Story Excerpts
“Sabbath”
Her name is Carmen, the pastor’s niece.
Her Sunday best is yellow.
Yellow like banana pudding, cool and smooth and soft. Her dress is summer wanting and church flattering, summon you to see her in it and think the word ebony. She slips through the parish and into the front of everything like light through the stained glass windows. She is welcomed by the church before Pastor even says, “Church, we have a guest.” The pastor’s been mentioning his niece from out of town for a couple weeks already. “She’ll be with us for a short while, through Easter, so keep an eye on her now.” He looks over his glasses at the congregation. A smile is there, small and proud.
She smiles and dips her head, shows off that she’s flat-ironed her hair this morning. The church stops fanning themselves with various papers folded in half in order to raise their hands and clap like someone’s just been saved. Your hands hum from beating the tambourine. They throb like sleep limbs tingle, as if the animal’s skin you’ve been playing decided to bite back.
“Abel is Found”
Head bent to the mound of freshly turned earth her eyes sear as the weeping begins, and her lashes catch in the wet like a fly’s legs. Her arms wrap around herself, barely holding her like a broken crib, like a crib that has been broken into. Heart tugging to Heaven, she feels naked again as she heaves in breaths too full for her rib to fit safely.
Novel Excerpt
Like a charm on a necklace’s taut chain, she is strung between them. Only slightly does she slide one way or the other with a tilt of her head or a particularly drawn-out moan until I finally take a breath when she does.
I want to be her; I want to be them.
Daniel’s hand is too light on my back as we stand at the outskirts of the scene. These doms are so synchronized. Not a word is exchanged between them as they touch her. Not from what I can see. And now they’ve just taken their floggers out from their belt loops at the same time. And once they’re out, they don’t even flog her. They just slowly drape and pull their floggers over different parts of her body, and she turns blindly to follow the swirling lines of contact.
To me she looks like Eve, like Eve meeting the serpent, its cool belly moving across her thighs. The serpent’s flickering tongue like the ghosting of their fingertips moving along the sides of her neck and the tops of her kneecaps.
“The Hunter”
He fills the doorway like a living shadow, his features lit by the fire the same faint way that clouds appear in the afterglow of lightning. From what she can see, his hair looks as if the wind and night fog had fought over it, and the hair on his face is new since a few days past across his cheeks and over his chin. His time away has roughened him, and yet relief flutters behind her lips, forcing her to smile. Her husband is home, and with her face half hidden by her hair, hanging like moss, her eyes fasten to his in the dark.
“To Be Noble”
Dust swirled out as he stepped into the tower, over the shattered glass. The rain was quiet now. Inside, his eyes had to gradually adjust to the dim. When he could see, there was not much change in clarity. Everything looked overlaid in grey, a fog of age had settled. The Prince strode in deeper and tried not to gag on the stagnant air. Webs curtained every direction he looked in. He could see the skeletons of their makers hanging in them, curled, translucent, and brittle. There was no counting of how many of these fatal pale tapestries he’d had to pass through in this decayed room before he finally found her.
“Thrice”
He put the shell to his ear and the thin coldness of it cut a chill through him. Almost upon instinct, he pulled it away from his head, but there was a sound. There was the swirl of salted whispers, lightly frictioned air from elsewhere. This is what the ocean sounds like, he thought, but then there came a voice!
At once, the magician stood and his chair teetered in its place. The voice was gentle and deep and said, “Call to me by my name.”