Slightly Sweetly, Slightly Creepy

By Sonya Lano, Lynn Rush, Katherine Traylor and 8 more

* Ten complete gothic romances set in eerie locales around the world, with HEAs or HFNs. *

Sydney, Australia: a young woman with a family secret becomes entangled with an enigmatic stranger.

He was brooding and beautiful and... she was intrigued by the grief which spread from his eyes to the space around him, held up by his music. The music pierced Em's heart, though she couldn't understand the words...
An Inheritance by E.H. D'Urbin

In a South African asylum, a cursed creature sings hope to a grieving woman.

Sometime after midnight, the storm that had raged during my arrival blew over and the moon bathed the garden in silver beams of light. I awakened, drenched in sweat… to find a shadow lingering right outside my window…
From the Ashes by MS Weaver

In the old-world charm of Orlando, Florida, an enchantress's fiancé becomes something else after dark...

His smile was slow to spread, like a viscous puddle of blood. "Hello, Julia. Pleasure to meet you, at long last."
I Love You After Dark by Taryn Moreau

Out at sea, after the fog descends, a newly wedded wife senses something watching her.
Something in the water.
Something that knows her secrets.

I loved our wedding day. As I came to love him, despite the lies…
The Cracked Compass by Beth Green

In a country between the cracks of existence, a young woman's imprisoned inhuman lover summons her into peril.

Once upon a time, you were scarred and pitted and you walked crooked and I loved you.
Unbeautiful Corners

In an abandoned Texas hotel, an intrepid ghost-girl from the 1920s and a stubborn boy from the present day wage an epic battle of wills.

It wasn't being dead that bothered Audrey so much. It was that the constant sameness of every day was just so boring.
A Fool For You by Nicole Herron & Renee Edwards

After the stage lights go dark in North Carolina, and rich soil sifts over buried secrets, love still thrives.

She woke to a dark figure looking down at her… two eyes, dark and round as hollows… a thin, wide mouth and the suggestion of a nose. A spill of shadows resolved into trailing hair over a knobble-jointed body.
Whoever this was wasn't human…
The Wind Chimes by Katherine Traylor

In rural New York, an orphan prey to strange dreams encounters a creature of storybook nightmares.

Wings protruded from the gargoyle's back, each tipped with a sharp talon that promised agony should one pierce its prey...
Stone and Hellfire by Lynn Rush

In the streets of medieval Tallinn, Death and Fate wreak havoc in the life of a starving artist.

"Kiss me."
The shouts from the market, the wind rattling the windowpanes, the whole outside world stopped as Agnes stood up on tiptoes, looking at him as if he were the only person in the world.
The Dance of Death by Sky Sommers

In labyrinthine Prague, a lonely woman makes a lover from a scrap of soul.

"Don't you trust me?"
Samorost by Sonya Lano

Come, dear mortal, enter without fear.
(I told you: I promise it'll end happily for those who dare...)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sonya Lano
• Release date: Apr 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215469255

Sonya Lano

Born in Texas but somehow having escaped without the accent, Sonya Lano currently lives in Prague, Czech Republic with two cats and a bunch of dust balls, hairballs, fur balls, spiders, story manuscripts, dreams, chocolate, books, and whatever else is hanging around her flat. Her full-time day job testing software pays the bills while her nights are (mostly) filled with living in other worlds.

Book preview

Slightly Sweetly, Slightly Creepy

A Fantastical Gothic Romance Anthology

Sonya Lano, Taryn Moreau, Beth Green, E.H. D’Urbin,

Nicole Herron, Renee Edwards, Katherine Traylor,

MS Weaver, Lynn Rush, Sky Sommers

Copyright © 2023 by Sonya Lano

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods.

Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors' imaginations, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. References and derivations of other works of fiction follow the guidelines of public domain and/or fair use.

