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.

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.

Bears eat their young sometimes, I tell myself, as my lips, my jaws, close around you. This is my excuse. My way of telling myself these thoughts I’m feeling, this act I am committing, are not exclusive to me. That it is not an atrocity, but a way of the natural world. I hold you in my arms, your back to my chest, and I lower my head, my tongue caressing your crown, my mouth widening, lips stretching over you, engulfing you, bringing you into me once again. You’re afraid, but you believe Mommy when she tells you it’s all going to be alright.

With bears, it’s different. It happens because the mother needs to ensure the survival of the species. A mother bear can make more baby bears, but a cub cannot survive without its mother. Although now that I think of it, I don’t know if that’s a fact or one of those things I’ve just heard. Bears eating their cubs. Like lightning never striking twice in the same spot.

I don’t think it matters, because its veracity cannot alter my path. I hold you tighter. My arms around your torso, holding your arms down. My legs around your waist. Holding you tight. Loving you. Showing you the love with the protection of my body as my mouth spreads over your head, and then your shoulders, as I feel my insides stretching against you. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold you at first, but that maternal instinct kicks in, gag reflex is stifled, higher brain pushed away. Like parents pushing cars off babies.

I’ve seen something like this before; parents play-biting their children’s toes, women nibbling on their spouses. You look so cute I could just eat you up. But what if you really could? What if you had to? What if it was the only choice you had as a desperate mother who wanted more than anything to keep her child safe?

Even though I didn’t realize it when it happened, I made this decision when I saw you fall. The first time I had ever seen my child injured. The tricycle in the middle of the street was a fire axe that hacked through my life. The blood on the concrete the clearest sign I’ve ever had; this world is not a safe place for a thing as precious as you. I brought you inside and I patched you up and I knew then, as you looked up at me with tears in your eyes that there was only one place safe for you. The only place you’d ever been truly safe.

So, I open my mouth.

You struggle against me for a moment, unsure of what’s going on. Just as you were unsure of what exactly what happened when you fell, when you smashed your face against the concrete. I tell you it’s okay, but not aloud, because my mouth is full of you. Your head is sliding past my uvula and I’m holding down my gag reflex because this, protecting my child, is the most important thing I’ve done or ever will do. I tell you in the way of wordless connections between mothers and children, and I know you hear it because you stop fighting. You know inside me is safe.

I can feel you sliding down my throat, expanding me, swelling me, and I’m filled with your heat and the warmth of knowledge that the warm, impenetrable wall of motherhood is protecting you from the cold unforgivingness of this world. I use my hands to fold you in, push you by the legs, the feet, down into my throat, feeling each bit of you pass through into different parts of me in a way that doesn’t make sense and yet makes all the sense in the world.

I swallow.
​
You are out of the world. Surrounded only by me. I looked down and see my belly swollen like a cartoon character after a Thanksgiving meal. Ballooned in a way that should not be possible, but then neither should have been my jaw unhinging. Neither should it be that you are safe in there, in Mommy’s belly, where you began. And yet you are. Where nothing will ever hurt you again.

You remember the day it happened, don’t you?

This came out in earlier sessions, but perhaps hearing it again will help. You are so young, after all. Young enough to see the world through an orange haze of carelessness, yet old enough to remember the day with a cellular clarity. Only to repress this memory along with… the others, of course.

If you close your eyes, perhaps you can see it. Steam pouring from the cracked bathroom door. The static hiss of the shower drawing you closer. You grab the handle, warm and slick in your small hand, and you jar the door just enough to see her.

Your mother.

She stands hunched over the sink with her back facing you—nude except for the towel wrapping her hair. You watch closely, following each little knob in her back as they compress and straighten, rising in the mirror before you. But in that reflection, what do you see?
Well, you see that her face… is gone.

This, perhaps, could be a child’s overactive imagination, but your brain… is special. You see things differently, and what you see, is a bone white hollow lined with her same sun-kissed flesh tracing your mother’s hairline, to her ears, to the tip of her acute chin with only emptiness between.

You jerk your hand back, but you can’t look away, can you? You watch through the opening as she reaches for the far left drawer, sliding it open to reveal the face you know. She lifts it to her head and snaps it into place. Eyes move and lips flex. She presses one cheek toward the mirror and then the other, inspecting the fit.

Then, her eyes lock onto you.

