Brief Stories

category archive

The bulk of my writing, consisting of stories between 500 and 2,000 words in length.

Empire grew in blood and greed, but the exuberance of its youth soon gave way to a colder cruelty.

The history of Empire—there is only ever one, and only one who did not grow in the shadow cast by its death would claim not to know it—is fraught with danger. Even the most theoretical study of its contours risks stumbling upon an old taboo, a deadly truth wrapped in undying chains by ghoul-kings who feared the touch of sunlight upon their sins.

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Empire's shadows linger long after the last pyre has fallen to ash.

It is well known, to those of a certain disposition, that the ruins of the old watchtowers are attended still by the ghosts of the soldiers who gave their lives to the belief that a piece of land—a pile of rock—would protect their fellows from some distant enemy, uncaring of the internal foes that starved their supply lines and drained their spirits.

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Beatrice's Eyes

Beatrice sniffs the air uneasily, unsure of herself in a way that she once vowed she would never be. Something has changed, something has shifted within her home's generous confines, and she hasn't the slightest idea what. An absence in the air; a lack of smell and noise.

"Cinnamon," she calls, "I need your eyes."

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Fangs Over Breakfast

She wanders into the kitchen midway through your preparations, drawn by the warm scents of cooking meet and browning bread and your heartbeat's happy rhythm. You tug the blackout curtain closed as she does, walling out sunset's last beams before they can touch her grey skin.

"Hey!" you cheerfully greet her sleep-mussed hair and hollow eyes, "do you want some coffee? It'll be ready in a minute."

She grumbles at you and shakes her head; not a surprise, since things like her don't really need to eat, but you like to offer anyway.

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The Stained Doll in the Window

Each day you walk past the dollmaker's store, past those wide glass windows full of carefully constructed cages. They almost look like they're not cages at all, just dollhouses, but you know better: you've spent enough time watching to notice the bars.

The dolls gambol and dance, climb their furniture and nestle in little display cases almost like they weren't alive at all; sometimes you even pass by as they're having a tea party, a matched set drinking in unison.

Every few weeks one or two of the cages sit empty.

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And they all look just the same

"I heard that there's a new dollmaker moving into town."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, they're setting up at the old mushroom farm. Everyone in the market was buzzing about it."

"Who?"

"One of the big corporate ones, I think—"

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Rue's Waxy Friend

With the click of a button the room fills with the mournful sounds of a funerary dirge, a piano's mournful notes weaving through droning prayers and grief-filled tears. The music drips down the cold stone walls and across the marble slab—

"Ugh, it's so cold in here ..."

The body on the slab shifts just enough to stare at its companion. She's shivering in a lacy black dress and mourning veil, nipples hard and skin goosebumped.

"It's a crypt. Of course it's cold."

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Heaven's Light

They say that light hangs timeless in an eternal now.

They say that each glimmer of starlight is a glimpse of grace; that heaven lurks among those twinkling pinpricks and only light will ever be truly saved, in that eternity lingering between emission and absorption.

They lie.

It's obvious if you have the nose to smell it. Few do, and fewer bother.

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The Soft Sound of Flocking Angels

“Did you know,” she says, “that the average person can endure less than five minutes of direct exposure to Her before their timeline is completely overwritten?”

You, bound and gagged on the floor of the temple's airlock, can only nod in response. Everyone knows that.

She grins at you. “Unintelligent matter is rewritten faster, of course, and living wood endures surprisingly well—that's why your rebellion was so excited when they found the asteroid forest, right? Sucks for you that we got here first.”

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A Migraine is like A Throne

Fleeting waves of mirage haze sleeting across my eyes like rot's reeking spore, each flexing the world's bounds further still—walls bow against absent pressure and cracks grow into gaping doors, and all the while the shimmering gem of aura's heart eats and eats and eats—

That brightly lit not-mouth, an angel dancing at the center of my vision; it's odd how similar a mouth and a wing and an eye can look, you know, how feathers are just teeth seen by someone who's still waiting to be taught how to be a victim.

Angels eat just the same.

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