Book Cover by getcovers.com

Table of contents

* A Love from Elsewhere *

* Elsewhere *

* Unbeautiful Corners by Sonya Lano *

* Florida *

* I Love You After Dark by Taryn Moreau *

* Out At Sea *

* Cracked Compass by Beth Green *

* Australia *

* An Inheritance by E.H. D’Urbin *

* Texas *

* A Fool for You by Nicole Herron & Renee Edwards *

* North Carolina *

* The Wind Chimes by Katherine Traylor *

* South Africa *

* From the Ashes by MS Weaver *

* New York *

* Stone and Hellfire by Lynn Rush *

* Prague *

* Samorost by Sonya Lano *

* Tallinn *

* The Dance of Death by Sky Sommers *

* Unscathed *

Dear Reader,

Please be aware that some stylistic differences (spelling, commas) between stories are the result of various authors’ regional differences.

Enjoy the journey, you lovely, gentle souls!

* A Love from Elsewhere *

Maybe my brother knew something was off. When we were kids, he used to sleep on my floor at night. Maybe he thought that if something monstrous emerged in the dark, we’d have a better chance of fending it off together.

I had bigger things to worry about. Like the strange, apocalyptic visions I was occasionally having of vast, beetle-black armies marching across a rippling vista of clay-red dunes.

These visions brought despair.

Aside from that—and feeling like I never belonged where I was—things were calm.

Maybe it’s called ‘normal’. Let’s go with that.

I was invisible a lot. Imagine a girl on the periphery of everyone’s life. Everyone else basked in the spotlight center-stage while I meandered around the darkened props.

Except when the people from elsewhere showed up briefly before vanishing again.

The first was a boy who appeared when I was nine.

One day, out of nowhere, he moved into a house in our neighborhood, along with his terrifying-looking father and a sister who never smiled. He—the boy—was tall and wiry and had sandy-blond hair always falling into his eyes and freckles, and he was always grinning. He was more alive than anyone else around me.

I don’t even know how it happened, only that, one day, I was his girlfriend. He dragged me center-stage into his life.

It was one of the most animated times I’d ever lived. Everything was thriving, lively, every moment matchless. I felt like I was trying to touch a sunbeam, but it was already shining entirely on me. My face tilted up into all that bright glory.

I remember spending countless sunny afternoons with him. He would eat flowers to try to impress me, and he’d chase me around their pool, and catch me, and throw me in. Splash (fully clothed).

I remember trying to sneak into my house while dripping wet (try to hide a wet entryway hall floor from your mother; it doesn’t work).

One of those chases ended up with him pinning me down on the grass and stealing a kiss—on my cheek, of course, because I turned my head, because it’s a terrifying thing, realizing a boy unlike anyone you’ve ever met is going to kiss you. And you’re only nine years old.

Or maybe I was horrified thinking that my parents could see through my eyes and knew everything.

On the bus one day, too, I twisted around at a commotion behind us, and he was leaning forward, grinning, holding his mother’s diamond earrings (he always avoided talking about his mother. It was a strange mystery, never solved, but maybe vanishing was normal for mothers of kids from elsewhere).

I hurriedly turned away, my face flushing, and I was thinking frantically: was he trying to give me diamonds because he was proposing?

I was suddenly too center-stage in life; I wasn’t used to it.

Somehow, it also happened that his sister wanted to fight me one afternoon.

I wasn’t a fighter. I liked bicycling, roller-skating, swimming in the bayou, digging caves in the embankment, reading Nancy Drew, and writing ghost stories—all those peripheral things that didn’t involve me communicating with anyone else.

But, by rite of passage, I had to fight. All the neighborhood boys were shouting that I had to. Because, back then, when someone heard the word ‘fight’, everyone came running to watch.

And so, I tried not to think of biking, or skating, or swimming, or Nancy Drew, or that I would rather be at home and invisible and writing a ghost story. Instead, I circled and circled my boyfriend’s sister on some neighbor’s lawn, and I thought: I can’t let my brother and my friends down. I have to fight well.

I made a fist. I told myself I wouldn’t pull her hair or bite her; that was unfair.

But she pulled mine, and tried to bite, while I punched and punched—

And we jumped apart, and then we fought again, and jumped apart, and I started thinking, desperate, Please, please, just let this end. When could we stop? I wanted to stop.

Someone shouted, Whoever draws first blood wins!

I was nine years old. I didn’t want to draw first blood. I just wanted to be invisible and read books, but I was scrabbling on the grass, and this girl was dragging at my hair and biting, and I had to punch her, and we shoved apart.

