• short stories

    The Rare and Delightful Mirror-Book

    For the first time, I open a book and I find a mirror inside. I’ve heard that you can find mirrors in books, sometimes; most of my friends have had it happen at least twice, and Angelina from across the street has it happen so often she probably doesn’t know that books are actually made of paper.

    But this is my first time, and it’s spectacular. I see a face I know inside the book: a round face, the freckles Mom always called constellations, my inquisitive eyes (which I have always thought are my best feature), and hair that looks like it belongs to a street dog.

    I don’t look like a street dog in the reflection. Somehow, in this context, I look like an unruly adventurer. The impish smile that gets me into so much trouble belongs to someone exciting! Someone, perhaps, with a pirate’s hat and a sword—or maybe a wizard hat and staff, or—

    My reflection moves even though I do not. From the mirror extends a hand that is just like mine. The fingernails are chewed down to the quick. Of course I take it; I’ve never had the chance before, and I won’t miss it now.

    When I fall through the mirror, I find myself wearing a familiar costume: shining armor that matches the bright-silver fur of the horse beside me. I’ve always read about knights in shining armor. But never have I fallen straight into those clankity-boots to find my face reflected back in the polished shield mounted to my horse’s hip. I look good as a knight in shining armor. I wouldn’t have expected that.

    The horse lets me mount, because I’m good with horses—who knew I could be good with horses?—and skillfully do I ride up the mountain, urging her onward.

    “Let’s go, Streakfire!” I say. “Let’s go!”

    We fly together, like I never knew I could fly, and the whole world of the story falls out below me. There are villages below filled with people who need to be saved, and I’m the only one who can do it—me! In the forests await adventures I’ve seen others survive. Hardship awaits in the darkest caverns and deepest tunnels, but it’s only the kind of hardship which proves I can handle anything.

    My horse and I arrive at the mouth of a dragon’s cave, and this part, I dread. I know how others have done this. I know I should kill the dragon. But oh! He’s beautiful! He rears above me with multifaceted scales that catch the sunlight as surely as my armor.

    The dragon asks, “What do you want?”

    “I came to see if you need anything,” I say.

    “You don’t want to hurt me?”

    “Never.” And I’m shocked that I can say that, because the story shouldn’t progress that way. I never thought it should. I didn’t like it. I wanted the heroes to be nice—like I’m nice—but so often the books just don’t do that.

    This is my mirror in my book, my life in my book, and I never draw my sword against the dragon.

    The chapter ends with a long talk between the two of us. Streakfire eats grass at the mouth of the cave and I make my favorite pie for the dragon to eat. I love every minute, every word, every turn of the page. To think that someone like me would make friends with a dragon!

    When it’s time to close the book, I slip out of the mirror, and I hug this beautiful thing to my heart. I disappeared for hours. At last, I found myself in a story. At last I could go into the mirror, like so many others do, and at last I can see myself as something else. It won’t be the last time, either. The dragon still waits in chapter two.

  • Staircase to basement room.
    short stories

    My Eldritch Life

    My new house is a little strange, I’ll grant you. The rooms seem to rotate in and out of existence. Oftentimes I wake to find a staircase I’ve never seen before, just sitting there, and the floors can’t decide whether they’re carpet, marble, bare dirt, or mahogany. But it wasn’t too much trouble. I didn’t even realize I had a roommate until an eldritch creature slithered out of a brand-new closet to talk to me about the last three days.

    “Oh, it’s been three days since I moved in?” I asked. “Time flies.”

    Ilgilgrit’f’n said, “Most people are begging me for an exit door within eight hours.”

    “That sounds distressing.”

    “Well, it is,” zie said, “but I’ve rather come to expect it. How are you managing everything so normally?”

    I shrugged. “Well, it’s sort of like life, isn’t it?”

    “I don’t follow.”

    “The house is like life,” I explained. “It’s just a series of rooms to which we can never return. If I leave something behind, I know I can’t go back for it, so I take only what I need and don’t worry about the rest. All of these rooms are really nice. You’ve done a great job decorating the place.”

    Taken aback, but also flattered, Ilgilgrit’f’n asked, “Thank…you?”

    The house was rumbling again. It was unsettled, shifting around me, and I picked up my knitting back from the couch. Beyond the doorway, the staircase swayed, twisted, and blurred, before turning into another hallway. The wall at my back started oozing shadow. It wouldn’t last long.

    Knitting bag over my shoulder, I beckoned for Ilgilgrit’f’n to slither at my side. “Have you ever tried to go back to the same room twice in a dream? You can’t do it. Your brain doesn’t build a house for you to dream inside. You’re just imagining one room after another. So…it’s like that.”

    “I thought the house was like life,” said Ilgilgrit’f’n.

    “That too. Life, dreams, potato, potato.”

    The hallway stretched ever-long, passing a kitchen dappled by afternoon sunlight and taking a left turn right after the den where a fireplace burned in the depths of winter evening. I decided to sit by the fire with my knitting bag.

