Amanda C. Davis

Forthcoming

Changelings & Fairy Rings: The Instructions (reprint)
G Is for Ghosts: U is for Unfinished
Midnight Under the Big Top: Courting the Queen of Sheba (reprint)
Science Fiction World: The Lair of the Twelve Princesses (reprint, translation)
Science Fiction World: A Giant’s Rightful Due (reprint, translation)
Stupefying Stories: The Quiet After Twilight

Collection

Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Collection, with Megan Engelhardt, 2/19/13

Witches have stories too. So do mermaids, millers’ daughters, princes (charming or otherwise), even big bad wolves. They may be a bit darker–fewer enchanted ball gowns, more iron shoes. Happily-ever-after? Depends on who you ask. In Wolves and Witches, sisters Amanda C. Davis and Megan Engelhardt weave sixteen stories and poems out of familiar fairy tales, letting them show their teeth.
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle] [Buy ePub]

Short Fiction

The Lair of the Twelve Princesses – InterGalactic Medicine Show Issue #26, 1/15/12

Bay followed the dance of the ivory dice across the table. Her bitten-dull nails dug into her palms. A bounce — another — and the pair fell still. A one and a three. There went the last of her coins. Oh well, she thought, grinding the heel of her hand into her eyes as the narrow-faced man across the table from her raked in his winnings. Wasn’t enough to buy a room anyway.
[Subscribers Read Free] [Buy Subscription]
Reprinted 12/28/13
[Buy for Kindle] [Sample or buy on Smashwords]

Easy as Eating Pie – Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline, 09/03/2019

Eddie stood in front of the basement shelves in his undershirt, fists on his hips and suspenders slipping down over his shoulders. There were rings in the dust marking where jars of food had once stood. He swiped the empty shelf in disgust.

“My own fault,” he muttered. “‘Come live with me,’ I says. ‘You married my dead sister, you’re like family.’ What do I get? Big dumb deadweight name of Chuck that snores and eats my food when I ain’t looking. Some family. This ain’t exactly a land a’ plenty, you know. Folks is starving to death in Oklahoma.” He raised his voice in the direction of the basement stairs. “Hear that, Chuck? Starving!”
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy Print]

A Giant’s Rightful Due – InterGalactic Medicine Show Issue #68, 04/01/2019

Bay had found it rare, as she journeyed through her own ravaged kingdom and into its allied neighbors, to come across a tavern willing to exchange room and board for war stories. So she was determined to take advantage of this one.
[Subscribers Read Free] [Buy Subscription]

All the Way Down – Daily Science Fiction, 12/20/2018

The water isn’t clear until you’re all the way down, but by then it’s too late. You sink slowly, seeing murk. A gross brown mist, a fog, refracting what’s left of the sunlight with thick particles of filth. Tastes good though. Rich salt. You drink it in and soon you are sinking faster.

Young Bones – Daily Science Fiction, 10/12/2018

The worst of it was, after long eons, I forgot my offense. I would creep through forests and hide in caves, moaning through my hideous lips and teeth, “Why?” I hunched in bogs sifting my gems of memory in search of the pitted stone of sin that might justify the pain. So few remained. A dress, a cat, a rose, a crown. Nothing to earn me the shape of a monster.
[Read Free]

K – E is for Evil, 5/15/2018

Nadia had spent most of her life ignoring boys. She had school to worry about, anyway, and her family, and her books, and the occasional obsession with horses or painting or learning the guitar. But the way John strode down the hallway, the way he ran his fingers through his too-long hair… Well. She noticed.
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy Print]

The Hauntings and the Moments – Unnerving #6, 4/26/2018

The creature is the sum and substance of its world. Every molecule here belongs to it, is part of it. The creature stretches to every corner and every wall. Strangely, though the creature comprises and consists of an entire universe, it is no larger than a house.