And she sniffed.

And her nose dripped.

My first blood.

I’d drawn first blood.

The neighborhood kids went wild, my boyfriend among them. I was the winner, grins all around me, shouts, cheers, sweaty slaps on the back, all teeth and hollers of frivolous joy—it was too much for a girl accustomed to sitting offstage on theater props.

I looked past the merry mob at my boyfriend’s unsmiling sister, who was turning away. Trudging off.

Alone.

Beaten.

Invisible.

Unwanted.

No one cared.

I had used violence for the first time in my life, and I hated it. I rejected it. I started crying and couldn’t stop because I didn’t want to draw blood and punch faces. I wanted to be invisible and—

My boyfriend looked at my face, my tears, and his grin dropped, blanked out, and something else re-formed in its place. Did she hurt you?

His voice was different, changed.

I shook my head but couldn’t stop crying, and the thing in his face mottled. He lunged after his unsmiling sister. I’ll kill you!

And suddenly the neighborhood kids were cursing and running away from me and clustering around him, grabbing him, holding him back while he tried violently to reach his sister.

He was screaming, I’ll kill you if you hurt her. I’ll kill you!

I didn’t understand. My brother who slept on my floor to guard against monsters would never, ever scream at me like that, not even for a girl he’d dragged center-stage in his own life.

Maybe people from elsewhere loved differently than we did.

And then, one day, the house where my boyfriend lived was just empty. From one night to the next morning, he was gone, along with his terrifying father and unsmiling sister, gone back to elsewhere.

And my life was quiet again. I went back to being invisible.

It wasn’t until my third year of university when another person from elsewhere sauntered into my life. He had a mystifyingly... unplaceable accent, and sometimes he switched his consonants around when speaking. Reversing them, rolling them.

He’d come from across the sea and occasionally lived on a ship. He’d traveled to places like Yemen and Réunion and Mauritius. He was tall and dark and handsome and mysterious. He sometimes brooded when he looked at me, but wouldn’t tell me why.

Then I came back after studying abroad one semester, and he was gone—vanished like my boyfriend when I was nine. And this was before the time of emails and cell phones and internet. Gone meant gone without a trace. Or maybe a scrap of address, through a friend met once... but even with an address, can you really find ‘elsewhere’?

Elsewhere, after all, is everywhere and nowhere at once: that mythical place around the bend, a grove off the beaten path, places found in fairytales and books and songs.

Books like this anthology.

Here, authors from across the globe bring you loves from ‘elsewheres’ such as Australia, Estonia, South Africa, New York, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Prague, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The idea for it was inspired by a story I wrote like a wish to the universe, a story about a woman standing tiptoe on bracken and seeking her lost love.

That story was rejected from where I sent it. Maybe because they wanted tales that were part horror, and I had turned away from horror when I’d rejected shedding blood—when I rejected violence at nine years old. And as I wandered through my flat one day, I thought: It’s because my story was only slightly creepy.

...Slightly Sweetly, Slightly Creepy, a voice echoed in my mind.

Thus—from that near-miss rhyme, and from the occasionally strange sweetness and creepiness in my life, the lost loves, and that soft, rejected story—was born the idea for an anthology of gothic romances by authors from around the world.

And so, come listen to the tales we’d love to whisper to you.

I promise you there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Watch your step,

Sonya Lano

* A lock clicks shut *

* Elsewhere *

Don’t Try to Run

Good day, wayward wayfarer . Have you blundered into this place?

Come sit by me. I’ve an old tasseled pillow from some goblin royal’s couch. Moldering, to be sure, but better than the damp floor.

No, no, don’t bother trying to bolt. Don’t try to unlock that door. You’ll just lose nails and smear blood on the golden lock.

This cage won’t open that way.

Come. Sit.

Let me tell you a story.

If you strain your ears, you can hear its faintest stirrings: the hushed murmurs of lovers behind closed doors, their footfalls venturing into a fresh life together. Maybe.

This tale takes place in a country you don’t know, but which lies in between the cracks of countries you’re familiar with...

* Unbeautiful Corners *

By Sonya Lano

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, you weren’t beautiful, but I loved all your unbeautiful corners.