    “Most people go insane with this stuff,” said the eldritch beast.

    “I don’t blame them,” I said. I went back to reading my book. “Living is pretty insane.”

  • A figure standing silhouetted by the light at the end of an underground tunnel.
    short stories

    The Bunker After the End

    I thought I was alone, after the end. Then I found the bunker. Then I realized there had always been people inside. And they were hiding from me.

    The few who didn’t try to run away, screaming, donned full HazMat suits before approaching me. I was sobbing by the time they encircled my crouched body in a creaking mass of canvas suits and sheer plastic face protectors.

    “I’ve looked for you so long,” I wept. “I have been so lonely! Why won’t anyone touch me? I haven’t been touched since I was a child!”

    “You’re sick,” insisted a man in the suit.

    I felt wonderful, and I had always felt wonderful, my body functional as any toad swimming downriver, or the birds flapping in the sky, or the other companions I had held dear in my excruciating solitude.

    There was nothing but abyssal loneliness in the concrete box where they shoved me.

    “What are we going to do with her?” asked a woman outside my door.

    “We have to kill her,” said the man. “She came to find us. There’s no more time.”

    “Kill me?” I asked, banging on the inside of the door. “Kill me?”

    I sobbed that my weakness had sent me to this bunker, into the arms of humans; I sobbed that I had not simply been satisfied in my freedom of the outside world above. Instead of cherishing the grass under my bare feet, I had wondered what it would be like to hold hands with another girl. And now this was my reward for wanting people. This bleak room, these bleak words, my bleak heart.

    ***

    The woman let me out of the cell. “Lisa,” she said. “I’m Lisa.” I didn’t have a name because I’d never needed one. I was simply me.

    Lisa felt bad for me. Against everything that the other survivors recommended, she wanted to take me to her room, and feed me, and clothe me, and treat me like any neighbor in their little bunker.

    “You’re so small,” she said. “There’s nothing about you that might threaten us, no matter what they say!”

    She had never lived in a place with grass or sunlight or toads. She lived in a closet with a mattress, which she was eager to let me rest upon, and a few dirty scraps of cotton that formed her wardrobe. Lisa embraced me with her generosity. I was so pathetic that I loved her for it.

    Until the others found my cell empty.

    Until the others came running to Lisa’s room, so angry with her that they shoved her – threw her – and her head bounced off a shelf and the life went out of her eyes instantly.

    “Kill the outsider!” shouted a man.

    They chased me down the hall of their bunker with furious hands groping at my back, pipes swinging at my head. Finally one struck me. I fell to the ground and blood poured out of my face.

    “Kill her!” said another. “She’s dangerous!”

    The wolves had stolen my food while I was sleeping. The storms had drenched me when it was too cold to be wet. The bees had stung me when I got too near their hive. But they had only hurt me out of the nature of their existence, and there was no comparison to the rain of blows they smashed upon me.

    In my anger, I did what the wolves did, and I bit someone’s hand. The copper taste of blood filled my mouth.

    “Dammit!” The man jerked back and shook the blood off onto the floor in little drops.

    “She got him! Kill him!”

    “Get them both!”

    “What?” asked the man, turning wide eyes upon his friends as they turned their pipes and fists upon him.

    He didn’t let them kill him easily.

    He was more of a fighter than I was. He drew more blood. And each time he drew blood, the vitriol spread, the violence spread, and the men turned upon each other to fight and bite and tear.

    One of the doctors fell near me, dying with his face halfway crushed. He had enough consciousness to tell me, “You brought the virus from outside, inside. You brought the violence with you.”

    “It was always with you,” I spat back as he died.

    The killing spread and men fell. The injured ones went on to injure others. They ran into the other rooms to fight, and the infection spread further.

    I didn’t wait to watch it. I just picked up what was left of my bloody, aching body and I ran outside, to the grass, to the trees, to the forest, to an unforgiving sky with a blazing sun that never meant to hurt me.

  • republished,  short stories

    Something Wrong

    There was something wrong with her.

    I could tell from the beginning. It wasn’t how she looked, although it more than offered to my imagination. Shoulder-length black hair. White skin. It was always the dark ones, she told me once. I believed her.

    It’s easy to recall the day she came to us. Take care of her, Mother had said. She’s fragile. And then she’d put her in my arms, this new pink-skinned baby, and I looked into her little baby-black eyes and wanted to kill her. I put my hand on the paperweight at the desk, but Mother was looking, so I set it down and gave her back.

    She never looked at the mobiles hanging above her crib. They were bright shiny things, with pink ponies and light blue bunnies that twirled even without a draft. Mother hung toys from the wooden slats that even glowed when it was nighttime. Mother said she wouldn’t feel scared that way when it became dark.

    Her eyes would roll and she’d look over at me. Babies can’t turn their eyes like that, I’ve heard, or smile, but she looked over at me and she smiled.

