Welcome to the madhouse
What is Conjured Shall Vanish
Apex Magazine 2024
Mum stitched the corners of my mouth up to my cheeks,
and cast a spell of heat over my eyes so tears vaporized as soon as they were produced.
My Ship Remains
Radon 2024 (previously at Flame Tree)
“Parts may change, but the ship remains.”
My mother told me this before my first shedding, and I chant it mantra-like every time I discard my limbs for new ones.
Trapped in This Body, I Wait for You
Heartlines Spec, 2024
You expected me, but what you find is a reanimated body, my lips stitched by invisible strands and my limbs twisted at abnormal angles tethered to the strings of an alien puppeteer whose hold on me remains after their death.
Daughter, Mother, Charcoal
Apex Magazine, 2023
When I was a little girl, Mum would wrap potatoes in aluminum foil, then put them deep into the blazing hearth between the coals and grandma’s bones.*Brave New Weird finalist 2024
*reprint in audio by CreepyPod
The Sun Approaches Every Summer
Spectrum, 2024
She didn’t know I knew, but I was happy for her. I really was. She’d been a great friend if nothing else, and had every right to pursue activities I didn’t care to pursue with her.
And I was truly sad to see her boyfriend die of heatstroke first when the sun creeped closer next summer.
His Belly is a Coffin
Inner Worlds, 2023
A shuddering thought seizes her: her baby caged by stomach walls. Is this anguish and defenselessness the cost of holding a precious newborn?
Is that loud pumping of her own blood and the raging sleeplessness the price of life?
Rerolling the Dice
Gamut Magazine, 2024*
There’s a saying that Death’s a gambler—one carrying no scythe, but a massive bowl full of thousand-sided dice he rolls every morning.
In the Academy we know that’s not true. The true gambler is Life.*cover art of this issue is based on this story
The Wolf in My Belly
The Dread Machine, 2023
Dad says I’ve shrunk because the wolf inside me feeds on my flesh every night. But soon we’ll make him leave.
Open up my belly, and remove things from inside me to starve the beast.