2022-10-03
275 words (1 minute)
Love is pain.
Love is a knife in the gut.
Love is a slimy cord wrapped around your insides, swelling and tightening until you can barely breathe and you’re doubled over, white-knuckling the toilet.
Love is holding your hair back while you vomit your life away.
2022-09-28
291 words (1 minute)
You were told the cult would help you “open your third eye” and “reveal the ultimate truth of the universe” to you, but—you poor dear—that’s not at all what they did to you, whatever visions you now find yourself burdened with.
2022-07-01
646 words (3 minutes)
Month by month, my ability to function degrades. Something in my knee pops, every step summoning an agonizing grinding noise. One hand twitches violently whenever I do not concentrate on keeping it still. Noise creeps in at the edges of my vision.
I am running out of hope.
2022-05-19
144 words (1 minute)
She smiles when she breaks you.
It hurts, of course, like nothing you ever felt in your life. How could it not?
Not just a pain that jolts through the nerves of your body, this is a shattering of awareness, a fragmenting of your selfhood.
2022-04-06
454 words (2 minutes)
At first it was so scary to hear that my best friend managed to upset the local witch enough that she started making threats.
Everyone in town said that she was powerful and terrifying and cruel. I was so worried about what she’d do.
2022-04-02
381 words (2 minutes)
An oracle writhes on the platform prepared for her, gripped by vision and sensation from beyond the Door. Words dribble helplessly from parted lips that move without conscious thought, punctuated by pained moans or gasps hissed through clenched teeth.
2022-02-15
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.
2022-01-20
297 words (1 minute)
I want you to know that I am going to hurt you quite a lot.
Yes, even though you already surrendered to me voluntarily, though you pledged yourself to me, though I can peer into your mind and see how sincere your promise of worship is.
The problem is you’re still a person.
2021-11-18
291 words (1 minute)
The wyrm writhes within your guts, bringing such acute pain that you have to force yourself to bite off the screams your throat involuntarily produces.
You have to remind yourself that you swallowed this thing on purpose—this pain is a necessary step of your symbiotic journey.
2021-10-31
102 words (1 minute)
She cries and cries and cries, tears flowing until they run out, then turn to blood, and then finally all capacity for tear making is utterly exhausted.
Still the IV sends a steady stream of grief into her, and she is wracked with dry sobs until her body gives out entirely.
2021-10-20
458 words (2 minutes)
The flesh begs for the shaper’s hand.
Isn’t that right? Even when you thought you were a person, you saw something in me you couldn’t bring yourself to look away from.
You didn’t know what it was, but you knew even then—I had what you needed.
2021-10-19
208 words (1 minute)
I hobble into the shop, barely in time for my appointment. My gears grind noisily inside me with the effort of opening the door myself, and I feel a spring twisting too far.
2021-10-16
184 words (1 minute)
To have stumbled into the favor of some oneiric power is to awake each morning gripped with impulses not entirely your own, mind stuffed with fresh memories from a night of visions more wild and vivid than ordinary dreaming or even waking life.
The thing in your skull stirs.
2021-10-03
268 words (1 minute)
The signs are subtle at first, easily missed. A faint shimmer in the sky. A whisper on the breeze. A thought that tastes a bit off. This time I was lucky and caught them early, giving me time to prepare. Not much that can be done, but I could cancel plans and send people away.
2021-09-21
306 words (2 minutes)
Slitted eyes lock with mine. One clawed hand at my throat. Another grips my hair. Two more raking my back, breaking the skin. A smile widens, full of needle-sharp teeth, relishing my helplessness in the moments before it opens to devour me.
“Remember me?” The creature hisses.
2021-09-12
311 words (2 minutes)
The more she kisses me, the more I get lost in her kisses, unable to think or notice anything else. I cry in pain when her clawed fingers pierce my flesh, but even then it only inspires me to kiss back with greater fervor.
2021-09-06
160 words (1 minute)
She loves you. She barely knows you, but she loves you, and you come to know her through the love she lavishes upon you. Her kiss is like corrosive acid on your mind. It eats into you a little more with each visit, but you are too small to push her away.