The house is a hug, hot and tight. Will rolls his pillow in half to prop his head. It helps with his breathing. He’s on the tail end of a Summer cold. The Moores’ dog next door, Jenny, is barking an ode to the moon. Will thinks it’s cruel to keep a dog out all night. And it’s disrespectful to the neighbors. Some people work. He doesn’t like the Moores. They don’t take their cans in for days after the garbage has been collected.

The moonlight through the blinds has turned the bedspread into a zebra pelt. Downstairs, the smoke detector beeps every sixty seconds. Will plans on changing the battery before Rea gets home from her mother’s house on Tuesday. He’s lonely without her reading next to him at night, but when it’s time to sleep, he’s happy for the real estate. He closes his eyes and thinks about work, specifically how he’s going to organize his day tomorrow, and once he feels confident in his plan, he thinks about Kelly, the office manager. He touches himself until, on the edge, he hops out of bed, opens the toilet, and cums into the bowl. A moment later, he’s back beneath his sheets, thinking about how cruel the Moores are to poor Jenny, who is still outside intermittently barking as if to say in a huff, Well, I never.

Will lies with his left ear on the pillow and his right hand over his other ear. It doesn’t help. Jenny has things to say. The bedroom light clicks on. It’s been like this since they bought the house. When the fan is on high, sometimes the light comes on. Bad wiring or something. He gets out of bed and presses the button to turn off the light. Back in bed, he squeezes his eyelids shut. He tries to will himself to sleep, but it doesn’t come. Over one hundred and eighty beeps and barks later, Will is on the verge of going for a run, or catching up on some work. Anything other than lying in bed not sleeping.

The bedroom light snaps on again. He turns it off again. He squeezes his eyelids shut again. He thinks about Kelly again. Her legs again. Her cleavage again.

The fan is whirring.

Outside, Jenny yelps. Probably a skunk got her. The light snaps on. Will curses, gets out of bed, and clicks the button to turn it off. He gets back in bed. The light snaps on. Fan whirs. He swings his legs out, but the light turns off on its own. He sits on the edge of the bed. His eyes are heavy.

Then he hears it: someone is coming up the stairs. There’s the familiar protest of the fourth step. The snap of the seventh. Maybe Rea is home early from her mother’s. But she didn’t take the car. And why would she have taken a taxi at this hour?

Beep.

There’s rumble down the stairs like someone has dropped a suitcase. Will has one foot on the ground, every muscle tense. A few seconds later, he hears a snap, and a dying last garbled bleep from the smoke detector.

Will considers going for the revolver he has locked in the small safe beneath the bed. But then he remembers that the key to the gun safe is on his keyring in the crystal bowl by the door. Besides, he’s being silly. Rea is home and her suitcase has fallen down the stairs. That’s all.

“Rea?” There’s no reply.

Outside, Jenny is quiet.

Will moves to the door and peers down the hall toward the top of the stairs. “Rea, is that you? You okay, honey?”

No answer, only the squeak of the fourth step. Why’d he put the key to the gun safe on his keyring? It should be in the bedroom, where it would be useful. “Rea, please answer me.”

The moon is hidden by clouds. The room is dark. The snap of the seventh step. Will is watching the stairs from his bedroom door when the light snaps on. And then he sees the top of its conical head. Its eyes that remind Will of the onyx button cuffs his father wore. Only larger. Black holes that want to swallow up the world.

He runs to the bed and pulls out the safe. Checks to see if maybe it’s unlocked—maybe he forgot to lock it. But Rea was adamant about keeping it locked up. Rea never wanted a gun in the house to begin with. Now she’ll see. Now she’ll see why they needed to protect themselves.

Will moves to the back of the room. He’s breathing fast. The light clicks off—the transition from light to dark coats everything in absence.

It emerges from the hallway, a shadow the length of his bedroom door. As Will’s eyes adjust, he can see its arms, like hornbeam branches, smooth and long. Its eyes are still lost in the darkness of the room. They are the darkness. They emit darkness and gulp it up, breathing the viscous oil-black night. But it’s just standing there, staring at Will. And Will is staring back, hoping his heart doesn’t stop beating like his dad’s did when he was only twelve. His dad, wearing those onyx cufflinks Will’s mother said made him look important. The ones his dad was wearing when he came to the door that night to tell Will to sleep tight.

The light snaps on.

Thank you for reading! Now for a message from…well…me:

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Sean Thomas McDonnell is a contest-winning Bay Area-based author specializing in horror and dark speculative fiction. His debut collection, Beneath the Valley Oak—a fierce blend of western grit and creeping dread—sold out within 48 hours. He is a founding creator of The Midnight Vault anthology and the author of the standout story Blink Twice If You Can Hear Me. His breakout punk-noir novella, Cherry Kills, is available worldwide through Tiny Worlds Publishing.

The thread had snapped three weeks into December, but I was aware of my seasonal propensities, and so I closed my eyes as I fell into the emotional squalor of winter, trusting my anguish to subside with the blooming plum blossoms. And like clockwork, by the time March had arrived, me, this hideous creature, somehow inflamed and scrawny at once, emerged from my tattered pupa with something akin to hope; my soul fluttered.

I turned my face to the sun and my waterlogged spirit sizzled with gladness. One fluffy white cloud hung in the sky as if from wire in a child’s nursery. The birds conversed. People laughed from passing cars with their windows down, hair whipping madly, their cheap car speakers thumping, providing tempo to this budding new world.

The warbling song of a robin, spirit high, hidden in the blossoming trees, made my heart soar. I basked in the early sun and hummed along with the bird’s morning hymn. The world was good. Finally, the world was good again.

On my morning walk, I passed my favorite oaks, now adorned in moss as bright green as artificial turf, and moseyed across the bridge of the babbling creek where, during the winter months, I would smoke cigarettes and stare at the rocks below. I stopped halfway across and peered down at the creek. There were two children at play on the creek’s bed.

I saw the game: in the hands of the little blonde girl was a doll, nearly as tall as she, wearing a little blue jacket with a red sash around its waist. Its white pants and black shoes were muddy. I couldn’t see the doll’s eyes, because the girl was holding it facedown in the water, pretending to drown it.

The boy child, older, but not by much, and who shared the same round nose as the little girl, shouted instructions from a few steps away.

“Deeper—don’t let it breathe!”

I shook my head and turned to go, but before I’d moved ten feet, I heard the girl yelp. By the time I’d run back to the railing of the bridge, the children were gone. But there was the doll, on its back looking up at me, one eye open, the other closed, winking as if we shared a secret. Its amused pink lips and rose-red cheeks peeked through the mud.

I climbed down the embankment and lifted the doll from the umber-hued debris. Embroidered on the inside of its collar was the name Nils. I wiped his face with my shirt. His right eye was cerulean-blue. But his left eye was closed, and as hard as I tried to push it open with my thumb, it wouldn’t budge.

I looked around for the children, but finding only a glittering pink hair barrette, I tucked Nils under my arm and went home.

After dinner, I watched TV with the windows open. The warm spring air made even the most mundane habits feel eventful and fulfilling. I had cleaned the doll and put it in the rocking chair in the corner of the room.

“Well, Nils,” I said, lifting the television remote. “What do you want to watch?”

The phone rang. It was my sister, Marlow, wanting to know if I’d received an invitation to our cousin Beth’s wedding happening that July.

“I’ll see you there,” I said. “Look for the man wearing a wrinkled linen suit.”

“How long has it been?” Marlow said, exhaling her cigarette smoke on the end of the line in a measured wheeze. “We were starting to think you didn’t like us anymore. Mom’s going to tear into you.”

Nils was staring at me with his one open eye from the corner. I winked at him.

“Well, Mom is eighty and thinks everything is about her, doesn’t she? Listen, I should take off. I’ve got a busy few days of doing nothing.”

“Rough life.”

“Being out of work pays. Besides, if I had a job, who would tend the garden?”

“What are you planting?”

“Everything.”

We said our goodbyes, and when I could no longer keep my eyes open, I laid a small blanket over Nils’s lap, told him to sleep tight, and went upstairs to my bedroom.

Even with the bedroom window open, it was hot, but I managed to fall asleep happy and hungry for the opportunity this summer wedding would afford me: good food and drink, and a chance to, however cliché as it may sound, revisit the good old days with family.

But as pleasant a takeoff as my initial journey into slumber had been, once in flight, my dreams became turbulent. In one such dream, a one-eyed magpie hopped onto my chest, and in the bird’s solitary eye there was Nils, laughing and spinning madly like a wood-peg top, his red sash trailing behind him like fire and blood, until he unraveled completely. Beneath the resin and linen and silk was nothing but dried leaves and lichen-encrusted sticks. I woke up tearing at the sheets with my teeth.

When I’d finally fallen back to sleep, the magpie was back on my chest. This time, when I looked into the magpie’s eye, Nils was staring at me through the iris. He pushed his face against the glossy-black window, opened his pink lips, and mouthed the word, “Sorrow.”

Up hopped a second magpie—I felt the weight of it on my sternum. It squawked and tilted its head, the nictitating membrane of its third eyelid flashing white with every blink. But as upset as I’d been by the first bird, I was now filled with a tentative sense of hope. I knew the rhyme: One for sorrow, two for joy. But when I looked into the second magpie’s eye, I saw nothing but my own reflection, and I felt an incredible sense of condemnation.

I touched the tomato plant leaf, lifted my finger to my nose, and reveled in the fragrance. Maybe I’d make salsa in the summer. Maybe I’d sit in the garden with the sun on my face and drink sangria and listen to jazz and eat tortilla chips and homemade salsa. I picked out a small plant with a sturdy stalk from the bunch, put it in my cart, and wove in and out of the spring gardeners to the checkout line.

Standing in front of me, a father and daughter were buying an assortment of vibrant flowers. I smiled at the young father, nodding approvingly. His child was looking at the back of a packet of seeds. She had her hair pinned back on one side of her head with a glittering pink barrette.

“Spring has sprung, huh?” he said to me, patting his daughter’s blonde head.

I held the tomato plant to my nose and inhaled. “It couldn’t have come soon enough.” I nodded down at the kid. “Spring break?”

He plucked the packet from the little girl’s fingers and smiled down at her. “Daddy’s gotta pay—I’ll give it right back.” He patted her on the head once more for good measure. “No, this one has been out all week due to an injury. Isn’t that right, honey?”

The daughter looked up at me, and I gasped, stumbling backward into a crinkled woman holding a jug of hummingbird nectar.

It was the same round nose, same glittering pink barrette from that day at the creek. But there was a difference. The girl, whose right eye was as green as glass, was wearing a swath of white gauze over her left eye.

That summer was better than anything I could have hoped for. I found work at a company not far from home, I’d met a woman, and the salsa I made with the tomatoes from my tomato plant was heaven.

I credited Nils for my good fortune. He’d come with the spring thaw, and together we watched the birds sing and the neighborhood children play. We felt the sun on our faces. And because I’d grown used to having him beside me—even sleeping in my bed—I brought him on the four-hour drive to the wedding that July.

“You look happy,” Marlow had said over wedding cake.

“I am happy,” I replied.

By November, I was single again. And while I still had a job, they’d put me on a PIP. This was meant to be a kick in the ass, but it only made me less motivated. At night, Nils and I drank wine and watched the news. Nils never looked upset by the terrible things happening in the world. His perpetual smile and wink began to grate on me. It felt unjustified. And when I looked in the mirror at my own face, and pushed and pulled my lips into a smile, it looked just as wrong.

One evening, I forgot to bring Nils upstairs with me. The next night, I remembered, but pretended like I hadn’t. Soon after that, I didn’t bring him anywhere.

The magpies were back and on my chest every evening. Squawking and preening, Nils spinning and laughing, and my cold face, looking back at me through coal-black eyes. One for sorrow, two for nothing. One for sorrow, two for nothing. Until three weeks into December, I woke to find Nils sitting on a chair in front of my bed. How did he get there? His smile was gone. But like with anything that was something and now is not, I wasn’t sure it had ever been. How did he get there? I stared at the doll for a long time, until its face began to contort in the low light. I laid down and squeezed my eyes shut tight. I’d look again, and its face would be normal. I’d look again, and his smile would be back.

Did I bring it upstairs with me?

I sat up—its face was back to normal. I exhaled, shot out of bed, and snatched it by the arm. Downstairs, I dropped it into a chair without regard. I didn’t cover it with a blanket. I didn’t tell it goodnight. It was only a doll. It was an it—resin and linen and silk.

I didn’t fall asleep right away; my mind was spinning and spinning and laughing, and when I finally did sleep, the one-eyed magpies were back on my chest, beating their wings.

I woke up, and there again was Nils, sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed, its face morphing in the low light. I laid down and shut my eyes.

It’s not there, I thought. It’s not there. This is only a dream—a nightmare.

But I felt it on my sternum.

It’s a dream. It’s the magpies.

I opened my eyes and saw its pale resin face frowning back at me. Its cerulean-blue eye was closed. Its left eye, as green as glass, was open. And I saw myself again. Finally, I saw myself again.

Pick up my novella CHERRY KILLS at Tiny Worlds (or your retailer of choice)

The blood on the hanky is in the shape of a man fucking a goat, or a pig—no, a dog. Bill dabs at his lip, then looks at the hanky again; the man and dog are gone, now it looks like The Great Land. Alaska. Fitting. Bill’s lip feels the size of Anchorage.

He throws the hanky in the sink and pops out his bottom lip in the mirror. It’s the same mouth as his brother’s. Same mouth as his father’s mouth, a bit crooked. But that’s where the similarities end. All the men in his family have the Murphy nose, all but Bill, whose nose is—as a stranger back home once declared on a city bus loud enough for every passenger to hear—like that of a proboscis monkey. His mother calls him a handsome Durante.

Bill walks into the room and flops down onto the taut bed. His brothers are probably plotting a way to get him out of the hotel and back home, but he’s not leaving. He’s got just as much right to be at the reunion as any other Murphy—maybe more. He’s the one who supported the family and worked the box office while his brothers were in Japan, the one who helped organize the tire drive—he was the one who mowed their lawns, gassed and oiled their wives’ cars, fixed their kids’ bike tires, and trained their goddamn dogs.

Bill sees himself smashing Joe’s nose, feels the crunch. He laughs at the thought of Joe’s bloody Murphy schnoz. Joe with the limp from where a 6.5mm bullet just missed an artery—nothing better than a war hero with a flattened nose.

There’s a knock at the door.

Bill hops up from the bed and looks out the peephole. It’s Joan, arms akimbo. She’s going to tear into him.

“I know you’re in there, asshole—open.”

Bill opens the door a crack.

“What, Joe send you up here to finish the fight? Some tough guy.”

“Joe doesn’t know I’m here. Can I come in, or what?”

Bill is skeptical, but moves aside.

Joan struts to the window and pulls open the shades. “Why you sitting here in the dark? No fuckin’ way—you have a view of the topiary? We’ve got a beautiful view of the goddamn parking lot. Well, I guess we can have them switch our room, seeing how you’re getting the fuck out of this hotel and going home right now.”

Bill laughs, pulls on a fresh undershirt.

“I’m not going anywhere, Joanie. You really think I’m going to let that bully—”

“Bully? He told a sweet story about you and him as kids, and then you punched him in the nose.” Joan sits down on the bed.

“Listen, honey, I like you, but your husband…my brother, he told that story specifically because he knows it bothers me. He tells it because it makes me look weak, and it makes him look tough.”

Joan pulls a cigarette from a small case and lights it, the sulphur from the match momentarily overpowers the scent of Bill’s aftershave. After she’s exhaled a plume of tobacco smoke, she seems a different person, lighter, nearly zen.

“Okay, Billy-boy. Have it your way. But can you do me a favor?”

Bill sits on the bed, next to Joan. His ears feel hot. Maybe he should fuck her—that would show Joe who the bigger man is. “I don’t know, Joanie. Depends on the ask.”

“Can you steer clear of each other. For fuck’s sake—and for my sake, too.”

“For you, Joanie—but not for him. That asshole better stay out of my way.”

The smoke snakes around Joan as she rises and heads for the door. “You men are such babies, I’ll tell ya.”

After a shower and shave, Bill takes the two little cloud-white pills. The same pills he’s taken for years. The same pills that got him declared 4-F. He leaves room 218.

