Mothwings and Conjures

By Turner Keith

Dark beauty and human emotion dance like moths around a naked lightbulb in MOTHWINGS AND CONJURES.

In "Ugly Lipstick," the spirits of two scorned lovers are trapped for eternity with one another. Caged together in the dingy hotel room that served as the scene for their adulterous acts, will they learn to exist with their own demons, and each other, or will their own poisonous acts further tarnish their everlasting souls?

A young, arrogant, tooth fairy prepares for the promotion of his life in "Baby Teeth and Coffee Stains." He is up to become a Fairy Godmother and leave his seemingly tedious life behind, wanting to be on top of the corporate food chain. But will his own personal monsters hinder him, staining his reputation like coffee spilled on paper, or will he get the his own 'magic wand' and finally be living up to his own personal idea of potential?

Glamour, subterfuge, and heartache take center stage in "Hunter," where Jordan enters an amorous competition in attempts to save what's closest to his heart. The price? Your life given to the monstrous, beautiful creature that chooses your entire being in exchange for one wish. What happens, though, when what needs to be done is thrown against what's best unconditional love? Not all monsters hide in the shadows.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Keith
• Release date: Dec 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463296653

Turner Keith

Turner Keith is an author in Bentonville, Arkansas, specializing in fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Currently, he’s pursuing an BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment from Full Sail University. He published his first short story in a local library contest when he was only nine years old. Don’t tell anyone, but he knows Bruce Wayne is Batman.

Book preview

Moth Wings and Conjures

By Turner Keith

Copyright © Turner Keith Reeves, 2020

All Rights Reserved

Book Cover Original Images/Illustrations by Turner Keith Reeves

First Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Information

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Goddess

Defiance

Memoriam Sanguinis

Figure Drawings

Sisters

Ugly Lipstick

Hunter

Beating Wings

Baby Teeth and Coffee Stains

About the Author

To Sheila Faye, who saved every terrible story child-version of me ever wrote.

Introduction

Stories are strange things and writing them is sometimes even stranger. Akin to feats of magic, stories have the power to conjure us out of our every day, transporting us into a reality that is free from our own. They are profound, universal, and, hopefully, transcendental. The words in your hands encompass my very first official attempts at manifesting myself as a professional author, a master sorcerer, an accomplished conjure man of my stories. Sure, I’ve written many others, and will, without a doubt, write many more, but these are the first.

And like the moth, changing and fragile, these stories grew, evolved, and metamorphosed into magic in their own right.

I hope they serve you as well as they have served me.

Goddess

She was a goddess. She revealed in the energy flowing a river through her soul, a deep, thrumming vibration, an esoteric orgasm of her own self, slithering from her hands to her feet to her belly to her heart and crowning in her scalp. The power caressed the wall of her skin with a force somewhere between a sensual lover’s trailing fingers and a raging tsunami.

She could do it. She could call it.

She had to.

She. Had. To.

As young as her physical body was, barely more than an adult on its own, hardly old enough to matter in the scheme of things, going to work, finishing her graduate degree (Mythological Literature), her soul was borne from the eon’s past. She was eternal, infinite, never ending, being birthed over and over in a cyclical dance of existential infinity. Birth, die, birth, die, birth, die. Eternal as her power. Eternal as her mundane life seemed to be before the goddess inside stirred, opened her divine eyes. The monotony before her power blossomed, she thought, would never end. I am nothing, she’d told herself, long ago, diminishing herself, stealing her own goddess-ness.

There she stood, in her modest apartment, dressed in a baggy t-shirt, and yesterday’s sweats, determined to erase her very mundanity.

She held her hand aloft, fingers hovering inches above the dying orchid Lilianna had given her, for some occasion or another she no longer gave a shit to remember. The vibration was there, tickling inside out on her fingers. It pressed to be freed.

A minute passed.

Her finger twitched.

Another minute. Her shoulders slumped.

Her bottom lip trembled. Another minute, two. She groaned. She was distracted, letting her emotions chain her infinity. She could hardly feel anything but the pain. The rejection staining everything.

Fuck Alec. The tears welled over. Her hands became fists, clenching at her side. How could he do this to her? How could he-

A leaf twitched on the flower; its rotten, shriveled black evanescing into vibrant green. One leaf, no more. She stood there, watching. She didn’t take a breath. Had that just happened? Maybe she’s imagined it.

No, stop that! She scolded herself.

She was a goddess, damnit. How could she let some mundane man tear out her heart, take away her divinity, caging it like some docile beast? She focused on the orchid. She let every hurt surface, mixing with the euphoric power storming within her, warring