[Buy for Kindle] [Buy Print]

O – D Is for Dinosaur, 2/16/17

The air in Hazel’s apparatus smelled like sweat and the stale city and her own fast breath. She clung to Zig’s hand. Around them, the Machine whirred and hummed and then fell still. The fog lifted. Out from the mist rolled the jungle: the dense tropical swatch that would form all of everything from its air and water and molecules. She had known to expect jungle–she had known to expect big–but this place swallowed her whole.
[Buy Paperback] [Buy for Kindle]

The Winter Princess – Daily Science Fiction, 04/25/16

Once there was a princess born on the coldest day of the year, so that as she drew her first breath, the midwife exclaimed, “Truly, this girl will never feel the cold.” And as she grew they saw this was true.
[Read Free]

Z – C Is for Chimera, 04/09/16

Part of me is Rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus), an eastern cottontail, a hardy and vigorous species, adaptable, fast-breeding, an important component of many proven and theoretical ecosystems. It’s not a very big piece of me. Just a mass inside my torso, nourished by my adolescent Homo sapiens body. But it’s the piece of me that matters the most. There are many thousands of people on this ship, but I’m the last of Rabbit.
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy Print]

Voices Without Voices, Words With No Words – Cemetery Dance, 03/01/16

The power company had shut off his electricity again. Jeremy lay on his back on his dead parents’ bed in his dead parents’ house and stared at the long strands of dust that hung from the ceiling like old man’s hair. He calculated where to get the money to turn the power back on. Beth. Topher. Gordon. He’d already squeezed them all dry. He hadn’t even seen Topher in–how long? A month? Months? He would have to hitch a ride into the city and spend an afternoon panhandling. But not until after work. Money was useful, but his work–his work kept the world turning.
[Buy Print]

High Enough – Daily Science Fiction, 11/12/15

One floor below the penthouse, the elevator slid open. Ben, pressed against the mirrored wall like he wanted to climb it, mashed the button marked “P” before my husband got his shaking hands and drew him away.
[Read Free]

The Glorious Pudge: Murder’s a Beach – Vitality Magazine, 09/01/15

There was some kind of nature program going on down the beach, but I had better things to do. I had cold cash in my purse from my last case, a brand-new bikini that I was spilling out of like some lush statue losing her toga, and a smorgasbord of hot ladies stretched on every other beach blanket from here to the boardwalk. Ladyhorse Cove was heaven. High school, and in fact anything resembling school, was welcome to jump into the sea.

Pudge Padrelli. Girl detective. Officially on vacation.
[Buy Electronic]
Reprinted in Cozy Crime Short Stories, 03/26/2019
[Buy Print]

The Roofnight – Scarecrow, 08/04/15

When Quentin Meeks set out from the base of Mount Whiterock, he had a donkey, his best surveying equipment, a kit of high-quality travel gear, and two commissioned jobs from Duke Greeble–one explicit, and one secret. By the time he poked his head over the summit, his kit was down to the barest necessities (still, of course, high-quality) and he was starting to think neither commissioned job was worth the trouble.
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy Print]

Questing for Princesses – The Overcast, 6/1/15
Originally appeared in Wolves and Witches

Prince Harold swore off marriage at the age of six, when his older brother Yancey came riding home with a new bride and a waterfall of half-healed scars along his right side that he called “the unexpected bonus for winning a princess from a fire-breathing dragon.”
[Listen Free]
Re-recorded for Cast of Wonders, 05/01/16
[Listen Free]

Dennis Innwicky Gets Back in the Game – Space and Time #123, 05/15/15

By the time Horace got to the Eat’n Park at ten-thirty at night, Dennis Innwicky was already there, having breakfast. Innwicky had his face set in the disinterested expression that all factory workers eventually master, but his stubby fingers shook. There were traces of magic clinging to the sleeve of his work shirt like kindergarten glitter.
[Buy Electronic] [Buy Print]

Dear George, Love Margaret – Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly, 03/31/15

My Dearest George:

Only an hour ago I watched your train pull away from the station, and already I am compelled to send my words of love. How will I tolerate these long years without you? Already I miss your voice, your comforting presence. I will bear up. But, my love, I will count the days.
[Read Free]
Reprint – Swords and Steam, 9/29/16
[Buy Hardback]

Why Ulu Left the Bladescliff – XIII: Stories of Transformation, 3/16/15

Ulu cleans her gutters before Cleaver comes by, skims the rust from the roof, sharpens the awning into a razor’s edge. Shipshape. Stem to stern. If the sun would hit it, her arch would glint like the tone tapped on a crystal glass. But there’s no sun here. Only fog. No light. Only Cleaver.
[Buy for Kindle][Buy Print]

Xenofabulous – The Time It Happened, 3/1/15

“The public can forget you in as few as forty days,” I told my assistant Paz, mixing my own cocktail like a plebian.

“Not you,” said Paz dutifully. She was wearing one of my designs from three years ago and therefore looked hideously outdated. I hated to see her tidying even the scraps of my newest creations while throttled in the iron grip of my old ones.

