The final three miles of the ride, that part when you drop down into the Cliff Creek drainage, is mostly alpine meadows. In early summer the grasses wave and the birds sing except for one stretch where the forest has taken over, pine and fir from creek bottom to cliffside. When you come to it you know you’re finally getting close to camp and it’s where in late summer the evergreens offer cool dark respite from the sun and the heat and the dust but it’s late fall now and late fall here in the high country might as well be middle of winter in the lowlands. Trouble with the pack string has me running behind running late past sundown and still facing an hour on the trail thank god for the full moon on the crusty snow-- the world is drained of color, all blacks and whites and greys in-between-- but it’s enough that I can keep an eye on the string behind me and watch that the packs are riding true. We hit that stretch of pines, though, and everything is different; the trees eat all the moonlight, drink all the sound and swallow us up. I’ve traveled this path more times than I can count, I’d thought it a familiar friend but now I’m desperate to be done with it, to be gone from here. The darkness has weight and mass and form from which I might never emerge. Dry mouth and pounding heart. Reins slack in my hands, I leave it to my saddlehorse to lead us onward outward he plods, unconcerned, no thoughts beyond the feed bucket waiting at the end of the trek. When he and the rest of the string have been unsaddled and fed And I’m in the cook tent at the stove warm and dry and tired I laugh at myself to be so shook at a little bit of darkness. There was never anything going to reach out at me from the shadows there was nothing in the forest or the fields turning its attention to my passage. Years away and miles later, I think I understand why my thoughts return to that night. I think I’ve come to realize that a country breeze can seem a loving caress, a storm may appear to be all anger and fury, but to the wind, to the trees, the rocks, the wilds, it’s really none of it to do with me; we flatter ourselves that nature notices us but it’s all playacting on someone’s part. Plants grow and waters flow; where the sunbeams and moonbeams fall, there is light and where they don’t, there is not. With me or without. That night, I glimpsed the indifference that is the truth of the wilderness. RK Rugg is a non-Native native of the American West, a Jewish cowboy who spent most of his life wrangling both horses and words in the Montana Rockies and the Great Basin of Nevada. He currently lives in New England where he teaches middle-school writing by day and writes genre fiction, nonfiction and poetry by night. His work has appeared in Utopia, Illumen and Asimov's, among others, and he regularly presents at academic conferences on the topic of identity in speculative fiction. He can be found online at www.raymondkrugg.com. No flowers grow there, just glass eyes Glaring out of the dirt The tops of their porcelain heads peeking Through Babydoll submarines Mouths full of mud Limbs woven with weeds Tiny fingers Tiny toes Untouched What secrets planted there? What suffering Can be inflicted On ones so small and still? No little hearts to stop. No graves Save For rocks and stones Spilled like milk Gone sour in a swollen breast Untouched Little babies Little lambs Little dolls. The dog has defecated here The headstones have been disturbed Defiled The sacred ground made profane. Nothing will grow. Nine months Then nine months Then nine months Ripped from the earth Torn out and cast aside. Whose secrets do you, dear ones, Hide? Melissa Pleckham is a Los Angeles-based writer, actor, and musician. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from Rooster Republic Press, Flame Tree Fiction, Luna Luna, Mind's Eye Publications' The Vampiricon, Head Shot Press’ Bang! An Anthology of Noir Fiction, and more. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association. She also plays bass and sings for the garage-goth duo Black Lullabies. Find her online at melissapleckham.com or on social media at @mpleckham. You will linger, he told her, In murksome memories made manifest Through the guttering glow of tallow candles And the mold-tinged stagnant bathwater. You will howl from the other side Your face pressed into the superviscous Veil Your ectoplasmic essence seeping Through pinprick perforations of bobbin lace. Your return, an inevitability for those left behind Who will denude every gilt-edged mirror And, with the slow reluctance of death-row prisoners, Lower the temperature to greet you. You will sit at the kitchen table, he told her, Facing the unctuous contrition of your family And dance your slow-solidifying fingers Through the blackest of bitter coffees. The cemetery soil will congeal into a paste Under your fractured fingernails, The long-ingested poison A regurgitation upon your tongue. 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 Strange Horizons, Vastarien, Asimov's, Reckoning, 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).
