Hold the Sea Inside
Diabolical Plots
#112 | June 2024 "Among the crags of the mountains weeps a cascade of salt water. In the pool beneath, stiff-peaked foam drowns careless men and sickens parched animals. The menfolk say it’s devilry to find salt water so far from the shore, but we know better. It’s no devil’s work but woman’s grief." |
Diabolical Plots
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Green Water, Blue Water
Hold the Sea Inside
Issue 2 | Summer Solstice 2024 "Vele pulled herself up the algae-slick stone steps of a narrow street, like she did every month. The new moon cast a velvety darkness over her city. Between the lit lamps, shadows hid that her skin was a shade too green, her cropped hair too spongy like the algae growing canalside. When the water levels in the canal dropped each month, the humans assumed it was because of the new moon, not because the spirit of the canal had crawled from the water in a valiant attempt at a human body." |
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Grief in C Minor
Luna Station Quarterly
Issue 57 | March 2024 "There had been something uncanny about Grandmere’s music. Even as I child, I knew it. Her songs would wrap around my bones, growing heavy until I slept sprawled on the carpet. If I was throwing a tantrum, the song would stop up my mouth until there was no air for crying. They weren’t lullabies, exactly. They were not made to comfort. They were made to control." Support Luna Station Quarterly on Patreon for a special audio version of "Grief in C Minor" with an original score by Teddy Musarra.
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Cover art by Hannah Elizabeth
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Time Between Her Teeth
Kaleidotrope
Winter 2024 "This is the story the roses tell when their heads fall, rotting, from the bush. This is the story the leaves hum when they crackle, trampled, underfoot. This is the story the frost whispers when it creeps, greedily, over the fields. This is the story of Death and the girl they love." |
Cover art by Francesco Crisci
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A Brief Theory of Time Compression:
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Cover art by Jenny Mure
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Want Like Raw Silk
Cosmic Horror Monthly
Issue 37 | July 2023 "Way up on the mountaintop, just before the spruce firs finally surrender to craggy rock and sky, stands a grove of mulberry trees so dense the trunks knot around each other. And in that thicket, tangled among the branches and the sweet fruit, are panes of glass, buckled wood, a rusted bed frame. No one can recall how long it’s been since that lonely house fell—on the account that no one was there to witness it—but there are stories. Oh, there are stories." |
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Follow Darkness Like a Dream
Violent Delights and Midsummer Dreams
Ed. Damon Barret Roe & Cassandra L. Thompson | Quill & Crow Publishing House "See the shadows creep down the mountainside, swallowing the sweet wineleaf and the bittercress, gorging on the rocky outcrops, devouring the young man and woman standing alone. The shadows bring sleep and hateful fantasies." |
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The Word Hoarder
Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things
March 2023 "The English language has five thousand words. A long time ago, before I and the Third Generation were born, there were half a million words in the English language. ... I am a word hoarder, tasked with preserving the words the world has forgotten." |
Cover art by Choong Yoon
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Deserving of Warmth
Bleak Midwinter Vol. II: Solstice Light
Ed. Damon Barret Roe & Cassandra L. Thompson | Quill & Crow Publishing House "Up in the mountains, the cold will lick your bones clean. No matter how heavy your coat or how warm your hearth, a stray wind will creep like a breath over the back of your neck. And each year, when the nights are at their darkest and the snow is at its deepest, when it seems spring may never come, our tales turn to monsters." |
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Everyone's Got a Little Devil in Them
It Was All a Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right
Ed. Brandon Applegate | Hungry Shadow Press "In the winter, the Devil’s cloven hooves bore deep tracks in the crusted-over snow. In the spring, the Devil’s claws slashed gouges into saplings. In the summer, the Devil’s winged silhouette rose from the mist in the cranberry bog. And I’d keep my head down and my mouth shut, so much like a mouse that I could never be mistaken for a devil. Almost never. Except for those gray nights in late October, when the moon hung low and ripe, and the whole world seemed to crackle—those were the most dangerous times. Because those nights, people did more than tell stories about the Devil. They tried to catch it. " |
Cover art by Evangeline Gallagher
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Dance the Sky Bright
Medusa Tales
Issue 2 | July/August 2022 "When the star had descended two days ago, it had pulled the night sky down with it. A veil had been cast over the mountainside—the sun did not rise, the wind did not blow, and anyone who tried to leave through the narrow rocky pass was lost to the shadows. The star would return to its seat in the sky—bringing back the sun and wind and light—only when the townsfolk offered it a young woman for a dance. And the star had chosen Esther as its dance partner." |
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Discounts for the End of Days
The Vanishing Point
Issue 4 | Summer 2022 "It’s hard to tell, those first few days, that the apocalypse is coming. If Tony had known, he would have raised the price of toilet paper sooner." "Discounts for the End of Days" also appears in The Vanishing Point's anthology, Convergence: Best Stories 2021-2023.
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Cover art by Julian Aguilar Faylona
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The Future in a Wash Basin
Metaphorosis Magazine
March 2022 Issue "This was the land where her mother and her gran had practiced their craft. This was the land where her own daughters would learn their arts. Even though the town seemed to be growing smaller each day, she couldn’t bear to leave Schull Harbor and the bones of the women who came before her. This land was her inheritance." "The Future in a Wash Basin" also appears in Metaphorosis Books's Reading 5X5 x3: Changes anthology, ed. B. Morris Allen.
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Cover art by Carol Wellart
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Sleeping Giants
Luna Station Quarterly
Issue 49 | March 2022 Originally published in The Gateway Review "Annie Warren spoke in tongues – every time she opened her mouth garbled sound flooded out. The only people on God’s green Earth who knew were her ma and pa. They told her never to speak in front of strangers, and the girl listened." |
Cover art by Caroline Jamhour
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