the little drips oozing from its tip are any indication) in her workshop’s warm air. She’s been careful not to touch it, but that’s hardly a barrier; his body has so many other sensitive places for her hands to linger, and the plug buzzing against his prostate certainly helped—it’s always been his weak point, though she’s been careful not to give it the sort of hammering that might push him over the edge. That would ruin things. ...

On the day Abigail found her halo, her mother had sent her up into the attic to pick out some ornaments for their tree (for it was that time of year, with snow outside and candles burning in the window; so unlike our winters now!). She didn’t want to, of course. The attic was dark and cold, and as she climbed the ladder up she felt like she was ascending into a den of monsters. The little flashlight dangling from her wrist hardly illuminated a thing, and her neck itched so very horrible as she poked her head up through the trapdoor— ...

“Hey, get ready. Fifteen seconds …” “Yeah, yeah, I’m ready.” “… five, four, three, two, inhale—” The burnt-lemon smoke burns her throat as it goes down, leaves her feeling rough and raw. Spasmodic coughs shake her body. “—there, I think you got it all. Sit down …” Her head feels hot as her friend’s hands guide her down to the carpet’s cool embrace. It’s so soft, so yielding! The perfect place to be, the perfect place to stretch out her legs and wiggle her toes and giggle and fall over— ...

“I’m glad you’re broken too.” The murmured words linger in her ears just like the sticky sweat covering both their bodies, its wet horny smell slowly fading into a memory of itself as the little room’s littler AC unit struggled to catch up with the heat. The room smells like sex, like her body and theirs, like all the gasps and touches and shuddering moments of release they’d filled each other with all through the movie murmuring its background noise from her laptop’s little speakers and long past its end— ...

Ever since the prince’s new tutor arrived at the castle, everything has been just humming along. It’s really almost uncanny! It’s like someone’s filled off all the edges that used to cause so much friction; the chefs haven’t bitten anyone’s head off, let alone snapped at them, and the scullery maids have grown so quiet and efficient that you almost wouldn’t know they’re there. The footmen move in well-rehearsed motions, the horses kneel down to be mounted …