Hello, and welcome to another ASMR relaxation video. I'm your host, Kit. If this is your first time watching an ASMR video, welcome. ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, aka the tingles. Not everyone will experience this while watching this video, but if you do, you may feel a pleasant tingling sensation going down your spine and into your arms and legs. Others experience ASMR as a languorous calm of the deep brain. Some just feel very relaxed. Whatever it is, we’re glad you’re here. And if you don’t experience any of these, we guarantee that what we have to tell you at the end of this video will blow your mind. Joining me today is a special guest who you may know. I won’t tell you their name just yet, and they’ve asked me not to reveal their countenance, but needless to say, they’re quite famous. Watch all the way to the end! You'll see! Our guest today has requested some interesting and tingly items that I haven’t used before on this channel, so I hope they’ll be new and noteworthy for my regular listeners and watchers. For those of you new to ASMR, understand that these aren’t the greatest hits of ASMR—we won’t be doing nail tapping, toaster coaster, face brushing, hair brushing, cranial nerve exams, or your make-up. No, these are one of a kind. Some I had never even heard of before. In fact, I’m not even sure I have the English words to describe some of what we’ll be doing. Rest assured, I’ll have our guest pronounce everything at the end, and if they’re able, type them into the comments section when the video posts—I know you all have really liked my non-English videos before, so stick around for some new and different words. Also, if you can guess what these sounds are, please post in the comments with time stamps from the video when you recognized what they were. I’m interested to see what the guesses are, though I’d be really amazed if anyone gets them. I’d be surprised if anyone familiar with these sounds has regular internet access. Let’s get started. ***3 minutes 12 seconds of wing flapping*** ***4 minutes 32 seconds of bone-crunching (probable)*** ***2 minutes 1 second of claws raking over dried human bones*** ***5 minutes of blood dripping*** ***7 minutes 6 seconds of the squelching sounds of mud (or coagulating blood) walking (probable)*** And now, my darlings, to reveal my guest. It's literally going to blow your mind. Cthulhu, would you like to tell the audience what they've won? ***Garbled grumblings, madness-inducing thunder*** ***Human screams, assumed to be human, identified as video uploader KitThooLooverASMR*** ***Video end*** Jason P. Burnham loves to spend time with his wife, children, and dog. Find him on Twitter if it still exists at @AndGalen. Until the reek of scorched flesh filled the air, as if it had been boiled up from the dusty road below, the trek to the old woman's house reminded Davis of the time when he was an inky-haired nine-year-old, and his father had left him 22 miles from home. After the sand had torn up his cheap boots and blistered his feet, his stepmother made him clean up his vomit inside the front door with his shirt before he could have some water. His hair was now the color of an unwashed chalkboard. He had a horse, a mule, and cargo: the Bavarian and his sister. The pair were elderly, easily mistaken for a couple, and bound with rope. Davis didn’t have a plan. “Don’t be fooled by their sweet air of innocence,” the old woman had said to him in Glenrio two weeks past. She had come to him in the tavern, like they all did, promising bounty. “They’re killers,” she had said. “Or, at least, they think they are.” She was unlike his usual clientele—bank managers, scorned lovers, crooked sheriffs—an elderly woman with perfectly white hair, perfectly round teeth, a twinkle in her eye, and a sweetness he couldn’t resist. “It is impossibility,” the Bavarian had said after Davis pinned his arms behind his back. He found the two in an apartment above the bank in San Albino. “But what other is to explain?” his sister said. “Please,” she begged Davis, her wrinkled hands working in the folds of her dress. Sweat matted her gray hair to her forehead. “You must to believe. She is evil old, old woman.” Davis cinched their knots and positioned them on the mule. They were frail and frightened. And insistent that the sweet old woman had tried to kill them once upon a time. He spat into the sand now and adjusted the wide brim of his hat against the sun. He wagered they were just three miles out from her house. The stench was like the crust of coffee at the bottom of a kettle, cast upon a sunbaked carcass. It filled his nostrils like rain in a thirsty creek bed. When the house shimmered into view, he dabbed his eyes with his bandana. The Bavarian and his sister huddled together on the mule. At the final knoll before a gray yard opened like a dead flower, his horse spilled him to the ground and took off in the direction they had come. The mule walked a small, confused circle. Davis looked long at its cargo, whose grim faces seemed to carry more than the present discomfort. He recalled