The scent of Windex and Clorox hangs heavy in the hallway. He doesn’t mind it. It reminds him of when he was a boy, helping his mother with the chores. Mommy’s Little Helper is what she called him. What did his dad call him again? Oh, yeah, a coward.

Bill walks down the corridor, lost in the orange and red geometric pattern of the carpet. He tries to find where the pattern breaks, as if it might be a maze, but it all ties together in a way that’s difficult for him to make sense of. Sort of like his own life. How did he end up in this pattern of otherness?

He walks past the elevator to the stairs, hoping the exercise will get those cute pills moving through his system faster. When he gets to the bar, he’ll order a scotch, maybe ask the bartender if there’s a place he could score something a little stronger. He feels woozy on the ride down. Feels…off. Maybe the pills are working after all. He hears music and laughter. Smells gardenias.

At the bar, Aunt Genie and Uncle Pete, well, Uncle Pete number two, the first Pete dying of cancer just before Joe had come back from the war, are sitting at one end of the bar, so Bill sits at the other. He orders a scotch, and stews; did Joe really believe the bullshit he was selling?

Dan Brown, Bill’s cousin, walks in, spots Bill drinking at the bar, sees Aunt Genie and Uncle Pete number two, decides to check on his smoldering cousin. He sits down at the stool next to Bill and nods to the bartender. “Hey there, I hear you’ve got the good stuff…” Dan squints at the bartender’s name tag. “Lloyd?”

“That we do, sir. Nothing but the best.” Lloyd takes a bottle from the wall and, without taking his eyes off of Dan, pours the caramel liquid into a tumbler. “I’m sure this will meet with your approval.”

“Ahh, you bet. Put it on Bill’s tab, Lloyd.” Dan lightly shoves his cousin. “Kidding, of course. These are on me.”

Lloyd takes his rag and wipes a drop of scotch from the bar-top. “Very well, sir. Very well.”

“Listen, Dan…now ain’t the best time. I’m not really—”

Dan waves him off. “Bill, you and Joe are always at each other’s throats—this is supposed to be a fun weekend. It’s a goddamn reunion, right? Let’s re unite. You and me, we’re gonna get nice and loose. Then we’re going to find us some ladies—”

“It’s a reunion, Dan. We gonna fuck our cousins?” Bill pushes his glass forward, Lloyd fills it.

“No, Bill, we’re not gonna fuck our cousins—Christ’s sake! No, I happen to know of a room with four of the prettiest girls you’ve ever seen who’re probably just itching for a good time. We go there, maybe bring a bottle of Champagne from the bar here—Lloyd, you can help us out with that, right?” The bartender smiles and nods. “And maybe we’ll see if a couple of these lovely gals want to come to the ballroom tonight, as our dates.” Dan looks around the room approvingly. “Now, if things go right, maybe the party lasts a little longer. But even if it don’t, we’ve had a better night than trying to hear Genie and Pete talk about their dog Pickles over Tommy Dorsey’s horn.”

It doesn’t sound terrible, Bill has to admit. He could use companionship. A night with a pretty girl in a fancy hotel room could be nice.

Lloyd hands Dan a sweating bottle and smiles. “This should do the trick, sir.”

Bill follows Dan to the elevator, but it never comes. “Must be stuck,” Dan says, rapidly pressing the call button. “Guess we’re going to have to earn our calories today, buddy boy.” On the way up they pass Joe and Joan on their way down for a drink. Joe’s nose is as crooked as his smile. And his shoulder supports the weight of an extra-large chip.

Bill smiles and winks at Joe, but Joan shoots a look that says, don’t try me, Billy Boy. He looks away without saying a word. But he’s feeling better already. Those pills must be working. Seeing Joe’s busted nose certainly helps.

Joe tugs in Bill’s direction, wanting to even the score, but Joan keeps a hand gripped tight on his wrist.

Yes, things are looking up, Bill thinks as they walk down the hallway. But the patterns are playing tricks on him, and he’s hit with a nasty bout of vertigo. He steadies himself against the wall.

“You okay, Bill?”

“Yeah, just…just a little thirsty.” Bill takes the bottle of Champagne from Dan and presses on. When they get to the room, Dan’s grin is about as wide as it could be.

Bill laughs. “Funny.”

“What?” Dan raises a brow.

“These ladies are staying in the room right across from mine?”

“You’re in 218?” Dan says, knocking on the door, and slicking his hair back with his palm. “Surprised you haven’t seen them. They’re gorgeous, Billy. You’re gonna—”

The door opens. Dan isn’t wrong; the woman who opens the door is stunning, with golden curls and bright green irises, almost as if colorized, like from a movie. Bill has forgotten all about Joe. About the vertigo and the pills—everything.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” The woman says between drags on her cigarette.

Dan looks at Bill, but the words aren’t coming. He wants to be smooth, tell how pretty she’s looking, but he has to focus to keep from falling over from the vertigo.

Dan jumps in, “My cousin and I have this bottle of sunshine, and, well, we were raised right.” Dan pokes Bill with his thumb. “My dad would roll over in his grave if he knew there were thirsty women that I hadn’t offered a glass to.”

The woman pauses, sizing up the cousins, then steps aside.

Inside, three other women are sitting around a small table playing gin. “What do we have here, Samantha?” says one of the women.

The night was off to a bang. The girls were as fun as they were pretty. Bill was particularly attracted to the curly blonde who’d answered the door. Dan liked the brown-haired heiress, Mary, who’d stolen him away to the bathroom once the Champagne was finished.

Bill felt uncomfortable when Samantha put her hand down his pants. The other two girls were at the table watching them make out. He wondered if this might be one of those situations guys dream about—maybe they’d all get together. But as he considered this, Samantha squeezed harder than was pleasurable.

“Ouch, honey. Delicate stuff down there—”

He pulls away and gasps. Samantha’s eye is drooping, like his dad’s eye drooped when he had palsy and had asked Bill’s mom to keep him away from him, afraid of what the steroids were doing to his brain. And now Bill couldn’t trust his own mind—this can’t be real. The pills. Maybe they’re not mixing well with the booze. He blinks hard, and when he looks again, her face is porcelain and perfectly symmetrical.

She giggles. “Don’t you like it rough, Billy? You’re so virile. You serve?”

Did he serve? No, he didn’t fucking serve. Someone had to stay home and take care of their dad, who chose the perfect time to get sick. Someone had to work so that their mother could eat. And the vertigo…the doctor said it was real, even if everyone else looked at him as though he was a coward.

“No, no, I wasn’t able to fight. I wanted to, but…” Bill feels his erection fading. He stands.

“Where you going, Billy? We’re just getting started.” She tugged on his arm. “Oh, unless the reason you didn’t serve was because you don’t like…”

Bill grabs his jacket and bangs on the bathroom door. “Dan, I’m heading out. Got a headache again. You staying here?”

No answer.

“Dan, you okay?”

A clank from inside the bathroom and a giggle. “Dan is indisposed. But I’ll take good care of your cousin.”

The girls beg Bill to stay a little longer, but he’s no longer interested in these people.

On his way to his room, directly opposite the room he’s just left, the pattern on the floor halts him in place. It makes him feel like he’s on drugs. But besides those little white pills the doctor makes him gulp, and half a glass of Champagne, he’s not on anything. He closes his eyes and pushes through it, and when he reopens them, the pattern invites him forward, its thick lines splayed like an open farm-gate.

Once inside his room, he hears the girls laughing across the hall. He puts his pillow over his head and grimaces. No, he couldn’t serve. But he wanted to, god knows. But the dizziness. The dizziness.

The reunion is likely in full swing by now, everyone standing around Joe, patting him on the back, Joan kissing his neck. But in here, in room 218, lies Bill: a dizzy, despondent, and flaccid little man.

Somehow, he sleeps, and when he wakes up, he feels like a million smackers. He’s never felt this good. No dizziness. And he’s hard as a rock. He’s got a mind to go next door with his cock out to show Samantha. To show everyone. Maybe he’ll go down to the bar and show good ol’ Lloyd. He wonders how the bartender would respond to that. Very good, sir. None better since Excalibur, sir.

Then he hears it. A little rumble. A little engine revved up beyond hot. There’s a wasp in the room behind the curtain, itching to get out into the night air.

Bill grabs the Good Book from the drawer next to the bed to smash it. It seems the last tenant had the same problem; there’s dead wasp ground into the maroon linen cover. Its abdomen has been exploded across the word Bible.

He walks over to the furious insect, but he doesn’t hit it. Its anger is too relatable. Bill opens the curtain, looks around for the latch to open the window, and when he finds it, he pushes it open. The night air is warm and smells of pine. Below, a man and woman are arguing. Bill can’t see them, but he knows who it is. It’s Joe and Joan. He smiles. Trouble in paradise.

Just on the other side of the couple, a giant rabbit-shaped bush looks ready to hop over the moon. But the dog is hungry. And the lion is grouchy. Bill shudders.

The wasp inches along the window, ramming its head into the glass with a clink, clink, clink. But just before it flies out into the dark Colorado night, it bounces off the glass one final time, and then flies down Bill’s throat. He gags, clutching at his neck. He feels it fight its way down his esophagus. It’s a strange, foreign feeling. Not painful, but awkward. And when it’s down, it’s down. The room is quiet. Bill looks down at the couple, still arguing, and drops the Bible out the window. He’s still hard, maybe even harder. He pulls shut the window.

Bill puts on his suit and runs a comb through his hair. He’s looking as good as he’s feeling. He’s thinking about Joan again. A night with his sister-in-law would put everything right. And they’d been fighting, Joe and her. So maybe the idea has legs. Legs that’ll open under the right circumstances. He takes two more little white pills, preemptively. Doctor’s orders. And heads out into the hallway.

At the end of the hall, the elevator door slides open, and—

Bill lets out a cry that shocks himself. There’s Bill’s dad, his left eye drooping. His dad, who’s been dead for over four years now. Still, there he is, with his crooked smile, wearing his spotless uniform. His dad raises a hand, salutes, and pulls a revolver from his jacket pocket.

“Dad?”

His dad puts the gun to his head as the door slides shut.

BANG.

Bill tries to get back into his room, but the door is locked, and he’s left his keys inside. He pounds on 217, but nobody answers. Thankfully, the door is unlocked.

He rushes in, closing the door behind him. He’s breathing fast. Too fast. The dizziness is threatening to consume him again. He tries to stay calm. Says the mantra, does the steady breathing—thinks of little clouds and birds and snowcapped mountains.

Clank. A sound from the bathroom.

Bill approaches the door and speaks softly. “Sorry, don’t mean to intrude. I’m just…I needed a place to duck into for a moment. There’s…um…I—”

Another clank.

“You okay in there?”

Bill reaches for the doorknob, but before he can touch it, the door swings open. There’s Dan, face down in the bath. He runs over and pulls his cousin out by the arm, but when he hits the tile with a wet slap, he sees his cousin’s face, frozen in terror. The flesh on his cheek is rent. His left eye, sagging, like a hard-boiled egg that’s been stepped on.

Bill stumbles back, nearly falling over the threshold of the bathroom door. He runs out of the room and out into the hallway, but it’s different—the walls are no longer cream, they’re brown, and the carpet, the geometric pattern, is now a solid orange. There are no doors—not his room, not even the door he’s just come out of. Brown walls and orange carpet. Nothing else.

He runs. He doesn’t know where he’s going, or what he’s running from, but he knows it’s here with him. It’s in this maze—and a maze is just what it is.

He turns right, straight, left, left, straight right—falling against the brown walls, swimming through turns and channels, until, until, until—he sees it. It’s a platoon. Standing in front of him with their rifles on their shoulders. Every one of them, a family member. Every one of them brave. Every one of them, steady and honorable.

And then his father steps out from the ranks, his eyes still drooping—forever drooping. And when he smiles at him, Bill feels his bones break and his teeth crumble and his mind…well, his mind is oddly still. He’s no longer dizzy. And the blood, gushing from the elevator from behind the familial platoon, down the doorless hallway toward him, is welcomed. Let the blood come.

Yes. Let the blood wash it all down—the shame, the regret, the pride—like a cute pill.

And then there’s an axe, just right there leaning against the creamy wall. Right there, can you see it? With its sleek head on the geometric pattern. And everything is so steady now. And Joe’s limp, from where he took that bullet helping to rid the world of that evil man, and in doing so, rid the world of all evil, will soon be gone. He’ll be restored. And in that restoration, they’ll be equal again.

The Murphy brothers will be equal again.

Thanks for reading! And if you think I didn’t get a fair shake for the Views from the Overlook anthology, please contact your senators!

All joking and tears aside, I’m 100% going to pick up Views from the Overlook. And then I’m going to print out my story and insert it into my copy of the book. YOU CAN’T STOP ME!!

Also, pick up my book Cherry Kills!

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I’ve come to this disused mall because I’m hungry. I want to indulge in loss. In lost youth and lost brotherhood. We used to ride our bikes here on the weekend and never spend a dime. The trek took us over an hour each way. Never once did we think it unworthy of our time. We laughed here. Sometimes we sat in silence.

The texture of the wall is…ordinary. But it’s a simple nothing, which also happens to be the blueprint for sublimity. I feel desperation for the contentedness of that time. But that peace is a gift presented exclusively to explorers who lilt and blow through life, who seek without expectation, and I’m here with greedy hands and a hungry heart.

I run my palm over the wall and close my eyes and I swear I can hear ąŋɖყ and נαѕση calling my name, urging me to hurry up and join them in the ░F░o░g░.

This linear duel: ~thirty paces, turn—you’re dead.

I let my fingertips brush the wall as I walk past old ghosts: Wet Seal, B. Dalton, Spencers and Camelot, until my fingers catch on something: a fine slit in the paint. Almost imperceptible, unless you get close. So close you feel your own proximity.

The hairline reminds me of when my brother Michael, six years old, had a splinter the size of a wood chip removed from his back. The doctor asked if I wanted to leave the room before he cut it out, thought I couldn’t handle it because I was only eight. No, I’d said and moved closer. The doctor made a fine slit with his scalpel.

And here, in the severe quiet of this once thriving, echoing epicenter, the wall is my brother’s back, and I, the doctor, slide my fingers beneath each flap and pull them apart.

There’s somethings lodged inside. It’s warm and smells like tanbark. And it’s heavy—a foot ball-sized mound of dry-rot.

It crumbles in my hands like a piece of devil’s food cake. Inside, at the center, something living. Pulsing. Steadily thudding. An inflamed heart. Sticky in places, slick in others.

At home, I set the rubbery heart on the mantel. It’s a engine in a tunnel—loud and mean. Why isn’t Raven barking? He’s licking his paw like everything is normal. Because animals lilt. Animals blow through life. While us humans, we indulge in the dust. We like yesterday’s sunshine. We beg for a moment—a few pitiful seconds—of naivety.

When I lay down on my twilight-pillow, I hear it: it’s somebody coming toward me, walking across wooden planks; it’s someone gulping water, never quenching their thirst; it’s the melancholy echo of feet and laughter and life.

I put my hand to my heart; the thuds match the rhythm, but the beats don’t rhyme. Every pulse is coded, an asymmetrical swallow-thud containing the saliva of thousands—those unquenchable drowners: sensitive souls, indulging and begging with hands pressed together like a hatchet, cutting, praying, diving into empty water features and choking on wish-pennies.

The knife is sharp. I place the heart on the cutting board. It’s a Valentine’s Day tissue-paper-slice, nearly dissolving when I fry it with butter, white wine, and shallots. I eat it on toast.

I wrap what’s left of the gulping heart in butcher paper, drive to the mall, and return it to the cavity. I smooth down the flaps.

I blow through time, turn: 💀

While you’re here, did you know I’ve published a novella? If you’re a fan of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, or off-kilter comics and unlikely heroes in general, you might enjoy Cherry Kills.

When I was a boy, my mother, God rest her soul, spoke in a quiet, reverent voice about the first time she saw a redwood tree, and how it filled her with dread. Most people, my father and brothers included, laughed at her when she told this story, but I did not; I understood the oppression of majesty. I too felt that dread as a child, and to a lesser extent as a man of nineteen, when out beneath the grand clouds which slide across the vast blue, or at the foot of a stoic mountain. But in this house—the house I’d built with my own hands, out of the trees that so filled my mother with dread, timber brought on barges from across Mono Lake—I realized the majesty was not the redwood, the big sky, or the imposing mountain, but the perspective granted: we are small, fragile creatures.