“Not me,” I agreed. “I worked hard to loom so large.” I sipped and grimaced. Too much vermouth. “But after four hundred days, well–” I finished the drink, vermouth and all.
[Buy for Kindle][Buy Print]

She Opened Her Arms – Fantastic Stories of the Imagination #225, 2/1/15

Amber was hunched on the playground swing, watching Michael chalk meticulous, artless nonsense on the blacktop, when a woman came up to watch. Amber eyed her warily. Her brother couldn’t tell bad strangers from good ones, so it was up to her.

“Those are really something,” said the woman. She looked like a mom in a movie, so fancy she didn’t seem real.

“Thanks,” said Amber. It was easier than coaching Michael to say it.

“Just think how smart he’d be if he were normal.”
[Read Free] [Buy for Kindle]

Good Neighbors – Not Our Kind, 2/1/15

There was a stone in Paul’s mailbox instead of a newspaper. He took it out gingerly, so it didn’t scratch the bottom panel, and hefted it a few times. Down the block, Mrs. Ha was extracting a similar stone from her own mailbox. She scowled at the stone and then at Paul. Paul raised his stone in a resigned salute.

She shook her stone at him. “All I want is the obituaries. You tell them. Let the man write the obituaries. I don’t care what else those maniacs get up to. You tell them to leave the obituaries man alone and let him do his job.”
[Buy Paperback] [Buy for Kindle]
Reprint – Funny Horror, 2/13/17
[Buy Paperback] [Buy for Kindle]

The Gate, My Beloved; My Story, Its Key – Daily Science Fiction, 12/2/14

There is nothing here, in the bright bronze center of the desert–nothing but the great walled city with gates shut tight, and at the base of them, clutching them for comfort, me.
[Read Free]

Loving Armageddon – Crossed Genres, 7/2/14

She presses her cheek to the center of his chest, listening to the beat of his hand-grenade heart.

It ticks like a time bomb, but no, he insists it’s a grenade, pin forever almost-pulled, and through the skin at his sternum she can feel the telltale ridges, precise metal squares, sharper than bone. She strokes the shallow indents. He shudders.

“It might go off at any time,” he says. A bit warning. A bit bragging.
[Read Free]
Reprint – Year’s Best Weird Fiction, vol. 2, 10/13/15
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]
Recorded for Audio by Drabblecast, 02/23/2019
[Listen Free]

The Hitchhikers – Phobos: Emergence, 6/1/14

“I’m trying to tell you something,” said Jonah, with his elbows on the diner booth. He had his hands going like he was sculpting me a story out of air. “Just listen. Just let me tell you something.”

“Jonah,” I said, “quit tripping for two minutes and drink your juice.”
[Buy Print]

Omen – Shock Totem #8.5, 3/5/14

Back when I sold insurance, laying up money to get engaged, I used to tell people, “Death never calls to let you know it’s stopping by.” If I was feeling jocular, or if they looked like they could appreciate a little gallows humor, I’d go on. Little routine of mine. “You think you see it winking at you sometimes, but death’s an awful flirt. Come down with cancer and die of a stroke. Catch bronchitis and go down in a plane crash. Why, I insured a fellow who liked to go hunting. His hunting partner had bad aim and a neverending thirst, if you catch my drift. This fellow had a policy–two million dollars to his widow in case his hunting partner got boozy and decided this guy resembled a ten-point buck. So one day the two of them are hunting, and my fellow tracks a wounded deer through the brush–and right off a cliff.”
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

Remembrance In Stone – Daily Science Fiction, 11/28/13

Fire sings of pain: the tingling victories and the scorching failure. When Badra calls on fire, her skin lights up in sympathetic memory. When she gets her scars too close to the flame, they prick the way they did the first time they were burned. The scars recall the wound.
[Read Free]

The Scry Mirror – What Fates Impose, 9/23/13

The day Tom Bright got wed, I ran home and got a poker from the hearth and smashed the scry mirror until it was a thunderstorm of glass all falling at my feet. Then I ran out back to the fish pond and sat there on a log wishing I was dead.

