Strange. Deranged.
"It was a normal year and a normal night like any other. Jack O’Lanterns prowled the pumpkin patches. Howls echoed in the distant woods, no doubt aimed at the blood-red moon. Foul, ancient things rumbled nameless in the deep. Thursday. The most I’d ever worked with bones were the boring manual labor shifts I had at the Terror Farm. “Great existential dread comes from happy skeletons. Happy skeletons come from Halloween-ifornia.” Everybody knows the ad, can sing along like it’s a hymn, but what the heck is a happy skeleton?"
Great Existential Dread
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"This is how the caecillion enters you. First, he drums his fingers very lightly at the door of your heart. From inside, you look up, unguarded because the tapping is so friendly."
Echo, Shadow, Ether, Mirrorlight
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"As she spoke, the stitches pulled against the edges of Diane’s face, and a small drip of blood rolled from the edge, just at where her skin was sewn on, down her neck, tracing the length of her collarbone. Barbara pretended not to see..."
The Ladies' Supper Club of New Banebridge
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"She has no feet/ so she is a ghost/ an art historian says/ Come back, sensual/ to haunt the man who wronged her."
We Bring What We Want
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"Then she pulls my hand into her mouth, toward the big sharp teeth at the back, and bites. It doesn’t hurt, it feels soft and sinking, like a very hot bath. So I don’t stop her when she goes to the counter and takes a knife out of the block."
Pears Made Noodle Soup
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"Sam gripped the top of one of the nearby dining room chairs and froze when he felt something on the top of his hand. It was a fly. Its large black eyes stared straight into his."
Booze and Bugs
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"I’ve never been haunted before, nor have I had a stress-induced break from reality, but regardless of which one of these is happening, I make the choice to befriend the ghost bird."
They Only Eat the Dead
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"He felt a shadow pass across the room and shook it away. It didn’t matter. Whatever danger had been there was gone; Gail had said so."
The Soothsayer
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"Our hunger was/ never so animal/ as it was on/ the Cold Moon,/ never so bloody/ as the first/ of the month."
Wild
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"That night I dreamt of heat lightning, and when I woke, I woke thinking about the stolen bones. "
The Bone Tree
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"We covered the body of the doe with shovelfuls of dirt. I had my children help the entire time —made them sweat; work."
Delicate
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"He would go to bed early and lie very still, willing the scent out of his memory so it could leach into his body."
Oud
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"jealous mean minded ghouls/ excise her pulpy flesh, bright bloody/ clits and lips, erect mental cages..."
Mint Grows Thuggish in the Witch's Garden
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"She drags her tongue along his bottom lip before entering his mouth. All she incites is another sleepy moan, and then her tongue grazes against what almost feels like the dull end of a needle."
Hooked
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"The ghost of her fading nightmare made Mel’s heart rate quicken as she picked Daisy up. Turning the doll over she felt a ridiculous relief on seeing her left eye still fused shut."
Foundling
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"Euryale tried to swallow the sound that erupted from her womb, but a low moaning growl rumbled from her lips."
The Reviled Sisters
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"When the foxes screamed, they sounded like children. She felt surrounded by ghosts, or something worse."
Out in Those Woods, in the Dark
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" I call the police because there’s this neckless man on my doorstep at eight pm. Sun just now going down. He’s standing there, unmoving, unblinking."
Neckless
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