Perfidious Beauty

by Eugie Foster

Beauty knelt over the cooling body of her husband, the prince.  The elegant clock in the foyer, carved from ebony and teak, struck the midnight hour.  The twelve tiny peals: the bells of heaven tolling, or the din of hell birds?  

One.  Two.  

Knife strokes shearing through flesh as easily as heated wax.  

Three.

Blood dark as despair and wet as sorrow in a spray across the marble tile.  

Four.  Five.  

The prince a discarded doll, head askew and half severed from his neck.  

Six.  

The gold of his hair, black now and matted with gore.  

Seven, eight, nine.  

The scald of his blood on her hands, her face, cooling in the wintry air, becoming sticky as old honey in a forgotten jar.  

Ten.  Eleven.  

Fierce joy.  Her wedding day promise to her lover achieved.  

Twelve.  

Grief, held in check these long weeks, released.  

Beauty crumpled to the floor, the sobs wracking, shaking her slender frame as though they would wring her apart.     (Continue Reading…)

Death Has Red Hair

by Greye La Spina

We three men were hugging the open fire closely. The raw chill of that November night had closed in around us and the blazing logs yielded grateful warmth.

Peter Murray was leaning forward in his chair, looking absentmindedly into the leaping flames that sent flickering shadows to dancing on the walls behind us. Hank Walters was staring at Peter and I was watching both my guests with curious speculation that had risen in me since that afternoon’s encounter.

I could have sworn that Hank’s black eyes held an expression at once envious and inimical as he bent his gaze sourly on Peter’s handsome, perplexed young face. I was both dismayed and sorry, for the older man possessed a weapon that might cut the brightness out of Peter’s life; Magda Farrar was his. foster-daughter and his ward, and to young Peter she symbolized and embodied everything desirable in life.

“Come out of it, you two,” growled I, irritated and uneasy at their silence. “This is a shooting party, not a wake.”

Peter’s bright blue eyes turned from the fire. He met my gaze and chuckled. (Continue Reading…)

Knock, Knock, Wolf

by P.G. Galalis

It was time to kill the sparrows.

Every autumn, after the last leaves fell and the bare trees rattled their bone song to an empty sky, the widow Clarabel started baking. Five parts flour, three parts water, a pinch of salt and emptins for leavening, plus a handful of the devil’s blend, finely ground. She would let the loaf go stale for a day, then scatter it about the field between her cottage and the forest.

A knock on the door was the worst sound in the world if you asked Clarabel, when beggars and travelers and all kinds of wretched, needy folk would flee winter in the high peaks. Fortunately, Clarabel had discovered that a lone cottage in a field of dead sparrows seldom received any visitors.  (Continue Reading…)

The Child-Feast of Harridan Sack

By Kaitlyn Zivanovich

I plant a whisper in my daughter’s hair when her shoulders shake and hunch up to her ears. It’s only a story, I say. I turn the page; I’ve resolved her fears. It’s only a story. That is what mothers say to their daughters. 

What kind of comfort is that?

It’s not a reassurance, or a consolation.

It’s a warning.

It’s a story, child. Pay attention, it is a story. (Continue Reading…)

The Hollow Tree

by Jordan Kurella

There are two kinds of secrets: those we keep from others, and those we keep from ourselves. 

My mother told me this after one of her too-silent nights with my father. She told me that the worst ones, the ones too terrible to believe, are the second kind. She told me she hoped I’d never have one of these kinds of secrets, as she leaned over and kissed my forehead. Only then did she go to her bed. Three days after that, my second sister came out of her, unbreathing. That time, she did not cry.

She told me, “Pira, you won’t cry either.”

She told me, “Pira, you have to be strong for me. I need you to always be strong.”

And so I was.

I was strong every day as my father served my mother’s pies through our bakery window, telling all our neighbors in Stowe that they were his. He smiled through his thick black beard, dripping with sweat and grease, joking with each person who came by each day. My father’s smile was a smile I had grown to hate. But the town hadn’t. They always said: “Silas Baker has such a wide smile to go with his sad eyes.”  They always said: “There are no pies sweeter than Silas Baker’s pies.” They always said: “He must make his pies so sweet for his lost daughters.” (Continue Reading…)

Charged

by Leanna Renee Hieber

My first memory is of being struck by lightning. It was exquisite.

I was standing in my grandfather’s field just before the storm broke. White hot arcs threaded across the whole of the charcoal English sky. Trembling with thrills, I wanted to reach up and touch the delicate vein-like threads of light. It would seem they wanted to touch me too.

“There’s nothing more wondrous than a good, riotous thunderstorm, my boy,” grandfather had said with a gamesome punch to my shoulder that landed too hard. But I learned that’s how one shows affection to a male child; with a touch of force.

That’s when the bolt anointed me. I stood riveted as my bones rattled and crackled, my blood boiled and a thousand angels screamed in my ears. When it was over, small wisps of smoke curled up from my hair and coat.

Grandfather stared at me in horror. “You should be dead, child.” He clapped me again on the back, a sting of shock passing between us upon contact, and walked away.

I wasn’t dead but he was right about one thing; I’ve yet to see or feel anything more wondrous than a sky full of electricity.

(Continue Reading…)

The Thought Monster

by Amelia Reynolds Long

The first of the series of outrages was the case of Welton Grimm. Grimm was a retired farmer with a little place about three miles from town, who apparently had not an enemy in the world; yet one morning he was discovered dead in a patch of woods near his home with a look of horror on his face that made the flesh creep on those who found him. There were no marks of violence upon the body; only that expression of horrified revulsion at unspeakable things. Two doctors, a coroner, and a jury puzzled over it, and at last gave out the statement that he had been the victim of a heart attack—which nobody believed. (Continue Reading…)