when he was eleven, and his dad showed him how to break a horse after a mustang wandered near their house one morning. That was the first time Davis had fired a gun, too, after his stepmother had come outside with a pot and a lid and banged while the horse jerked in every direction, eventually taking him down a sharp decline to the gulley below, breaking her rear left leg. Davis let the Bavarian and his sister stay with the mule while he walked to the front door, his bandana tied tight over his nose. He had cut their ties. Tendrils of a plan were taking shape, and he thought he could still get his payment. He stood for a long time with the thumb of his right hand hooked in a belt loop and its three remaining fingers teasing the handle of his revolver, and then the door swung into darkness. “Where are they?” a voice called. It was the same voice that had said to him in the tavern, “They’ll try to tell you I wanted to eat them. That I lured them into a house made of candy. If you believe a story for little kiddies like that, then maybe you’re not the one for this job.” Davis felt a pair of hands press on his lower back; his boots clucked on the hard wood of the living room as he staggered inside. He heard a suck of air just before the heavy thunk of the front door closing. The old woman stood in the doorway to the kitchen, from where intense heat flowed that could make the desert summer feel refreshing. She was not the sweet old woman with perfectly round teeth and perfectly white hair who had cornered him in the tavern. She had few teeth. Her hair was blackened and patchy. Her skin, too. Her dress hung on what remained of her body in scorched tatters. Davis could see her left cheekbone, her right clavicle, half of her ribcage, and all the bones in her right hand, which she held stiffly near her mouth as if stifling laughter. He spun to find that the front door did not have a knob on the inside. That must have been the joke she had been keeping to herself. He emptied his revolver’s chambers into the door, and sunlight rayed into the room. “Please forgive,” the Bavarian said through the holes. The heat from the kitchen pressed on Davis’s back like a freshly hewn hide. He watched the two walk across the gray yard and mount the mule. He breathed deeply from streams of desert air, then turned to the voice saying, “You were warned, weren’t you?” He felt the useless weight of his gun in his hand and let it clank on the floor. He wondered what was in the kitchen behind the charred and rotting old woman and thought of how his father forbade him to ever go into his stepmother’s kitchen. Naturally, the kitchen became to his curiosity a mirage to a parched throat, and one day when he was six, after being caught trying to quench that particular thirst, his stepmother helped separate his pinky finger from his right hand. He used that hand to wipe sweat from his brow. “I sure was,” he said. Jeremy Wenisch is a software tester living in Princeton, West Virginia, with his wife and their books. He writes fiction darkly inspired by folklore, including stories appearing in Whistling Shade, Ink Stains Vol. 14, and Bending Genres. https://jeremywenisch.com/ Instagram/Twitter: @jereminate This night, I walk within empty echoes Of waist-deep weary fog, sinking to The crumbling floor of futility Dripping minutes bleed through cracked Rusty hours, as wafting feathers Of broken rest circle dreams Devoid of lullabies-- In waning monotone Pillow smothered murmurs Cover breath of crushed voices Not even stealing a skeletal whisper Past my withered lips. Michelle Faulkner lives outside Portland, OR, with her husband, her cat Little Miss, and her dogs Mr. Peabody and Sherman. Her work has appeared in The Literary Yard, Alternate Route, Westward Quarterly, Sparks of Calliope and others. She has also been published in two poetry anthologies, PS: It’s Poetry and PS: It’s Still Poetry, both available on Amazon.com, and also in several upcoming anthologies from Poet’s Choice. When not writing, she enjoys true crime shows and watching the Food Network, although does not actually cook.
Magellan paused for breath at the edge of the ridge and looked down into the canyon. Hellswatch Cabin stood roughly fifty yards from the river, dwarfed by a nearby boulder that had crashed to the valley floor thousands of years before. The high canyon walls obscured direct sunlight outside of the peak midday hours, blanketing the cabin in half-lit shadow for the majority of the day. The first shiver brushed up Magellan’s spine at the sight of the darkened cabin and lingered beneath his sweat-drenched shirt. “There’s been poaching in the Sombre Canyon,” Cooper had said on Monday morning. “We need to send a ranger out to Hellswatch. Think you can handle it?” Magellan swiveled in his chair, turning his back on the permit applications that swelled his inbox. “Hell yes,” he grinned. Cooper sipped his coffee and leaned against the doorframe. “You might want to think about it,” he said, “it’s a risky assignment. Men return… well… changed.” “C’mon, Coop,” Magellan rolled his eyes. “You think