Gods and Monsters Installment 33: Pamela
Reading Time: 8 minutes Vampires followed the deluge of fluid and fear, tracking the lonely, homeless, and lost to the city, drawn by the need for belief, as well as blood.
Magical realism
Gods and Monsters Installment 32: Time Before Time
Reading Time: 7 minutes Thanatos never kills. He’s just the messenger.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 31: Small Time Gods
Reading Time: 7 minutes Ever since he found Gabriel in the field, River has been cut off and alone. Separated from humanity by a knowledge that he didn’t even realize he possessed, a perception deep within his bones. An understanding that though fairy tales may come true, they are written in blood and lies.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 30: The Morgue
Reading Time: 8 minutes The door is heavy, about four inches thick. A long narrow staircase leads down into darkness. He is in total darkness. Feeling his way slowly along the wall, carefully tapping his feet to see where the stairs begin, he finds a light switch. Harsh fluorescence floods the stairwell. This light would make anyone look dead, River thinks.
Gods and Monsters Installment 29: Beautiful and Strange
Reading Time: 7 minutes Pamela stands in the doorway. River stops stirring and opens his arms. Pamela doesn’t even need to cross the room. She melts into him, soft as butter into flour. She is cold, damp as night fog.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 28: Journey’s End
Reading Time: 8 minutes That night, Jackson does not come to Bert’s.
Gods and Monsters Installment 27: The Crossing
Reading Time: 6 minutes Jim is standing on the rocky shore of a dark underground river. The only sound is the constant thrum of pebbles which gently lapping waves draw back and fling up the high strand. There is a whisper, the sound of a shadow gliding over hard round stones. Against the blackness he sees a man, tall and lean.
Gods and Monsters Installment 26: Scent Memory
Reading Time: 6 minutes Glistening like a frozen tear, delicate as a kiss, the crystal necklace lies on wine velvet cloth. Jim has never seen anything so lovely and flawless. His breath catches in his throat. It’s out of his price range. There’s no way he can afford it. There’s no way he can walk away. Something in the manner the colors intertwine weaves around his soul.
Gods and Monsters Installment 25: In the Time of Many Pigeons
Reading Time: 7 minutes It is the first time Gabriel has heard birdsong. Usually, birds drop lifeless at his feet. Hearing the song, Gabriel is warmed by an invincible summer. He stretches his arms toward the light.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 24: Wastelands of the Wild
Reading Time: 8 minutes Dust fur falls like rain, feathering into the plumes of a dove. The dove’s wings become sleeves. Amimi is shining like a hologram in the glooming.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 23: History Lies
Reading Time: 7 minutes In the night shadows of trees, shunning the moonlight, a man waits. It is Kristjan, taller than Jim remembers. He is nearly naked, covered only by a wolf skin. In the night, his eyes glow red. As Jim looks at him, unable to turn away, something dark slips beneath Jim’s fingernails, flowing like a shadow into his blood.
Gods and Monsters Installment 22: Delicate Dust
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape
Reading Time: 8 minutes Out of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 20: The Love Song of the Mole Cricket
Reading Time: 5 minutes Mr. Jones appears to have been mauled by a wild animal. His body shows evidence of teeth marks and claw marks. The wounds are uncommon.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 18: We Are The Stuff That Genes Are Made Of
Reading Time: 8 minutes He awoke at dawn, sore and scratched. His mouth, clothes, and limbs were covered with gore. His clothes were in tatters. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to remember.
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Gods and Monsters Installment 17: Moirai Mechanics
Reading Time: 7 minutes “Where did you get the gun, River?” Jackson asks. River looks down. His right hand is wrapped around a cold black gun.
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The Imaginary Librarian
Reading Time: 2 minutes In a sparse, orderly imaginary office, a librarian awaits unseen directives, tending to imaginary tomes with quiet diligence. As dawn approaches, she fulfills a final task, providing closure for a life departing.
Thumbing to Sugar Daddy Oberon
Reading Time: 10 minutes In spite of interfering adults, a spoiled child is determined to claim her birthright in the court of Oberon and Titania.
Eight Legs Under Moonlight
Reading Time: 12 minutes In a Victorian town plagued by werespiders, a curious spinster takes in a mysterious woman.
The Nocturnality of Dorian Salva
Reading Time: 17 minutes Dorian Salva is an artist with a consuming passion for birds. One night, his work-in-progress takes on an eerie life of its own, and the relationship between artist and subject, painter and painted, undergoes an uncanny reversal.
Out of the Darkness
Reading Time: 4 minutes A young girl, desperate to find her beloved pet, ventures out into the darkness.
Rainbow Sprout
Reading Time: 4 minutes Stupid car accident. Stupid sister. Stupid globetrotting, summer-consuming, plant-feeding adventure.
That’s what Mother said. “Oh, it’ll be an adventure! Just think how happy your sister will be with her sprout! She needs this now.” I get it, I’m grateful to have a working spine, but that doesn’t mean I should have to waste months trudging around… where the hell am I now? Greece?
The Last Thing Taken
Reading Time: 9 minutes When Sophia meets Oloku, she thinks it’s the perfect, strings-free affair. But when she learns his secret, she finds there’s a price to pay for loving him.
The Burning Point of a Soul
Reading Time: 4 minutes How do I discover what my soul burns for? Do I even want to find it?
The Mistaken Haunting of Seth Harrison
Reading Time: 15 minutes Excerpt
Lizzie Borden took an axe.
Gave her mother forty whacks.
But did she?
Three grifters get caught up in the Lizzie Borden murders and it plays itself out one hundred years later.
Inuksuk
Reading Time: 17 minutes Erecting a cell tower in the middle of an arctic waste–next to one of those ancient stone Inuksuks to fix location, to show scale, and to provide a little local color–would be perfect for the “We’ve got you covered” ad campaign. What could go wrong?
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly by Toge Productions
Reading Time: 2 minutes Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Coffee Talk by Toge Productions. In this game, you serve drinks to magical patrons which impact the outcomes of the stories they tell you.
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A Clairvoyant’s Misfortune
Reading Time: 4 minutes Someone might say: pal, since you know what’s going to happen, why don’t you do something to change your future! I can only say one thing: I did try it, many times, but there is no way to change your fate. If your life has got something in store for you, you will surely get it.
Deracination
Reading Time: 4 minutes Lovesick Serena is prepared to risk everything and uproot herself completely to be with the one she loves. But are her feelings returned?
Occupational Hazards or The Quite Curious Tale of Astridr Grimsdottir
Reading Time: 5 minutes Working to a deadline can sometimes lead to astonishing conversations, even revelations. Does the artist dictate the art? Or the art the artist?
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Nothing in the Dark
Reading Time: 26 minutes Cosmic horrors await an astronomer on a solo observing run.