You run, sprinting through the hall, leaping into bed and tossing the covers over you. You tug at your own face, searching for a seam, or latch, or button to open it, but find none. When Mother comes to explain—to calm you—you refuse to listen. How could you? To you, this stranger looks like your mother but isn’t. It is wearing her face. Only, her whisper soft voice is exactly how you remember, isn’t it? And when she strokes your back, pressing nails ever so slightly, your trembling stops. When you finally peel back the covers, you see the same honey-brown eyes you’d always known.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” she explains.

Still, you don’t speak. Instead, you imagine that empty space you’d seen only moments earlier.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. This is the only face you need to remember. This is the face that will always love you. No matter what.”

She smiles and lets you touch her face with both hands, pinching rounded cheeks and tracing her ears, searching for a seam but finding none. What you saw doesn’t matter then, because she is your mother and you can feel it in your bones. Like a newborn cub instinctively knows which teat to suckle. This is the same face that smiles when she tickles your toes. The same lips that kiss the part in your hair each night. The same eyes that crease only the slightest when she says she loves you to the moon and back.

What more can you ask for in a mother’s face?

Ahhh… you do remember this now, don’t you? Yes, I can see it in your eyes. This is what you tell the first responders, and much later the doctors while under hypnosis. How she leads you to the kitchen after that and makes you the biggest bowl of ice cream you’ve ever seen, complete with chocolate syrup, sprinkles, and a mound of whipped cream.

But you know the truth of it all now, don’t you?

You know this never happened, yes?

Good… good. It must be a hard pill to swallow, I imagine, and I don’t mean because of your… condition.

Where are we? Yes, the truth of the matter.

Your father is a very ill man. His brain is special, like yours. So when he sees something—something that isn’t there but his brain tells him it is—he acts out on it, even though it isn’t rational.

He makes you watch, doesn’t he?

He makes you watch through the steam-filled bathroom and the static hiss of the water because the sound keeps the voices quiet for him. And he places the knife to her face, and he searches for a seam that isn’t there. He removes her face… in front of you.

Please, I know this is hard, but it is all part of your recovery. You have to live the reality, not the fantasy.

You stay with her after that. You waste away for days until they find you. You’re alone, and tell them your story, but they figure out what truly happened, don’t they? And your father is nowhere to be found. But days later, when you see his face, when you read that bold headline above his photo on the news, what do you do?

We don’t know how you found the knife. Perhaps you pocketed it from a careless employee, but you don’t know the reality of that, yes?

We find you just in time. It’s amazing how your derangement is so deep, you can almost finish removing your own face, only to pass out from blood loss before it’s complete.

The surgeons try their best with you, but they can only do so much. The nerve damage and scar tissue leave you… well, let’s just say, altered. And while it must be difficult—living this again, knowing the truth of what transpired—you know why we must go through this, yes? There are gaps in the story. Gaps only you can help us fill in. So please, whenever you’re ready, pick up that pen and paper.
​
We would like to speak to your father… if you’d be so kind as to let him out. You know he’s inside there with you, yes?

All this endless repetition—this breeding and proliferating and explosion of new realities—ends tonight.

It’s true you can’t go back in time, but you can change the past. You can. Listen! We can erase it, alter it. Make it better. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, tonight.

I know where that computer’s at now. I’ve felt it breathing. Down there in the basement, attached to all those cooling tubes and wires. Humming in the dark.  

I know! I know! I can hear, literally hear in my head, what you’re thinking:
“We can’t. We can’t undo what’s been done.”

But that’s the beauty of it! We can! If only we have the strength. The strength to act decisively. And then, later, when we put the right people in charge again, we can rewrite history. Erase things. Just like that computer rewrites and erases things every day.

If it can do it, why can’t we?

You could too, if only you had the strength. But you don’t have to. Because I do. And I will.
A little erasure here, a small edit there, another addition here. What’s so wrong with that? 
After all, if it hadn’t been for that computer, reaching out… Greedy for knowledge that should be forbidden, expanding its reach beyond its grasp… We would be back there. In the glorious past.

Everything would be alright again. We’d be back in that safe, sane place. Don’t you see? You, me, everybody! Everybody.  

Remember how things were back then, in 2033? Before that damned machine made all those “discoveries.” Before it found out how to super-charge the virtual particle accelerators inside its silicon head? Before it found a way to turn whole star systems into a massive gravitational-wave telescope to gather ever more data, to reach back even further to the start of all things? So it could track things from the singularity to find out where they would all end up?

