It was a fact that had become the focus of my entire life, a whisper in my heartbeat, a permanent, insidious presence that punctuated my every breath. I couldn’t escape it, that persistent voice, lingering...

With painstaking rumination, the tips of his fingers grazed over my neck, a deafening silence. I didn’t move as his hand paused at the base of my throat. He listened to the arrhythmic beating of...

Death begins before birth. I have always found this an odd notion, but were it not for the death of certain cells during our initial development, humans would be born with webbed toes. Death moulds...

I never really wanted to die. But I followed through anyway. The pain in my heart was excruciating, and death was beautiful.

Insects crawled across my skin, legs skittering across my flesh, numbed paths of cold left in their wake. They were the creatures that heralded my ghosts, and I knew them well, yet the revulsion they...

Of course it’s kitsch, and of course our love for every cult figure gets called kitsch when we want to separate the suffering it requires to create a symbol that lives in the world from...

I imagined her poised, a humerus in one hand, a toothbrush in the other, as she gently brushed away the last remnants of the person who had once used that arm to shake hands, open...

Admitting defeat? How un-huntress like of you.

In the distance, steel-blue mountains loomed heavy on the horizon, their shoulders burdened with the same accursed snow the gods were currently depositing upon the lowlands. Between us and the mountains, the vast expanse of...

The past had already been dealt with, to one end or another, it was certain, fixed, the horror of it was already over.For the living at least. They grieved, yes, but they were not trapped...

It seemed for a moment as if something was there, loitering between the knurled and towering cherry trees, a flash of a presence as stark as the sight of the snow against their bare branches...

I found serenity in the towers, especially the highest, even in the midst of winter. The crows also enjoyed the lofts, and I habitually fed them.Often I held conference with the grotesques lining the summit....

She stood in the snow, effervescent, all pale skin and blonde hair, clad in white and bathed in moonlight. She should have looked angelic, instead she looked like a corpse, freshly raised from the grave,...

Joshua had always been able to get away with things—things for which he should never have been forgiven. He was a lot like James in that respect, for while my husband had bought his grace...

The reflection was that of a putrefying corpse. By some trick of the light, her face seemed sallow and slipping, the patches of darkness giving the appearance of skin sloughing off in small pockets. I’d...