Before the town of Bodie lifted their head from their pillows, or had gone to bed at all, depending on ambition or profession, I made my way to the only brick building in town, the mortuary, to assist the mortician, my uncle Johnathan. The summer mornings were as cold as the winters in Bodie. I shoved my hands deep down into my pockets.

A man approached and stopped six feet from me. He stared at my face as if contemplating a complex riddle, and when he couldn’t work it out, he squawked, “Hands!”

I removed my hands from my pockets, showing him the fronts, and then the backs.

“Carry on.”

I made my way to the back entrance of the red-bricked building and opened the door. “I hope you have coffee for me.” I rubbed my hands together, blowing hot breath onto them.

Uncle Johnathan motioned to the back of the room with a flip of his wrist.

He was a sharp man, not just in mind but in features, his nose like a saber, fingertips like pikes. He spat out the window.

“Uncle, how do you live like this? It’s freezing. Can we close that?” I stepped toward the window—

He waved me away. “No! My throat is phlegmy, and I won’t be opening and closing it all day long. It’ll warm up soon enough. Your generation—it’s a miracle that we get you out of your cozy beds at all.” His dark hair made his face all the more pale, but his eyes were full of vitality.

Uncle Johnathan believed what he said, yet I never took offense; I knew where we stood, and at the end of the day, that was the best one could hope for in any relationship. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sipped, watching him prepare the body for burial.

He moved about like an elk with a bullet in its haunch, erratic movements that seemed motivated by pain or nerves, but when he touched the corpse, his hands were gentle, and the way he moved its wrists and tilted its head was respectful, as if the stranger were kin.

“Did you see the paper?” he said.

“No. I came right over. All good news, I assume?” I wrapped my hands around my cup and waited for him to go on.

“President Hayes is dead.”

I don’t know why this news shocked me. I suppose there is an unconscious tendency to believe that with power comes immortality, and even though this notion should have been extinguished with the death of men like Lincoln and Cornelius Vanderbilt, I was at a loss for words.

“Why?” I managed to whisper. But I knew the answer: it started with a body pulled from the San Francisco Bay. A group of dockworkers had found the man—said he looked like a yule log dressed in a frock coat. It wasn’t until they saw his sea-green, lifeless eyes, that they’d contacted the police. The man was later identified by his wife as Jon Acho, a businessman who’d recently arrived from Scandinavia. All five dockworkers caught the Treefolk plague that day. Soon after, it spread from the docks to the alehouse, from alehouse to brothel—from there, it cared not about class nor creed. Men and women stumbled about the city, their cheeks burled, their arms and legs like gnarled branches of a dead tree.

James Kelly, a resident of New York City, ironworker, and father of three, was the first of the infected to unintentionally wrought mass destruction. I’d read it in the paper—we all had. He’d been hammering rivets, as he had done a hundred times before, only on that morning, when he placed his hand on the steel cable responsible for suspending the western half of the great East River bridge, it turned to wood, most of it falling to the river below. Hundreds of men lost their lives that day. Unfortunately for James Kelly, he survived long enough to be killed by the state.

“Hayes didn’t stand a chance.” My uncle wiped the face of the corpse with a wet cloth. “It’s like our good Pastor Edwards says, ‘Treefolk are Godless.’ But more than this, men and women who turn metal to wood with a touch of the hand can end progress—and with it, fortunes.”

I helped my uncle move the body into the alcohol and arsenic mix for embalming. The flesh was hard, and the grooves in its arms were so much like wood that it seemed impossible. I could see the poor man’s brains, as pink as a child’s cheeks on a cold day, snuggled within the husk. I wondered what offense this man caused to warrant such brutality.

“Uncle, please look at it from the pastor’s perspective. He needs to maintain control of the hearts and minds of his flock. He’s asked that all infected leave our town, which might seem cruel, but I think he does this for their safety. Now that Hayes has been—”

“Murdered?”

“Yes,” I said, filling my cup with more coffee. “The division will widen.”

“I have something to confess, Robert.” Uncle Johnathan stepped back from the corpse and lowered his head. I thought he might be praying, but then he spoke. “You must keep it to yourself—swear to me?”

“I swear it, Uncle.” I set my coffee down and stepped forward.

Johnathan rolled up his sleeve; there were deep grooves that seemed etched into his arm, some running parallel, others diverging and swirling around warts and knots. The skin around this newly grown shell sagged; his entire arm would soon resemble wood.

“I am dust—I am destined for Boot Hill.”

I knew this day would come; we worked closely with the bodies of those inflicted with Treefolk. My heart sank. This man who reminded me often of stone would soon turn to wood. I embraced him and he stiffened, unaccustomed to physical displays of affection.

“Okay, that’s enough—I’m not dead yet.” He pushed me away and went back to the corpse. “Let’s finish this body and move on to the next.”

I shook my head and closed the window. “You need not die at all! We should leave town at once!”

Uncle Johnathan pushed me aside and flung the window back open. “Fearful men are everywhere—are you going to help me with this body or not?”

I found Pastor Edwards at the church working on his sermon. It was a moving plea for strength within our community, and I could not help being swept up by his words. He looked around the room as if it were Sunday morning and the room was full of worshipers. His hair flung about as passion took hold, and his dark eyes swallowed up the phantom congregation. After he’d finished, he bowed his head in silent prayer.

“I hope you don’t mind,” I said, stepping forward. “but I watched you practice your sermon. This town is lucky to have such guidance.”

He motioned for me to join him at the podium with a broad, exaggerated sweep of the hand, as if his imagined Sunday worshipers still looked on.

“You are too kind. How are you, Robert?”

“I’ve brought you a gift, Pastor.”

He kept his eyes on me while he unwrapped the package, slowly at first, then quicker as the contents were revealed to him. His smile was wide, and his teeth were whiter than I knew teeth could be.

I smiled with my mouth closed.

He put the gift down on the pulpit and clasped his hands.

“This is beautiful. Where did you get it?”

“Aunt Mary picked it up for me in San Francisco. I requested a Bible that would make your face light up, and I see she has not failed.”

“The binding is wonderful—I’ll use it during my sermon tomorrow. Thank you, Robert. And please, thank your good aunt.” He stepped down from the pulpit.

I extended my hand but he did not take it, instead he handed me the paper that the bible had been wrapped in.

I nodded awkwardly. “Pastor, there is something that I wish to speak with you about, if you have time?”

He smiled and waved me on. “Every man is a friend to him that giveth gifts.”

I followed him to his office, a small room in the back of the church that smelled of dust, leather, and wet wool. The shelves were crowded with books of all shapes and sizes.

“Quite the library you have here. Have you read all of these?”

“I have, many times over. What did you want to talk about?”

The room was warm from the day’s heat; I watched a bead of sweat fall from the pastor’s brow to a paper on his desk. I considered retreating, making up some mundane reason for speaking with him, but his kind face drew me in—he seemed a reasonable man, so I did not mince words.

“The world is against those inflicted with Treefolk.”

The pastor raised a brow and nodded in agreement. Encouraged by this reaction, I continued with more conviction than I’d started.

“I’ve been thinking about why these God-fearing people, these children of the Lord, would be ravaged this way. And do you know what I came up with?”

The pastor’s face did not change.

“Well, I believe this is a test. Not just a test for the individuals inflicted, but for the world.”

The pastor sat down and placed his elbows on the desk. It was so quiet in the room I could hear the pastor breathing.

“Like the parable of Job but for the world?” he said. “Interesting.”

“Yes—yes, Pastor. Like Job! God is testing us to see if we are worthy. How we treat these poor souls will be a testament to our love for God almighty.”

The pastor arose from his desk, walked to a small window overlooking the main road, and watched the men returning from a long day in the mines. He lowered his head for several minutes.

The light came through like a divine ray from God himself, and I felt a surge of hope through my breast. I believed God was infusing the pastor with holy wisdom.

He turned to face me. His top lip quivered like a leaf caught on a rock in a stream. His hands were balled into fists.

“When I look out across the congregation, do you know what I see?”

He waited until I answered him.

I shook my head, unsure of what was going on. “What do you see?”

“I see fear. I see hatred. But we should not be afraid of these poor wretches. No. But we should pity them. For when they get to those pearly gates, clutching their hats in their splintery palms, they shall be refused entry.”

He walked over and stood with his nose inches from mine. His breath smelled like buttermilk.

“They have given their soul to the devil—it’s clear as day to me. Not to you, though. Is it? That’s alright. So now, what shall we do here? Pity them, sure, but we cannot let them overcome our town. No. We cannot.”

“But Pastor, do you not—”

“We cannot let them destroy Bodie and it’s God-fearing men and women! We must drive them and their wickedness from our home! We must drive the devil from our home! We must do God’s will! And we must drive the devil from Bodie!”

Spittle flew onto my cheeks, but I did not flinch. There was no love of God filling this house of worship. My stomach churned and my body felt weak. I thanked the pastor for his time and left, walking through the phantom flock and out through the chapel doors.

Uncle Johnathan did not leave the mortuary. He slept there, took his meals among the corpses and, knowing that death was near, told me story upon story of his life.

I asked him why he had became a mortician. He lowered his head and talked in a low voice.

“Whether they had money, power, or generosity of spirit, their bodies eventually ended up in front of me and their souls in front of God. In some ways, I felt closer to God because of that—partners in the business of death.”

We had tea, and I witnessed my uncle turn from stone to something softer. Then, as night descended and our breath rolled out to meet our words, a crowd clamored outside. My uncle ran to bolt the door, but when he touched the metal, it turned to wood. Minutes later, the mob cracked the pinewood lock.

We leaped out of the window and ran toward Boot Hill, but it was not long before they caught up, forming a circle around us, their eyes wild and full of an evil togetherness. Through the mob, which swayed back and forth, drunk with bloodlust, emerged Pastor Edwards, brandishing an axe; a lumberjack in a dusty suit; a pious madman intoxicated with ordained power.

The pastor pointed at a couple wild-eyed men. “You two—hold the young one.”

The two men grabbed my arms and sneered, one of them smelled of whisky and vomit, the other of soap and coffee. No matter how I struggled, I could not break free from them. Uncle Johnathan stood perfectly still in the middle of the mob. He looked taller than he normally looked, like a cousin of the redwood—majestic.

“I have been thinking about our conversation, Robert.” The pastor looked up at the stars and exhaled, a plume of steam from his breath rising up to meet God’s ears.

Uncle Johnathan did not look at me.

Pastor Edwards stepped forward and put his hand on my cheek. “You helped me. I dug deep—I prayed to God! Do you know what he told me? The Lord God Almighty said, ‘This is a test!’ Just like you said, Robert—this here is a test. I prayed and God responded. He said to me, ‘What will you do to save this town?’ And I’ll tell you, Robert, the question scared me. But I said I will do whatever I must.”

Before I could respond to him, he pivoted, and walking swiftly up to Uncle Johnathan, lifted his axe and brought it down between his shoulder and neck where the Treefolk had yet to spread. My uncle’s hot blood sprayed on my cheeks and lips.

I watched in silence as my uncle’s blood pulsed from his body like a freshly dug well.

I gave one terse shout to God to voice my opposition to His madness, one terse shout for the Devil for the rusty taste on my lips, and one terse shout in defiance of a world made up of dull men.

The pastor bowed his head. “Let us pray together.”

My blood boiled, mixing with the hot bile in my throat. I wanted to take that axe and strike him down, but I knew the pastor was but a hair on the head of the monster.

“Heavenly Father, we beseech you to continue your guidance and shelter us from the evil men of this world. We do your bidding. And Heavenly Father, please watch over Robert Nell and help him understand the sacrifice we made here today—under Your command. Bless this town, Father. In Jesus’ name, we pray, amen.”

“Amen,” the men around me mumbled.

“Let him go, he’s our brother.” The pastor tossed the axe to the ground.

Tears let loose and streamed down my face, but no sound escaped my lips. I looked at my uncle’s body, a pool of black ever-expanding in the dirt below him like a large black period on the end of a taut sentence. I brushed my hands over his eyes. With them closed, he looked like a felled tree in dusk’s dim light.

In the distance, I saw the men of Bodie pouring from the mines on their way home for supper—the lifeblood of this boomtown was a golden vein feeding a corrupted city of false worshipers.

I picked up the axe the pastor had discarded, his work for the day done. My body was shaking. I stood over Uncle Johnathan’s lifeless body, and said a prayer. A simple request for forgiveness, and when I’d stopped shaking, I hoisted the axe over my shoulder and brought it down hard just below the joint at the elbow, severing Uncle Johnathan’s arm from his lifeless body.

I fetched a gold dollar from my trousers and placed it on the ground before me, picked up my uncle’s arm, the white sleeve now bathed in blood, and touched the coin with his sharp, sticklike fingers. The coin became wood.

I threw the axe into the tall grass and walked toward the mines.

Thank you for reading, What Dread Hand. I wrote this one back in 2024 as part of a historical fiction contest. It was a fun challenge!

If you enjoyed this story, I have a folk horror story in Give Us This Day, which you can purchase through Dylan at Drek Death and Doom!

Drek Death and Doom

The official newsletter of horror author Dylan Bosworth, owner of Drek Death and Doom Publishing

By Dylan Bosworth

Other books available:

Blood in the Yolk. (Bird Horror!)

The Midnight Vault (The hit anthology!)

Beneath the Valley Oak. (Old West Grit)

Coming Soon - Cherry Kills (Novella)

Etched into the white paint of the backside of the gazebo were six sets of initials, each set with a heart between them.

KDM <3 MJD

LRM <3 TKD

JLM <3 BBD

Colton ran his hand over the markings and, looking around to make sure no one was watching, which, why would they be, it was two in the morning and pouring rain, kneeled beside the steps leading up to the gazebo and pulled back the lattice skirt; it was loose, Just as Roy Lee said it would be.

Colton dropped to his belly and shimmied beneath what his maw-maw called “The heart of Lovett.” He considered this expression as he wagged his body over the damp soil like a lizard all the way to the center, flipped over onto his back, and looked up through the seams in the planked floor. Everyone in Lovett congregated in or around the gazebo; carols were sung in the winter, and in the summer, while BBQ-lipped children made trails in the air with sparklers, a band played ragtime music. And in just a few weeks, Maw-maw and the entire Dunn family would decorate the gazebo with flowers for the Lovett Easter celebration, just as they did every year. Colton didn’t care much about tradition, but he knew Adele would be there, way in the back near the picnic benches with her family, and that was enough to make his heart race. Yes, the gazebo was the heart of Lovett, but Colton’s heart was Adele Moor.

Lovett was a small town; everyone knew everyone else, but that didn’t mean everyone liked each other. Adele’s family, the Moors, didn’t seem to like anyone. It had always been that way for as long as Colton could remember. He recalled when, at five years old, Adele’s momma yelled at him for knocking on their front door. His offense? He’d asked if Adele wanted to ride bikes. “If you even look at Adele again, I’ll kill you,” she’d said. When Colton told his maw-maw about that, she was livid but didn’t go over there. She didn’t call, either. Just said, “I told you not to speak with them. Those Moors are no good. Never been any good.”

Maybe that’s why Colton was in love with Adele, forbidden pleasures and all that. Any chance he had to be near her was seized; in the lunchroom, he sat at a table directly behind her and listened to her joke around with her cousins. He learned a lot about her that way. She loved to dance. She wrote fiction but was too embarrassed to share it with anyone. He even knew what she smelled like: strawberry. But not fresh strawberries; it had an artificial smell, like strawberry chapstick or bubble gum.

In the corridors at school, he’d exchange smiles with Adele. And at church, when the pastor asked the congregation to “turn to thy neighbor and embrace them”, Colton would wade through the crowd of loving Lovetts, spread his arms, and say, “Good morning, Adele.” Her momma didn’t like that one bit, but there was nothing she could do. Colton was just being Christianly. For the remainder of the day he’d glow, taking in the blissful fragrance of strawberry still on his clothing one small breath at a time, trying not to use it all up.

But for all that love—all that longing—there was nothing to be done, because Roy Lee had beaten Colton to the punch: Adele had agreed to meet his cousin that night at the gazebo.

But Roy Lee, being the class act he was, invited Colton to watch. Told him about the loose lattice at the rear of the gazebo. “Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two,” he’d said. Colton nearly slugged him, but after he cooled down, he told his cousin he’d be there. He didn’t tell his cousin the real reason why he was going. It wasn’t to watch. No, he wanted to disrupt them. To stop it.

