Immortality is far from a silent thing.

Your mother tongue babbled around you in your youth—voices in chirped and croaking tones and babies whose first words spoke of the sun and the stones. Mothers who crooned of the cold sand and the fire that could warm the meat of the beasts you hunted.

Of the creatures in the dark.

Your tribe did not know what exactly the creatures did or how they came to be in the dark, but you all knew they were there.

They found you first. The bite felt like a thousand stinging nettles. A hushed voice asked you if you wanted to live forever.
Yes.

You thought you said the word. Eternity flooded your veins. It was over for them. For you, it was just beginning.

Back then, you huddled with the masses and fed on them when they slept. Their pained cries were drowned out through layers of furs and found later in the piles of bodies struggling to keep warm as winter arrived.

It was so cold. They didn't have time to silence you.

Eventually it was Kang, the leader’s boy, who stood up to you. Called you what you were.

Monster. The word was more complex. It doesn't translate well.

Banishment tasted more sour than the blood of the beasts of the forest.

But, immortality meant that all things turned to dust eventually. The tribe would die. The rocks would weather. The ice would melt. The chirps and croaks would make way for a smooth, ancient Germanic language.

You would learn it, of course. Perfectly rolling off your tongue in cool, clear tones like a viola played to perfection. In this era, you did not have to huddle in tiny caves; you could pull in a bar wench and talk to her. Seduce her. She would coo and she would cry against your ear as you purred against her throat.

But in your head, you thought only in your native tongue. In the language that was dust, along with the cave and the tribe. The occasional time you would run into another like yourself, you might hear the language, but the Ancient Ones were getting rarer. Too much sunlight. Too many accidents.

The word for what you were was different then, too.

Vampyre.

By the time you reach the age of technology, you stop thinking in your native tongue. When you think about the fact that your back hurts, it is easier to just think that it hurts in English, rather than to translate.

You press your thumb against the button on the frame to your door. Another long day at the university with the shades drawn. Late nights. You're so knowledgeable about history, so many languages known. So charismatic. They think you need the additional security to keep the obsessed students from clamoring through your doors.

In a way, yes.

The door opens, and you step into the empty building. No furniture. No tables. One lone leather chair in front of a flat screen television, a wine rack, and a coffin. Your patent leather shoes click against the concrete floor as you step over to pour yourself a glass of wine.

Professor of linguistics.

What a hock of crap.

You've forgotten more languages than your department head ever knew. You've written more books than are in that college library. You've been more than those students will ever be.
You flip on the TV and lower the blinds on your floor-to-ceiling windows.

A sunrise starts on the screen, playing from the camera positioned outside your home.

That.

That is what they have that you do not.

The envy you feel is palpable. Vicious. It swirls inside of you like the red wine in your glass and it makes you want to vomit. Your anger is more real than the image on the screen.

You had no choice back in the cave.

With the vampire.

You had no words for what was happening to you.

Words for what it was didn't exist. The bite. The Turning. They came later, when you left the Stone Age.

Back then, you were but a victim.

Choosing to change was like breathing. You breathed. And now, now they breathe--

But look at your accomplishments. And they haven't caught you yet.

It should be worth it.

A notification interrupts the sunrise. News. You flip away from the things you want and cannot have to the things you deal with that are part of the world you live in instead.

“And now we have the latest candidate to jump in the Senate race, dark horse candidate, Kris Kartsoris. Kris, do you have anything to say?”

You follow politics. You follow what the world is up to. After all, you're going to be here a long time.

However, the person who steps on screen, standing under a dark umbrella is known to you. The dark hair, the tawny skin, the black eyes. He smiles a broken-toothed smile that has all the charm of a man who has led more people under harder, more dire circumstances.

It's Kang.

“This city is hurting. Every day, we see violence to the youth of our city at night, and we don't know why. I'm going to start campaigning to clean up our universities and find out what's been happening to the children of our state.”

Prick.

The mobile phone on your chair rings. You step towards it and look down. It is from an unknown number. The tinny noise reverberates across the empty room like a baby's cry in a cave.

You answer.

“It has been a long time, Monster.”

A language with one is dead.

A language with two is alive.

He has come to find you and to stop you. For him, you will be his Monster.
​
Your mother tongue was immortal after all.

You never should have followed her down that alley, but you did.