    It was worse when she first crawled. She took a liking to me at the instant, came to my feet while I sat in the rocking chair, her hair a puffy black cloud around her face. She opened her mouth, and she had two sharp little teeth. I didn’t pick her up, and she never cried.

    She became as quiet a toddler as she was a baby. Mother dressed her in fluffy pink skirts with white trim that made her pale skin look even paler. I sat her in the sand box in our back yard, and she didn’t touch the hot sand, but looked up at the sun unblinkingly. I stayed behind in the shade, looking at her while she looked at the sun. I wanted her delicate skin to burn. I wanted to watch it turn red and crisp and boil.

    Mother was out at the store the entire day through, and she was in the sand box the entire day through. Before Mother came home, picked her back up, and took her inside. Her skin wasn’t even warm.

    I watched her as she grew. I always liked children, but I never liked her, and when I held her I wanted to put one hand on her small chin and another on the back of her head and twist hard enough to hear the snap. Later, I thought, because she was too small now and there was still time.

    It wasn’t long before she dressed herself. As soon as she got tall enough and strong enough to slide open the drawers on her dresser, she clothed herself, and as soon as Mother started forcing me to take her clothes shopping, she wore black. She was partial to black, and red, but she never touched anything gold. For her birthdays I got her a little necklace, bright pure gold, and I put it on her. She screamed, and with her short nails clawed at her throat and Mother made me take it off.

    She still liked me. She sat on my lap when I read during the day, and knelt by the computer when I tried to ignore her, her large dark eyes just staring at me. Staring.

    She didn’t go to school, nor did she learn from Mother. She taught herself, reading what Mother told her to read and writing what Mother told her to write, but her real education came from her own self. I found the first one when she was seven, a little mockingbird pinned to the bark of a tree with her sharp, ruby-decorated hairpins. Blood ran down its feathers, spread out and dried like some sick stigmata. It was still twitching when I took it down, but there was nothing for it now. I held it like I held her, and watched the blood flow over my hands until it finally stopped moving. I buried it under her childhood sandbox.

    She sat by me at dinner that night, Mother’s lasagna on the table while Mother herself chattered away about neighborhood gossip. Her eyes stayed on me, and she smiled again, like she had when she was a baby. Her teeth were white and even now, though, and her lips a dark red. It looked like the blood of the jay.

    But later, I knew. I’d have time to kill her later, to pin her hands to the trees and slit her throat quickly. She would not suffer, as the bird had, but I’d wait until she was bled dry from her hands before the actual cutting, and then I would bury her somewhere under the moon she admired so much. Her pale dark eyes would close, and she would never look at me again.

    She grew curves, her breasts before her hips, and her cheeks hollowed out. Her dark eyes grew darker, her black hair blacker, and still she loved me. I found the cat under my bedroom window, stomach slit open from its genitalia to its chin, and its innards spread artfully around it. They were concentric circles, perfect and bloody.

    Boys asked her out. Girls asked her out. She never said yes, and she spent her nights with me, while I watched the television, while I cooked and ate dinner, while I did homework. She didn’t often speak, but she always talked to me. I saw the words in her eyes and her movements.

    She finally grew to the age I’d been when I’d first found the bird, and Mother was dead. The police didn’t know what happened to her, although there’d been much investigation, but I knew.

    It would be too late. I realized this now, looking at her long legs and slim waist and strong arms. She could match me, so I’d have to do what I had to do while she slept.

    I went into her room, where she always slept on her back, her round, bare breasts reflecting the moonlight from the window. She didn’t look vulnerable, even now, but she was more so than before.

    She didn’t wake when I took the paring knife and the nails from the kitchen. She didn’t wake when I straddled her hips, looking down at her blank face. Her black hair was in soft rings around her head, like the cat’s guts, and I knew I was going to slit her like she’d done the cat, and crucified her like the bird, and I’d keep my hand over her mouth as she floundered and died.

    She woke when I nailed her palms to her bedside table and her bedpost. Her eyes were wide, afraid, but I just shh-ed her calmly and put my hand over her mouth. She tried to bite me when I shifted, and then I smoothed her sweaty brow.

    It’s for the best, I told her.

    She shook her head. No.

    I slid the knife from her girl’s parts, where she was blossoming well and her black hair was curly, up her gut and stomach and chest. I had to press harder on her chest, but it came. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t shake her head or try to fight at all anymore. Blood was pooled everywhere, drying on her hands.

    Like the jay. I could see the way she had done it, holding it lovingly while she tacked it down. Or the cat, spreading out its stomach and intestines in the flower bush. I could even see how Mother had died, in the home where we’d put her because she was old. Their trees would blossom well this season, I knew, because she would keep giving the gift she’d given her and me. They would flourish as we had.

    It’s for the best, I wanted to tell her. But now she was gone.

    There was something wrong with her.