When Magda came in from the woods, she found the mess and then me. She looked mad as hot toads, but I was crying streams before she could even shout. “Tom’s gone and wed someone else,” I told her, “and now I’ll always be the witch’s girl and never Tom Bright’s woman.”
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

Things I Wish I’d Known Before Drinking the Faerie Wine – Penumbra, 9/1/13

5. Its Sweetness Sours Everything.

Everything human, anyway. I thought the leftover tang of chicken salad wouldn’t be a problem–it was white wine, after all, supposedly an ideal pairing. (Truly white, not yellow or pinkish or the faint green of a young Chardonnay. White as whole milk and yet clear as glass.) I was wrong. The delicate underworldly bouquet turned everything sour, including my own lips and tongue.
Out of Print

O How the Wet Folk Sing – FISH, 1/27/13

The she-frog in my hovel had the smooth belly-skin of a new tadpole. By that I knew she dwelled on the clean side of the chasm, where spawn grow up healthy and frogs like me dare not go. Instead she dared come to me.

Her scent oozed across my walls and her eyes bulged with darling precious fear.
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

Rites of Justice in Civilized Societies – Beast Within 3: Oceans Unleashed, 12/08/12

The village was at her back now, but Sarah still felt the glares piercing her shoulder blades and heard the taunts clattering around her head like plates of tin sewn onto her bonnet. If she didn’t get home soon, she’d scream. For every kind face there were two cruel ones; for every polite welcome, three whispers delivered disingenuously from behind palms, as if they weren’t meant to be heard. The scars on her left hand ground against the handle of her to-market basket, a perpetual reminder of what she’d endured to salvage what was left of her life.

Innocent. This was how they treated her, when she was judged innocent. What hells would she have endured, if they’d found her guilty?
[Buy Print]
Reprinted as Trials of Teeth and Fire
[Buy for Kindle]

Mr. Terwilliger Confesses – UFOPub.com, 12/05/12

Mr. Terwilliger had been most jovial with us for the entire evening, as gentlemen of the Codswallop Social Club always are, but when the snuff-box came his way, he put up a hand and declined.

“Forgive me,” he said, “I come from the future, when we have learned the terrible effects of tobacco upon the tissues.”

Of course we enquired further, but he would not elaborate. Soon our attention was drawn to Mr. Darven discovering, tragically, the club’s out-of-tune piano, and our curiosity was muted by his musical crimes and a few more rounds of port.
[Read Free]

Shimmer – Daily Science Fiction, 10/19/12

Bethany Chow is shimmering in the cafeteria like the disco ball they borrow from the seventies for every stupid school dance. Her hair is shifting through a dozen shades of black and brown, a dozen patterns of highlights and lowlights, and her eyes are changing shape so fast she seems to be constantly winking. She’s only changing height slightly these days, so people must have figured out how tall she is. She’s really settling into her shimmer. If I guess right, she’ll be shimmering the rest of her life. She’ll never be without admirers, and lots of them, to think about her and remember her and shape her.
[Read Free]
Audio Reprint – Cast of Wonders, 11/30/14
[Listen Free]
Translation (Catalan) – Catarsi #18

Jelly Rules the Roost – Terror In the City – Issue #6, 9/26/12

Jelly-Wings wakes with a rustle of his feathers. The fledglings nestled all along the ledge chirp in their sleep. He doesn’t wake them, only coos into his shoulder and blinks and twitches his head up. It’s morning. The dusty factory windows are letting in a little light. He flutters off the ledge and drops to the cement floor.

When he lands, he’s a bird. When he stands, he’s a man.
[Buy Electronic]

Courting the Queen of Sheba – Arcane #1, 4/12/11

We were still setting up for the matinee when Billy came tearing into the grassy back lot, face aglow. He strode right past me and stopped before Arthur Whitman, our minstrel. “You got to see this,” he panted. “There’s a new outside show, and it’s got a dead girl.”

Mr. Whitman and I passed back and forth a look of weary tolerance, as would a set of overtaxed parents. As a lady rider I had been with Prince’s Hippodramatic Show for three years; Mr. Whitman, for two. We knew better than to fuss over the games and exhibitions that poached our customers and took advantage of our advertising for their own profit. But Billy was the newest rider in the show. He had yet to learn.
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy for Nook] [Buy Electronic]
Reprint – Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top, 08/28/12
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

The House, the Garden, and Occupants – Triangulation: Morning After, 7/27/12

This is Anne, with shreds of her gown wisping away like the edges of clouds, at the elbow of the grand staircase where the iron-framed window overlooks a patch of garden entombed in briars. She casts a glow onto the wall that reflects faintly but bestows her no shadow. She is riveted to the window; her face is watery, difficult to make out, but her posture reveals her inner workings. A clock chimes midnight. Slowly, she lowers her head. Slowly, she turns from the window. She takes a single step upstairs before she dissipates like fog beneath the sun.
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]
Audio Reprint – Pseudopod, 6/6/14
[Listen Free]
Reprint – Chilling Ghost Stories, 9/24/15
[Buy Print]