She moved like she knew you, like she had been waiting for you. Her bare feet made no sound against the damp pavement. The streetlights buzzed overhead, casting flickering shadows that seemed to stretch and twist as she passed. The alleyway smelled of clove cigarettes and something rancid-something sweet and spoiled, like fruit left too long in the heat. No one else saw her. Or if they did, they refused to acknowledge her. But you…

You were curious. Or maybe it was something deeper than curiosity. Maybe it was something pulling you forward.

The alley was narrow, the walls slick with moss, bricks pressing close like the ribcage of something ancient and dying. You stepped forward, ignoring the way the light behind you dimmed, ignoring the way the night swallowed sound, until there was nothing but your own breathing, your own heartbeat, the wet drip, drip, drip from somewhere unseen.
She never turned back, never slowed, until-

Until she did.

Her head turned first, slow and unnatural, and the rest of her body followed. Her skin, pale, too pale, like something pulled from the bottom of a river. Her lips, peeling and cracked, stretched into a grin too wide, too full of teeth. And her eyes:

Empty. Hollow. Waiting.

Your stomach clenched. The air pressed thick against your skin, and you wanted to run. But before you could move, something beneath your foot gave way with a sickening, wet squelch. The scent of iron filled your nose. Not garbage. Not some dead animal.

Meat.

Human.

A hand. You could see the fingers now, half-buried in the grime, skin darkened, nails torn. And when you looked back up, she was already there, too close, too wrong, her grin stretching, splitting, revealing layer upon layer of needle-thin teeth.

And then--

Darkness.
 
You wake to silence.

The room around you is white, too white, the kind of white that makes your head ache. A table. A chair. A mirror. But it isn’t a mirror. You know it isn’t a mirror.

A voice crackles from the other side of the glass. Calm. Controlled. Clinical.

“You’re doing good,” it says. “Try again. Tell us what happened next.”

Your mouth is dry. Your tongue feels thick, wrong. You swallow, but it doesn’t help.

“I-” The words catch. Your teeth ache.

The voice continues. Papers rustle.

“We found you in that alley. Do you remember that?”

Yes. Maybe. No.

“We found the others, too. Or what was left of them.”

Something cold coils in your stomach. You don’t want to ask. You don’t want to know.

“Tell us what you saw.”

The woman. The alley. The shifting walls. The thing wearing human skin.

Or-

Or was it you?

You don’t remember biting down. You don’t remember the taste of copper flooding your mouth, don’t remember the way your fingers dug in, pulling, tearing-

But your teeth hurt. Your jaw throbs. And when you open your mouth to answer, the voice on the other side gasps.

Because there, beneath your tongue, another row of teeth is growing.

And you know.

You never left that alley.
 
You try to sleep, but the dreams won’t let you.

They are wet, sticky things, full of whispers and laughter and teeth. The taste of raw meat lingers on your tongue, even when you wake gasping, even when you shove your knuckles into your mouth to stop the sound from escaping.

The door opens. A different voice this time, lower, softer.

“How are we feeling today?”

You don’t answer. You stare at the walls, at the too-bright lights, at the tray of untouched food beside you. You are not hungry.

Or maybe you are, but not for that.

The voice sighs. A chair scrapes against the floor.

“You were found in a bad state,” they continue. “Alone. In that alley.” A pause. “There was blood.”

Your hands clench.

“You kept saying the same thing over and over when they brought you in.”

You don’t ask. You don’t want to know.

But they tell you anyway.

“Not mine.”

Silence hums between you. The air is too thick, pressing against your ribs, pressing against your skin. The voice shifts, uneasy.

“Do you remember?”

You do.

You remember the alley. The woman. The shifting walls. The taste of something you should not have tasted. The hunger curling, twisting, growing-

You shake your head.

“No,” you say.

They sigh again, pushing a paper across the table.

“This is for evaluation purposes only,” they say. “We need a sample. Just—open your mouth.”
​
Your pulse pounds. Your teeth ache.

Slowly, you obey.

The voice on the other side goes still. The scrape of chair legs. The sharp, sharp inhale.

You close your mouth. Too late. You already saw it in their eyes.

They know.

They see.

They know you were not alone in that alley.

And they know-

You brought something back with you.

Eli had lived in his grandmother’s old farmhouse for three months when he first noticed the mirror. It wasn’t there when he moved in—of that, he was sure. But now, an ancient, dust-fogged thing leaned against the far wall of the upstairs hallway.
 