Like the tiny craters in your pockmarked skin, from the pox that marred you when you were a boy. You called them dents from life’s hard punches. I called them basins I could fill with caresses.

I miss your uneven gait: that slight limp gifted from the fall from the tree, back when I was a hoyden and you a bad influence.

I miss your uneven movement around our tiny space, especially those you gifted to me: your soft touch, your softer glances, your softest breaths.

I miss the minuscule cuts on your fingertips, from the splintered glass of your botched creations.

I miss your faint-green skin and sharp-toothed mouth, all your hoblin traits that lured me—poor human girl pinched tight in an existence of strictures—to snap her seams of propriety.

I miss the scar I gave you. The evening after it happened, you peered at the jagged stitches in the mirror of our room, your shirtless body cupped in a nimbus of candlelight, your dark hair curving like scythes across your pockmarked cheeks, and your strained mouth quirked up in a half-jest. You said, Now you’ll have to marry me, because no one else would have me.

Once upon a time, you were scarred and pitted and you walked crooked and I loved you.

I BALANCE BAREFOOT on rain-damp bracken, with dipping branches overhead dripping droplets on my curls.

Moonbeams illuminate those rain-dropped spheres on my skin while I cast my thoughts like a fisherman’s reel into the starred firmament.

Bastiun, where are you?

Like petals on invisible thread, hopes and dreams unspool on my magic.

But hopes and dreams are dangerous things now.

At some point in time, every country has fallen ill with an unearthly dread. Every country’s people once cowered or fled before some unnatural thing: some abomination of man, woman, or beast, whose truth now corrodes, obscured, in the decaying parchments of time.

Hungary had its Erzsébet Báthori, who purportedly bathed in the blood of girls to keep her flesh youthfully supple.

România had its Vlad Drăculea the Impaler, whose cruelty staked alarm into the hearts of his foes.

France boasted the Beast of Gévaudan, the size of a horse, with a flattened snout, an elongated head like a greyhound, and formidable teeth. It gouged out the throats of half a thousand men, women, and children who tended livestock in the forests of Gévaudan and partly ate their cadavers.

Blood seeps through the ink of every land’s ancient annals.

And ours?

In this place that drains dreams, it’s safer to be born without them.

The problem, though, is that humans are not only water, bone, blood, and flesh.

We are also stardust and dreams.

‘Loved’, Sureah?

Your words breathe into my mind like an enchantment, swirling me from earthborn woman to something weightless as a cloud, buoyant. Not a single fiber of my soul escapes your answer.

I no longer balance on the detritus of the forest, but on tenterhooks and hope.

Finally.

But for a moment, I cannot breathe back.

And then, my words drift: I loved you always, Bastiun. I love you still. Where are you?

My heart waits, and my breath bates. Earthworms crawl across my toes as I gaze between the branches, which grasp the sky like skinless limbs seeking a celestial lover.

Do you still want to die? you ask.

My tears spring stupidly from the well of my uselessness. Bastiun...

I’m at the heart of the horror, you answer.

The castle? Though why do I ask when I already know?

Come to me, Sureah, and try your best to die.

You were Stolen

THE VILLAGERS SAY THE horror that rules our lands rode through the dusty town square, driving an open white carriage with carved flourishes on its door. As its gilded wheels ratcheted across the stones, hens squawked and fluttered around the ruckus, and conversation stopped dead—when she stopped dead in the center.

They say she has lips of flawless apple-red, a swan-elegant neck, and snowy-white hair that snakes around the glittering golden cage of her elaborately twisted headdress.

They say she stopped next to you.

No one knows why: to ask directions, out of curiosity?

They say you looked up with your questioning smile, hands relaxed in your trouser pockets, rocking comfortably back on your heels. Words were exchanged, casual (yours) and brittle (hers).

What’s peculiar then is that everyone turned away. They don’t even know why, because what could be more interesting than her?

But one man looked down to shake a bug off his boot. Another looked at a rat scarpering from an overturned bucket. A woman swatted at a child whose antics nearly sent her tumbling.

And when they all turned back, you were gone.

HER VICTIMS SHUFFLE through every village I travel.