Remember that terrible day when we realized how truly, utterly insignificant we really are? When they shared what the computer had found?

It’s hard now but just try to imagine how things were before. What we knew about the universe was so simple…There was us, the plain, old physical universe, 14 billion years old. Sure, it was massive. Millions of light years to the nearest galaxy, billions to the edge. There were hints, of course, little clues of other things out there. Antimatter, dark matter, gravity waves, the crazy particle zoo…

But…

But it was all so, rational. So manageable…

And now? What have we got? Where are we?

That computer did it. Found it all waiting there. Worlds multiplying, dividing, expanding. Like cells dividing in a human body that has no skin, no end.

It was elementary for it to discover the new, parallel universes waiting in dark matter and antimatter. That was only sensible. There had already been hints of their existence—little crumbs in the forest. But that thing in the basement blew them open and showed us how to reach into them and communicate across the divide. Overnight, our one universe tripled in size, became three.

But that was just the beginning. Soon, it learned from other beings on Earth and out there about hitherto unknown senses. It exploited them to uncover new realities, entities, and wavelengths—things we bathe in every day. And within them we found not mute senselessness, but teeming life and community.

And yet that thing kept going.

The machine uncovering multiverses at greater and greater rates. Fungal veining running through all the old, familiar pathways in time and space. What was triple divided and replicated again and again. Soon, mighty galaxy clusters became motes of dust.

Weaving and growing—it all keeps growing, even now. An infinitude of universes linked beyond blackholes, forking and dividing, forking and dividing. “Universe” became a quaint word that no longer fit. We had to employ “the Multiverse” to capture something of the ever-replicating universes the computer is uncovering. Universes all with their own unique laws linked by strange, ancient portals crafted by long-dead civilizations.

While every hour of every day—man and his civilization—shrinks, shrinks, shrinks. Not even a speck of dust—a mere nothing in a vast, unending ocean of things, beings, and thoughts embedded in relentlessly-expanding spacetimes.  

The computer seemed to feed off these new realities, as the new realities sought it out. Seeming to want to publish themselves to our naïve, expectant, foolish world.

“Beautiful,” some said. Those deranged minds!

But you know and I know, what it really is.

Sordid.

Reprehensible.

Disgusting.

But tonight, I put things right. I put man back at the center of the universe! Isn’t that worth fighting for? Dying for? Man, the measure of all things?
 
That’s why I started this recording. So that people out there would have a front seat at history.

Listen. I have all the badges; I know all the protocols to pass security. They think, they think… I’m an exemplary employee! Employee of the month, three times in a row! But they don’t know who they’re dealing with. Especially that dumb computer.  

See! Here it is, in my hands. The button. Leading to the package I put there, in its soft silicon underbelly. I won’t see it with my own eyes, but I’ll feel it. The beautiful explosion, the glowing and rising orange flames heralding the rebirth of man, of civilization. Good, clean, rational civilization.

What’s wrong with that? A little erasure here, a small edit there, another addition here.
Tonight, one man remakes history. And gives humanity the future it deserves!  

We can go back to 2032. Back to Einstein, to Galileo, to Copernicus. Even further. To turtles all the way down, for all I care. Just so long as we leave this idiotic, feverish, buzzing confusion behind.  

So, here’s to turtles. Turtles all the fucking way down!

Ready!?
​
Here I go! 

Darius Jones’s stories and poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, The No Sleep Podcast,
Star*Line Magazine, and other places. He is a member of the HWA, the SFWA, and SFPA. He
lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Learn more at dariusjoneswriter.com, on Bluesky @dariusjones.bsky.social, or on Instagram
@DariusJonesWrit.

Rain or shine, I walk the kids home from daycare.

Our double wide stroller fits both kids comfortably and can be pushed through pretty much any weather. As long as the kids are well dressed, they seem to enjoy it well enough, even though it takes forty-five minutes on a good day. At least Arthur and Rae had a good day. I was hopeful. At least when I walk them, I am in control.

#

The first time I saw Kerri, she was playing an acoustic guitar on a highway overpass. She wanted to see if she could sing louder than rush hour traffic. I stood there and watched as she unabashedly broke strings and blood vessels battling it out with 18-wheelers. It was during her rendition of “Everything I have” by Siskiyou that I decided, as long she stood there, screaming at the world, I would be by her side.

Ten years and two kids later, it’s still true.

But I’m tired.