He hadn’t hung it there. No one had. And yet, there it was.
 
The first time he looked into it, he barely recognized himself. His reflection was… off. The smile that curled at the edge of its lips wasn’t his. Its head tilted a fraction too far to the side. Its eyes seemed darker. Hungrier.
 
He didn’t look in the mirror again. But it didn’t matter.
 
Each dusk, as the house sighed into night and the orange sky bled into bruised purple, he would hear it; a faint, rhythmic tapping. Like fingers drumming against glass.
 
Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
 
One evening, just as the last light drained from the sky, Eli walked past the mirror on his way downstairs.
 
His reflection didn’t move.
 
It stayed behind, grinning. Watching.
 
That night, he dragged an old sheet from the closet and threw it over the glass. He didn’t sleep, but at least he didn’t have to see it. At least, not until the sheet slid off the mirror on its own.
 
He found it crumpled in the middle of the hallway floor the next morning. The mirror was bare.
 
Eli stopped passing by after that. He stayed downstairs. He blocked the door leading upstairs with an old dresser. He didn’t go up—not anymore.
 
But the tapping didn’t stop.
 
Days passed. Weeks. He avoided mirrors entirely. Windows, too. Anything reflective.
 
But they found him anyway.
 
One evening, as dusk bled into night, the tapping started again—this time from the living room window. But when Eli approached, there was nothing outside. Only his own reflection in the glass.
 
Then it smiled.
 
And it knocked. 

The upside-down, rippling face peers over the rim, gazing down at me without knowing I’m there.

“Wishing well?” says a voice, warped and muffled by the stagnant water. “I wish…I wish that I could have a different life.”

Her tears hit the surface and turn to pearls as they sink into my waiting hands. Close behind them comes a single quarter, spinning and winking, landing tails-up.

“Ugh, this is stupid,” the woman says, wiping her eyes. “It’s not like anybody’s listening.”

Moments later, she’s gone. Clutching my new treasures, I turn upside down and kick free of the gravity of this particular wishing well, out into my own watery domain. Other wishing wells open up all around me—left, right, above, below—but nobody is looking into them, so I continue on to my nest. Centuries-worth of pennies, greenish in hue, encrust the walls. Since today’s coin is a quarter, I take it inside and add it to the chandelier I’ve been painstakingly constructing.

The pearls I place in my jewelry box, for they are the rarest and most precious gifts I receive through the wells.

Well, almost the most precious.

But that one coveted gift has eluded me.

As if the bountiful universe has heard my thoughts, a distorted scream disrupts the water, and I turn toward it. I don’t want to get my hopes up; I’ve been disappointed before. Cautiously, I swim to the opening of my nest and search for the source of the scream, finally spotting the churning water in one of the wells.

I propel myself forward. At first, it’s difficult to see through the furious froth being kicked up, but there is indeed a child in the well.

The boy, maybe eight years old, writhes and screams, choking as water floods his mouth and lungs. My limitations don’t allow me to really do anything until he’s dead, but I push those limits, reaching up and removing one of the boy’s blue tennis shoes and stroking the sole of his foot. His screams become of a different kind. Now he is trying to see what’s beneath him, and in his thrashing, he’s tiring himself out.

I’m with him the whole time as we wait for an adult to appear with a flashlight and a rope, but nobody comes. As the child weakens and slips out of consciousness, I’m able to grab his ankle, pulling him through the bottom of the well and into my world.

Gently, of course. Much more gently than I was treated.

When he awakens, the boy is confused. He looks at the bed of time-softened nickels and moves his hand slowly in front of his face, then he gasps as if expecting to inhale water.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “There’s no death down here.”

Trust me, I’ve tried.

“Who are you?” he asks. It’s the one question I cannot answer.

“I’m lonely,” I say. “I’m liminal.”

“What are all those tunnels?”

“Wishing wells, like the one you came through.”

“But if they’re sticking out all over the place, which way is up?”

“There’s no up here, or down. There’s only me and my treasures.”

I run my fingers through his short, blonde hair, this precious boy, this rarest of gifts. But I must control myself.

I tell him all about my life and how sad I am here alone, only catching glimpses of the human world. While he sleeps, I return to his well and listen to his family’s fruitless search and learn that his name is Charlie. Once or twice, one of them takes a look into the well, as if hoping that Charlie will magically appear. I grin up at them, unseen.