As Colton lay there beneath the gazebo listening to the patter of rain, a notion hit him like a bucket of ice water over his head: what if Roy Lee made it all up? It’s the exact type of thing his cousin would do: get him to come out here in the middle of the night in this cold spring downpour–get him to crawl under the goddamn gazebo. Roy Lee was probably home right now, sleeping in his warm bed. Colton felt his ears getting hot from embarrassment. He dug around in his pocket for his lighter and pulled it out. He considered smoking the cigarette he’d stolen from his dad’s work shirt but decided to wait until the walk home. He sparked the lighter and looked around. A wispy spider scurried across the board directly above him, crawling up and into the gazebo. Colton watched it go. Then his eyes focused on something carved into the board. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Exodus 22:18.” Before he could think much about it, he smelled strawberries. Just a hint at first. He thought he’d imagined it. But the scent became more intense. He released the gas lever on his lighter and lay there in the dark.

Adele’s bangles clanged a tin-can march as she climbed the wooden steps into the gazebo. She stood directly over Colton. He wanted to call out. To say hello. To tell her she looked beautiful. Maybe even tell her she made a mistake going with his cousin, that it was him she should be with. But he didn’t. He watched her until a voice cut through the sound of the rain.

“I can’t wait until summer—why is March so goddamn wet?” It was Roy Lee, walking up and into the gazebo. “Wasn’t sure you were gonna come out in this weather. Glad you did. That raincoat looks good on you.”

His cousin was smooth. There was no denying it.

“A little water wasn’t going to stop me,” said Adele. “You know, this is the very first time I’ve been inside this gazebo. I wasn’t allowed in it when we were little—you probably remember that. The other kids always gave me shit.”

“I do remember that. I probably gave you shit, too.” Roy Lee snort-laughed. “Why is that?”

Adele sat down on a bench. Roy Lee plopped down beside her.

Colton watched his cousin and Adele. He began to regret coming. What was his plan? To jump out and say…say what? Roy Lee sucks? Roy Lee just wants to feel you up? I’m in love with you?

Adele leaned back, playing with her bangles. “Momma said I wasn’t allowed inside until I was ready. And, well, I guess I’m ready now.”

Colton felt a tickle and looked down to see a centipede crawling up his forearm. He jerked his arm, and the myriapod flew off.

“What was that?” said Adele.

Colton could see Roy Lee looking down, his eyes searching for him through seams in the boards.

“Maybe a dirty pervert come to watch us?”

Colton gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.

Roy Lee continued, “Probably just a coon. It’s nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any Moor come inside this gazebo.”

“No, I doubt you have,” replied Adele. “But we do come here, though not very often. My momma has been in here, and her momma, too. Actually, this wasn’t always a gazebo. This structure has been around a long time.”

“The heart of Lovett,” Roy Lee said and put his arm around Adele. “That’s what my family calls it.”

Adele laughed. “That right? Well, we think it’s the heart of Lovett, too. Maybe even the heart of the world. Your maw-maw ever tell you what this place used to be, back when Lovett was still just a little baby?”

“Not really….but one time my dad called it a black spot on the town. Didn’t make much sense to me, seeing how the gazebo is white. Maybe it used to be black? I don’t know.”

Colton suppressed a laugh. His cousin had to be the dumbest kid in all of Lovett. He watched Adele fiddling with her silver bangles, the tinny sound blending with the tapping of the rain on the roof of the gazebo. It made him feel at ease. He could sleep right here, he thought. Then, a nearly imperceptible movement above his cousin and Adele caught his eye.

At the crown of the gazebo was a woman dressed in a black frock. She was splayed across the ceiling, looking down at the couple. A purple tongue stuck out from between brown, wood-like teeth. She was soaking wet, water dripping down from her stiff body onto Roy Lee and Adele, who carried on as if nothing were wrong. Colton gasped, but no sound came from his mouth.

He wanted to scream, to warn Adele and his cousin—to call out for his maw-maw—but he was paralyzed. It was as if something were holding him in place. It was a struggle even to breathe, like the gazebo was sitting on top of his chest, pressing him further and further into the soil.

“The heart of Lovett,” said Adele. “Momma says it’s an old heart. An old, diseased heart pulsing with the blood of diseased men.”

The water fell from the woman in black’s hair and clothing, over the heads of the couple, down to the floor, and through the seams into Colton’s eyes. Into his mouth. He gagged, turning his head away from the water. To his horror, beside him were several women on their backs, their faces turned toward him, mimicking his woeful facial expressions and noiselessly laughing at him.

Roy Lee scoffed. “Wow! Well, your momma has always been off her rocker. All you Moors—”

“All us Moors?” Adele stood and walked to the far side of the gazebo.

“All but you. Come back over here and sit—”

“No. No, you’re right. All us Moors. Go on, do tell?”

“I’m just saying, you all seem to be holding a grudge with us. What the hell did this town ever do to you?”

Colton felt something pulling at his legs, but he didn’t dare look down. He tried to pray, but the words were lost in the sound of Adele’s bangles.

“You killed Gloria Carol Moor. You killed Beth Mary Moor. You killed Mary Eliza Moor—”

“What the hell are you even talking about?” said Roy Lee. “I didn’t kill anybody. Your momma tell you this nonsense?”

“Momma told me–you Dunns killed our mothers and sisters! Drowned them right here, actually. Right in this very spot. This wasn’t always a gazebo. At one point, this was all closed up and filled with water. Right here, in the heart of Lovett, Dunns would swim witches.”

Adele pulled out a vile of water, uncorked it, and splashed it in Roy Lee’s face. “Blessed be the spring! Let the flowers bloom!”

Colton felt arms coming up through the soil, hugging his body. Embrace thy neighbor.

On the gazebo’s ceiling, the woman’s wide Tasmanian tiger-mouth gushed water over Roy Lee’s head.

Roy Lee gasped, clutching at his throat. His panicked eyes, popped from his face, were like soft-boiled eggs.

Adele turned her bangles and the water fell harder.

Roy Lee dropped to the floor of the gazebo with a thud, his young body writhing, hands slamming over and over against the wood, begging from help from Colton.

Water seeped through the boards and onto Colton and stung his eyes. Then, the only sound was the rain and Adele’s whispers.

The hands gripping Colton retracted back into the earth. The mimicking women were gone. Adele moved around to the backside of the gazebo, where she stood for a moment, scraping something into the wood. Then she was gone. But the scent strawberry remained. And a new smell. Flowers.

The rain poured down over the heart of Lovett.

Colton slid out from beneath the gazebo and looked around. No Adele. No woman in black. No Roy Lee. At the center of the gazebo was a pile of fresh spring flowers in the shape of his cousin.

At Colton’s feet were shavings of wood from the backside of the gazebo; two new sets of initials were etched into the heart of Lovett.

KDM <3 MJD.

LRM <3 TKD.

JLM <3 BBD.

AMM <3 RLD

Thank you for reading my story, The Heart of Lovett. This tale was originally published in a four part zine with three other incredible writers, , , and , who also did the amazing woodcut art for the collection.

He was lying on his back in the sun beneath a street sign half covered by the flaring branch of a sycamore. I rubbed my eyes like a cartoon hobo finding a shiny coin, and picked him up. He stretched and yawned, tilted his head this way then that, and then the little fucker bit my hand. I asked him why he’d bit me. He said it was because I was so big and he was so little, an understatement to be sure, as he was only three inches tall.

I set him back where I found him, and went home to clean the bite. After that, I showered, dressed, and went to meet Collette and Danni down at our old haunt, the Dubliner.

Danni was already halfway into her pilsner when I arrived. As I approached the table, she nodded to my hand. I told her I’d found a little man by the tracks.

“He was teeny-tiny and half naked.” I grabbed her beer and took a swig.

She called me a big weirdo and punched me in my shoulder.

Collette arrived late, as usual. The three of us laughed and reminisced about old times, but during our third drink, Collette said she’d found out her new neighbor was a sex offender. He’d served three years for raping a thirteen year old girl in Oxnard.

Danni shook her head. “The world is so fucked.”

I excused myself to the restroom where I tried to dislodge the little bits of shit off of the porcelain bowl with my piss, but they were stubborn. When I was done, I zipped up and left the bar without saying goodbye.

On the way home, I asked the Lyft driver to drop me off by the tracks. The little man was still there sleeping beneath the street sign. He was as cold as ice.

“Wake up, Little Man,” I said. “I know I’m big, but I’d like for us to be friends.”

The little man stretched and yawned, and after a moment of reflection, nodded agreeably. I dropped him into my jacket pocket and off we went.

I made a small bed in my sock drawer and tucked him in tight. I even sang him a pretty song my dad used to sing me.

Canopy atop knotted limbs

Makes dappled walkways for the Moonlight Darlings

Romance bent—whispers in the still

A deserted world for the Moonlight Darlings

But in the night, do killers kill? It really makes no difference

For the magic of the light is real—and it demands it

Worship from

the Moonlight Darlings.

In the morning, Little Man was lying on the pillow next to me. I watched him sleep for over an hour, and by the time he woke up, I’d already mapped out our entire day; we’d take the train to the city for the matinee, and then get a bite at my favorite restaurant, Chippies. But Little Man had other plans. He wanted to bite people. I asked him why he wanted to bite people. Because, he said, some people were too big. Some people were so big and filled with such darkness that they needed to be bit.

I reminded Little Man that I was big and asked if that meant I needed to be bit, too. He said he had tasted my blood, and it was moonlight-clean. I told him that most people were probably just as clean. He said he’d met many people who didn’t like the moonlight at all. People, he whispered, who like to stay hidden. We went back and forth like this for a while, but I’m not one to diminish another’s personal experiences, and eventually we agreed that some people probably weren’t moonlight-clean, and that some people—but not all—probably needed to be bit.

Later that day, we popped over to Collette’s to say hello. She was sitting on her porch looking at her phone, eating cheese crackers. We talked about the weird overcast but warm weather—what we call earthquake-weather in California—and about books, shows, movies, and that shit-bag in the White House. While we chatted, we watched a group of neighborhood boys and girls playing soccer, and whenever one made a goal, we shouted, “Gooooaaalll!”

Little Man was snoozing in my pocket. The rise and fall of his little chest made me feel lazy and content. I wished I were a cozy little man sleeping in a pocket.

Across the street, a big man came to his window and looked out at the kids playing soccer.

“That’s him,” said Collette. “That’s that fuckin’ rapist. Piece of shit—look at him staring at those kids. They don’t live on this street—they only come here because it’s a cul de sac. Less cars, ya know? They think it’s safer here. Think I should warn them?”

“Probably…” I said and nodded. “Hey, you mind if I grab a beer?”

Collette said she’d grab one for me on her way back from the restroom.

Just then, Little Man woke up. He looked up at me and asked me why my face looked the way it did. I told him it was because there was a man across the street that was too big. He asked me if he was so big he should be bit. I said yeah, probably he should be bit. Probably he wasn’t moonlight-clean.

Collette came out with a cold beer and asked me if I needed a bottle opener.

No, I said, Little Man would help me. And he did—he popped the cap right off that bottle no problem. Then the rascal bowed.

Collette rolled her eyes and giggled, and told me about a short story she’d recently read by Patricia Highsmith, about a man and a button. “I’m not sure how to feel about it.”

It was hard to focus on Collette’s words; the big man in the window was distracting me. And Little Man wouldn’t stop talking about the many people he’d bit over the years.

I put my finger to my lips.

Thankfully, Little Man got the message and settled down.

Little Man and I made our way up the moonlight-dappled walkway to the big man’s house and looked through the transom window. He was sitting on the couch watching The Big Bang Theory. I tried the door, but it was locked. Little Man told me to kick it down. I laughed louder than I’d meant to, but thankfully, the big man didn’t turn around. I told Little Man it wasn’t so easy to kick a door down.

“It’s not like in the movies,” I said.

Little Man said he’d never seen a movie.

After we were done here, I promised him, we’d watch a movie together. Maybe I’d introduce him to Twins, with Danny DeVito and Arnie. Little Man said he’d like that.

We went around to the side of the house and found an open window. I quietly removed the screen and pulled myself up and into a cramped bedroom. The man’s work boots were on the floor beside the dresser, on the bed was a Teen Vogue magazine.

Little Man was wide awake and talking a mile a minute. I shushed him.

The couch squeaked—the man was up and coming toward us.

We hid behind the door.

The man came into the room with a waft of vanilla and salami, stopped, and stood perfectly still.

I watched the side of his face; his eyes were two resin beads between slats of Silly Putty flesh. He looked at the screenless window, trying to work out what had happened.

“Hello?” he said, and moved slowly to the window where he stuck his head out, surveying the side of his home.

Little Man and I snuck out from behind the door and into the living room, where we hid behind a splintery crate with a dozen holes in the top.

We heard the man close the window in the bedroom. A moment later, he cautiously entered the living room where we were hiding. He approached the transom at the front door and looked out. When he was satisfied nobody was outside, he sat back down on the couch.

Little Man and I made silly faces at each other for twenty minutes, occasionally peeking out from behind the crate to see what the big man was up to. Eventually, the big man’s eyes became too heavy to keep open.

Little Man wanted to bite. I told him to chill. He was only little and I didn’t want him getting hurt. But when the big man was finally snoring, I stood, stretched my legs, and asked Little Man if he was ready.

Little Man blushed, confessing he’d never actually bitten anyone but me. I asked him why he’d lied to me like that. He said dreams and opportunity don’t always align, and that it was only a lie because he’d never had a friend like me before. But now he did.

I sat down on the corner of the crate to think about this—Little Man’s confession changed everything. I had a big decision to make.

A whimper came from within the crate, and a whisper, “Please…please let me go home.”

The big man’s eyes snapped open. He stood and asked who I was and what I was doing in his house.

I didn’t know what to say.

He looked at my hand in disbelief—he’d never seen a little guy like my Little Man: three inches tall and half naked.

Little Man suggested I look away, which I did. Then, Little Man bit the big man, and he kept on biting him for over an hour. While he did this, I frowned at the crate, occasionally consoling whoever was inside, “There, there, Moonlight Darling,” I said. “Little Man will be done soon.”

As many ways as there is to kill a spider, there’s even more ways to help them. That weren’t always obvious to me. From an early age I was taught to destroy things that scared me—especially things that frightened my parents. So that first year I killed a lot of spiders and ants and millipedes—any bug that got in this tin can, I’d squash with my squasher-downer. One time I even killed a mouse. After I’d done it, I felt terrible. Its itty-bitty lifeless beetle-black mouse eyes looked up at me, saying, “I’m just a poor mouse. What did I ever do to the world?” I felt bad for months after that—still do, if I’m being honest. My sister Caroline always liked mice. She drew pictures of them for me to put up on my bedroom wall. She was really good at drawing fur.

I have pictures on the wall in this tin can, but they’re my own creations. I make them out of clay.

Every few days, the man with the bucket comes to give me food. Most people would not want the stuff he brings me, but for me it’s almost like Christmas. I rummage through the bucket like a Christmas stocking, dazzled by the colors. And the textures! So many textures. Sure, the fruit looks like it’s been off the tree for some time; baggy plums, mealy persimmons, apples with critter bites taken out of them—things most people would find nasty. But once you start eating—once you get used to the mouth-feel, which I am—it’s really not so bad. The bread, though…well, it’s hard on the teeth.

The man takes my waste and leaves a jug of water. He’s nice to me, most of the time. Calls me a good boy.

In the corner of this tin can is a hole just wide enough to get my hand down. That’s where I get clay and fresh rainwater, and it’s also how I met Josie; I heard her tramping around right outside this tin can one spring morning. I know it was spring because I could smell the flowers. And I heard a bee. Sounded like a fat one.

Didn’t know Josie was a cow for weeks. Discovered this fact as I managed to get my hand to the outside of this tin can through the hole; Josie put her muzzle right in my palm. I was upset at first to learn she was a cow, but the next morning she come back, things were different; just like how we’re taught to destroy things that scare us, our gut reaction to imperfect companionship is something we need to fight off, too. That morning when Josie put her nose in my hand—even though I rejected her on day one, even though I cried and shouted for my mommy—I knew I’d grown as a person.

Josie became my life; when the sun came through the rusted tin, Josie was there to greet me. On days she didn’t show, which was more often than I felt I could sometimes bear, I told stories to Earl, the daddy long-legs who lived in the corner of this tin can. He enjoyed that.