Dolly at the End of the World – Daily Science Fiction, 5/2/12

“Never open the box,” said Pappy, and since Pappy had been dead twenty years and no one ever came along to tell her otherwise, Dolly never did.
[Read Free]

Escape from Ape City – Zombie Kong, 1/19/12

At some point our first question––the keening, desperate “Where did the giant zombie gorillas come from?”––became moot. It was merely academic. The origin of the giant zombie gorillas was as useful to us as the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin. Less useful, in fact––pinprick-sized angels might be somehow brought under our control. Building-sized undead great apes left us no option but to run.

“They’re like any silly fashion,” said Bradbury to me, one day in the bunker. “One turns up and before long they’re on every street corner.”
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]
Reprinted in Suddenly, Zombies
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy on Smashwords]

Untouchable – Night Terrors II, 1/15/12

The floor was lava.

Emily crouched on the arm of the sofa and surveyed her options. The rocking chair. Dangerous, but tempting. The armchair was perfect, but it was all the way across the room; she’d need an intermediary. There was the bookshelf (too high) and the little wicker chair that held a decorative doll (absolutely, positively forbidden to touch–she’d learned that the hard way). But the lamp stand…
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle] [Read Free Here]

Things That Matter – 10Flash, 1/1/12

My brother Rory hunched in the mouth of our cave and cut a groove in his index finger, like a spiral, from nail to base. He crooked it like a crescent moon and looked it over for a while; then he grinned at me and licked off all the blood.

I said, “Why did you do that?”

“Because it’s snowing,” he replied. “It’s really important.”
[Out of Print] [Read Free Here]

Away and Below – Monster Gallery, 12/5/11

It was early in the spring planting season when the goblins stole my sister. We sowed seeds dressed in our mourning clothes; we watered them as we wept. My sister was the gem of our family, our most beloved. We relied on her smile to brighten our nights. Her marriage was sure to make us rich.

We mourned together and alone. But my brother showed only anger.

“How dare they?” he said, pounding his fists beside his untouched meal. “Those filthy cheating monsters.”
[Out of Print] [Read Free Here]
Reprinted in Faed – 1/31/15
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

On the Sabbath Day Be Ye Cleansed – Redstone Science Fiction, 11/01/11

The temple opened for Purge, but Purge did not begin.

We knelt, arching our faces to the temple like flowers strain toward the sun. We remembered the week, the loves gained and friends won. Those lost. Our conflicts. Our sins. We remembered.

We remembered far too long.
[Read Free]

In Memoriam – Daily Science Fiction, 09/26/11

There were four men in the tintype studio, but only one was dead. The dead man sat strapped into a wooden chair where the photographer had abandoned him to fuss over a plate of chemicals. The other two living souls, who had carried in the dead man for his portrait, occupied a duvet across the room.

The older and smaller of them sat rigid as a poker. The younger, slouching beside him, said, “We ought to of put him in the ground straight away, Doctor Bern.”
[Read Free] [Buy for Kindle]

Madonna and Child, In Jade – Broken Time Blues, 8/11/11

Patricia, perched on a stool near the stage, whipped out a compact and patted her ruby-red lipstick into place at the corners of her mouth. The dance floor at Rosewood Academy was half-empty, and no wonder: the meager orchestra had a way of sucking the fun out of even the lightest tune. Right now they were grimly murdering The Cuckoo Waltz. Patricia yawned. She and the other girls were no less desirable than any other taxi dancers, willing and capable partners for a dime a dance. If only the music was worth dancing to.

Across the room, the door swung open to a glimpse of wet street and a whiff of dirty rain. A stubby-legged man slunk inside–the kind who always looked embarrassed to be seen–and plunked down a single grubby dime for a single grubby dance ticket. He raised his basset-hound eyes to peer hopefully across the dance floor. Mr. Uniatowski. The most pathetic of all their pathetic regulars.

Patricia nudged her roommate. “Hey, Frankie,” she said. “Your boyfriend’s here.”
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

The Gold in the Straw – Triangulation: Last Contact, 8/1/11

The first time it happens you wake up with your head on a stack of spun gold, your fingertips bleeding from clawing through bales of straw, and your mother’s ring is gone. So is the straw. The spinning wheel is still there, though. Gold thread weeps from the spindle.