Emaciated, with skin draped over their bones, the joints moving visibly beneath, they shamble from chore to chore. Their smiles—when they see me—pull back like desiccated fruit peels from their teeth.

She has claimed all the lands, the fields, and orchards as hers.

I tread through this daytime nightmare, where blank-faced soldiers enforce her reign. Vacant automatons, they march at her beck and call while patrolling the meadows and lanes. Limp-willed farmers listlessly collect fruit ripe from the trees. Hollow-eyed clerks at gray stalls dispense food for coin.

But those who dream in our realm always suffer the most.

The beautiful atrocity who rules us loves best these fiery souls, the ones most vibrantly alive: a poet with half-written tales in the smudged ink on her fingers; an artist with her palette painted a rainbow of hues; a girl with a voice like a crescendo of song.

It is these by whom the atrocity halts when she rides through our towns.

When she rides through with you.

The first time I saw you beside her, I was perched on the stone rim of a well. Its eaves shaded me as I flicked the wormy apple in my hand free of vermin. A breeze gusted my hair across the bridge of my nose, the spirals now gingered by the sun. My cheeks had gone freckled.

You used to call those freckles summer’s art painted whimsically on my skin, before you’d kiss them and move on to my lips, and then move on to more...

You used to love me in the summer grass.

You loved me every place you could.

Every place I let you.

Your body next to her in the carriage... wasn’t you.

Deprivation of anything alive had etched recesses into your cheeks, and some endless void had swallowed up your soul.

Caverns of nothingness yawned in your eyes, and no soul at all lost within peered out. Nothing called from your body, which her magic had made beautiful.

I couldn’t stop staring—at your rose-gold skin, its greenish tinge gone, all your pockmarks smoothed out, your flawed features ironed flat, like cloth attire for a body that was siphoned clean of everything inside.

I couldn’t stop staring, while you stared at nothing.

She, however, watched everything. She halted her carriage next to a young woman who was gaping up at your beautiful nothingness.

And then our queen atrocity looked toward you, and she seemed to put an invisible hand up inside your body, and you shuddered softly from the bottom up, coming to life like a puppet filled with her hand. And by her will, she brought you briefly to life.

You stared down at the young woman—a poet, with her uplifted face lined starkly with countless unscrawled poems. Do you like what you see? you intoned, and your teeth, visible between your lips, were now human-blunt, not hoblin-sharp.

Yes! she cried, her yearning like palpably reaching arms.

With a beckoning hand, you invited her up, and she clambered up nimbly as if beckoned by a storytelling god.

She returned the next day as unfulfilled as an unfilled page. Inspiration drained, she shed leaves of paper behind her like fallen wishes.

At the next village I reached, the queen and you rode again.

Again, her invisible hand filled you up as if you were a handcrafted puppet.

Again, you intoned, Do you like what you see?—this time down at a marveling painter.

Her up-lifted face flushed like a canvas bursting with future landscapes, and her paintbrush dolloped scarlet drops on the cobblestones beneath her boots.

She returned scoured barren. Her kind husband tried to guide her depleted husk, but her apathetic hands, which had once sparked a thousand dreams, now sputtered around aimlessly like snuffed wicks.

Sadly, her husband watched her trudge through drudgery: an empty vessel stooped and washing clothes, hemming rips with mechanical hands, hanging laundry... and hanging herself.

At the next village, our queen atrocity used your puppet body to lure another victim: a girl with a voice like musical notes.

That girl returned with her voice a lackluster whisper.

You are our queen atrocity’s honeyed trap. She uses you to catch her unwitting flies.

Why do you let her use you to steal women who dream passionate dreams? Women whose art could set afire our leaden world.

You are her wearable puppet. An empty body into which she sticks her invisible hand.

EVERY EVENING, AS TWILIGHT swaddles the world in obscurity, strange tableaus wander to the periphery of my mind.

If I lean against a tree trunk or lie on a prickling bale of hay, sundry scenes appear behind my shut lids.

A ballroom where our queen atrocity glides among dancers. Her tresses aren’t snowy white in this scene, not as in the present day; here, they’re lustrously dark. Beneath the chandeliers, the strands shine like liquid carapaces of iridescent black, a contrast to her luminous gown.

