Words

“Be a dear and fetch my dancing body, will you? I feel like going out tonight.” Cam doesn’t bother to reply to his nameless mxtress, not with his mainspring as deteriorated as it is; he just opens the closet and carefully pulls out the shell they want. Each shell is different, dozens of bodies for every purpose they might possibly need: bodies for strength and speed and stealth, bodies for all the quiet arts of the courtroom and boudoir, bodies they haven’t worn in years and bodies worn thin from overuse. ...

The Witch of Forgotten Sounds (such an unwieldy title! She preferred to go by “Terri, with an i”) woke to find a doll in her bed. An everyday occurrence for many witches, of course, but Terri made a point of not keeping dolls (“they’re always so busy, I can’t stand it!”). She didn’t scream. Witches are made of better stuff than that. Instead she carefully untangled the doll’s limbs from her own, slipped out of bed, and stepped into her screaming room (a converted closet) to scream herself hoarse. ...

Precious little witch-to-be, caught in a trap— Cold iron teeth cling to her ankle, slowly warming in her blood’s heat; she doesn’t have the strength to move, can’t drag herself across the smiling tiles. The door’s right there: those few feet might as well be miles. She can’t think how this happened. Just moments ago she was out on the street, wandering through autumn’s dripping red and yellow, just enjoying the season. Cold, crisp air filling her lungs and the warmth of her oversized caterpillar of a familiar around her neck. ...

(This story is also featured in my collection Joyous/Decay) For the last few months she’s asked you the same question every week. “Are you sure you don’t want it to be a tattoo instead? Something permanent?” Each time you answer more or less the same way. You’re sure, you really are; she doesn’t need to ask. You’d tell her if … You’d tell her. But you won’t need to. You’re more sure of that than you’ve been of anything except the need which first led you to her, back in those dreary days you can hardly remember now; back before you were really a person, just an empty shell pretending. ...

Moonstruck toys staring up at pale silver eyes, lost in wonder as the sky’s thin shell cracks and the void rushes in … Dolls can’t drown in the dark places Between, don’t fade away into dusty memories—but their gears seize up, and their screams find no purchase on the void. Worlds crack like dying bubbles and spill their precious cargo out into cruel emptiness. They do exactly what they were made to do, and the things Outside eagerly drink them up. ...

content warnings: medicalization, institutional xenophobia, genocidal and carceral logic, child abuse, the project of upholding whiteness and the horror implicit within it. It squats spider-like over the building which was meant to contain it, vast legs cutting the sky to pieces as soon as you step within its outermost extents. Only its teeth (its drill? its proboscis? it’s unclear) are hidden from view. Every year it’s easier to find yourself inside it. They keep on having to move the plaque marking its limits and pull back the barricades another few painful blocks. ...

Light falls across the couch in thick golden beams, filtering in through dusty windows thrown open to catch the setting sun’s warm breeze; there’s dust in the air, and smoke, and the thick musky scent of slowly drying sweat. When you first got here the smoke was the woody stink of distant fires, but now it’s just good clean weed and and the strangely layered perfume of vaped DMT. The world doesn’t feel real, hasn’t for a long time; reality trickles away with each breath you take and each time your friend passes you the blunt. She’s the only person you really know here, the only reason you were invited; usually you’d feel awkward, but everyone’s so hazy and high and the couch really is so comfortable … ...

“Wake up, doll. Something is coming.” Her words echo in the doll’s mind as she wakes, just as they have for years—ever since the doll’s new mistress ate her old one and dragged her back into its lair. Such a small memory to be burned so deeply, but she’s thankful for it. Today she wakes as she always does, words echoing in her mind and the monster’s looming vastness crouched on spindly legs above her stony bed. A drop of venom sizzles on her skin, another hole burned through her ruined dress. ...

(This story is also featured in my collection Joyous/Decay) The doll shivers in your arms, trembling like a candleflame in the wind, like you used to shake and shudder when you knew you had sinned, when you could feel rejection’s creeping despair just around the corner. Her big button eyes stare up at you, pleading, blue thread fraying from the knotted mass at the center of those dark disks; her mouth moves in soundless whispers, the same words over and over again– ...

Hero pinned to the floor, glaring up at the beast who’s finally gotten the better of him. Trying not to notice the thin lines of blood welling out of where its claws grip his neck, trying not to think about how easily it could end all his struggles— (if he thinks those thoughts his luck will break, or so he’s always been told. there are so many things he doesn’t think about.) ...