I begin to fear that my own silent wish will never be granted, but then it happens.

“I wish for my son to come back,” says Charlie’s mother. Her quarter lands heads-up in my palm.

Charlie has grown quite fond of me, and he holds my hand as I guide him back toward the wishing well. When he sees his mother's face, he starts to wail. My grip on him tightens. This is exactly the way it happened between me and my predecessor.

“This coin,” I say, holding it up for him to see, “is your ticket home. Or at least it’s a ticket home. Do you want to go home?”

He nods, pearlescent tears rolling up into his beautiful hair.

“Remember this moment,” I say, closing the coin in my fist, heads-up. “It’ll be your only way out someday.”

I swim as close to the surface as I’m normally able to, and then I push through it, gulping in sweet, nighttime, human air. Above me, Charlie’s mother screams as I begin to climb. There’s no telling what I look like after all these years, with only coins and pearls to show me snatches of my reflection.

Dark water streams from my body and patters into the pool at the bottom of the well. Down there, beneath the surface, little Charlie is thinking it looks like being underwater in a swimming pool when it’s raining, and he doesn’t understand yet. I didn’t understand either, not for ages.
​
But now, I am free. My wish has come true.

The stars are not as still as they seem,
They pulse and flicker with silent screams.
The night is stitched with unseen eyes,
Glimpses of truths the daylight denies.

A thousand aeons drift like dust,
On cosmic winds of fate unjust.
Planets crumble, gods decay,
Yet something watches far away.

Not bound by flesh, nor locked in time,
It shifts through thought, it warps the mind.
A whisper crawls behind the veil,
A nameless hunger, vast and pale.

What hand first lit the burning sun?
Who carved the orbits one by one?
What madness guides the cosmic tide,
Where all is swallowed, none abide?

The moon is cold, its face untrue,
A mask that cracks to let it through.
Beneath the surface, something stirs,
A shadow writhing, void concurs.

We call it fate, we name it space,
Yet know not what awaits its gaze.
A shrouded maw, a sight unseen,
A beast that dreams beyond the dream.

It whispers secrets, slow and deep,
In riddles carved through time’s asleep.
The past unmade, the future lies,
All things dissolve in hollow skies.

So gaze upon the stars with dread,
For they are tombstones for the dead.
Not gods, not hope, not cosmic grace--
But open mouths in endless space.

And when the silence grips your throat,
When reason drowns, when meaning chokes,
You’ll know the truth the void imparts:
We are but echoes of the dark. 

Emmanuel Komen is an African contemporary poet, philosopher, and thinker based in Nairobi, Kenya. His works explore themes of identity, nature, and the human experience. A passionate motorsport enthusiast, Emmanuel is an avid fan of the safari rally and proudly supports Team Toyota GR.

​

There once was a room where nothing happened.
The floor was covered in plush rugs blanketing the oiled hardwood and the walls held books in a sequence meant to mimic order. Where sounds were absorbed by the thickness of heavy tomes and textiles while the low rumble of distant shrieks approached like thunder, causing the grain of the wood to tremble.
And the key turned in the lock as the handle shook.
 
There once was a room where nothing happened.
The air was warm from the sunlight that dripped through tall windows. Where dust rippled in the light, unsettled by nothing, and landed softly on a potted plant. Shadows shifted over the leaves as tentacles, slick with wet, slid over the window panes while suckers pock pocked their way up the glass, slapping and squelching to blot out the drenching light. And amidst the writhing bodies, a balmy eyelid opened to find the belted curtains suddenly drawn.
 
There once was a room where nothing happened.
Where the softness of a pillow cries for you to come closer, lay your head, and trust the closing of your eyes. Their treaties matched in tone and pitch by the whispering beatific voice that wends through the vent on the floor, sighing in reminiscence of hopelessness and defeat. The murmurs of “why didn’t you?” and “shouldn’t you have?” are sliced by the sliding of the grate into place.
 
There once was a room where nothing happened.
Where the door was bolted and curtains drawn, where sunlight never stretched and sound never echoed. Where all was silent save for the gentle whisper of death slipping love notes under the door.

​Shavauna Munster is a writer and historian living in Salt Lake City. She enjoys weaving the history of medieval physical punishment, medicine, and salvation with her love of creative writing. When she's not working with local history organizations or meeting with her horror writing group, she can be found crocheting with her cats.