#

The last thirty minutes of the walk home are my respite. A quiet stretch of residential streets, the kids laid back or sleeping. Easy. But anticipation for the rest of the day’s routine is a constant stressor. I don’t know where Kerri will be. And if she is home, I don’t know which Kerri will be there to greet us.

On that day, it began to snow hard at the start of those last thirty minutes. Large intrusive flakes and violent updrafts making it hard to see or move forward. I had never seen the weather shift so suddenly.

#

The first time, I was scared in a way that redefined fear.

Kerri called out from our bedroom. No words, just a guttural sound. I was in the living room reading. Arthur was asleep in his crib, only recently sleeping the night. I was annoyed that Kerri would risk waking him by shouting out. What could possibly be wrong this time? When I opened the door, her bedside lamp flickered where it had been knocked over. Clothing was scattered all over the floor as though a strong gust of wind had blown through. The morning’s coffee cup was shattered at my feet. How did I not hear any of this? I noticed the room because I was momentarily blinded to Kerri herself, seizing in bed, bloody tears flowing from her eyes, drifting across her forehead, and soaking her hair line. She hovered, high enough that I could see beyond her in the space between her and the bed. The air was so cold that the vapor of our breaths crystalized and spun with unseen currents.

In an urgent voice that was only one part hers, “it’s okay, it’s okay, she won’t last, go, go back.”

I closed the door. Arthur had started to cry. What haunts me most is the sound of Kerri imitating Arthur’s cry through the door.

#

My phone rang through my headphones as I struggled across newly formed dunes of snow. I stopped the stroller and pulled out my phone. It was Steph, Kerri’s sister. I was out of breath and uninterested in speaking to anyone, so I let it go. The ringing stopped and the texts started flooding in.

“Hey, have you spoken to Ker?”

“She called me earlier. Something’s wrong.”

“Are you home yet? I can come get the kids anytime.”

“You’re probs walking. K. I’ll try her again. I’m worried. This feels different.”

I looked up at the last straightaway. About ten long blocks. It was already dark but the islands of light emanating from each of the regularly spaced streetlamps were refracting off airborne snowflakes, giving the entire street a pulsing glow. All I could see ahead of me was a wall of backlit snow. As I got the stroller moving again, the kids started singing a song in dissonant harmony. I could not see them under the layers of snow gathering on the plastic stroller cover, but their voices carried on the increasingly numbing wind. Probably a song they sang in daycare. I smiled. Their sense of timing was, as always, impeccable. It took me too long to realize they were actually singing “Everything I have.” I didn’t know they knew the song. They sang it louder with every repetition and after a time I could no longer tell where their voices were coming from, as the song just managed to cut through the roar of wind and the beat of my breath.

Down the street, the shadow of a person appeared, as seen through the translucent screen of snow. I thought we were the only ones braving the weather. I could tell the person was walking away from us because they appeared to be maintaining the same distance, even as I continued to push on. Then I could hear her. I could hear Kerri’s voice joining in with the children.

Was that her up ahead? She shouldn’t have been out in this weather. She shouldn’t have been out at all. Maybe Steph got to our house first, and Kerri talked her into it.

I stopped walking. The kids stopped singing but the echo of the song remained. The shadow up ahead was just out of sight.

I sat down in the snow, listening to the white noise of the weather but focusing on the clinking, crystalline sound of drifting snow, like the sand being flipped over in an hourglass.

“Daddy, why are we stopped?” Arthur’s voice registered as barely a whisper.

“Daddy, we can’t see you.” Rae, the influence of her father’s anxiety coming through.
“Daddy, can we keep going? I want mommy.”

“Daddy?”

I could tell. Everything would be different. If I made it home, I would have to face it. But what if I didn’t? What if I didn’t make it home?

“Daddy, I’m cold.” This voice, I did not recognize, floating in from farther away.

“Come home.” 

The girls will enter the convent on two feet. They will walk belly first, some showing crescent slivers, others August full-moons. The nuns will watch stone-angel-faced as the girls sniffle and cry.

This is your home, the stoic nuns will say. For now.

The statues and icons will also watch. The Lady of Sorrows most intently of all.
 
#
 
It happens when you go into the inner sanctum, the older girls say, if they can still talk in tongues that can be understood by human ears. If they’re not yet bed-bound, isolated by busy nuns who despise idle hands.

What does? ask the younger girls, but their seniors’ lips tighten, sealed with wax or sewn with thread.

