We don’t choose the skin we live in, she’d said. Our little fish girl. She knifed through water like a hungry seal, sleek and black. Our little fish girl, swimming the darkness. It had started as a small pinkish patch of skin on Olivia’s cheek. It was diamond-shaped, the size of a small button and […]

It was a smell at first, a reek climbing out of Cheta’s body. Like the stabbing whiff of rats’ urine. Something, sharp enough to draw blood, clawed at his skin while he slept. Then it stretched out even though Cheta was not willing to cede any space for it. It prowled his physical world as […]

Millie’s daughter came back twenty days after her death. This was not surprising, since everybody came back twenty days after their death. What was surprising, though, was that Ariana chose to come back as a young woman, even though she was only ten when she was struck by a passing car. The driver had been […]

Insolent pattern, this: the spackling of corrupted metal where his lips wetted it every night. Insolent comfort, too: the way the boat extended an internal pipe of dragon-nail or chitinite or some such, it didn’t matter, from the tumble of planks that made the walls of the hold. This is where Anefthyn suckled. This is […]