I’m scared of grizzlies? I’ve been around bears my entire life.” Cooper shook his head. “It’s not just the bears. Not at Hellswatch. The legends say the Sombre Canyon’s cursed, you know. You wouldn’t remember the last guy—we haven’t had a ranger out there in over a decade.” “What happened to the last guy?” Cooper frowned. “Not sure,” he paused. “Something just wasn’t right.” The words hung between them, thick with uncertainty and… fear? Magellan waited for more information, but Cooper just shrugged. “He got promoted to a desk job in D.C. not too long after.” Magellan’s expression soured, “Are you trying to send me to D.C.?” Cooper laughed, “No, no. I need you here. Real outdoorsmen are hard to find these days. That’s why I’m hoping you can handle the poachers and… whatever else is out there.” Magellan tilted his head to one side, “I never thought you were superstitious, Coop.” Cooper gave a wry smile and stepped back into the hall, “Just take care of yourself,” he said. “You leave in the morning.” Magellan scrambled down the canyon and followed a game trail riddled with bear scat along the river. He stopped short, eyes widening at the sight of Hellswatch. Claw marks scraped across the length of the ancient logs. Magellan could almost hear the grating nails as they tore through the weathered bark, shrieking above the bass growl of an 800-pound predator. He took an inadvertent step back as fear gripped his chest, then shook his head and continued towards the cabin. Once inside, Magellan deposited his pack on the low cot and surveyed the room. An old rifle rested against the east wall. A narrow table and chairs hugged the wall opposite, and an old rocking chair kept company with the wood stove. Magellan started a fire and busied himself with unpacking. After devouring a dehydrated dinner, he settled himself in the rocking chair, cleaning his pistol and studying a map of the canyon. The first knock sounded faint, almost inaudible. Magellan paused, alert, but no sound followed. He crept to the nearest window and peered beneath the curtain at the empty front stoop. Twilight had fallen, and the first stars twinkled in the purple sliver of sky above the canyon. The shadows deepened beneath the boulder. Looking out across the river, Magellan searched for movement along the grassy bank. Nothing stirred. He dropped the curtain and bolted the lock. Magellan had just taken a sip of whiskey from his flask and returned his attention to the map when the shriek of claws racked across the west wall. He froze, then tiptoed across the cabin to inspect the rifle—it was loaded. The second shiver needled the hairs on the back of his neck like tiny claws seeking a footing to tear across his skin. The clawing stopped. Rifle in hand, Magellan caught sight of his pale reflection in a dark window. He peered into the murky sockets of his bloodless face, then yanked the curtain closed. The rocking chair creaked beneath him as he took another sip of whiskey and settled the rifle across the arm rails. The claws screamed again, echoing through the canyon. Inside, the fire roared in the wood stove and the rocking chair creaked. The claws wrapped around to the front door, then stopped. Something heavy thumped against the door, throwing its weight against the hinges. Magellan positioned the rifle against his shoulder. Again and again something pounded the door, but the iron bolts held firm. Magellan breathed, observing that no claw marks marred the inside of the cabin, then gasped as the bolts slowly turned. The door swung open. Magellan raised the rifle, bracing his lungs for the deathly stench of the grizzly bear, but a different odor pierced his nostrils. A familiar scent, like the rotten-egg bubbles that rose from the depths of the nearby thermal features, causing the tourists to giggle and pinch their noses. Sulfur. Instead of the shadow of a bear, Magellan’s own moonlit figure stepped into the doorway. The same hair, only shinier. The same face, but more symmetrical. No bump blighted the bridge of his nose, no freckles dotted his forehead, and no eyes filled his sockets. Magellan’s breath grew ragged as the figure stepped into the room. He moved to pull the trigger, but his fingers froze. The third shiver traveled from his fingertips to his shoulders, turning so cold it burned like fire, paralyzing every muscle. His other self brushed the barrel of the rifle aside and leaned over the rocking chair, resting his hands on the carved arms. Magellan stared up into the cavernous eyes and felt the final shiver tighten and squeeze every last inch of warmth from his bones. Unable to look away, he watched as a pearlescent swirl filled the vacant sockets. A spark of hellfire lit the white eyes and cooled to lava-rock irises. A half-smile, a wink, and Magellan’s vision went dark. Cate Vance writes from the mountains of Montana where she is inspired by misty mornings, brilliant days, and starry nights. Her short fiction has appeared in Sky Island Journal and Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, among other outlets. Follow her on Twitter @WriterCSVance.