When I was feeling up to it, I dug clay from the hole in the corner to make art, and sang songs in celebration of the seasons.

Earl died in Winter. He just sort of closed up. His legs reminded me of the claw from one of those machines at the carnival, the ones with foam-stuffed animals waiting to be plucked out by some lucky kid with a buck to spare.

I made a coffin for Earl out of clay and rocks, and the next morning when Josie came to see me, we said our goodbyes to him. I sang a song my mommy used to sing while she cleaned our house. Not sure if Josie cried, but I sure did. RIP Earl.

The best sound you’ll ever hear is rain on a tin roof. It’s a song no musician—and I don’t care how good they are…let’s just say it’ll soothe your soul no problem. When I hear that rain, I just know everything is going to be okay. I just know my sister, mom and dad—everybody is going to be just fine. We might be hearing the same song, you know?

A few weeks after Earl’s death; Josie stopped coming. Without Earl and Josie my days were filled with such…emptiness. The kind of empty you get when you’re sick in bed and hear all the other children playing outside on the street, or the type of empty you feel the days and weeks after Christmas and New Years, when the months become cold and plain and slow and nothing.

Now I lay on this damp mattress with my arm up the hole, my hand in the cold Winter’s sun, pretending to be a weed. If I’m a weed, maybe I can grow big enough to let the world know I’m still around. Still alive. But do I even want this?

Scenario One: Mommy sees my face, sees the stubble, sees the change I’m sure is there, says, “No, that ain’t my son. That ain’t my boy.” And even when I tell her what I got her for Christmas, the year I was put in this tin can, as proof, that pack of cinnamon sticks from the corner market, she’ll look at my face and deny me. And maybe she looks different now, too. Maybe I’ll deny she’s my mommy.

Scenario Two: Mommy sees my face and cries…and…and doesn’t stop crying for forever. And maybe—just maybe—I can’t handle this. Maybe I’m not able to handle anything. Maybe she cries forever if I come home.

Luckily, I don’t need to find out because life goes on.

Somewhere in the distance I can hear a motor running. Construction, maybe. A lawnmower, maybe.

Bucket day has come and gone without a visit from the man. I don’t feel great; my head’s hot and my eyes are dry. I call out for the man but he doesn’t come. Maybe he’s dead? That would be sad.

But hey, maybe this is just the end of the story. Was it such a bad story? I had friends and I had music. One day they’ll find me and feel bad for my life. But, maybe they’ll see my art. And maybe they’ll see Earl’s grave. Maybe then they’ll know there were moments that weren’t so bad.

I hear someone outside this tin can. I shout for them to help me. I shout and shout and shout! I stick my arm in the hole and reach up, waving my hand, a Miss USA pageant wave.

I shout, “Please, my name is John Landry and I live on…I don’t remember the name, but—”

Then I feel it: Josie’s cold, wet nose in my hand.

My best friend Josie is back and I couldn’t be any happier. I scratch her chin and sing her a song. A happy song—a hopeful song.

Julie got out of bed and followed the sound to the opposite side of her new bedroom. The whistling was coming from within the wall, right behind the meadow of textile daisies, wallpaper her mother called “quaint.” Back in Gary, Julie would have minded cheery daisies, because in Gary, happy flowers would have clashed with her disposition. But here in Truckee, in this new life, they suited her just fine.

She ran her hand over the wall and squinted; there was a seam. With her index finger, she traced the indentation up, over, and then down.

A door?

Julie walked back to her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Tomorrow she’d ask her dad about the door. If she were lucky, she’d have more closet space by the end of the week.

Her eyes were heavy, her body warm beneath the comforter. The moonlight through the windowpanes made angelic hopscotch squares on the hardwood floor. Julie imagined getting out of bed and curling up in the magnificent pale light.

Her mind wandered until it landed on the Elk her dad hit the night they’d arrived in Truckee. It was a moment’s distraction while fiddling with the radio. Julie was the only one who saw the animal’s eyes just before impact; they were eyes full of fear, yes, but they were also full of something else that she couldn’t quite put a finger on. Relief? Inevitability? Her dad had told her to stay in the car, but she wanted to help—she wanted to save the poor thing’s life! Its panic-white eyes rolled in their sockets, and a low whistle came with each shallow breath, until finally it had gone still. Julie walked back to the car, but she hadn’t cried; maybe all new chapters need a sacrifice, she had thought.

When she finally slept, she dreamed a syrup-slow scene in which her dad handed her a shard of glass from the headlamp of their car, and said, “The bones are too heavy.”

When Julie’s alarm went off, the moonlight squares were now soft patches of sunlight disrupted intermittently by blah-gray clouds moseying across the sky.

Julie saw the move to Truckee as her opportunity to lose the reputation imposed on her by that asshole, Mark Darcie, back in Gary, who freshman year, told anyone who’d listen about how he fingered her during P.E. An unfortunate truth, and one Julie would have preferred to keep to herself. The following year had been one of social exile, so when her dad broke the news that they’d be moving to a new town on the west coast, and how that “unfortunately” meant leaving her nonexistent friends behind, she reluctantly accepted this terrible news like a team player, went to her room, and thanked God for hearing her prayers.

On the first day of school, a girl named Kelly asked Julie to sit with her and her friends during lunch. By the end of the week, she was part of their group. She’d met just about everyone in their circle except for one girl, Beth, who was away on a trip with her family at Pismo Beach.

That weekend, they all went to the lake for a swim. In the late afternoon, as Julie lounged beneath a shrugging willow, Beth pulled up in an old Nova with a boy named Ricky. She exited the car with a case of Modelo in her hand, walked straight up to where Julie sat beneath the tree, and handed her a beer.

“It’s not great, but it’ll do the trick.” Beth winked.

When Julie got home that evening, she hugged her dad and said, “Thank you for moving us here, Dad. Best decision ever.” Then she went to her room, put her head on her pillow, and thought about Beth. She was nice, funny, and kind. And she was Pretty.

Once autumn rolled around, the quaking aspen and maple trees of Truckee blanketed Julie’s world in a golden quilt. She worshiped the trees and prayed to the stars. And when her parents said they were going out of town for a few days, and would she mind being on her own for Halloween? In her mind she was already planning a party.

And of course the first person Julie told about the party was Beth, who grinned and said, “Hell yeah.”

Soon, that was all anyone in their group talked about.

One week before the party, Julie invited Beth over to help plan. They went to her bedroom and sat on the bed, laughing about Beth’s silly costume.

“You’re going to be Pee-wee Herman? That’s so random.” Julie reached over and touched Beth’s hair; it was even softer than she thought it would be. “You going to wear a wig or something?”

Beth looked skeptical. “Um, no. I’m going to cut it all off and dye it black.”

“No you are fucking not.”

“I am! And you’re going to help me. Let’s cut it the night of the party so that Kelly and everyone are super shocked.” Beth pulled back her long brown hair. “Do you think I’ll look weird with short hair?”

Julie looked down at her hands. “No. I think you’ll look pretty.”

“What are you going to be?” Beth wrapped an arm around Julie and squeezed.

Julie turned her head and looked at Beth’s petal-pink lips. The room felt warm.

“An angel.”

The night before the party, Julie heard the whistling coming from her wall again. She walked over and pressed her ear against the daisy-covered wallpaper. This time, it sounded different; it was like wind through the trees, an autumn whispering.

She leaned against the wall; there was a tearing sound as the wallpaper came apart in a straight line up the seam. Julie stood back and put her hand to her mouth—her dad was going to kill her. Only three months in and she’d already ruined her bedroom wall.

She stepped back up to the daisies, dug her finger into the tear, and carefully lifted the wallpaper away from the wall. Before she knew it, she’d torn away enough of the wallpaper to see a flush metal ring pull at the center of the door. She reached for the ring, then paused.

What am I doing?

She shook her head and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Julie looked in the mirror and wondered if Beth would take her up on the offer to stay the night. Beth had said it all depended on whether or not Ricky was coming to the party. Julie thought Ricky was nice, but he wasn’t good enough for Beth. He was a bore. His favorite band was Bush.

Julie spit in the sink. There were strawberry-pink swirls in the frothy mint toothpaste.

On her way to bed, she stopped to look at the mystery door.

Probably just a shallow cupboard, she thought. She hooked her finger through the ring and pulled; the door swung open.

A closet?

Her bedroom filled with a cold, earthy scent. It reminded her of the basement at her church back in Gary.

It was too dark to see much of anything in the closet. She went to the nightstand and took her flashlight from the bedside table. When she turned back around, the door was shut. She paused. Then she put the flashlight away and sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the door until her eyes became too dry to keep open.

In her dream, she was the dying Elk looking up at herself and her dad, whistling for death. But who was that behind her dad?

When Julie woke up, her parents were already gone. She brushed her teeth, dressed, and was on her way out of the room when she remembered the door.

She hooked her finger in the ring and slowly pulled open the door.

The sunlight revealed a cramped, empty space. At the back of the closet, hanging on the dusty wall, was a mirror with a fissure down the center like a lightning bolt. It made Julie’s face look like it was split in two. She’d need to buy a new mirror.

The door creaked closed on its own, but just before it was completely shut, she saw fear in the eyes of her reflection.

When Beth arrived at Julie’s house, she was wearing orange shorts with a white stripe up the sides and a black jacket. Draped over her arm was a gray suit, white dress shirt, and red bow tie.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Julie. “We could just hide your hair beneath the back of the jacket.”

“In for a penny, in for a pound.” Beth grinned.

“What does that mean?”

“My grandpa always says it. It means fuck it.”

Julie slid a chair to the center of the kitchen and told Beth to take a seat.

Beth unzipped her jacket and threw it over the side of the chair. Then she took off her shirt.

Julie blushed. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I need to grab my scissors from the bathroom.”

When Julie got to the end of the hall, she turned to look at Beth sitting shirtless on the kitchen chair. Her skin was as pale as moonlight. Julie wanted to curl up in it. She swallowed hard.

As she walked past the yellow daisies, she pushed the closet door shut.

Julie pulled the shears from the bathroom drawer, set them on the counter, and raised her eyes to the mirror; she was covered in blood—the shears were stuck into the side of her own neck, and though her mouth was open as if she were screaming, there was no sound.

Julie recoiled, her back slamming against the wall behind her. Then she blinked, and the blood was gone. The scissors were back on the counter.

She picked up the shears and ran out of the bathroom, past the open closet door, and down the hall to the kitchen, where Beth sat eating an apple.

“Hope you don’t mind. I’m starving.” Beth looked Julie up and down. “You okay? You look nervous. Honestly, I don’t care if you fuck up. I’ve always wanted to shave the entire thing anyway.”

Beth looked out the living room window.

Julie was starting to feel like herself again. Maybe she’d been dehydrated. She blew on Beth’s neck to remove the last of the tiny hairs.

“That feels amazing. I should have chopped my hair off long ago.” Beth turned around to face her friend. “You’re not fooling anyone with this angel costume, babe.”

“I’m a good girl—I swear!”

“Sure you are, Julie. Sure you are. But do you think I look enough like Pee-wee?”

Beth got on the tips of her shoes and danced. “Tequila!”

“You’re such a dork.” Julie laughed until her gold halo nearly fell from her hair.

“They’re here!” Shouted Beth as two carloads of their friends pulled into the driveway. “I have an idea!” She ran over to the front door and cracked it.

“Quick—put on that creepy music!”

Julie did as she was ordered.

“Come on!” Beth grabbed Julie by her arm and pulled.

Julie was thankful her feathery angel wings and gold halo stayed in place as they darted toward her bedroom.

When they got to the doorway to her room, Julie stopped.

“Come on!” Beth pulled her toward the opening in the daisy-covered wall.

Julie resisted. “Fuck no.”

“Oh, what? You scared? You can hold my hand. We’ll only be in there for a few seconds. We’ll jump out and scare the shit out of them!”

“Don’t let go.”

“I won’t let go.” Beth’s freshly dyed blue-black hair accentuated her petal-pink lips.

Julie paused. “Promise?”

Beth smiled, grabbed Julie’s hand, and pulled her into the closet. “I swear on my life. I wouldn’t lie to an angel, right?”

The cramped closet was cold and musty. Julie could feel the warmth radiating from her friend’s body.

Beth moved closer, her suit jacket brushing against Julie’s arm and sending shivers up her back.

Julie squeezed Beth’s warm hand.

Beth squeezed back.

Out in the living room, Kelly and the rest of their friends were laughing and opening doors and shouting for Julie and Beth to come on out. “We know you’re here, assholes!”

Beth giggled.

Julie’s cheeks burned with passion and shame; she wanted to throw her arms around Beth and kiss her, but she wasn’t sure if Beth went that way. Hell, she wasn’t even sure she went that way. But maybe she did? Here in the dark, her body seemed to already know; it was just waiting for permission from her mind.

But now her body was done waiting. Now her body had teamed up with her soul, and tonight, here in this closet, the perfect opportunity presented itself. She would give in and lose her mind. She would find something new—something real.

She put her free hand on Beth’s hip and leaned in to kiss her.

Beth let go of Julie’s hand.

Julie stammered. “I-I was just…I thought we…”

It felt as if the weight of the silence might crush her.

“Beth? Beth, speak to me.”

In the dark closet, Julie wanted to believe the world had slipped into oblivion, and that she wouldn’t have to deal with the mess she’d just gotten herself into. Why was she sabotaging her life here in Truckee?

“I’m sorry, Beth. I couldn’t help myself. You’re beautiful, kind, and I’ve never met anyone like you. If you don’t go that way…”

It started low, the same whistling as before, only deeper.

“Do you hear that?” Julie turned around in the dark to face where the whistling was coming from, and although it was pitch-black in the closet, she could see the mirror clearly hanging at the rear of the closet.

“Beth, you see this?”

Julie saw her mouth move in the reflection of the mirror, but it seemed off, as if it were mimicking her. She raised a hand, and her reflection did the same, but again, it was…off.

The whistling stopped. The house was silent.

Julie reached out, expecting to make contact with the door and nearly fell over. There was nothing there.

“What the hell?”

The whistling started again. This time louder.

In the mirror, her reflection’s lips pursed, mimicking the sound of the whistling.

Julie reached out, searching for Beth in the surrounding darkness, coming up with nothing.

“Beth? Beth please talk to me. We need to get out of here! We need to get out now!”

She turned around, reaching for the door, coming up with nothing.

She stepped forward. Nothing.

Stepped forward again. Still nothing.

Then she was sprinting, looking over her shoulder at the mirror, which was no farther away than it had been a moment before. The darkness swallowed her screams.

Her reflection mocked her. It put its hands to its cheeks and opened its mouth wide enough for Julie to see it had no teeth, just a hole of despair and hatred—a hole of shame, lust, and longing.

Julie stopped running. “It’s not real,” she shouted and covered her eyes. I’m having a breakdown. Or was she being poisoned? Yes! A carbon monoxide leak! Any minute now, her friends would open the closet door and drag her out into the safety of her bedroom.

But then her reflection spoke; it was her own voice, only thin, only not quite right. Whispered like a church-child.

“Come inside, Julie.”

Julie opened her eyes. Her reflection was gone. In its place was an unfamiliar man wearing a dirty white dress shirt with a short collar, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. His scraggly sideburns came down low, all the way to his chin, and his arms and hands were wet with blood. His eyes, distant at first, snapped to attention upon seeing Julie. He stared at her like the Elk stared at her, just before her dad hit it. Then, the man’s eyes became wild and desperate.

He reached out a shaky hand and touched the glass, leaving a rust-red smudge.

The world was in slow motion. Julie thought she could hear Beth calling her name.

“Beth?” she called. “Beth, I’m in trouble.”

Julie looked over her shoulder; it was another mirror, but in this new mirror, she saw Beth, shirtless, her pale breasts and pink nipples exposed. She opened her arms and tilted her head back in a silent laugh, but when her face came back down, she had branching antlers and lacquered-black eyes.

Julie put her hand to her mouth.

Then, in a mirror to her right, her dad grinned, his face rising from the steaming belly of the Elk he’d hit. Strands of flesh and fur hung from his teeth. He shook the dangling meat playfully.

All around the room were mirrors, each with a new horror, each terror customized for Julie.

She clawed at her own face! This was madness—this was insanity!