The prince comes in and you stand up and dust straw from your apron and hold out your arms: Ta-da! Maybe your father wasn’t just boasting after all.

But it wasn’t you who turned this stable into a treasury. How could it be? The dwarf did it. The dwarf that you saw only dimly: the evil little thing, the ugly twisted monster that saved your life.
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

The Instructions – Daily Science Fiction, 5/23/11

Say you’ve got a problem. Might be big, might be small. Almost always to do with money. Maybe you can’t afford to feed your kid. Maybe you can’t make the rent. Maybe you’ve thought about all the different ways to get yourself out of this hole, and they’ve gotten bigger and crazier–theft and fraud and suicide and murder–and you’re just about ready to start trying the worst of them.

Here’s what you do.
[Read Free] [Buy for Kindle]
Audio Reprint – The Way of the Buffalo, 2/09/12
[Listen Free]

The Peril of Stories – Enchanted Conversation, 4/27/11

Hush, my petal. Hush, my gem. I’ll tell you a bedtime story.

Once upon a time there were two people, and they were married to one another, and they had a little daughter. And they were all terrible thieves.

One day the thieves saw a golden mansion deep in an enchanted wood, and they decided to rob it. But the mansion was owned by a beautiful wise woman, and she caught them. They begged to be set free. The beautiful wise woman was going to punish them, but then she saw their tiny daughter.
[Read Free]

Your Wicked Parts – Untied Shoelaces of the Mind, 2/1/11

The monster returned to Marlie’s bedroom closet in eighth grade, after she had almost forgotten about it. Marlie lay awake listening to the whispers for one agonizing night. In the morning, she twisted a wire hanger into a jam to hold the knobs together. It could not be killed, she knew, but perhaps it could be contained.

The second night, the whispers were louder.
[Read Free] [Listen Free]
Reprint – Untied Shoelaces of the Mind Anthology 2011, 09/10/11
[Buy Print] [Buy Electronic]
Reprint – Beyond the Nightlight, 12/5/14
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

Drift – Shock Totem #3, 1/13/11

“The snow is made of bugs,” said Caden.

I leaned against the kitchen counter beside my firstborn, the kindergarten king, who was sleepily trying to put peanut-butter crackers into his mouth and mostly missing. He watched the window like he listened to lullabies. The heat of the kitchen turned his cheeks red and made his eyelids droop. My unpredictable angel.

“Who told you that?” I asked.

“I saw it.” He put a cracker up to my face and I took a messy bite. “Little white bugs.”
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]
Reprint – The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, 5/19/12
[Read Free]
Translation (French) – Ténèbres 2015
[Buy Print]

Memories – Necrotic Tissue #13, 1/14/11

The neurology professor remembered what it was like to think. He recalled heartbeat and breath churning from the brain stem, stance and posture tickling the cerebellum. Then the stimuli would crawl up his spine to the cortex, wriggling into perception in the parietal lobe; reasoning would worm through his frontal lobe; words would chew through his temporal lobe to become speech. All those squirming neurons for a moment of thought.

The professor plucked a maggot from his rotting tongue and reinserted it into his ear. Yes, he was sure. In life, thinking must have been very similar to this.
[Out of Print]
Reprinted in Suddenly, Zombies
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy on Smashwords]

The Dry Man – The Scroll of Anubis, 12/1/10

All his life, my grandfather kept a mummified hand on a shelf in his office. I was twelve before I got up the courage to ask him where he got it. His eyes grew bright under his wide, bushy brows; he drew me into the office and shut the door behind him. I had rarely seen the dignified old man so boyishly excited.

“That hand!” he said, rubbing his own hands together. “I’ve had it for sixty years. I intend to be buried with it. Isn’t it hideous? Imagine that clamped around your neck!”
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle] [Buy Electronic]

David is Six – Triangulation: End of the Rainbow, 7/26/10

David is six, and cannot wait to be seven. Seven will be a spectacular change in his fortunes, an incredible leap in status. “Seven” takes much longer to say than “six.” At six, people sometimes ask if he is still in kindergarten; but at seven, they will know he has ascended to grade school proper. He will no longer have to assert that he is a big boy. At seven, big-boyhood is assured. David is so anxious to be seven that he has wet the bed twice this week, an occurrence he is certain will stop as soon as he has his birthday. His birthday is in May. He still has three months to go.
[Buy Print]
Recorded by The Drabblecast, 12/5/11
[Listen Free]

My Rest a Stone – 10Flash, 7/1/10

We are all in the lifeboat and our noses are full of the salt sea and I am hugging my dolly, like always, when her head wobbles once and falls off. The stringy hair slides through my fingers and right over the side. It rolls away with her curls all waving around in the water and her glass eye winks at me to say ha ha, she is leaving. She is leaving and I am not.
[Out of Print] [Read Free Here]
Reprint – Specter Spectacular, 9/26/12
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

Mentor – Anotherealm, 7/1/10

The magic goes like this.