In her wake trails a man in a golden mask, which covers his entire face aside from holes only for the eyes. Those eyes glint intensely, and just as intensely, he follows her.

Or hunts her.

The next scene shows a brick cellar where stacked casks conceal the walls. A table in the center displays a lantern—and her.

She lounges sprawled in breathless dishabille, her ruffled gown a jumbled mess, and it’s obvious what she’s finished. Ruddy blotches splotch her neck from passionate kisses, and her hands are pushing her rumpled gown back down over white-stockinged calves.

She’s lost her slippers, and the ornaments in her hair dangle haphazardly from where some chaotic hand must have yanked them.

The masked male figure steps in close, his nude body honed to muscular glory.

In the next tableau, they stand in a curtained alcove, the muted hint of voices on the other side. He cups her chin and whispers, Dreams are useless.

His voice mesmerizes her, her pupils dilating as he leans in near.

Painters, he murmurs, poets, songwriters—they do not labor. We need to rule and eat and build houses and—

But, she rushes into his speech, what will we do after the work is done? The houses are built, dinner eaten, our toil through, and we’ve time for leisure?

What did we just do now?

But—

Do not question the pleasure.

In another tableau, our young queen atrocity stands with her back to the gold-masked man; his hands curl on her shoulders, intimate, possessive.

She does not protest his intimate possession.

Happiness is not why we live, he monotones, and she monotones with him. It is frivolous, useless, and tempts people away from what should be done.

But, at this, I think: Why live if not for happiness?

It is those moments that make us thrive.

You and I thrived, Bastiun, didn’t we? Not only during the twining of our bodies, but in the shared times of laughter; leaning shoulder to shoulder in companionable silence while listening to a viol, a lute, a song during some celebration. Listening to storytellers weave riveting tales; strolling in the wood while smilingly pointing at cottages painted with whimsical scenes; feeding each other apple pies, ripe cherries, our kisses crumbed with honeyed confectionaries.

We patched our life together from dozens of misdirections into corners of happiness.

A Sip of Dream

EVERY DAY, I COME CLOSER to her.

And, now, every night, instead of tableaus of her, I dream I am you.

I dream that you’re following me. From above, I watch my plump limbs stride spry with vigor through shaded woods, my curvaceous figure crouched to gather wild tubers and mushrooms. My fingers uproot them feather-light and hummingbird-quick.

I never realized how vibrant I seem—or perhaps only seem to those sapped of dreams.

I am ambrosia to you, enticing you so close that you note the dirt of the earth in the dusky crescents under my nails.

When I rise, briars and leaves sweep adrift from my hair, and my bare feet and arms are bedecked with spirals of soil.

My eyes are ablaze with dreams.

Those dreams make you hunger.

Even veiled with sleep, that gulp in you aches and craves—Feed me. Nourish me. I diminish, decline. I ebb; I taper; I need...

You need me like sip after sip of a drug-like dream.

But maybe that’s not you.

Made of Starlight

I AWAKEN ONE NIGHT entangled in herbs and vines, in some cottager’s moonlit garden.

A little girl in a frock quavers above me beneath the sickle moon.

She bares her teeth, small as the milk-teeth of a babe, but sharp. Her words come out whistling like a dagger across a whetstone. Are you afraid to die? she rasps.

Bastiun? I ask.

I’m not him. Did you come to give me your dreams?

I gasp awake—truly awake this time.

In a rustle of plants, I rise amid the scents of thyme and sage.

Enough.

Enough of these dreams. Enough of this silence.

Bastiun, Bastiun, where are you? Please.

I beg.

Again, I unspool my hopeless dream on wishful thread that ties me in knots with your name. Bastiun, Bastiun... as I used to sigh in your ear, over and over as we—

I asked her to take me, you whisper.

It’s a punch to my heart, your admission. I can hardly revive.

But I must be stronger than this, although I’ve no idea where to go if it’s true. Would I want to go anywhere at all? You no longer love me?

When she rode through, I was so livid. So sick of you always trying to—to—and as she rode past, the words just escaped.

What words?

‘I know what you’re afraid of.’

And?

She stopped. And I smiled up at her. And she was like ice as she asked me what I thought she was afraid of.