She turned back around to face the man with the blood-covered hands. It was him—he was doing this to her.

“What do you want from me?” she shouted.

The man was still speaking, but there was no sound. He looked at Julie with pleading eyes. She’d never seen so much sorrow and fear in a set of eyes before. She tried to read his lips. What was he saying? “Save me?”

She whipped around, witnessing each horror—each mirror. She spun around and around until she was dizzy and wild with fear. Her crown fell off her head to the floor.

Then, her eyes met her own eyes—it was her own reflection again. In the mirror, her angel costume was covered in blood, and she was holding a shard of glass in her hand like a knife.

Julie looked down; the shard of glass was in her hand, just like in her reflection. She considered using it to end this nightmare. She saw the recognition and delight by her reflection in this idea; but if hell was here in Truckee, then hell was everywhere. Hell was something inescapable and boundless.

The man with the bloody hands pulled off his boot, bashing the heel of it into the mirror repeatedly.

Julie felt the blood draining from her body. She was the Elk; her bones were too heavy to carry the distance it would take to leave this place. Her heart and soul and bones were all too heavy.

A light opened from somewhere behind her. An angel? A real angel? No—it was a new demon, this one with a red slit across its neck.

Julie gave in—there was no use resisting. She looked at the man in the mirror one last time. He was still screaming, trying to smash the glass with the heel of his boot.

It had been nice in Truckee for a while. Nice having a friend like Beth. And it had been a nice kiss, however brief.

The devil pulled her over the threshold and into a field of daisies.

No. No, it wasn’t a devil. And it wasn’t a demon. It was a girl wearing a red bow tie. A girl with petal-pink lips.

Chasm is a two-part story. Read the companion piece, by EJ Trask, here.

This story is based off of four prompts given by as part of the Stacktember 2025 contest. Thanks, Nico!

I intended to post four flash fiction pieces this month, but decided to put them all together instead. Enjoy!

Christopher S.

“Da-e!” He used to call me that. He’d say, “Da-e, I love you.” Or he’d say, “Da-e, horsey,” and I’d get on my hands and knees. “Giddy-up, partner!” I’d shout. I loved the warmth of his little body pressed against my back and his tiny arms wrapped around my neck. I guess that’s why, twenty years later, I’m lying here listening to the sounds of dirt scatter against a coffin lid. I guess that’s why—even though he stopped calling me years ago for anything other than to ask for more money—I’ve given my life for his. Buried alive in the middle of nowhere. Payment fulfilled: one life. Da-e saves the day. Giddy-up, partner.

When Nicholas was ten, he asked me to stop smoking.

“Not that easy, Nickie,” I said.

A commercial told him that if I didn’t stop, I was going to die.

“We all gotta go sometime, Son.”

When Nicholas was seventeen, he said I shouldn’t work so much. “There’s more to life than selling paint, Dad.”

I laughed. Not because I didn’t agree with him, but it’s one thing to know you gotta do something big with your life, and another to actually know what that big thing is. And anyway, how the hell can you do anything if you don’t got cash? But now…now I can think of a million and one big things I should have done. I count them alongside the sounds of dirt and rock landing on the pine wood like dice. After a moment, the sounds soften; soil upon soil.

Dillan is up there, dead-eyed under the stars, burying me alive. Got the sense he didn’t want the side of the token he got, but that’s gambling for ya. I offered him money. He shook his head like a cow shaking off flies, said, “No, no, no—that wasn’t the bet.” I told him I’d go to the police. He said, “One shall witness and one shall die. Is your son a man of his word?” He held out the token. “One shall die.”

Now it’s quiet. Da-e’s long nap begins.

Will Nicholas care? Last time we spoke, he told me he hated me. Said I was the reason he was so messed up. Said I worked too much and never truly supported him or his dreams. Guess he doesn’t remember the horsey rides.

I know I was a shitty dad, but all dads are—it’s baked into our gender. We’re cold because we know the world is cruel. We feel guilty about it, because it’s the men of the world who make it so. We cause all of the pain. We shoulder all of the pain—eat it up until it makes us sick.

But at least Nickie is out of debt, for now. But gamblers gamble, and Nicholas will play again. Oh, he’ll lose, like he always does, but he’ll play. He’ll flip that token, the one with the lidless eye on one side and the daises on the other, and he’ll lose.

The scent of pine reminds me of when Nickie was a boy; I stare up at the darkness until I’m back at the Christmas tree lot on Crow Canyon Road, paper cup filled with coffee in one hand, a Marlboro Gold in the other. A perfect Winter’s morning. Nickie wants the smallest, most pathetic-looking tree. I nod. Whatever you want, Nickie. Whatever you want and it’s yours.

There’s just enough room in this pine box to reach my hand up to my breast pocket. I fish around for my smokes and wonder if Dillan will tell Nickie how Da-e paid up.

Shelly S.

My dearest son. My baby boy. My heart. My poor, poor Christopher.

When I was a young woman and pregnant with you, my mother—your grandma—told me something horrible. She said you’d kill me one day. She said that men were hard on the world, but even harder on themselves, and that all that pain would pour out of your soul one day, as it will for all men, and destroy the people who love you. I didn’t believe her, but here we are—I’m standing over a mound of fresh soil talking to myself.

I’ve brought a shovel, but I’m not naive; I know you’re dead. Dillan told me as much. Still, I won’t let cruel men decide where your bones rest. I’ve brought help. Your cousin Jake is in the car waiting for me to give him the word. He doesn’t understand why I haven’t gone to the police. But you understand, don’t you?

Do you remember that time your father took off his belt and snapped it at you? I guess I should narrow that down a little. Do you remember the last time he snapped his belt at you? You laughed at him. He was so angry—that you should have the audacity to laugh at this threat! At him! He hit you over and over, but you wouldn’t stop laughing. Then, and I think about this a lot, he went into his office and shut the door. Never struck you again. Do you remember? Do you?

But you were a good father to Nickie. I know you don’t believe this to be true, and I know Nicholas might disagree, but you did what you felt was right for him. Sure, you were hard on the boy and worked a lot, but only because you loved him. He’ll realize that one day. I’ll make sure of it.

I’m not going to tell Nicholas I’ve moved your body. I’ll tell him you’re buried right here. I’ve brought flowers to leave on this soon-to-be empty grave. I’m taking you somewhere peaceful and Holy, Son. Somewhere to rest easy.

I know what you’re thinking: Why not tell Nicholas? Because, my sweet boy, Nick needs a monument to the pain he’s caused the world. Caused me. You’re gone because of a stupid bet he made with a cruel boy. If only Nicholas were more like you.

Christopher S.

I need to get out of here-I need to get out of here-Oh dear God, what have I done?—I need to get out of here! No-no-no-no—stay calm. Stay calm. Breathe. It’s only been thirty minutes—an hour tops. You’ve got air. Okay, that’s better. Stay calm. Yes, that’s it—in, out, in, out.

Think about Christmas. Watch the boy running through the corridors of pines, laughing and shouting. You were smaller than most of the kids your age, Nickie. But you were strong. I’m right behind you, Son. It’s crowded—don’t trip!

Be a good boy, and maybe I’ll let you have a candy cane while we watch the man tie the tree to the roof of our car. Would you like that, Nickie? It’s hot out, but I can’t seem to get my jacket off—I don’t want to spill my coffee.

Nick! Nicholas! Come hold my coffee for me! I saw your shoe, Nickie! I saw you heading around those big fir trees! I hear you laughing, Nickie! I hear you laughing and shouting and…I hear you singing! I don’t recognize that song. Is that a Christmas song, Nickie? Is that a Christmas song, Nickie? Nick? Why are you running away from me?

It’s time to pick a tree, buddy. Just need to get this jacket off. Need to get these gloves off. Need to get this goddamn scarf off—I can’t breathe with this damn thing on. Let’s get the tree and go, Nick. The firs are making me sick—I can taste them on my lips. I saw your shoe, Nickie! I saw your shoe! I know you’re right around that corner—I’m not joking anymore. Come help me, Nicholas! Come help me take this scarf from around my neck. Hold my coffee and cigarette. Help me, Son. Please—for the love of God!

Nickie, what are you holding? Open your hand. Don’t make me ask again—what do you have in your hand, Nicholas? Daisies? Where did you get those? Yes, they’re nice flowers. But where did you find them? That mound over there? Son, that’s a grave. Someone is buried there. Someone…oh dear God…dear God no…

Dillan! Dillan, I’ve changed my mind! Dillan! The coin wants Nicholas! The coin decides, Dillan! We don’t get to decide! The coin decides! You were right all along!

Get off my back, Nicholas! You’re too heavy now! Your arms are choking me! You’re choking me! I can’t breathe!

Nicholas S.

Goddamn you, Dad. You had no right…

And now look, you’re dead. You think this means I’ll live forever? I’ll be dead soon enough. So this sacrifice, it won’t be worth shit. I’m going to kill that mother-fucker. I swear it. He had no right to change the terms—the bet was between him and me. ‘One shall witness and one shall die.’ My life or Dillan’s. No proxies. No pinch hitters. The terms were simple.

Do you know how hard it is for me to stand here knowing that you died for my sins? You’ve always been a reluctant Jesus, haven’t you? My begrudging savior. You’ve never understood sin—not my kind of sin. I never hurt anyone…not intentionally. My sin is as clean as your sin. Vanilla sin, is what it is. Sin as fine-grained as baby powder. You worked too much, and I play too much. You smoked too much, I gamble. You bore the world on your shoulders like Hercules giving Atlas a breather, and I…I was that world. The heaviest boulder you could shoot out of your dick, right?

So now what? I visit you here every Sunday at the church of regret? I’m just…I don’t know what to do with any of this. I’ve been trying to remember the good times…but it’s hard. I remember walking on your back as a kid….and…riding you like a horse. When did that stop?

The flowers Grandma left on your grave smell like piss. This brown-sugar-soil was meant for me.

I walk back to the truck and sit in the cab, taking in the scent of vinyl upholstery and the surrounding pines in small sips. I consider my life and watch plump droplets of water explode on the windshield. I stick my hand in my pocket and feel the token, turning it, running my finger over the embossed daisies. The eye. Daisies. Eye…

Half an hour later, I grab the shovel from the back of the truck, kick the flowers from our mound of dirt, and dig.

I need to see your face one last time—to tell you how much I hate you, and to confess how I’ll always love you more than anyone I’ll ever know. My exalted father.

When the shovel scrapes the lid of the coffin, I stand there staring at the exposed wood. It feels as if it might pop off on its own, but it doesn’t. It won’t.

It smells like Christmas; it’s the pine wood; it’s your cigarettes.

I say a prayer.

Dear God in heaven. God of mercy. God of luck. God of pity? Please hear me. The last time I reached out to you, you didn’t answer my call, but hey, maybe you were busy not saving children from being blown up by bombs overseas? Maybe you were out not saving women from being raped? Maybe you were off giving rich men more wealth and letting the poor starve? But maybe—if I ask really nicely—you’ll hear me today.

I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, God. I’ve been thinking about what it would take for you to intervene, and I think I’ve worked it out. I’d like to propose a bet—I know you enjoy those! That’s the entire reason we humans are stuck here on Earth, right? So, here’s the deal, God: Let’s flip? What do you say? If it lands on the eye, I open this coffin and find Dad’s dead body—I shall witness the horror. But, if it lands on daises, then the coffin is empty.

I know what you’re thinking: what’s in it for Me? Well, God, if the coffin is empty, I’ll get in—one shall die. You still get your pint of blood. What do you say?

…

I’ll take that silence to mean you accept these terms.

I fetch the token from my pocket, take a breath, then flip it. I catch it in mid-toss and slap it to the back of my wrist.

Daisies.

I reach down, pop open the lid, and lift. One shall witness, one shall die.

Prompts used:

• The Bargain

  A deal struck under duress. The cost is greater than the reward.

• The Offering

  A gift or sacrifice that changes everything.

• The Threshold

  Crossing into a place you can’t cross back from.

• Buried Alive

  What refuses to stay dead.

Gabby is running. Gabby is a runner. She runs and runs and runs. That’s who she is.

Gabby was in a marathon back in 08 and came in with the respectable time of three hours and thirty-seven minutes. When she hit that first wall, she pushed through, and when she hit the second and third, she did the same. She loves the grind. The harder it gets, the more she feels tested—the more she gets out of it.

She beat her boyfriend Kyle’s time by over twenty minutes.

When Gabby was eight years old, her math teacher escorted her class out to the school yard for a special outdoor session on the grass. It was “too beautiful out to stay cooped up inside.” Under the big blue sky, they learned long division. Two older boys were kicking a soccer ball upfield from where Gabby and her class studied. She watched them run back and forth across the lawn. She wanted to run with them. One of the boys kicked the soccer ball into a cherry tree at the edge of the field. They shouted at Gabby and her class, but it was hard to hear what they were yelling. She thought they were saying, “Leaves!” She thought the ball had shaken the leaves from the tree, and then a gust of wind had blown a blizzard of leaves that, at any moment, would rush past her and the other children like a magical, autumnal storm. But they were shouting, “Bees!” The teacher commanded the students to duck. And they did. All but Gabby. She ran. Because Gabby is a runner.

Before that day, Gabby thought bees taking on the formation of an arrow was a cartoon gag, but there they were, an arrow of thrumming fury chasing her down.

Now Gabby is thirty. She’s never been stung by a bee.

Gabby is running. She runs and runs and runs—she’s a grinder.

Whoever snatched her from the trail underestimated the power in her thighs. She kicked the back doors of the van open and jumped out while it was still moving.

Her finger is broken. Her elbow, flayed from the pavement.

The van screeched to a halt, but Gabby is a runner. She’s running.

Gabby is a runner. Ask her dad, who never saw her again. Ask her dad, who, years after she ran away from home, ended up dead in the pen for being a creep.

Gabby is running through the forest, down the mountainside. If only she’d worn her cleats, but it’s a road-work day. Speed-work.

She’s sliding down the embankment, kicking up clouds of dirt-dust, but her friends call her Gabby the Goat. She bounds down the hillside. She doesn’t need cleats.

Gabby is running—someone is chasing her.

She hears the snapping sticks and the rustling leaves behind her. She feels a hot, mean breath on the back of her neck, but it’s not his breath—her pursuer can’t keep up—it’s the familiar breath of opposition; she won’t stop.

Gabby is running. She tells herself to focus on her breathing. She inhales for two, and exhales for three. Inhales for two, exhales for three. Inhales. Two. Exhales. Three. Two. Three. Two. Three. Two. Three. Two. Three.

Gabby is running. So is the man chasing her, but Gabby has grit—Gabby is a runner.

Gabby outran bees. And Gabby outran her dad. Gabby is a runner. Two. Three. Two. Three.

Gabby sees a woman standing in a yard at the bottom of the hill. Gabby yells at the woman to call the police.

The woman is waving her toward a door at the back of the house. 𝕊𝕒𝕗𝕖𝕥𝕪.

Gabby is sprinting. When she gets to the woman’s house, she runs inside. The woman doesn’t come in after her, slams the door shut.

Gabby is standing in a dark room with no windows, touching the walls, shaking her head; so much plastic.

The woman is outside speaking with the man. They’re laughing; he’s a lucky bastard, this time. He’s out of shape, and thank God she was in the garden harvesting the potatoes. The man asks the woman what she wants for dinner. A thigh, she says.

But Gabby loves the grind. Gabby loves hills. Gabby has grit. This is just another wall to break through. Gabby is a goddamn runner.

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Ground squirrels dart from hole to hole, shimmying lizards disappear into fissures, and the sun is high in the big sky. Dirt and rock crunch beneath the young man’s feet. He pushes back a strand of dull, boot-black hair with one hand, grips his purple leather-bound Bible—the one that belonged to his daddy—with the other. Up ahead, a girl is lounging on a rock, baking in the sun.

The young man stops walking. He watches her watch him.

She’s wearing a simple dress, something between a potato sack and a floral curtain, but it looks right on her. Easy in the breeze.

He dusts off his western-style brown blazer and adjusts his bolo tie. A moment later, he’s standing in front of the girl.

“Hello.” He’s not looking at her when he says it. He’s looking out across the dry, bronze rolling hills.

“Hello.” She’s looking at the young man’s face.

“What you doin’ out here?” he says.

“Sittin’ on a rock in the sun.”

