fiction
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Sunday Scaries: “The Ballad of Gloria Vetrana”
At first, the reports weren’t especially interesting: unconvincing testimonies of vague phenomena. Folks reported feeling nauseated and feverish. Tinnitus. Migraines. Some reported electrical disturbances, lights straining brown as the power waned.
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The Part That Hurts
She had been a good friend when she had to be, and somewhere in all of this time we’d forgotten how to speak to one another. Now, she has come to me in this early stage of grief. I wasn’t…
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Pop-Tart Crumb
“All my life is telling obstacle from sweetness and i must smell to know – i smell everything for its scents – i smell rock most often – wet wood – i smell linoleum, hair of dog, smudge of olive…
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Ancestral Milk
“Zoe feels panic rising from her pelvic floor, then guilt and more anxiety about her own animal response, the cortisol bath leaching into her milk which will then permeate Pippa’s gut and become part of her DNA and Pippa’s entire…
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Bad Artist
That was summer. In the autumn, you fly to see him. The address is a narrow lane off the canal, where tourists recede and street signs wilt in their place. The buzzer is broken, he has to come down to…
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Men in Black Coats
I probably should have lied and told him it got dangerous. I lived alone. No safety net of a brother or a boyfriend to fall back on if a murderer broke into the building and got past the doorman, past…
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Silent Nights
He talked on and on then, about how you’d have to get to the airport very early in the morning or else miss your flight, the X-ray machines at the security, the little cans of soda and bags of pretzels…
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Lifesaving
I wasn’t good at managing the cold. It wrestled the breath from me, pressing deep into my chest and throat. Once, when I knew Rob would be out, I cheated and put the heating on, sitting against the radiator and…
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Sunday Scaries: “The Lurking Kind”
“They were,” I said. “He was preparing them for when they grew up. He told them about this kind of monster that lurked in the shadows and was so dark that it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Its…
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Star Champions
Simone diminished the flame of curiosity in Isabella Fernanda to a quiet ember. Alexandria was actually relieved. The sticky food in her mouth had already indicated she wouldn’t be speaking further on the subject anytime soon and tilted her body…
