Horror
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The Salt in the Grease
Saul had a wife once. Her name was Mabel. She had a laugh that sounded like a creek running over smooth stones. Then she tripped on a loose floorboard in their cabin and hit her head on the iron stove. Just like that, the creek stopped running. Saul didn’t want to see the trees or…
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The Bone in the Road
I have spent fifteen years looking at the worst parts of people. I have seen the way a man looks when he knows he is caught, and I have seen the way a city burns when the lights go out. You think you get tough doing this job. You think your heart turns into a…
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The Guard in the Dark
The clock says I have been awake for eleven days. My brain feels like a wet sponge being squeezed by a heavy hand. I know the rules of survival: water, heat, shelter, and sleep. I have the first three. The fourth one is a ghost that refuses to haunt me. I sit in the lantern…
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The Ink on the Stone
Artie lived in a tower of stone and glass. It sat on a jagged rock that the ocean tried to swallow every single day. He was a man who liked things in their place. He polished the brass until it looked like gold. He swept the floor until you could eat off it. But his…
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The Rhythms of the Deep
Kaleb was the kind of man who bought a one-way ticket to a rock in the ocean because he was tired of people. He was thirty-two years old and already finished with the world. He had a face like an unmade bed and a heart that felt like a heavy stone in his chest. When…
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The Pulse Beneath the Salt
I have walked across the burning sands of the east and sailed the frozen waves of the north. My legs are heavy now. My eyes are tired. But it was my ears that gave up first. The world used to be a loud place, full of shouting and birds and the whistle of the wind.…
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The Red Wick
I am sitting on the cold floor of the gallery, and the glass is starting to rattle. You think lighthouses are for the sailors. You think they are for the brave boys on the boats trying to find their way home. They aren’t. I have watched three ships break on the rocks this month alone.…
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The Ink in the Marrow
I spend my days looking at old files. Yellow paper. Thick dust. Mostly I organize reports on how people used to die from things we don’t even have names for anymore. It is a quiet life. I like quiet because my childhood was very loud. It was hospitals and beeping machines and doctors with cold…
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The Weight of the Echo
The bunker was forty feet below the dirt. It was a box made of gray concrete and lead. Mona stood in the center of the main room. She was an architect who built places for people to hide. Her clients were rich men who were afraid of the sun or the wind or other people.…
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The Silver Exchange
Sarah spent every waking hour looking for flaws. She was a surgical resident, which meant she was an expert at finding things that needed to be fixed. But the one thing she could never fix was the girl in the mirror. To Sarah, her own face was a collection of mistakes. Her nose felt too…