Travel to a high place, where only the wind can see you, or stand by a watery shore: a river, lake, or sea. Then you must shout your longing across the water or into the wind–with voice, soul, and mind. If you are meant to study the magics of the world, the wind and water will carry your cry to the one magician destined for you from before birth. This is your mentor. He will answer you; he will find you; he will show you the intricacies of nature, the subtle glory in mankind.
[Read Free]

Bones in the Branches – Frightening Fables and Freaky Fairytales, 6/16/10

Once upon a time there was a soldier.
Once upon a time there were twelve daughters of a king.
Once upon a time, they met.
That’s what makes a story.
[Read Free] [Buy PDF]

Foundling – Bards & Sages Quarterly, Vol. 2 No. 2, 4/5/10

“Oh husband, see this,” said Old Jennie. “A baby in a basket, near enough on our doorstep.”

George, according to his habit, did not reply.

Side by side they wore their shabby finery, and she was the elder. “Near enough on our doorstep,” said Old Jennie, “and a still helpless thing at that. George, we’re meant to have him.”
[Buy Print] [Buy PDF] [Buy for Kindle]

Eyes of Ripe Lemon – Everyday Genius, 2/25/10

After the shipwreck, the natives came to us with fruit in their eyes and scarlet skirts that kissed their ankles; they winked papayas and fluttered mangoes and we ate richly of them, to cores and pits and seeds.
[Read Free]

Veins – House of Horror #7, 12/2/09

In my dream, an acid–or a bacteria or bullet or beast; dreams are pliable that way–had gnawed a hole in my palm so that the light shone through and the veins stretched clean within like water pipes in old walls. The hole continued down into my wrist along the bone. I could see the structural supports of my right arm, bare of the messier kinds of flesh. My skin hung hollow like wineskin.
[Out of Print]
Reprint – House of Horror Best of 2009 Anthology, 1/1/10
[Out of Print]
Reprint – Dreams and Screams Anthology, 8/15/10
[Buy Print] [Buy PDF]

Two Things – Zombonauts: Undead In the Universe, 11/30/09

The memorial microbial fuel cell was broken; that was the first thing. Nobody wanted to put good crewmen of the SS Trebuchet into the same cell that processed leftovers, plant cuttings, and human waste. So Admiral Than ordered some provisions to be shifted from one cold storage unit to another, and they stacked the bodies in there, rolled in white sheets, tagged by name, to last out the journey beside boxes of dehydrated chicken substitute and vacuum-sealed bags of beer. That seemed all right. Some of them had been pretty fond of beer.
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]
Audio Reprint – Wily Writers, 4/6/14
[Listen Free]
Reprinted in Suddenly, Zombies
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy on Smashwords]

Hierarchy – Dog Oil Press, 11/28/09

The first fingernail fell out at nine-thirty at night. I was drinking a Coke and watching my cat attack the rug when the nail slid free, just slipped right out of my smallest finger and left a smooth pink slot behind.
[Read Free]
Reprint – Hazard Cat, 7/7/11
[Read Free]

Stills and Rushes – Middle of Nowhere, 9/16/09

The first time I saw the thing in the creek, I was nine. I barely caught a glimpse of it. It slid like a mossy birch between the roots of a tree growing just at the edge of the creek: fat and greenish, gone in a moment. I threw stones at the pool framed by the tree’s roots, but nothing came out again, and I went home disappointed.
[Buy Print]

Squeak – The Town Drunk, 9/1/09

“Listen,” said the repairman, “if you want that boiler fixed, you got to do something about them rats.”
[Read Free]
Audio Reprint – The Way of the Buffalo, 2/10/11
[Listen Free]

Silk for Moisture, Mud for Shine – Emerald Tales V1 S1, 8/15/09

“Don’t be silly,” said Yolanda, waving her salad fork at Aimee, “you’re going to love them.”

