A cat or fox, or even a stag, would certainly have made for a more convenient familiar. Something that could move on its own, do minor chores, the sort that didn’t need hands, and curl up next to her in… Continue reading

The rope hung down into the darkness of the rift, still and almost certainly not touching the bottom. Kay had tugged and swung it about, trying to sound the depths, but there seemed to be as little sound as light… Continue reading

She was far past the point of wanting to simply sit down and cry. It felt almost as if she had missed the gap in her resolve that would have let her do so – the hole she could have… Continue reading

He took as deep a breath as he could hold, as deep and sound as ever, it seemed, and shone the penlight into the hole again. Holding his side with a splayed hand, stretching the skin from the edges of… Continue reading

“There,” one of them pointed, leaning precariously far from the edge of the slanted roof. “Right there.” The other stayed sensibly seated, squinting at a horizon that looked no different than it had five minutes or five days ago. “I… Continue reading

It felt silly to even think such a thing, but it was true, wasn’t it? The skies hadn’t been clear since they had started building that church. Almost three months ago. When it didn’t rain, the skies hung in sullen… Continue reading

It was just down the hall. Thirty seconds at a dead sprint, and he could be safe. She had already gone. Almost three hours ago, and he had listened with his ear pressed against the door as her footsteps had… Continue reading

“It’s not right,” she said, as he tore another page from the book and began folding it into the tiny square that would make it easiest to swallow. “Of course it isn’t,” he said. “If it was right, we wouldn’t… Continue reading

The sun still seemed to move behind the glassy heavens sometimes, searching bleakly through the blue as if it, too, had lost something it couldn’t give up on trying to find again. Returning again and again. They squinted at it… Continue reading

She didn’t move when he sat down beside her. The breeze blew smoke from the tip of her cigarette in her place. It stirred her hair, or he might have thought she was made of stone. That was how it… Continue reading