What did you say?

‘Age. Dying. Death.’ And I said I knew someone who wasn’t afraid of it at all. ‘She dreams of death,’ I said. ‘And how can you fear what you dream of—what you crave? If you had her dreams, you wouldn’t be afraid. You would be fearless. Like her.’

Like me.

Like you.

Then why did she take you instead of me?

Because I told her the truth: that you would embrace death before you’d let her catch you and take your dreams. So she had to catch me instead. And I would catch you.

What can I say? I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I always provoked the reaper.

I’m sorry that I tried to light my own pyre and burn myself to a crisp.

That I half-buried myself in the cursed forest as fodder for its roots, weeping as I tried to smother myself in dirt.

I’m sorry that I climbed to the top of the bluff and tried to hurl myself to the sky.

I wanted to die (or maybe just come close, as if being close to death would make me want to keep my life), but you were always the one scarred. Scraped to bone by brambles while dragging me from the forest. Struck by sparks when hauling me from the pyre.

And the scar that nearly took your eye...

Us toppling together on those rocks—all the blood on your pocked cheeks, your eyes closed, you... not conscious while I thought—that moment, before you weakly opened your eyes, I thought I’d lost you as you always so nearly lost me.

That was the moment I wished that I’d seen your pain rather than my own.

I didn’t want to cause you pain, Sureah. I just wanted you to love me more than your own hurt.

I do. I always did.

Then why do you dream of death?

I don’t. How can I explain it? That it’s an urge, not a want? A shove, not something I reach for? It’s not a dream. It’s... an illness in my mind. It makes me want to dance maniacally on the reaper’s blade. To feel how precarious my life can become and be so precious at the end. As if, by touching the end, I can make myself yearn, instead, to begin. I try to resist the cry, but it corners me. And it’s just easier to give in.

Do you try to fight?

Constantly. Always, for you. But it’s stronger.

If it’s an illness, then can you blame me for wanting to destroy it? Sureah, can you blame me?

Never. But what if by destroying it, you destroy me?

I would never destroy you. I want to save you.

Maybe there’s no saving someone like me forever, just saving me time and again.

Maybe she’ll save us both, you whisper.

She would devour our dreams first, and what would be left of us then?

What is left of us now?

What can I say to that? What has she done to your skin? I dare to ask. Your body?

I don’t know. I’m like a being of starlight.

What has she done to you?

You have no answer.

Because you’re no longer here at all.

ANOTHER TWILIGHT TABLEAU:

Inside an unfurnished room, its walls painted a wet, glossy black, our queen atrocity clutches a paintbrush. It drips with the same charcoal-dark paint that coats the walls.

Her gold-masked lover steps up behind her and drops a kiss to her throat.

She gasps—weeps?

And her hair turns from coal-black to snowy white.

An Embellishment Torn Violently

CONCENTRIC SEASONS encircle the atrocity’s castle.

I stand outside the iron gates, in the melting honey-gold of summer’s heat. But, above me, iron finials spire from frozen towers. Pennants snap from crowned rooftops that are overlaid with snowdrifts, above mullioned windows rimmed with frosted crystals.

Snow-swirls whirl down from those conical roofs and vanish into gardens the hues of autumnal umber and ochre and ruby.

Leaves die there in heaps of amber and decaying-red. Apples decompose, unpicked on the earth and visible through the iron gates before me.

A vacuous sentinel blocks that entrance with his lowered pike.

Good day, I greet him, which rouses him in the same way our queen’s invisible hand roused you.

Invisible hooks pull up his mouth in a garish smile, and he bows, as sluggishly clumsy as a ragdoll. Dead-lipped, he drones from beneath his helm: Do you still want to die?

I counter: Will you let me in?

Did you come to give me your dreams?

Let me in and find out.

Jerkily, the human automaton raises his pike. Unseen pulleys and cranks creak open the gates.

I stride past, from summer’s zephyr into autumn’s nip, onto a flagstone walk that’s peppered with broken thorns. On either side, snarled bushes jab at one another as though warring to the death; they bristle with thorns and spines that seep an unnatural, viscous sap onto the soil beneath, where beetles and larvae writhe.

