Tagged: blood

2024-07-25

Homecoming

Part of Night's Longing

2635 words (13 minutes)

If the hand on my shoulder belonged to a lookout I missed, someone come for revenge on the hunter who slew their kin, right now I’d let them have it. I find myself unable to muster relief that the hand belongs to Carmen instead.

2024-07-10

Execution

Part of Night's Longing

3749 words (19 minutes)

Carmen seems more withdrawn than before after sharing that story, as though even she was caught by surprise that those memories still have some power over her. A little fun in bed helps distract her for a moment, but I get the feeling she also uses it to distract me from the topic.

2024-07-07

Past Hungers, Past Mistakes

Part of Night's Longing

4477 words (22 minutes)

Carmen spoils me. She treats me like a princess, taking me out to eat at fine restaurants, lavishing gifts of beautiful clothes and shoes and bags and jewelry on me. It’s almost too much. Too fancy, too elegant, too high femme.

2024-07-02

To Pass The Time

Part of Night's Longing

3233 words (16 minutes)

As the two of us wait outside the restaurant for the valet to bring her car around, Carmen produces a small case from inside her jacket. She removes a cigarette, hand-rolled by the looks of it, and extends her arm to offer me the option of taking one.

2024-06-30

The Apex Predator

Part of Night's Longing

3337 words (17 minutes)

Tears. I wondered if there would be tears. A bloodbag, a human girl—a vampire hunter by blood—dies. What does that mean to the vampires who called her sister?

I guess it means tears. That’s something.

2024-06-26

What Passes For Wholesome

Part of Night's Longing

3972 words (20 minutes)

Four people dead in one night. One person missing, along with her clothes and valuables, making her the obvious suspect.

2024-06-23

Dinner's On Me

Part of Night's Longing

3357 words (17 minutes)

The man shouting at me imagines himself to be someone important. Though I barely pay attention to his ranting and raving, I gather that my error has not only inconvenienced him, it is but the first domino in a chain reaction that will end with his company collapsing, people losing their jobs, and the entire United States economy falling into ruin, all because I neglected the extra shot of espresso in his extra large caramel turtle mocha.

2024-06-22

A Better Family

Part of Night's Longing

3008 words (15 minutes)

A man kneels on a stone floor, coughing blood. His face is a battleground of despair versus anger, and he clenches his fists in a futile gesture of resistance.

“If it helps, I’m sorry in my own way. I’d hoped to let you live, but I cannot do that if you will not play your role in this story.” A figure, cloaked in darkness, circles the dying man like a vulture.

2024-06-21

Den of Depravity

Part of Night's Longing

2430 words (12 minutes)

When I was 15 years old, my father killed the first girl I ever loved.

2024-06-12

For the Love of Gods

Part of The New Goddess

3868 words (19 minutes)

My thoughts heave and surge like the tide, flooding, claiming, reshaping the world around me. However, so little of this is my design. The world is clay in my hands, but my hands are not alone, and my hands are not even entirely my own. I recognize Velle’s fingerprints here and there, nudging reality in delicate and subtle ways that contrast with my own wild flailing. Something within me lashes out even at those I love, possibly because I love them. My mind has become a kitchen with too many cooks, all of whom hate me.

2024-06-11

Lady of the Waking Nightmare

Part of The New Goddess

3316 words (17 minutes)

Not what I would call ideal timing for You to indulge Your hunger, Goddess, I have to say. Did You really have so much faith in the three of us, or have You been lying even to me about how in control of Your urges You are?

Stalking Nina and Velle as they descend through the palace, it’s immediately clear that Velle has regained some of her former self. How much, I wonder? I want to believe that her brusque attitude with the princess is a matter of urgency, and that her heart has not entirely discarded the woman she loved just this morning.

2024-06-06

Surrender

Part of The New Goddess

4497 words (22 minutes)

For the first time in longer than I can remember, I wake up pain-free.

I also seem to be completely naked in an unfamiliar bed with someone else’s arms around me. I feel and smell filthy. With a groan of disgust, I try to regain my bearings. Memories of what happened yesterday slowly drift back to me as though from a great distance away.

2024-05-26

Past The Limits Of Worship

Part of The New Goddess

3052 words (15 minutes)

I know when my Goddess returns by the way the whole palace comes alive in Her presence. The floor, the walls, even the very air carries a subtle vibration of Her power when She, the beating heart of our home, steps foot inside. My legs buoyed with renewed energy, the anticipation of laying eyes upon Her again carries me onward with quickened steps.

2023-05-05

I Love The Way You Go Too Far

Part of Cursed Sword

3610 words (18 minutes)

I remember Emilia. I could have loved her, but in the end her heart was set on another.

