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In the Blue Hour
She always returns in the blue hour, when twilight stains the glassy surface of the tarn with sky. Torn, stained, still smelling of charred flesh or powdered with quicklime, waxen lips curling into a wan smile. Most detested cousin. Most wanted inheritance.
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To the Android I Saw Get Pushed onto the Tracks at the Archives Metro Station
I didn’t reach for you when you toppled forward. But I did step closer, did watch with interest as the train came hurtling into the station. The man was gone before the cars screeched to a halt, lost in the throng of passengers disgorged from the Green Line train on the opposite platform. I doubt…
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The Deading Veil
Women did not always survive the ceremony, or at least not in a way that mattered. Three generations prior, a great-aunt had lain beneath the shroud and never emerged. When someone was at last sent to fetch her they found her catatonic, gossamer fabric clutched tightly in her hands. She died three days later without…
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Still Life with Cranberries
You’ve been looking at a lot of corpses lately. Your typical fare is more skeletal than fleshed, so it’s possible that the imagery is just far enough outside your wheelhouse that it’s getting to you. Tallulah and Tollund Man are easier to work with because they are (or were, in the case of the latter)…
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Duskhollow Township Unbituaries, Week of the harvest Moon
Daisy Farrow, one day dead, emerged from her coffin in the form of a swan as it was being lowered into the ground…
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Drinking the Heron
You reveled in battle, in the beating of drums and grinding of steel. And I, craven, lay awake in the anticipatory darkness, watching your chest rise and fall, wondering if each night would be our last. So certain was I that you would die sword in hand that I was blind to the stalking shadow,…
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If You Can’t Make Your Own Regret, Store-Bought Is Fine
Regret was without question the emotion no membalmer wanted to see trickling into the basin when they tapped a skull. It was the sickly brown of leaves decomposing into stagnant water, and fragility aside, it smelled foul. The ideal outcome for any preservation, of course, was to provide a living memento of the deceased for…
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Mind Palace v1.2.1
Nominated for Best of the Net 2027! >Overdose. Called to a code in the 4th-floor visitor bathrooms but the patient was already long gone. His mother is a patient on cardiac stepdown. He came in to visit her and then shot up in the bathroom after. No one found him until housekeeping came around to…
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Skull with Laurel, 1832
Alois, awoken from your slumberand lifted from the grave like precious jewelsyour bones did taste the sun but once, unearthedby friendly hands and bleached to canvas white.
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Blind Date with a Corpse
My boyfriend, Alan, is driving. We’re on a date—a rare occasion, since I live on the other side of the state and only get to see him every six weeks or so. There’s also a dead body in the back seat.
RJ Aurand 