The Dream of Meat

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.

Read on … ( ~4 Min.)

That The Seasons May Turn

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.

Read on … ( ~4 Min.)

abigail's mothers

Abigail’s Halo

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—

Read on … ( ~5 Min.)

Burnt-lemon Smoke

“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—

Read on … ( ~5 Min.)

the glass rod

Carter and Abel

⌈Cartɘr & Abɘl—ruining witchɘs’ days sincɘ 629⌋

It’s a cute sign. Done in marker on cardboard, sure, rather than paint on wood, but there’s something almost charming about that to Arlene’s weary eyes.

Pity that building it’s affixed to is such a disaster.

Once it was a handsome little store, with a wide-windowed ground floor and a little first floor perched atop it like a cat curled atop a stove; once ivy climbed its facade and flowers blossomed in pots beneath its windows. It must have been adorable!

Read on … ( ~6 Min.)

the glass rod

7: We All Have Regrets

This is the conclusion to this story’s first arc. It will likely make no sense without the context of the previous stories. Start here.  

Arlene’s last customer of the day is uncomfortably prickly as Arlene looks her over. She’s healing up well: the only trace of the rod’s presence is a scattering of flowers rising up from beneath her flesh, their lines sketched in blisters and bruises and knotted scars.

Read on … ( ~3 Min.)

the glass rod

6: If Such Things Have Ends

“What was I?” Florence asks, the question bubbling up unbidden through her seed’s vestigial throat and out past teeth already well on their way to hatching. Up in the red sky above the little patio where she keeps that memory of her lesser self her hands flutter uncertainly.

It is not what she expected to ask the shining-blazing-sharp-painspitting thing which crawled into her and took away her toys.

She wanted to threaten it.

Read on … ( ~5 Min.)