When we released the cloud of BumbleBears, everyone cheered. Naysayers and optimists united in delighted wonder, beholding our lab-made magic.

In truth, as we watched them fly free, we didn’t care about saving the planet through scientific hybridization and DNA manipulation. We only wanted to recreate the picture hanging in our childhood bedroom; the one over the dresser the color of old butter our mother bought third-hand.

The picture: a black-and-yellow striped bear, bumblebee wings holding her, impossibly, aloft.
And when those naysayers said (as naysayers always do) that it was impossible. That bumblebees (extinct 2175 CE) and bears (extinct 2273 CE) could not be combined, could not fly. We told them that we had harnessed the energy of our searing, unrelenting sun more efficiently than ever before. That a nickel-phosphorus skeleton was lighter than those of the few-remaining birds. We told them that through science and machinery, through the integration of AI-powered neural systems with muscle and chitin, we had created a cyborg that could endure this inhospitable, heat-ravaged world.

We held out our hands, and BumbleBears alighted on our fingers, nuzzling our lesion-riddled skin. The others copied us; naysayers, optimists, dirt-faced children, and bedraggled officials offering what remained of their skin to our creation’s caresses.

And if the nuzzling turned to biting, if screams soon drowned out cheers as surely as the hungry, rising oceans had swallowed half the known world, what of it?

We had removed the bumblebees’ stingers, but not the bears’ sharp teeth. We gave them wings and made them small, but we didn’t excise their craving for flesh.

And if each bite envenomated, if silence drowned out screams as paralysis seized central nervous systems—well. In the end, all creatures must feast to survive.

We think humanity has ground enough species to dust beneath the merciless boots of progress. And we think the BumbleBears’ lovely, soft fur, their sad, dark eyes, their sheer impossibility given wings—their lab-made magic—is worth the cost.
​
After all, isn’t the price of magic always blood?

Life becomes death becomes life.

I believe.

Life is unending if we choose to make it so. If we believe and understand.

We discard the old. A waste.

We must ingest the old, become the new. We must seek renewal, be reborn in your image.

Ouroboros watch over me.

My body is not what makes me. My soul is pure and my will is strong. I can change. I will change.

#

Yesterday I lay in the sun for an hour. Naked, no shade, no clouds.

Samantha would have scolded me for my foolishness. But she left. She didn’t understand me before and she wouldn’t understand me now.

My skin is pink, and it stings when I move. I wish for the itching to begin, for my skin to peel. Oh, Ouroboros, remake me.

#

Two more nights of aches and itching have passed. The first layer of skin is dead, loose, free. I rub across it, making tiny rolls of skin. I pull at the patches on my arms and legs, my chest and face. They come away in bigger and bigger pieces.

I peel off the old and do what I must to become new.

It tastes of nothing when I place it on my tongue. Some larger pieces have hints of salt. When I swallow there’s an aftertaste of sweetness.

There’s much more to eat. I can’t let any of it go to waste.

Samantha would have thought me disgusting. Maybe a part of her always did. Is that why she always yelled at me? Is that why she left?

It’s her loss. For I will become something better.

In your image.

#

The first layer is gone, but there are many more. The sun burns stronger, my skin reddens more easily. And it peels. It sheds.

I consume it all. I lick my wounds where I begin to blister and bleed. Nothing is wasted.
She thought I would never amount to anything. She thought I didn’t have it in me to change.
I’ll show her.

Samantha will see me when I am reborn.

#

Ouroboros watches over me.

My skin turns hard; scabs become scales. Old becomes new. In your image.

My fingers and toes ache. They thicken, swelling around the nails. The skin splits and bleeds. A nail clatters to the floor. My clumsy fingers can’t pick it up, so I lick it off the ground.

It’s hard. Can’t be chewed. So I swallow it whole. The other nails will fall off soon.
Why wait?

I lift my swollen fingers to my lips and pluck the nails from each with my teeth. Then do the same with my toes.

In with the old. To become the new.

#

My thighs fused overnight. I can no longer walk. I get used to crawling, to eating my shed skin off the floor. Every day I eat, every day I transform.

If Samantha could see me now. Behold me as I was meant to be.

Would she change her mind? Take me back?

Or would she run away screaming, cursing me? Would she hit me again?

It doesn’t matter. Soon I will be something new. I won’t need her anymore. I will be better.