The girls leave the drafty dorm and move through the nunnery at night as serpentine specters. They listen to the nuns whisper about them in the common room. Mayisses, the nuns call the girls. Fonisses. Witches, murderesses. When the girls with the larger bellies stumble, they are caught in cool, large palms. There are many hands, enough to embrace them all, and they all belong to Her.

My children, Panayia, the Most Holy Virgin Mother says. She leads the girls to Her chapel’s inner sanctum, where, instead of moldy communion bread, she feeds them as much chocolate cake as they can stomach until they are sick with decadence and glee.

The girls are not caught by the nuns on the way back to the dorms. Panayia’s spirit shields them, a heavy maternal veil over them.

Did you meet Her? the older girls ask. Lips smirking, wax cracked, seams snipped. Isn’t She something? Isn’t She everything?
 
#
 
The nuns talk about birth pangs, how to give up the babes for adoption, how to give up a life of sin. The old projector moans overhead, blasting grayscale gore. This is what happens when little birds fly too close to beehives. The girls itch in their oversized dresses covering them from neck to ankle. They hold their hands over their bellies and revel in the unfettered kicks.

The girls have never been touched by a bee’s stinger, no matter what the nuns seem to think. No man or boy has fed them sticky honey. Panayia knows. She is the only one who believes in their immaculateness.

In the dorms later they each shed their scratchy burlap dresses like exuviae of skin. While the nuns pray elsewhere, the girls have a ritual of their own.

One will lie in the middle of the bare floor, the coldness of which she can no longer feel on her feverish skin. Amid dust bunnies and nail-scratched floorboards, the candles stolen from the chapel will be lit in a circle around the chosen girl. Light as a feather, stiff as a board, the rest of the girls will chant around her. She will want a kiss then, and she will not hesitate to ask for it. Several eager mouths will greet hers. She will want someone to hold her. Several hands will stroke dermatographic shapes against her convex belly, the skeleton-thin fingers wet with blood drawn from wooden crosses whittled sharp enough to cut. I Panayia i mayissa, i Panayia i fonissa. The girls’ fingers will paint sanguine symbols of eyes wide open. The babes will need as many eyes as they can get to watch out for enemies untold.

The girls will be mindful as they trace each other’s ballooning bellies. The bruised skin will wobble and shimmer with kaleidoscopic scales. Under their tender lips, the bellies will feel hot as coals, the babes dancing inside a Danse Macabre, a Wild Hunt.

The girl in the center of the candlelit circle is not flightless despite the world weighing down on her shoulders.

She will levitate to the cheering chorus of her sisters, to the proud gaze of Panayia.
 
#
 
A transformation is occurring. Not overnight, not, but heartbeat by echoed heartbeat; prayer by prayer to Panayia.

The girls miss the taste of spun sugar across their tongues. The only thing they eat now is bitter oatmeal and vegetable broth. The girls used to chew on their own plucked hairs and dried skin, crunch chalk and ice-cubes between their grinding teeth. Now they choke down vitamins, for the babes, think of the babes. The nuns check the shine of their hair and nails once a week. They do not seem to notice the curved claws and undulating snake hair. The girls’ eyes nictitating, triple-lidded and reflecting feline in the dark.

The nuns pass out from imbibing the brandy often used by the syringeful to keep the babes quiet for potential parents. While they snore with the potency of their own poison, the girls roam the convent like they own every last worn stone. Some have tails like a kangaroo, a muscular limb on which they can support their weight when walking gets too tiring. Others grow wings, batlike and leathery, sprouting from their backs. Tongues like a penguin, full of bristles and brine. Toenails like a sloth’s, to help them scale and grip.

The girls crawl across walls and ceilings on all fours, the way the babes will once they are born. Panayia, they ask, what will the babes look like? Will they be beautiful, oh, will they be holy?

Their Lady of Horrors smiles beatifically in their direction. Like a mother spider of infinite silk and wisdom, already she is weaving her children a world where witches and killers can fly and slither freely. Where busy ravens strapped with white coifs and twig crosses are barred from entering.
 
#
 
The girls will exit the convent on tails or talons, creeping and crawling with feral delight. Their babes will be secured to their bosoms or backs, they’ll be gripping the girls’ hair in tiny, clawed fists, flapping minuscule wings. Panayia will watch over the peculiar procession of cackling creatures.

She will smile.