The young man picks up a pebble, rolls it between his fingers, then throws it down into the ravine. Something stirs in a nearby patch of wild oat, but nothing emerges.

“What are you doin’?” The girl is picking at a scab on her knee, breaking up Pangea with the stubby nail of her index finger.

“Walkin’ in the sun, I guess. You know, you shouldn’t be out here.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dangerous.” The young man looks down the trail from where he came, then up the trail where he was headed before he stopped. “My daddy says the Devil walks this path. He says—”

“Why do you walk it? I mean, if it’s so dangerous?” Finished with dead skin, the girl plucks an orange poppy growing from between two stones, holds it up to her nose.

“Why do I walk it?” says the young man. “You asking why I’m not afraid of the Devil?”

“I guess so.”

“Because I’m a good man.”

The girl scoffs, plucks a petal from the poppy, lets it fall.

“What’s so humorous?”

The girl doesn’t respond, not at first. She lifts her head, watches a hawk circling above. “Good people die every day. Being good…that don’t mean much.”

The young man picks up another pebble and sails it down into the ravine. This time, a ground squirrel squeaks its displeasure and darts to the hillside, where it’s swallowed up by one of many holes.

“Sure. I’ll give you that—good people die every day. But not by the hand of the Devil.”

The girl shakes her head. “Are you kiddin’ me? What about people who kill children? What about kids who drown cats in bags—the hunter who shoots the mommy deer as she’s eating blackberries from the bramble?”

The young man laughs. “You tellin’ me hunters are the Devil?”

“I’m tellin’ you that good things are murdered every day. Call it the Devil—call it…I don’t know. Call it nature? It don’t matter. There’s no protection offered or granted for being a good man.”

The young man kneels, places his Bible on the dirt path, and ties his dusty black shoe. “God will protect me.”

“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. Anyway, I don’t need protecting.”

“Why is that?”

The girl shrugs. She’s squinting, her face pointed toward the sky, watching the hawks again.

The young man lifts his Bible, stands, and then looks down the path. “Well, I should be off.”

The girl lifts a lazy hand to say goodbye, but her eyes are glued to the swimming hawks.

The young man walks down the road, singing a hymn1.

Oh Lord, my God

When I, in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made

Now I see the stars, and I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout the universe displayed

When the young man is over the hill, the singing stops. The girl looks at her stubby nails. She’s so quiet, a lizard climbs onto her hand, lifts its body up and down as if it’s doing push-ups. She looks down at it and smiles; it dashes under a rock.

From over the hill, a moan, or a smothered shout—the girl looks up the path to where the young man had been only moments before. A bearded man strolls over the ridge; he’s sluggishly cordial. It’s hard to make out his features beneath the brim of his sun hat. He greets the girl with a lift of his walking stick, and when he passes the girl, he says, “Salutations.”

A hawk screeches.

“Hello,” says the girl, watching the man pass.

His stick is light brown in all but one spot. In that one spot, it’s dark brown, glistening in the sun, collecting dust in the drip.

Once the man is out of sight, the girl hops off the rock, stretches her legs, and then walks up the path in the direction the young man had gone.

Once over the hill, she sees his body, his blazer flapping open in the wind. Beside him, the purple Bible mimics the blazer, waving; Over here. Over here.

She walks over, slowly at first, then a little quicker. She looks behind her. Nobody. She looks up ahead. Nothing. She kneels, touches the young man’s belly: it’s not moving. He’s dead.

A fly crawls along his cheek and onto his nose—the girl shoos it away.

She touches the young man’s head, withdraws her hand, and looks at the blood. She presses the blood between her fingers. It’s as warm as the sun.

She looks in front of her again, then behind. Nothing. Nobody.

The girl wraps her lips around her finger at the knuckle, slides it out. Her finger is clean, glistening in the sun.

She looks down the path once more for good measure, then she eats.

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Books and Merch

Bernard was a happy baby; no matter the weather outside or the mood of the house, he would look out from happy, if not docile, eyes. Pappa used to say that without Bernard’s cheerful disposition, our house would likely be swallowed up by our collective worry. He wasn’t wrong; many nights—even before Bernard died—I’d stare out the window at Abigale’s Promise, a catatonic watcher looming over our town from atop the south hump of Camel’s Back, and I’d imagine beasts skulking around its trunk, waiting for me to shut my eyes, to devour me while I slept. These days, I sleep with my back to the window, and even then, I sleep uneasily.

In the center of the tree is an iron door which opens to a hollow just large enough to place a baby inside. I’d never thought much about the size of the hole in Abigale’s Promise until the day Pappa put Bernard inside. Before then, I’d only seen offerings of grain, fruits, and vegetables on Prayer Day.

Two years ago, on Winter Prayer Day, I placed my hand on Abigale’s Promise and prayed for Mamma’s happiness. Three weeks later, she became pregnant with Bernard.

It was during this period of my life, when Bernard’s smile lit up our house, I began to realize how bleak the world is, and how every happy moment would one day be tainted by tragedy; how each ripe fruit would one day rot. I began to mourn our happy life even before Bernard got sick. I’m unsure what caused this dread, but the following years only reinforced my feelings of foreboding.

When Bernard died, Pastor Sharp brought coffee and donuts, filling our house with pleasant smells that would, from that day forward, forever be associated with intense sadness. The deacons sat in the den smoking their pipes, and I weaved in and out of gentle words and soft eyes, trying to get close enough to hear what the pastor was saying to Mamma and Pappa.

“I’ve prayed on it,” Pastor Sharp said, “and God has answered me. You’re to take Bernard’s body to Abigale’s Promise and place him inside.”

Mamma shook her head. “No, please, no. I can’t—”

“I know it’s difficult, but we must trust in Him.” The pastor held Mamma’s cheek and wiped a trailing tear away with his thumb. “Wrap Bernard in cheesecloth, place him in the tree, and soon your boy will be home. Soon, Bernard’s happy eyes will be filled with the light of the Lord once again.”

I followed my parents from the house and up the trail to Abigale’s Promise, then hid behind a rock, warming my hands on the sun-baked stone.

A crow hopped from branch to branch above Pappa as he pulled open the small iron door, the rusty hinges squeaking as it swung open. The crow above them cawed its displeasure at the noise and flew away.

Mamma shook her head, crying. She was holding Bernard’s tiny frame away from Pappa. I could see Bernard’s delicate features through the cheesecloth: his cherub nose, his angelic lashes.

Pappa took Bernard from Mamma by force, shouting, “My boy! Oh, my poor boy! I’m sorry! Please forgive me!” as he placed my brother’s body inside the tree.

Mamma fell to her knees, screaming for mercy; I bit my lip.

Pappa shut the door; Mamma wailed! Then Pappa fell to his knees, embracing her, stroking her hair and pleading with her to be well.

As they sobbed, I held my mouth shut with both of my hands.

Shortly after Pappa had placed him within the hollow, Pastor Sharp came up the hill. His brown suit blended with the surrounding hills, and he wore a crown of dried wildflowers atop his head. Behind him the deacons held their bibles in their hands, and sang hymns. When they reached the top of the hill, they stopped singing, finishing the verse as a hum.

Mamma and Pappa stood up, wiping the tears from their cheeks with their sleeves.

Pastor Sharp walked past them without acknowledging their grief, placed a hand on the iron door, and closed his eyes. Birds chirped.

The pastor began singing the harvest song; I’d only heard him sing it for the fruits and grain, but now he was singing it for Bernard. It was a pretty song, comforting. Bernard would have liked it, I think. It was in the old language, so I couldn’t understand it, not completely. But it was a song about the seasons; I remembered that much from school.

When Pastor Sharp had finished singing, he turned to Mamma and Pappa, embraced them, and said, “Your boy will be back in nine months.”

Mamma gasped; Pappa’s lip quivered.

The pastor crouched to pluck an undamaged acorn from the ground, placed it into Mamma’s trembling hand, and said, “Put this beneath your pillow, and read Genesis 1:28 each night before bed.” Then, the pastor turned to Pappa. “Sing to the womb nightly. Sing with all of your heart and soul, brother. Sing to Jesus, and sing to Frey.”

“God is good,” my parents replied.

“God is good,” I whispered.

The pastor motioned for everyone to walk back down the hill. Mamma reached out to the iron door—to her boy—but Pappa pulled her down the trail.

As they went, Pastor Sharp said, “You are not to open the hatch for nine months. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” they replied.

“Yes,” I said to myself from behind the rock.

That night, I dreamed of my brother Bernard, bizarre dreams filled with family and friends whose faces were unfamiliar and an orchard with babies growing from trees like fruit. On one such tree, I saw Bernard. He looked at me with those big brown eyes of his and smiled. “Bernard,” I said, “silly boy, why are you hanging from the tree like one of Mamma’s persimmons?” But when Bernard opened his mouth to reply, a fly crawled out from between his lips and flew down my throat, choking me until I woke up clutching my neck.

Each sleep held a new terror, but it wasn’t as bad as the waking moments, those moments filled with grief. Mamma and Pappa were husks of their former selves, and I was forced to become both caretaker and cook of the house. Not that anyone ate, not more than enough to survive, and certainly not with any desire or pleasure. Bread was eaten without butter, potatoes without salt.

Mamma only left her room for the essentials, and only when nobody was around. We thought she might stay in her room the whole nine months, but one early morning, before the sun came up, I saw her walking up the trail toward the tree, her rucksack slung over her shoulder. I waited for her to come back down, watching the trail leading up to Abigail’s Promise, but soon my eyes grew heavy and I fell back into my restless sleep.

Later that morning I found Mamma sitting on the porch in the early morning sun, drinking coffee, stroking Bernard’s stuffed rabbit. Her hands looked as if she’d been gardening. After that, she often sat outside on the stoop, looking up at Camel’s Back.

Life went on. There were no smiles, but life went on.

When I was at school, while the other boys played ball or chased girls, I’d climb to the schoolhouse roof and look up at Abigale’s Promise. I thought only of Bernard’s body, rotting behind that iron door. More than anything, I wanted to pull it open, and to look inside, but I resisted. But did I resist out of respect for my parents? For Pastor Sharp? God? No—I resisted because, as much as I wanted to see Bernard’s body, to mourn my baby brother’s life, I was also afraid he might not be within that tree.

Then, three weeks later, I woke up to the sound of Mamma singing a lullaby in the kitchen. I ran into the room, half expecting to see my brother cooing in his highchair.

“There’s our boy,” Pappa said to me. “Your mamma is making a special breakfast for us this morning.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Bernard is coming home!”

Mamma turned around, nodding in confirmation. She leaned her back against the kitchen sink, rubbing her belly. She was smiling, but the pancakes stacked on the plate beside the stove were burnt.

“God is good,” she said. “God granted us a mercy.”

I embraced her, but when I opened my eyes and looked out the kitchen window, Camel’s Back was covered in a blanket of fog, and I thought, Bernard’s cheesecloth won’t protect him from this damp.

As Mamma’s belly grew, so did my desire to open the iron door, to look inside the hollow. I tried to keep myself busy, cleaning, praying—I’d even taken up knitting, though Pappa called it women’s work. Nothing helped. I imagined what it would be like to be trapped in darkness for nine months and to hear wild animals sniffing at the seams of that iron door.

I had good intentions: I wanted to make sure the door was still closed and that nobody had disturbed my brother’s body. And I’d knitted a scarf to tie around Abigale’s Promise to keep Bernard warm. As I walked up the south hump of Camel’s Back, I thought I heard a baby crying, so I ran the rest of the way, but when I got to the top of the hill there was only silence.

I walked up to the Prayer Tree and stood before the iron door. Above me, a crow hopped from branch to branch, cawing.

“Have you been protecting my brother?” I asked the crow.

Caw! Caw!

“Well, thank you…if that was a yes.”

There was a piece of the cheesecloth sticking out from the seam. My mind went back to that day Pappa placed Bernard in the tree. I covered my mouth.

“Stay with me, crow, please.”

Caw!

Slowly I pulled open the iron door, and when it was agape, a thousand fruit flies blew out of the hollow and into my face as if the tree had been holding its breath.

I stepped back in shock, shielding my face. The smell was overpowering. I pinched my nose and stepped forward.

Inside, the cheesecloth was brown and filled with wet flesh. I slammed the iron door shut and backed away, but the crow called to me, frantically jumping from branch to branch.

Caw! Caw! Caw!

“It’s him,” I said.

Caw!

A yellow liquid was dripping from the bottom seam of the iron door.

“It’s him,” I said again. “It’s him and he’s dead.”

Caw! Caw!

I stepped forward, pulled open the iron door, and peeled back the hem of the cheesecloth: it wasn’t my brother’s decaying body—it wasn’t a body at all. It was a pile of decomposing persimmons.

As the congregation departed from the church that Sunday after worship, I stayed behind to speak with Pastor Sharp.

“Pastor?” I said.

“Yes?” The pastor smiled and approached. “Everything alright?”

I nodded. “Everything’s fine…it’s just…well, I have a confession.”

“You don’t have to tell me. Pray directly to your Lord and Savior, boy. He—”

“I was there when Pappa put Bernard in the tree I was…I was hiding.”

The pastor cocked a brow, then put a hand on my shoulder. “That must have been difficult for you to see. But tell me, and this is important: did you open the door?”

I looked into Pastor Sharp’s eyes, searching for my answer. “No,” I said. “I heard you say not to.”

“Good,” he said. “Good boy—smart boy.”

“Pastor, what would happen if someone were to open it?” I was looking out the vestibule doors at Mamma, who was outside on the church lawn, smiling and holding her belly, chatting with the pastor’s wife.

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious.”

The pastor patted my back, and opened the door to leave the church. “Bernard wouldn’t come home. We wouldn’t want that, right?”

“No sir, we wouldn’t.”

On the day Bernard reentered our world, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, looking out the window at Abigale’s Promise, when a small but healthy cry came from Mamma and Pappa’s room, immediately followed by sounds of joy and laughter. After a while, Pappa came in and asked me if I wanted to see my baby brother.

As I walked down the narrow hall to my parents’ room, I ran my hand over a sprig of singed rosemary Mamma had hung from the wall, smelled my fingers, and said a silent prayer.

When I entered the room, Pastor Sharp shook my hand. “You probably missed your baby bother. I’m happy to see you two reunited.” He ushered me toward the bassinet.

Mamma wasn’t smiling, and she looked weary.

“Is he okay?” I asked, looking from the nurse to Pappa.

“He’s perfectly healthy,” said the nurse, leaving the room to fetch clean towels.

“He’s your brother!” Pappa said. “There’s no doubt about it! He even has the freckle right below his left eye. Mamma is…Mamma is a little tired.”

I stepped up to the bassinet and peered over the top and there was Bernard, smiling back at me with those happy brown eyes. It was him. I reached my hand in the bassinet, and he took hold of my finger, wrapping his little hand around it. A tear fell from my cheek onto his forehead.

“Bring him to your mamma,” said Pappa. “Go on, big brother.”

I lifted Bernard from his bassinet; he was heavier than I’d expected. When I handed him to Mamma, she held him loosely.

“It’s him, Mamma,” said Pappa. “It’s our boy.”

Despite Mamma’s lethargy, I felt like I might explode from joy; Bernard was home! And he was healthy! I leaned against the bassinet and laughed at the funny noises he was making as Mamma moved him from her lap to her breast.

Then, I felt something tickling my back.

I turned around, and the blood drained from my face. Within the bassinet, scarabs swarmed over Bernard’s stuffed rabbit. Outside, a crow cawed.

Persimmons was edited by .

Books:

• Blood in the Yolk: Bird Horror

• The Midnight Vault: Twilight Zone Inspired

• Beneath the Valley Oak: Dark Westerns

• Cherry Kills: Horror Fantasy with Noir elements

Merch!

Cover art for this story was provided by . I can’t tell you how much I love Dan’s interpretation of my creature. I think you’ll all agree that his monster adds another level to this story. Go check out more of his creations on Substack, and follow him on IG at dansmonsters.

This is a one off companion story to the novella Cherry Kills.

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I watched the tiny black dots, one moment climbing through the hairs on my arm, the next lost in the pea-green shag next to Nathan’s bed. Why they didn’t suck my blood right then and there, I don’t know. Maybe they were filled with Nathan’s blood. Maybe his cat had been sufficiently drained. I knew it was only a matter of time before they were hungry again. And I’ve got sweet blood.

