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Years of Settlement yoS 1 → Dhagren births two gallstones and plants them in the planet’s corrupted soil. The gallstones grow into radiant objects [a sword hilt & a melted ribcage]. Dhagren adorns their body, placing the former on their hip and the latter over their chest. The fusion emitsContinue Reading

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For as long as he could remember, the barrel had sat in the backyard, behind a locked gate and a very tall fence. Only the father had the key, and three times a day, the boy would watch his father take a jumbled plate of scraps out to the backyardContinue Reading

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It was just before sunset every twenty-four hours to the second. She appeared, whispered one word; then was gone.  I stood on the hill behind the house for fifteen years just before twilight at that exact same time trying to hear the word. Every time, a bird chirped, a truckContinue Reading

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The ideal woman isvery brightly colored.She is shiny; her breastspoint in sharpconical assertion oftheir amazing defiance ofphysical laws; her waistturns where she leans orbacks away and, ifshe is clothed herstatic swiveling rumplesher neat skirt, shifting andhitching it over herneat hips. Her lapseems emphasized. Her legsalways exert themselves.If she is clothed,Continue Reading

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You could, if you were so minded,dab another descriptor onto the page,something sunny like dazzle or a blotch of razory silver, glinting in a naughty knot of cursive, a wink or arched curve of pencil under a dramatic swath of glistening fringe.The eye would be brimful and green, the hairContinue Reading

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“The cold rain began, a slanted pelting of big drops. Beneath the streetlight’s orange dome, the gutters already ran black. Somewhere, a dog barked.” Hey, that’s no dog! The solid, middle-aged woman pushed the typewriter’s carriage release back and to the left, then leaned down and cocked her head outContinue Reading

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Killers had become brazen. Wednesday afternoon around 2 p.m., a gunman firing from the passenger side of a car shot a man on the sidewalk walking beside a ten-year-old girl. As Thomas Green collapsed, bleeding out on the pavement, the murderer grabbed his sister Chyna, jumped back into the carContinue Reading

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As a five-year-old child, I was told I must never go near the closet at the top of the attic stairs, where dwelled a ghostly monster who survived on a diet of caterpillars, spiders, and snails, but was known to devour children so small they disappeared down its gullet withContinue Reading

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The ring-a-ding-ding of the bell dangling from the deli shop’s front door knob signaled the arrival of yet another customer. Felicity called out a welcome from behind the cash register as the calico made her way to the counter. “Ooooh, corned beef!” squealed the calico. “What a lovely surprise. I’llContinue Reading