The Horrible Women

Vesna Bell Does Not Live An Unhappy Life

She was a girl of flawed and low character, suitable for little more than feedstock.

Poor Little Thing

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.

Something She's Got Plans for Later

a response to this prompt. It’s not quite your first day, but she makes it feel like it is. Everywhere you go in the tiny, crowded kitchen you can feel her eyes on you, the heat radiating from her bulk as she slides in next to you (or behind you, with the weight of her arms reaching around your too-slender body) to correct some perceived flaw in what you know is exactly what you were told to do just a few days before. ...

The Doll Decides

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. ...

The Chalice

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. ...