You can find more about Cate Vance on her website: https://catevance.com The sleek straight walls of our arcology Penetrated by organic rot. A flower brought in, unseen, On the sole of a shoe or in a guilty heart. Our antiseptic citadel protected us From burning seas and mistakes long made. We sustained ourselves with sterile survival While the world outside decayed. An expedition to the wild outside And some failure of our defences Brought in our first fresh flower And long buried consequences. Stems and springs sprouted From burnished glass walkways. Escalators and elevators grew silent, their gears all clogged with grass. Attempts to decontaminate and control Only spread unsettled seeds. Vines clung about our structures and ruptured slowly from our skin. The first few people tried To rip or tear these new appendages. The fungal tongues growing from their chests and The poison ivy tangled in their hair. But they only grew back stronger Implacable, inevitable. Until all resistance stopped. The sinews coiled around our community Tendrils spreading one-by-one. Soil dripping from vacant eyes As they forgot their dull humanity. They shuffle around the corridors, Overtaken by new life. Bursts of red and green and yellow pulsating from walls and floors and mouths. Their minds are gone, but some life remains. Rebirthed in the barren womb of our last redoubt. I watch and wait for the dirt to take me. The last, but not alone. Butterflies and insects Spring from living, moving bone. Tangled metal flowers Grow around me in this room. I feel the fear of death abandon me. I know the world will be here soon. Danny Shaw is a conflict researcher based in Scotland, but in his fiction he prefers horror to war. He loves horror with existential and political themes, like Thomas Ligotti, Brian Evanson and Hailey Piper. You can find his short stories and poems @WeirdAndFearty and his political work @DanielOdinShaw on Twitter. Don’t try to monetize a poltergeist. Greed’s bad ghost karma can’t be rectified. Disgraced, divorced, and homeless, one man saw Redemption’s outstretched hand where others paused. Abandoned, curiously cheap to rent, This mansion’s past inspired its second chance. Accomplices were needed. Two arrived When Gerald Laughlin hatched his hapless plot To profit from aged, angry entities. In 1967, he lured folks Who paid to tour dark rooms suffused with gloom Inhabited by visible deceased Who followed paying guests—but would not speak. Published accounts have chronicled his woes. Too many harrowing encounters there Encouraged Gerald and his cohorts—men Who never were right-minded after that-- To flee, unseen foes hanging on their coats. Since bad ghost karma can’t be overcome, Investigate who’s haunting your house first. Respect the dead, whose turmoil can’t be priced. Don’t try to monetize sly poltergeists. Background: After a professional crisis cratered his chiropractic career and his marriage, Dr. Gerald Alexander Laughlin [c. 1926—24 Jun 2001] needed inexpensive lodgings and a new purpose. A dilapidated 33-room mansion [1161 N. Liberty at Atlantic Ave.], rumored to house inhospitable spirits, was vacant and well below market value. In 1967, Laughlin transformed the 19th century residence into New Castle, Pennsylvania’s first “commercial” haunted house with the help of two young bachelors from Lawrence County whose work was compensated by free room and board. Tours ($5) were popular. Increasingly, however, witnesses told of unsettling things. Spectres attached themselves to attendees. The longer Laughlin let folks explore the premises, the more mayhem ensued. Were numerous car accidents and heart attacks really caused by vengeful apparitions? In June 1970, the three-story structure was closed for fire safety violations; condemnation proceedings were considered. When the haunted mansion was totally gutted by fire on October 9, 1970, arson was not suspected. For more information, please read, "The House of Lost Souls" by Patrick Glendon McCullough Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, a Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, Best of the Net, and Dwarf Stars nominee, is a member of SFPA, The British Fantasy Society, and The Dramatists Guild. Elgin Award winner "A Route Obscure and Lonely," "Concupiscent Consumption," "Women Who Were Warned," Firecracker and IPPY Award nominee "Messengers of the Macabre" [co-written with David Davies], and "Apprenticed to the Night" [Beacon Books, 2023] are her latest poetry titles.
