The dark girl in the black coat walked to a disused railway bridge by night. Her eyes were as her clothes—the sky—were, and her nails were lacquered with the red that they would soon be from other matter. A man awaited her, his white hair blown up into the wind like a waterfall in reverse.Continue reading “The Tower”
Author Archives: (Not actually a Lady) Ruthless
Trap
The sun beat down like a hammer stroke on the day Angie found her husband’s car in the driveway again. She sunk back under the shaded ledge of the porch, uncertain whether she was about to fall over or to vomit in the trough of flowers under the nearby windowsill. In the end she didContinue reading “Trap”
The Whispers
My sister died when I was nine years old. She has no grave, nor is there any official record of what became of her. Like shallow marks in stone she would have worn away, had I not been left behind to remember. The others that know of her death don’t believe in it, or notContinue reading “The Whispers”
Of the Island
I was a shepherd on a remote island, once, until something began frightening the sheep. Thirty years ago it came, on an afternoon glazed opaline by November fog, the hills awash in it to such an extent that I saw almost nothing ahead of me but the dogs, their dark heads emerging from its vapourContinue reading “Of the Island”
The Wall
In my old house, I’d hear screams through my bedroom wall every night. I’d lie awake, sweating through my pastel sheets in clenched-teethed terror, bringing the quilt to my throat in a lumpen knot as the cries went on and on in the darkness. They echoed behind the wallpaper as though the space beyond wasContinue reading “The Wall”
A woman buried her daughter alive in the National Park I work at
She didn’t mean to kill her, that fact I know. Like others before her, she was trying to put something else back, or thought she was, at least. Having worked in the park for a good twenty years, I’ve learned enough about the things that live on and under this land that when I wasContinue reading “A woman buried her daughter alive in the National Park I work at”
Rosemary
In dreams, He sometimes came back. There had been herbs and recitations, that first time, to draw Him; now it seemed to Rosemary that He had never gone away, nor would He, the father of her only child. The boy was seven years old, and had never seen his sire beyond illustrations of His likeness,Continue reading “Rosemary”
Lucia
I haven’t seen my wife since I moved here, to our new apartment in a building so old that plants have grown through it like death through the bowels of an old tramp, and when it rains at night all the window panes sing with it, as though in the swollen pressure of their poorContinue reading “Lucia”
The Road And The Hungry Sun
My brother went missing out by Paris, Texas some years back, and what came home in his skin was something else, though you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that’d believe me. I know how the story would go. Folks would say I was so mad he’d up and left me alone in that house thatContinue reading “The Road And The Hungry Sun”
LEDA- original version
For a year I thought my sister had an eating disorder. Turns out that I was wrong. This is how is started. Last autumn, my younger sibling just stopped eating. Gradually, at first, so that you wouldn’t notice unless you were paying attention, which I—three years older, and her brother, at that—decidedly was not. LedaContinue reading “LEDA- original version”
The Morgue 