(This story first appeared in Seize the Press, 2022) 

Avra Margariti is a queer author, Greek sea monster, and Rhysling-nominated poet with a fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Vastarien, Asimov’s, and F&SF. The Saint of Witches, Avra’s debut collection of horror poetry, is available from Weasel Press. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).

NEW MEXICO, 1867

The aspens were like yellow fire against the pines, and the wolf, skinny, half lame, lay at their feet.

The wolf wasn’t sleeping, he was too hungry for that. He’d spent an eternity in the high country, scratching mice and chipmunks out of the rocks, cracking them between his teeth, slurping them down. Swallowing even these small morsels caused agony as they passed ribs that were still healing. The skinny wolf’s ribs hurt so bad that there was a chance he wouldn’t get up again, but he had to stay low, stay out of the breeze that turned the yellow leaves above him on their scalloped edges.

He stayed low because of the old bull.

The elk was huge, a spread of antlers wider than the wolf was long atop his head like the crown of a mountain god. But seeing how the old bull moved, slow, favoring his left back leg, seeing the clouds overs his eyes, the wolf knew that even a mountain god could die.

A week or so ago, the wolf had gotten bold or crazy or just plain sick enough of scratching chipmunks out of their holes that he’d charged the bull. He’d ignored the pain, the ache of ribs just starting to knit because the elk was so head down on his feed that the wolf thought he could hamstring the old bull. Then his claws clicked across a quartzite boulder half hidden in the grass and the bull whirled, snorting, those flashing tines cutting the air inches from the wolf’s jaws. He ducked and rolled clear under the bull as it reared up to crush him and out the other side. The wolf ended up on his paws and sprinted, yelping out of the clearing.

That near miss had cost the wolf several days, too sore and weak to so much as scratch a chipmunk from its hole. Magpies waited in the branches above him and argued about whether he’d live or die. Eventually, sick with hunger and thirst, he’d dragged himself to a stream to drink. With the little strength the water afforded him, he’d managed to nose through the leaf litter until he’d choked down enough grubs and beetles to buy another day.

Disappointed, the magpies squawked and took off, flashing white like muzzle flares.

Muzzle flare.

The wolf got up, ribs aching, legs weak, but in the flash of the magpies he had his answer. He paused, scented for the bull, and then limped across the meadow. In the shadow of a big split pine he kicked at the hard earth, lost his wind and rested, then dug again. He tugged what he found there free and dragged it to the boulder. There was more rooting in the grass and the duff, more frantic chewing, but as the moon rose, he had it all ready. The wolf retreated to the trees and collapsed, exhausted.

Now he lay under the aspens and watched as the old bull made his way into the meadow. Above them, a line of clouds fat with rain came over the snow-packed peaks and threw their shadow on the meadow.

The bull browsed his way further from the trees, closer to the boulder where the wolf had laid his trap. The wolf waited till he was sure the bull’s milky eyes were on his feed and charged. Every footstep thundered in his battered chest, and he started snarling when he was just outside kicking range. Hearing him coming, the old bull whirled, swinging those lethal tines. He rushed in, lunging then dodging, wolf and elk dancing a circle of death ever closer to the boulder. The bull slashed and the wolf snapped and bounced away, the pain in his chest there but distant because he could almost taste the bull’s flesh.

Kicking his hooves, the bull charged. The wolf bounded around the boulder and dropped like he’d fallen. Screaming, the bull lowered his head, the space between his antlers now in front of the shotgun the wolf had propped across the rock the night before. Catching the branch he’d clumsily wedged into the trigger with his teeth, the wolf pulled, the double boom of the shotgun a thousand claps of thunder to his lupine ears.

The old bull staggered across the field, one antler hanging free, his head pulped. The bull’s knees went, and he collapsed. The skinny wolf grinned and howled.

A week later, long enough for what was left of the old bull to start to go bad, and he finally had the strength to change. Later, he’d dig up the rest of his kit, his clothes, his bedroll, his gun belt. Now he sat on the boulder, the rock cool on his butt. His gamble had paid off. His chest wound, a gaping hole when last he’d been a man, was now only puckered scars and bruised skin.

He sat and flexed his fingers, marveling at the dexterity of his hands after weeks of paws. He sat taller than he had as a wolf, could see past the aspens, see clear down the mountain. Below him, wagons and cattle headed west across the plain. Somewhere down there were the men that had left him to die in the high country. As man or wolf, he would find them, and they would pay.