The train. The train. Can ya hear it a-whistlin’? Georgie sure did that fateful night. He was a gandy dancer, a railroad worker, and a fine one at that. He worked from sun up to sun down, strong arms layin’ down track as far as the foreman would ask. Always to the tune of that whistlin’ train somewhere off in the distance. To the tune of industry risin’ up over the hills. As the cities grew taller and taller, as automobiles moved faster and faster, as electricity lit up the horizon more and more with each new moon. That warm summer mornin’ in the wee AM hours, Georgie was a-walkin’ down the tracks, as he did e’ry mornin’ on his way to work. It weren’t safe, they’d all tell him, a-walkin’ down the tracks like he did. He ain’t never seen the train, though. No, not once. How dangerous could it be? So Georgie kept a-walkin’. “Now,” a cool voice called out. “What’s a fine, strappin’ lad such as yerself doing out at this time o’night?’ Georgie paid the dapper man no real mind. “On my way t’work, good sir.” “T’work! At this late o’an hour?” the dandy inquired as he preened and primped his pricy suit with each step he took. “I ain’t go no other way t’get there unless I’m a-walkin’, gotta be there before that sun comes up.” Georgie fixed the strap o’his bag o’er his body, railroad spikes clanged against his tools like thunder rumblin’ o’er the fields. He cut his eyes toward the stranger who appeared outta nowhere. He looked sly like the devil and as handsome, too. His eyes glistened like starlight and boy, his smile was wicked and cruel. “Boy, you best slow down. Yer too young t’be wastin’ away like this. Not with those looks and them strong arms,” the man chided. “Food’s gotta get on that table somehow, good sir. I got a big family, my momma needs the money and my sisters ain’t old enough to find themselves good men to care for them. No sir, not yet,” Georgie replied as he picked up his pace. “And what if I said I could make all yer problems go away like the coolest o’spring breezes? Ain’t never gotta walk these tracks again, ain’t never gotta see the sunrise again,” the dandy inquired. “I don’t know ya, sir, and I ain’t gonna risk bein’ late for my shift over temptations and lies,” Georgie replied as he pulled a silver chain with a matching cross out from beneath his shirt. The cross shone in the moonlight. Though he denied it, the dandy could see the cogs turn behind Georgie's eyes like the fast movin' wheels of a train. The dandy smiled, “Ah, good boy, aren’t ya? A real good boy,” he sneered as he stepped up onto the rail opposite o’Georgie. No matter how fast Georgie walked, the dandy was beside him without strain. Georgie was growin’ irritated; his bag o’tools was heavy. “Sure I can’t… twist yer arm, boy-o? This project’ll just keep on goin’, them cities will keep on gettin’ bigger. Trains ain’t gonna matter no more in a few years, and men like you ain’t never gonna be nothing more than this. I can make ya a king; I need a strong boy to help me. Got a big project comin’ up,” the dandy teased. Georgie finally stopped. He balanced on the railroad against the weariness he felt swellin’ like a summer heat within his legs. He cocked an eyebrow up when he heard the sound of the train whirrin’ down the tracks way off in the distance like a warnin’ siren callin’ out to him. Run, boy. You better run. “My momma said never be tempted by fancy men in the late night hours, sir,” Georgie noted. “She tell ya we the devil?!” the dandy inquired loudly. “Good lookin’ men like yerself usually are.” “Smart boy. I was tryin’ to do ya a favor, but I ain’t gonna waste breath-” “How much we talkin’?” That train whistle kept on howlin’. Georgie tried to step off the tracks, but his feet refused to move; they were cemented against the metal and wood he himself did lay down so many months ago. The dandy smiled and twisted his mustache round and round, “How ever much your greedy li’l heart desires, Georgie. Industry keeps on rollin’. Why shouldn’t we?” Georgie felt his heart race, “An’ how you know my name?” “I know all of it, Georgie. Ya were already mine before that sun e’r did set yesterday,” the dandy pointed down the way. Blood, deep and sticky, sat against the tracks and the Kentucky bluegrass swayin’ in the breeze. A torn-up satchel with busted tools inside laid by a boot, all crimson stained and reekin’ o’death. The mangled remains of a body lay crooked in a heap. Wrapped around a loose, half-finished spike was a silvery chain with the sign o’the Lord blowin’ in the soft breeze attached to it. All o’it was shining against the phantom lights of that damn train barreling’ down the tracks. The dandy extended an outstretched hand, nails sharp like daggers and smile twisted like a magnolia tree’s roots. Georgie looked down, looked at the red that soaked through the white and grime o’his shirt and realized he weren’t e’er gonna see his momma again. Realized he ain’t never made it home last night. Realized he had been walkin’ the tracks for a while too long this mornin’. Realized the tears weren’t comin’; there weren’t no more tears in him. That train kept on barrelin’ down the tracks. They say the ground shook when George McConnell died, as if the whole of hell sang out in a joyous noise. The dandy smiled that wicked smile at him, “I got a train that needs some tracks laid, needin’ a way to get poor boy-os like you rounded up. You’re outta time. Whatcha say, Georgie? Wanna make a deal with the devil?” A.L. Davidson (she/they) is a writer who specializes in massive space operas and tiny disturbances. She writes stories about ghosts, grief, isolation, space exploration, eco-horror, queerness, and the human condition. They live with their cat Jukebox in Kansas City. Website: http://disturbancesbyalycia.weebly.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AlyciaDavidsonAuthor Twitter: @MayBMockingbird |
Archives
October 2024
Categories
All
|