Reader, I implore your forgiveness for the crime I must detail. What I have done was not of my own choice, for had it been so I would have bled dry my throat before even the slightest urge to commit such an act overcame me. Circumstances, such as they were, forced my hand, and shouldContinue reading “The Vow”
Author Archives: (Not actually a Lady) Ruthless
Spittoon
There’s a haunting here at Porpoise Sand, and The Spittoon has its own set of ghosts. Everybody knows there’s something off about that ride. Since the park got going in the seventies there have been rumors of people hearing screams even when there’s nobody in any of the cars. Figures loitering under parts that areContinue reading “Spittoon”
Interloper
It began when Kiernan was a child of five or so, or at least that was his earliest memory of it. Presumably it had happened before, stirrings in the gloom beyond his cradle, but his short-sighted infant’s eyes had not made out what was before them, or else had taken it as another of thoseContinue reading “Interloper”
Flight
The first thing she said when I found her was, “I burned them.” I knew what she meant. For months I’d been asking for my wings back—not wanting to use them, necessarily, but to know that I could, if I wanted to. That I could come and go as I pleased. Sometimes Salyn wouldContinue reading “Flight”
Joy
I was smoking on the fire escape when I heard the neighbour come up after me. The Neighbour: that’s the way I thought of her, the title capitalised and official in a way I never felt like her given name really was. That, I told myself, was why I could never remember it. Why, thoughContinue reading “Joy”
The Killing Sea
The ancestors of mermaids that came to land in human form can never go back to the sea. If they do, they become foam— but we yearn for the water, we that are stranded here, a biological impulse in us to join with our sisters again. We still choose to live by the ocean, unableContinue reading “The Killing Sea”
What Became Of My Dear Sister
Justice, my sister, ran away from home when she was eighteen years of age, or so for many years I thought. My parents were vague on the cause of her disappearance, and all matters pertaining to my sibling, come to that. “A saint,” was all my father would say of her. “She was a saintContinue reading “What Became Of My Dear Sister”
ABBESS
It was the tenth child her husband had put in her now, and she would not bring it forth alive. Could not without her mind unspooling like intestine tugged free of a wound; this Angeline had known since the family doctor, with a nervy, congratulative titter, had informed her of its conception. Ethaniel—the father—had wantedContinue reading “ABBESS”
Our Dear House
For three weeks the children had the smothering dream before I did, as well. The dream, as the twins described it, was of being pressed into a narrow room by a number of dark figures until their shapes were one, a breathless, pulsing shadow, flat against the wall. Nightly this vision came, provoking both boysContinue reading “Our Dear House”
Magdala
From the steps of the railway station she descended from the rain, a woman like quartz, like dusk, and amber. She walked as if without true weight. Her hair, though soaked, floated about as if it, too, were water. Her eyes—so dark—looked through me. They were the holes of stigmata within her face, black andContinue reading “Magdala”
The Morgue 