Alexander’s stomach rebels. It cramps and spasms as his body struggles to contain the wrongness inside him. Sweat beads on his smooth skin; his muscles ache and his mouth forces itself open. The bathroom’s tiled floor is cool and peaceful, and he desperately wishes that he could let himself collapse onto it, to curl up and dissociate until it’s all over, but he can’t, he really, truly can’t. He is here and this is now and everything is happening so much. ...
The story of Afterbirth, North Dakota first came to my attention through back issues of the Bismarck Daily Sentinel, which I was reading for my own private purposes. This was before the Great War, of course, and many of its pages were concerned with the tensions that anticipated it, but the paper still made space for local occurrences. Many of these were of little import: the winners of local contests, the highlights of a fair, a new building being erected to house the blighted state’s government, and … a stray mention of Afterbirth, found abandoned at high summer.
Olive couldn’t say how they met, afterwards. A consequence of the night’s debaucheries; loud music and frantic bodies and another drink, another line, always another—! And then waking up back home in her own bed, left to sort out what happened from the barest suggestions. Rumpled sheets, torn stockings, fresh bruises, all normal enough. And that new voice trickling into her DMs, so strangely familiar. She couldn’t help trusting it, even when it was so cagey about how they’d met and what happened and who it really was, and that should have been a warning sign, shouldn’t it?
This story was originally posted to Twitter on April 28, 2022. There’s a mildly embarrassing shelf tucked away in the back of the supermarket, past the jars of pickled spells and the bottles of five-hour-Stillness. It’s part of the store you’ve always been dimly aware of, but why would you ever need to buy some freeze-dried Purpose? Well, today you have a reason. You don’t linger in front of it, just grab the first vacuum-sealed bag that looks right and try not to meet the cashier’s eye as their hands blur through scanning it and all your other groceries. ...