Aimee watched the sunlight glint on the fork tines. “I already go to Thermabelle.”

Yolanda lowered her sunglasses. “Really, darling? And how is the treatment at Thermabelle working for you, hmm?” Her mocking eyes disappeared again behind the tinted lenses. “Silkies can only do you good.”
[Out of Print]
Audio Reprint – The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, 10/29/11
[Listen Free]

Lina’s Got the Look – Innsmouth Free Press, 8/24/09
[Read Free]

Local Cellist Returns for Midsummer Concert – Innsmouth Free Press, 7/4/09
[Read Free]

Scry Through Phlegethon – Everyday Weirdness, 4/28/09
[Read Free]

Poetry

The Unicorn – Kaleidotrope, 10/01/15

You never saw a unicorn.

[Read Free]

A Warning – Grievous Angel, 03/05/15

Don’t go down to the ocean.

[Read Free]

Crown of Bells – Mirror Dance, 3/1/15

If we had only known earlier–
We whisper on the linen, nose to cheek–
If we had guessed the witch for what she was,
If we had resigned before the mess began–

But a servant’s no advisor,
And a cook’s no fool.
Let the master handle his own witches.

[Read Free]

Phobos: When I Am Eighty-Three – Phobos #3, 2/8/15

The autumn after I turn eighty-three,
If I am still sound of tooth and knee,
I shall move to a town where they don’t know me,
To the creepiest house, where the witch lives.

[Read Free] [Buy for Kindle]

Missed Connections > Pocket Universe – Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #57, 4/30/13

At the time travelers’ ball,
You had a HELLO MY YEAR IS sticker
With a date just ten years from mine.

I was drinking very old wine
From the future, cached in the ancient past,
Aged for millennia, very pricey.
It went to my head.
Such things do.

I cornered you by the hors d’oeuvres.

[Read Free] [Buy Print] [Buy MOBI] [Buy PDF] [Buy EPUB]

Song of Snow – Enchanted Conversation, 4/1/13

My love’s skin is a snowy plain,
Her hair a burned branch.
Her lips are berries.
Rise for me, my love.

[Read Free]

The Living Dead – Not One of Us #47, 4/10/12

We survivors bathe our skin in mud
To hide in shattered alleys
From our sharp-eyed conquerers.

[Read Free] [Buy Print]

The Witch of the Wolfwoods – Enchanted Conversation, 12/15/11

They sent a girl, a pretty pup.
I wonder if they dared to tell her,
While they filled her basket up,
Who is Granny, what befell her?
[Read Free]

Her Dark Materials – Enchanted Conversation, 9/30/11

First you hoist a girl from the ashes,
Brush sooty tears from her face,
Tell her she’s worthwhile.
[Read Free]

A Fixer-Upper – Candle In the Attic Window, 09/20/11

I had an uncle: very rich.
He died without a child, which
Is how I got the whole estate.
I’ll tell the truth.
It’s pretty great.
[Buy for Kindle] [Buy for Print]
Reprint – Niteblade #26, 12/01/13
[Read Free] [Buy Electronic]

A Shining Spindle Can Still Be Poisoned – Goblin Fruit, 7/19/11

If that was a prince up there,
Tower-bound in bitter briars,
Sleeping away his curse,
No girl would ever seek him.
[Read Free] [Listen Free]

Lies – Flashlight Memories, 4/11/11

People in books talked to her
Like real people didn’t
And spun her captivating lies
That somehow turned out true.

[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

Flytrap – Illumen #13, 10/1/10

Well, I tell you,
The hunting’s been bad lately
And an old woman doesn’t move like she used to.
Limbs seize.
Quick little things get away.
So you start getting tricky.
[Buy Print]
Reprint – Under a Dark Sign, 10/6/15
[Buy Print] [Buy for Kindle]

Sparks Between Our Teeth – Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia, 9/8/10

I smoked a lot
In the Fifties.
Half a pack a day.
Helped with my nerves
When the job needed done.
[Read Free] [Buy Print]
Reprint – Bull Spec #8, 04/23/13
[Buy Print]

The List – Nothing to Dread, 12/3/10

He jostled me
Upon his knee
And asked if I’d been nice.
I said I had.
He said, “Too bad.
The naughty add more spice.”
[Buy Print] [Buy PDF]

Under the End – Emerald Tales V2N2, 4/15/10
[Out of Print]

.

Nanofiction/Twitter Poetry

• See Read Free tab