For sale: one-of-a-kind secluded home in nice family neighborhood. private drive. inquire wilson realty, 432-6600. Beatrice knew she would buy the house before she saw it, even before she knew the price. In a tough real estate market, people bought properties as-is, regardless of the home inspection report. They wanted entry into the cycle of […]

Guilt and blossom chase me along the mausoleum path. The guilt because I’m late, but not only that. Coming here makes me realise how badly I’ve neglected a friendship. The blossom sticks to my shoes, already fringed with brown corruption before it left the tree. It’s been too long since I last saw Abigail Goudy. […]

We always died before turning twelve. Then we returned to the afterlife, lived briefly, and became flame souls again, reborn only to repeat the cycle of dying. We wore skin and moved like ordinary humans, but we are not like other children. We are Abikus, spirits of the dead who visit the living. Mist that […]

i. He visited me in the night, carrying his head. Dead men would sometimes visit the city this way. I had known this could happen with the executed, but I could not bring myself to accept the visitation. Yet there he was, in my apartment: holding his severed head just above the waist, eyes open […]