When You've Been Bad

By Dora Badger

-One man's actions bring him into contact with the denizens of a remote forest. 

-A surprising revolution is sparked by the closing of a spice shop. 

-Fable and history clash in a freaky, fractured fairy tale for adults.

This slim volume brings together three very short works of dark speculative fiction. Although short, the stories in this collection are certain to stay with you -- and they may just keep you up tonight!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dora Badger
• Release date: May 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781533752291

Book preview

Chill

I never listened to Ma in all my days, no, not once.

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Oh, I been wishing I had.

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They’re trying to make me come outside again: playing with my fire so I can’t get no heat, freezing the water so I can’t get no drink, running in the rafters just out of my sight so I can’t get no peace. They want me chilled, and half-crazed, and so thirsty I’m begging to drink what they do.

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Don’t go near them cabins, Ray, Ma said before I left – after she spit on the money that I showed her – It snowed there a thousand years already. Ain’t nobody comes out.

Ain’t nobody comes out of County after they kills two cops, Ma, I told her. You come too. Things’ll settle some here and we’ll go South.

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The fire burns blue-white with the heat they won’t let out for me; water drips from icicles along the windows but freezes before I reach it; but worst of all is that skittering noise they make with their claws and their tails as they dart across the ceiling and the walls.

I never could bear the cold. To live away from winters is all I ever wanted. I spent my life looking for a way out, a place where I could sleep warm every night.

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I told you to stay away from that bank, Ray, Ma snarled, "and now you in piles of shit. Boy, you stay away from them cabins or you gonna wish for shit."

But I had never listened to Ma in all my days.

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They have trapped me here, sewn up the edges of my world with their teeth. I don’t know how long they have held me here; the sky has been the same snowy gray for all the days and nights since I came. I get so tired when I see the snow and the gray sky that I think sometimes I been here almost my whole life.

They keep me for their sport, for my blood and for tiny bites of my flesh. I don’t know what they