In your image.

#

My teeth wobble and crack. They tumble from my bleeding gums. I don’t let them get far.
Some scrape against my throat as I swallow. Others go down easy.

My forked tongue flicks to the roof of my mouth to dislodge the rest. I can feel new fangs growing in.

#

My arms are one with my torso. My legs, my feet, and my toes are gone. Only a tail remains. My old skin has split down the middle. So much dead skin.

I twist and turn. I slither across the floor out of my old self.

My jaw opens wide. Wider. In with the old. What I was, is no more. I am new. Reborn.

In your image.

#

I no longer need you Samantha. I am better now. I am pure.

My new form slithers through your open window.

My transformation has taught me many things. Most important of all, I was not the problem. I was not bad. Unworthy. Worthless.

Weak, maybe.

But I am strong now.

You're unaware of me as I circle your bed. You only begin to stir when I wrap myself around you. Too late.

I cut off your scream with the thick scales of my tail coiling around your mouth and neck.
I watch the terror in your eyes.

Oh, Samantha. Ouroboros has granted me not only rebirth, but wisdom as well.

You were the problem. You were unhappy and you chose to blame me. I didn’t deserve that.

All this time you should have looked upon yourself. That is the only way to better your life. To change.

Well, there is one other way to change.

My fangs flash in the moonlight and my jaw opens wide.

In with the old. Become the new.
​
In your image.

This story was first published in Welcome to Your Body: Lessons in Evisceration published by Salt Heart Press in 2024.

​Is this the life you longed for?
Your house is in shambles—lonely and forlorn;
your tale a macabre one, a sea of lingering emptiness.
A musty smell wanders behind the creaking door--
imposing but not welcoming, the lock enforced
to keep away the trespassers;
guarded by Hecate, Cerberus, and flesh-eating hounds,
spraying poisonous slobber, plugging minds with slumber.
Food littered on the several decade-old dusty floors,
dotted with clothes, toys, books, and innumerable plastic bags.
Cobwebs scattered everywhere like an estranged mind.
Murmurs heard from the caverns of ones long gone.
You serve as a vassal with skeletons of those
who have crossed the worldly line,
found camaraderie with the long-hushed walls.
On your bed is nestled a clothed corpse of your lover,
covered with a blanket to ward off
the cold that no longer affects her.
At the foot of your bed lies
a heap of bones of the unknown.
Your burning eyes, sunken and cloudy,
have the intensity of a bolide--
expressionless, nonchalant like a funeral pyre.
Your thoughts wander around
the dirty dungeons of your shackled mind;
feelings pale, receded, frozen
like the polar ice, never to thaw again.
Your body is restless as if snakes are writhing along it.
You have consumed water from
the Lethe River of benightedness
to immerse yourself in a state of complete oblivion.
 
Is this the sleep you wished for?
To have exited like a poisoned rat,
blood foaming up at your nostrils, ears, and mouth;
body charred like the interiors of a coal mine;
as if you never existed, unheeded and unseen.
You lie now never to rise again,
never to feel the burgeoning pain
that spurted out within you like molten lava.
Your unvoiced scream is now one amongst
the whispers of the otherworld.

​Sreelekha Chatterjee is a poet from New Delhi, India. Her poems have appeared in Madras Courier, Setu, Verse-Virtual, The Wise Owl, Ghudsavar Literary Magazine, Porch Literary Magazine, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Poetry Catalog, Creative Flight, Pena Literary Magazine, Everscribe, and in the anthologies--Light & Dark (Bitterleaf Books, UK), Personal Freedom (Orenaug Mountain Publishing, USA), and Christmas-Winter Anthology Volume 4 (Black Bough Poetry, Wales, UK), among others.
​
Facebook: facebook.com/sreelekha.chatterjee.1/, X (formerly Twitter): @sreelekha001,Instagram @sreelekha2023, Bluesky: @sreelekha2024

​Lanson Wells is a librarian with the Cuyahoga County Public Library and the assistant editor of the Journal of the American Viola Society. He holds Bachelor and Master's degrees in music, a Master's degree in Library and Information Science, and a graduate certificate in online learning and teaching. He has had several musicology papers published and has self-published both a book of poetry and book of musicological research on KDP. He is a lifetime lover of horror movies and books and resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his wonderful wife and their beautiful Shetland Sheepdog.