My grandmother tried to kill me in my crib when I was two months old. She’s dead now. Did I kill her? I don’t know. It’s not a simple question, and there are no simple answers. All I remember is being covered in blood, her blood, as I lay in my crib. # I never met my father. He was a passing fancy, my mother told me. Someone to keep her loneliness at bay. I never met him, but I’ve seen him, swimming in my underwater dream...

Folks always claimed ‘Buck’ Granderson got his nickname because he still had the first dollar he ever made. It wasn’t true, at least not the part about his name. I had it on very good authority that his parents, two otherwise sober and responsible individuals, named him Buckalew Lavelle Granderson. While few knew about his full name, those who did all agreed it must have been a long and very difficult birthing for a momma...

There is something wrong with you Though we can’t quite point it out You are dangerous, you are scarred Only we can help you out! Everything you know inside Is the devil’s gateway to you If it feels good, it is deadly! Sin! Sin! Something’s wrong with you! Only we can save you from this Terrible tragedy Let down your defenses Your soulful fences Give us your money! Give us cash! It’s evil! Here, let us take it for you! Gi...

Ch. 7 *Sakura*Morning came after seven torturous hours. I barely slept. The guest bed was insanely soft and comfortable, but I was too stressed to give it a chance. I had lied on the floor all night, bouncing back ideas as to how I would go about luring an Aejin anywhere. They were sly, manipulative, and hard to identify. They tricked you - it was hardly ever the other way around.The room was too warm for my liking, but I...

She stepped down the broad marble staircase uncertainly, feeling the weight of the coin purse Artemidoros had given her thump heavily against her leg. At the bottom of the steps, she turned back, looking to the porch above, attempting to glimpse the man who stood in the shadows. A pale hand briefly extended into the sunlight in a decisive gesture; go. Exhaling a breath of pent-up nervousness, Liyah squared her shoulders a...

Chapter 6 To Save The Future I forgot. It’s Sunday, and we have to go to church. I hate it there. That’s why Mevild drags me to the carriage, already by the door. He is afraid I’m going to put up a fight. The servants say it’s because I’m a devil. Ignorance is bliss, indeed. The organ in the church emits low-frequency sounds that no one else can hear. Apparently, I’m the only one. It hits me like a ton of bricks every tim...

Maybe I’m more sensitive about cockroaches than most other people because I was eighteen, in the army, before I ever saw one. I was working in the mess hall and I went to the broom closet to get a mop when the little monster chased me out. In Montana, only Deer Lodge Penitentiary has roaches, and there’s this guard that collects them and shellackes them to boards in posed courtroom scenes, fishing and hunting scenes, etc....

Christy Sparks struggled against the urge to laugh, but knew she was losing. As Brother Silas, the venerable choir director, led the assembled multitude gathered inside the Faith of Our Fathers sanctuary into another verse of what was, at best, joyful noise, she gave up trying to keep a straight face and sought to hide her big grin behind an open hymnal. It proved a futile effort at avoiding the puzzled glances of her hus...