Dead thing sits on the floor, watching. Doesn’t move an inch. Its skull is a crushed mess and one of its eyes popped as it died, a mass of slime dripping down from its ruined cheek onto one of its perfectly formed and perfectly unblemished breasts. Death’s eager embrace didn’t care at all for its body; the trap’s jaws only took its too-curious head.
(once, long ago, there was an Empty Spaces Anthology. This was the longer of my two stories in it.) There is a type of rot that breeds in silences, a moist decay that drips through the cracks in your life and softens your thoughts with its insidious warmth. It’s the sort of thing that lingers long after it was first welcomed in, that never quite leaves— “Miss,” the doll’s plaintive voice echoes through the bedroom door, “are you in there?” ...
Originally posted to Twitter on September 16, 2022. 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. Sunlight is clean and fresh, as warm and welcoming as a corpse whose blood has not yet remembered to cool. Moonlight is dripping blood and petrichor, familiar as any reflection’s smile. ...
Originally posted to Twitter on January 18, 2022. 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. ...
“There! Do you see that?” An endless twisted thread; a mat writhing beneath the surface. Sprouting bodies receding into the rotting soil; corpses blossoming into ghostly light. Ribs crunch beneath Abigail’s feet; a smile lights her face. Her companion tarries, unwilling to venture in; Rob’s mothers told him so many times to stay away from the burial pits, not to risk whatever ordinance might yet be buried among the numinous dead. ...
Rot, beautiful though it is, is merely one extant form of decay. Deep processes continue beneath the earth’s crust in the same way as they do within any corpse, differing only in magnitude and result— “Almost there, just another good hit—” A pickaxe crashes against stone; the wall crumbles. Light breaks through for the first time in longer than the emptiness within can remember. It’s dazzling, overwhelming—a dim lantern’s glow magnified and refracted, burning through the countless crystals that line its walls— ...
“Hey, do you have anything for stomach aches?” Doll, sitting behind the counter, doesn’t glance up from her sketchbook. She’s been doodling in it for hours, painting with the blood that still hasn’t stopped dripping from her gums. She’s having fun! “Try aisle 3. Uh, the one with the big light-up skull. Don’t listen to it, it’s lying.” The ostensible customer graces her with a mumbled thanks as they turn and walk away. There’s something wrong with the rhythm of their steps, a squishy irregularity. Doll ignores it. ...
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. ...
“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— ...