Rather than follow the path to the stone stairs leading up to carved oaken doors—no use making her pursuit of me and my ‘dream’ easy—I veer through an opening in the hedge and crunch onward, to the twig-covered garden beyond.

Here naps a marble fountain, its basin carpeted with snow-sprinkled russet leaves. An adder coils around the throat of a sculpted warrior kneeling in the center. Mold slicks the stone beneath him, where water-flow has tapered to a trickle. Centipedes swarm disinterestedly over some long-dead rat.

Circumventing the fountain’s rim, I come face-to-face with a woman in dingy homespun, her smile a puppet’s rictus, her pose hanging like something pinned to the air. She tilts her head, the motion a tic, her fingers twitching on the cleaver in her hand. Do you still want to die?

I hold myself still, my breath still, my life still. Where is Bastiun?

Her smile pries upward, her hand still twitching on the cleaver. Did you come to give me your dreams?

Show me Bastiun and find out.

She swivels on a booted heel, leaving a furrow in the snow-dusted earth.

I follow—hopefully coming closer to you.

Mutely, she and I crush leaves and stems and the occasional scuttling thing underfoot. Step... crunch... step... crunch...

Inside the castle kitchen, oil sizzles and water boils as human silhouettes slave around a scorchingly hellish fire in the hearth. Hanging pots overhead reflect their forms in wild, thrashing shades, as unstill as the cleaver in my escort’s hand.

She leads me through corridors of mounted candles whose soft scintillations spell out questions on the stone walls: Do you still want to die?

Did you come to give me your dreams?

And then, we halt on the threshold of a gilded ballroom. Engulfed in luminosity, ornate mirrors of all shapes adorn the walls, replicating the radiance of two dozen chandeliers a thousand-fold. Fragrances of rose and jasmine and citrus sift between my parted lips. Brocade and silk swish in susurrations around me.

Across the floor flounce people powdered and perfumed, in peacock-hued waistcoats and gowns, all of them frolicking more like goblins than dancers.

No, not that. They judder from pose to pose like creatures enchained, not autonomous. Their flung-back heads and flung-out arms go yank, spasm, tug, lurch.

There’s a puppet smile.

A bloodshot eye.

A sloshing wineglass plummets from nerveless fingers, spilling a burgundy waterfall of wine. The glass shatters, lost beneath the rustle and breath of wordless dancers. They exhale, inhale, immersed in unplayed music, their slippers scraping across the broken glass, scraping it across the black and white tiles. Their figures go bump, shudder, spasm, jolt.

Sureah.

She glides before me in a languid goad, her lacy gown as snowy white as her hair, whose tresses twine through her metal headdress with ribbons of pearls. She cuts her smile as thin as an apple peel. Do you still want to die?

Where is Bastiun? I respond.

Did you come to give me your dreams?

You have enough.

"And have you? Will you not feast?" She gestures to a sideboard flaunting platters of fleshy fruits, wedges of peppered cheese, and wine bottles in holders clamped with jewels.

Ignoring the mouthwatering fare and the feverish dancers, I don a faux serenity to mirror hers. I’m not fond of glutting myself.

Not even on love? She extends her elegant, beringed hand out behind her.

And then you step up in your mask of skin.

Not taking her hand, you halt like a curious bird. You look wrong without your timeworn boots or the cambric shirt I mended for you a thousand times—and slid off of you a thousand more. On your rose-gold skin, you wear a foamy white shirt with a ruffled collar, a black vest all glinting with silver buttons, raven-black breeches over white stockings, and buckled shoes. You simulate a shallow courtesy.

Only your hair matches you—almost—oiled into faking its usual windblown, hand-raked untidiness.

As for your flawless skin, your neatly combed smile, and your perfectly ironed face... those aren’t you.

But someone dwells inside you.

Or something.

You take my hand, and yours burns like ice. Sureah.

Faced with your blunt human teeth and your sewn-up, civilized air, I’ve never been more aware of my own disheveled hair, the ropes of my curls all threaded with leaves, my bare feet daubed by the earth, and my artlessly coy way of hooking one ankle behind the other when speaking to you.

We don’t belong in this cultured enclosure.

But nothing in