I gave her everything—all my hate and all my power—and we would have had the world if she hadn’t thrown it all away for that foul priestess of hers.

2022-12-06

Once A Hero

Part of Cursed Sword

2690 words (13 minutes)

The knight was a hero once. The princess called her that, at least, before sending her on this quest.

2022-11-12

Do It For Her

1135 words (6 minutes)

“We all miss Reisa,” my friend told me. “And we all want to see that bastard pay, believe me, but this is too much.”

2022-10-30

An Expensive Mining Incident

1023 words (5 minutes)

That the planet was haunted would never deter the executives running the galaxy’s biggest mining corporation, of course. They weren’t the ones who’d have to go near it.

No, they just send their most disposable employees there. Us.

2022-10-15

Compost

273 words (1 minute)

With a thumb, you push the hissing tooth into soft, tilled earth. Sadly, you hold little hope in your heart for it to sprout.

In a bygone age, the soil had wealth great enough to support the growth of anything at all, and gods grew like weeds here.

Now? It’s thin. Weak.

2022-10-03

Divination Is Not Prophecy

291 words (1 minute)

Divination is not prophecy. You must understand the difference if we’re to get along.

No, no, no, this is not a matter of an oracle’s condescension for your practice. I’m sure your cards and carved stones and whatnot have their uses and guide you well.

They just don’t hurt.

2022-08-29

Vanity's Appeal

259 words (1 minute)

She’s so fucking infuriatingly vain, isn’t she? Whatever the topic, whatever the context, she thinks everything is about her. And if you try to make it about anyone else? She’ll find a way to twist it right back around to herself.

You can’t stand her.

2022-08-13

The Gay Bar In Vegas

1018 words (5 minutes)

A bar isn’t home. It doesn’t feel like home; it can’t be home. That’s obvious, though, isn’t it? Hardly an observation worth stating at all except to call attention to just how far from home it feels.

2022-05-21

Antidote

1204 words (6 minutes)

It seemed like a nice date at first. She cooked you an elaborate meal, she shared such interesting stories, and the way she looked at you with those arresting eyes made you squirm in your seat.

Then she told you that the pie had been poisoned and all the doors were locked.

2022-02-21

Siren Song

1316 words (7 minutes)

The low creaking sounds of wood and the lazy rocking motion tilting the doll’s head side-to-side in a slow, gentle rhythm made for soothing sensations.

At least they did so in a vacuum, and the doll was trying her very best to exist only in that perfect vacuum.

2022-02-15

Your Pet Angel

673 words (3 minutes)

Your angel is so sweet, so pliant, with her collar around her neck. Such a wonderfully docile creature since you learned how to leash her more firmly than even her halo.

The defiant warrior swinging her flaming sword is long, long gone now.

2022-02-10

What We Both Lost

2053 words (10 minutes)

It was all over. The forces of light victorious. The Dark One banished to wait for another turning of the cycle to clash with another destined Hero generations from now.

Still the Priestess grieved her love, the Hero who gave her life to win this victory.

2022-02-06

Blood Doll

1024 words (5 minutes)

She wraps her arms around me just like always, tilting her head to one side, offering me her delicate neck.

We’ve done this countless times, but she still gives a tiny shiver of anticipation as my lips touch my favorite place and my fangs pierce deep into my thrall.

2021-11-22

A False Angel's Hunger

323 words (2 minutes)

“I am not an angel.”

Her claim is hard to accept. Her snowy wings, delicate complexion, and shining halo make such a denial an absurdity.

Even if the look in her eyes is not at all the flat certainty of an angel acting in accordance with her Purpose.

2021-11-19

I Remember My Childhood Comforts

362 words (2 minutes)

I haven’t seen the ocean in so long. I barely remember it any more. I barely remember myself.

I grew up there, you know? I miss having access to fresh seafood everywhere.

Out here, in the middle of the continent, it all tastes lifeless, somehow. Definitely missing something.

2021-10-02

Let's Drink To Becoming

237 words (1 minute)

Drink from the pool in the deep woods. Find your vision blurring, brightening, twisting and colorful. Your steps grow unsteady as you quest for a warm spot in the sun in which to lie.

Do not wake. Put roots down. Stretch your limbs and bloom into a beautiful home for fairies.

2021-09-07

Vulnerable

1521 words (8 minutes)

The heroine swoops in toward the site of the explosion, keeping an eye out for—ah, there she is. Her great nemesis, striding through the destruction, catches her eye at the same time and grins widely. “Ah, there you are! Fireworks always were the best way to get your attention.”