“I’m not sleeping on this floor. It’s nasty! Look, it’s covered in bugs!” I held out my arm, but by the time Nathan looked, the black crumb had teleported.

“Yeah, it’s Ginger. She goes outside and brings back all these fleas.”

“Ever heard of a flea collar?”

“She has one! And we use powder on the floors, too. It doesn’t help. You can sleep on the couch, if you want.”

“I guess I will.”

I felt itchy all night, and the fear of being eaten by fleas invaded my dreams. In one dream I was eating cereal, and when I looked down, the bowl was filled with black specks swimming in the milk. In another, my skin was shiny, inky-black, and taut with blood.

I was happy when the morning finally arrived. The Kent family, along with their special sleepover guest, me, all sat down to a nice family breakfast before church. Nathan’s mother made bacon and eggs. She lit up the house with enthusiastic salutations and affirmations. I enjoyed sitting together for breakfast; at my house, we ate on the couch, or at the table but at different times. Nathan’s dad, a tall preacher with a chinstrap beard like Abraham Lincoln, sat at the head of the table. Unlike Lincoln, who wore a smirk at best, the pastor wore a broad smile round the clock. Probably why his congregation at Rugged Cross Baptist loved him so much; he was approachable. But, whenever he was near, I recognized an involuntary tension come over me, like my body was bracing for something. He asked me how I slept.

“Fine.” I lied to the pastor.

He gave me a wink and took a bite of his eggs.

“These eggs are runny.” The pastor said it so quietly that nobody but me heard him. Not at first. I watched his face, waiting for the punchline—waiting for the shrug—but then his smile was gone, and his crystal-blue eyes became sharp, slicing through the Sunday laughter.

SLAM!

He brought his hand down hard on the kitchen table—the plates and silverware rattled. My bones rattled. I felt small. I was small.

Nathan’s mom flinched. “I’m sorry…I’ll…I’ll make you new—”

SLAM!

The pastor’s hand hit the table again, this time so hard that a spoon fell to the floor with a CLANG.

Now he was towering over Nathan’s mom. Spittle glistened on his ham-colored lips. “Is it too much to ask to have a nice breakfast? And look, you’ve made our guest uncomfortable. Are you stupid? Are you stupid? Answer me! Are you stupid?”

I looked down at my plate.

Nathan’s mom cried and made new eggs. Five minutes later, the smile on the pastor’s face returned.

A flea hopped onto my arm. I watched it feed.

During Sunday school, while Mrs. Harris told us the story of Daniel in the Lion’s den, I scratched at the tiny red bumps on my arms.

“So God shut the lions’ mouths?” I asked.

“Yes. Because Daniel had faith in Him,” replied Mrs. Harris.

The other kids nodded their heads; all this was obvious to them. They wanted the teacher to show them pictures of Jesus fighting the Devil on top of the mountain from her Children’s Bible.

I ignored them. “And King Darius had the families of the people who put Daniel in the den killed? Like, even the kids?”

“Well…” Mrs. Harris shut her Bible and picked a piece of lint from her blouse. “It was a different time.”

“Why didn’t God save the kids?”

“The point is to have faith in God,” said Mrs. Harris, then asked the kids if they wanted Teddy Grahams.

I scratched my arm until a small bump erupted with blood.

Wafts of rose perfume from fanning women made me feel nauseous. A few rows behind me a man shouted “Amen!”

With heavy eyes, I watched as Pastor Kent preached to his congregation about love and respect. I wondered if Nathan and his mom felt loved and respected.

“My friends,” the pastor pleaded, “if we cannot respect our fathers and mothers, how can we respect ourselves? How can we respect God?” The pastor’s smile faltered. He looked at me, and his smile returned. He winked. “And God demands respect, doesn’t he? Yes. God demands respect.”

In the car on the way home, I saw a man walking on the shoulder of the road. He was completely naked and looked confused. On his back, a tattoo of Jesus on the cross hung askew. I asked my parents why he wasn’t wearing any clothes. They said they didn’t know. Then we got KFC.

When we got home, I peeled the skin from my chicken with my teeth and thought about Nathan’s dad. This holy man. This man of God. He had faith. But I wondered, did Nathan have faith? Did his mom? Did I?

“Good sermon today about respecting your father and mother,” said my dad, plopping a second helping of coleslaw onto his plate. “Hopefully you didn’t inspire that. Were you well-behaved?”

“Dad, do you think King Darius was a good man?”

“King Darius from Daniel in the Lion’s den?”

“Yeah. Was he a good guy?”

“Not at first, but in the end, he did the right thing. He let Daniel out of the den, right?”

“But then he fed kids to the lions.”

“I don’t remember that part…”

I bit down on the chicken bone and tried to imagine what it must have felt like in those final moments before the lions came from the back of the den.

…broke all their bones in pieces…

I stood beneath the alien-green glow of the exit sign, staring at the door. I was challenging myself. A silly game I played while my parents attended the church’s Wednesday night business meeting. I’d walk across the courtyard from the church hall to the fellowship building, down the steps to the basement level, and work up the courage to begin. The game was simple: walk to the end of the darkened hallway, touch the door, then walk back. No running.

It was a long hallway with seven doors. Behind each door was a small, uninsulated room with folding tables and folding chairs and windows set high enough to capture light from the street level during the day. On Sunday mornings before service, the church would give classes in these subterranean rooms on how to be good Christians. But in the evenings, there were no classes. All the rooms were empty. All the doors, shut. The only light was the bright green Exit sign at one end of the hallway.

After touching the door, I walked back toward the light pouring down from the fellowship hall, my heart revving steadily with each step, fear pushing softly against my back. Slow down, I thought. Slow down or you lose. And when I was safe, at the threshold of light, I looked back down the long hallway at the glowing green sign and thought, See, you are brave. You are strong. You have faith.

Then I’d start again. Above each closed door, on a thin sheet of metal, were the names of books from the bible: Genesis, Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Psalms, and the last door on the left, Revelations.

I began saying the names under my breath, each of them a milestone—each a dedication to my bravery and faith.

“Genesis.” There’s no one down here but you.

“Mathew.” You’re in God’s house. Nothing can hurt you here.

“Mark.” Well, it’s not the church. It’s just the fellowship hall. Does that count?

“Luke.” Protect me, Jesus. Protect me, Jesus. Protect me, Jesus.

“John.” God let those kids be eaten by lions.

“Psalms.” He let them die.

“Revelations...” I paused. The door was open, the green light from the Exit sign spilled over a table and chairs. I felt something behind me. I turned around. On the wall at the opposite end of the hallway, where light poured down the stairs from the fellowship hall, a shadow bobbed. For a moment, it comforted me. I figured it was my mom coming to tell me it was time to go home, but as the shadow stretched, something inside me knew it was him before he stepped down into the hallway. It was Nathan’s dad. It was the pastor.

“Oh, hello,” he said, his signature smile spread across his face. “What are you doing down here?”

“Just playing around,” I said, and pushed on the exit door to leave.

“You can’t go that way. The door is stuck. I’ve been meaning to fix it.”

I pushed harder. It wouldn’t open.

The pastor stepped slowly into the hallway. “I never got to apologize for this morning. You know, I’m a little embarrassed that you saw me like that.”

“That’s okay,” I said, glancing into the room beside me.

“It’s just…it’s all about love, you know? Respect is love, so if I don’t get the respect I’m deserved, then I don’t feel loved.”

In the low light, the pastor’s face began to morph. His cheekbones jutted from beneath his eyes, which were no longer crystal-blue but black dots swimming in milk. His arms extended, knuckles nearly touching the floor as he stepped toward me. He licked away the smile from his ham-lips, and said, “Shall we pray together?”

I bolted into the Revelations room and slammed the door. “Please leave me alone.”

“What are you talking about? Come out here. Let’s pray together.”

I pleaded. “Please leave.”

“Come out and pray you little fucker.”

“Please! Please, just leave me alone. I’ll pray in here!” And I did pray. I prayed to God. I prayed to Jesus Christ. But as I was praying, I thought about the kids in the lion’s den. I thought about King Darius.

The pastor pulled on the handle.

I prayed.

The pastor tugged harder, the wood frame snapped in response—it was only a matter of time before the lock broke. But as much as I screamed for help, no angel came to save me. The lion’s jaws snapped. It hissed for me to open the door.

I turned on the light, thinking the brightness would drive the demon-pastor away, but when I looked down, my arms and hands were covered in its fleas.

And the king gave the command, and they brought those men who had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions—them, their children, and their wives; and the lions overpowered them, and broke all their bones in pieces before they ever came to the bottom of the den.

Thank you for reading!

The prompt from was “Give me a demon, no redeeming qualities, no romance. Make me stay up all night.” I’m not sure I accomplished that, but this prompt did remind me about the real demons who walk among us. Those false-faced “good guys” who hold positions of power. As kids, we knew them instinctually.

I’d love to tell you this story is all fiction, but it’s not. The most frightening part of this tale happens at the breakfast table. The family is terrorized. I was there. I witnessed this scene first hand. Luckily, I didn’t have to endure this daily, but my friend did. His mom did. People all over the world do. If you know a demon, kick them in the nuts and tell them I say hi.

Shony.

Pick up a shirt, sweater, tote, or mug at my Etsy shop! AUTOMATIC WRITER STUFF

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I watch the yarrow bend beneath the weight of my piss and think of our baby boy, George. Will he have sea-green eyes flecked with gold like me? Or will they be hazel, like Genie’s? I tell myself I’ll be happy no matter what, but the truth is I’m afraid they’ll be Dad’s eyes: slate-gray and passionless. I couldn’t handle that; I need love, I know this.

I look over my shoulder at the maroon Ford Escort, the only thing available at the Avis Car Rental on short notice. Nothing pretty, but she’s been a trouper so far. Soon, I’ll embrace Genie and greet our little man, George, for the first time. I’ll get some shit for not being there during his birth, but what were the odds she’d go into labor an entire month earlier than expected?

I zip up my jeans and stare at the trees, stretching my legs. I hear a rustling sound, but after a few moments, it stops. I shake my head and return to the car. The doors are locked, the keys hang from the ignition.

“Fucking fuck fuck!…

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One by one they peel off walls. I know, because I’ve seen them. They live in corners with wispy spiders, conspiring.

At night, when parents are dreaming of taxes, these casual specters slip from their hangers: amorphous voyeurs; skulking ink spots; Negatives.

A scream takes too long—every kid knows this. Better to hold your breath. Better to pretend to sleep.

The door is open. I could run across the room to the hall → living room → kitchen → dining room → and finally, my parents’ room. 𝕊𝕒𝕗𝕖𝕥𝕪.

No. Better to become small. Better to not draw attention to myslef.

They glide past me, sliding across the room to my sister Brenna’s bed. She’s dreaming of ponies and Rainbow Brite. Glitter and glue. Easter grass and chocolate coins. The Negatives surround her and confer—they’re in agreement: Brenna is special.

The house is holding its breath, waiting for me to unravel. My eyes are dry but I keep them open. The Negatives…

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When it’s over, I’m mesmerized by a reflection I see upon the water in the shadow of her skiff. She, a plain girl, come to read beside the lake, now on her back, eyes bulged. And this man—this hideous creature—hands rising from her neck to cover his mouth like a child who’s broken his father’s favorite pipe.

I watch the woman’s chest in the reflection. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting—it does not rise or fall. Then, a raindrop ripples this ghastly image into oblivion, and I reel, teetering away from the disrupted horror.

I stumble over her book, falling to the rushes. But I keep my eyes on the warped reflection; I want to pull on the water like a bedsheet, to remove its creases and confirm what I already know: the devil cupping his mouth is me.

Rustling from the bramble, a hare bounds, disappearing through the trees into the forest.

I scan the shoreline, but my sins are mine alone; forever shall I keep and hold and molest them privately. I pick up the book and throw it into the skiff; the page…

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Bless these hands that grow tired and weary. Bless these hands, which are dedicated to You. Bless these hands, which test and rebuild us. Bless these hands that are Yours to work through.

My name is Karina. My dog’s name is Mickey. My mom’s name is Lucy; I don’t remember what color her eyes are. Sometimes, I recognize a smile or a chin cleft of someone familiar flipping about in my brain, but then the face goes all different, stretching and pulling into an ugly, strange character, and I’m forced to sit with my beast—my invention—until Sticks comes down.

As an exercise, I try to name every member of my family, but things are…not as clear as when we started. I remember my brother Spencer, Cousin Tom, Aunt Claire, my mother Kelly, and my dad…Robert? Richard?

Sticks was gone for some time. Could have been minutes, or days, but now Sticks is here. We can hear the excitement in those steps; Sticks wants to get on with it.

The door opens; a bar of light hurts our ey…

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Brunette sees him coming through the door and knows exactly what is going to happen. She sees the intent on his face before he calls Blond a “Thieving whore.” Before he tries to pull her off the stool by her straw-colored hair where she sits eating her eggs and fries.

Brunette feels the electricity; the coffee-and-newspaper vibe has changed: superstrings are vibrating, a chain reaction which started at Genesis and will continue through Revelations, all of those strings wiggling and extending to touch—think Creation of Adam—the powder-burned index finger of a talcum God.

Blond is tapping the embossed 57 on her wrist and it’s really starting to come now, sliding down the neck inside the bottle, the sweet and tangy condiment bubbling out the lip. It’s a race: 57 vs 40 Caliber. She has a cigarette dangling from her lips despite the passive aggressive comments she’s been getting from Charlotte, the only waitress working the floor at this hour.

Brunette would wave Charlotte down, to tell her to call the police, or to have her shoot daggers at the man with her late-night waitress try-me-glare, but there isn’t time; a number is up.

The man has yellow teeth and yellow eyes and yellow skin—probably smells yellow. Brunette knows him; or, she knows men like him: a bitch of a man: weak: yellow: : : :

Charlotte’s annoyed with Blonde for smoking inside the diner, but only because she wants a cigarette, too. At least she’s wearing the comfortable shoes she bought last weekend, a purchase made knowing she’d have an extra day’s tips. She wasn’t supposed to be working tonight, but she didn’t have anything better to do, and now she has a little treat: comfort.

Then, she sees Brunette’s face. But there isn’t enough time for connections. There are too many possibilities: she wants the bill, or to know where the restroom is, jam for her toast, to complain about a hair in her oats, or…

Blond’s mascara is thick, spider legs caked in chocolate cake. Lipstick on her smoke, bubblegum-pink, over-chewed. She’s pretty but worn.

The yellow man is wearing tighty-whities1. Brunette sees them as he lifts his shirt to pull his gun. Sees his belly fur. His Daffy Duck tattoo. She sees a snapshot of a man who puts on underwear and watches Looney-Tunes. Eats Cocoa Puffs. Comments on nostalgia posts on Facebook: “Rub some dirt on it!”

Brunette is standing. A voice within her is screaming to Sit the fuck back down. Don’t get involved!

Charlotte can’t figure out why Brunette looks so intense. She sees a gun. She doesn’t understand the shout in Brunette’s eyes. She sees a gun. Maybe she dropped her spoon? She sees a gun. Maybe she’s uncomfortable? SHE SEES A GUN!

Blond is tapping on the 57; the red is coming. The yellow man is pointing the gun at the back of Blond’s head.

Tap, tap, tap.

The red is coming.

Click.

The gun jams.

Brunette runs at the yellow man.

Chickchack. The gun is unjammed.

He fires at Brunette. Pop, pop.

Misses.

Brunette is frozen, contemplating her previous decision, considering her options, checking for holes in her breasts and stomach, thinking about her daughter at home in Minneapolis and her kid’s deadbeat but charming father in Mississippi. She thinks all of this in 1 second or ten years as her gaze lingers on the comfortable shoe sitting beneath a table a billion miles away from Charlotte’s ruptured body. Time means nothing here. She sees her grandma’s garden on Easter, a blue pastel egg sitting near the roses. She hears a train bell. Smells brownies.

~

~

~

—time snaps back like a rubber band. Brunette picks up a steak knife and lunges at the yellow man.

The red is really starting to come now, sliding down his neck and out from between his lips. He gurgles. Rub some dirt on it, bitch.

Brunette drops the knife and covers her face.

Blond is standing over the yellow red man, smiling. Bends down, says,

“Frank is my cat. You killing me wouldn’t have changed a goddamn thing. He’s my fucking cat.”

Blond picks up a fry from her plate and dips it into the red.

Footnote: