You’re cold and hungry and drunk. You don’t particularly want to go home, there’s nothing to go home to, no warm fire or hot meal. Just an empty house and a dead dog. So why did she leave you? Maybe she’ll be there when you get home. Why did you shout at each other when… Read more The Dark Light of The Moon

From about age nine I was in love with her. She seemed to me to be so exotic, with her clothes wrapped around her, those rich colours and fabrics. I was hooked. Taffetas, chiffons and shiny silks in azure, vermilion and deep emerald, with a delicate lilac gauze. I think that’s why I loved her.… Read more Hanging Meat

He offered one small favor – he retrieved my ball – and I’m bound for life.  I’m obligated to share my food, my chair… …my bed. I’ve sinned against mankind.  My meager life is forfeit, weighing but little against the gravity of that crime which inevitably bears the feminine imprint, from Eve down to me:… Read more The Secret History of the Princess and the Frog

The Sin Eater crawled on her hands and knees, as she had been bid, towards the catafalque. The huge state-room, richly decorated, was empty, for no one is allowed to witness this private ceremony. She had been woken early this morning at the Relicts encampment outside the city walls, pulled from her bed of rags… Read more The Sin-Eater

You call me child-stealer. I deny nothing. I snatched a newborn babe so fresh and pale she glowed with womb-light, yet to taste milk from the one who would be known as mother. I carried her deep through twisted limbs of lost swamps where early mists curl and smoke. Her cradle was woven with my… Read more Hagstone

So we go for a walk, Scarlett and me. Scarlett, she’s the girl that usually feeds me and takes me out. Nice kid. Well, her mom asks her to take some things to Granny, and we start off. I like to go to Granny’s. She always has dog biscuits for me, but sometimes I have… Read more Lobo

Tonight, is the spring dance in the alder grove. The village maidens are coming dressed in their finest for the path back will be dotted with hopeful men. The young women arrive in ones and twos, each looking slyly at the others, weighing her own beauty against theirs. In truth, they are all beautiful for… Read more The Dance

Winter started early that year. First snowfall at the end of October, and by Thanksgiving it was over two metres deep. The town was cut-off, and we hunkered down for Christmas with most folks spending the darkest days watching the inside of their walls. March 8th was the first day without frost and people began… Read more Blizzards of Bigfoots

I know what they say about me. I know, because it’s the same thing they always say. Over a hundred years, and they still go on like I’m the one in the wrong. Like my way with herbs and medicine made me evil only when I asked for payment for my work. Like I’m the… Read more The Witch of East Somerton

Das Wasser des Lebens, Grimm # 97 Jacob Konig owned a business as big as a kingdom. But he was so sick that his expensive doctors thought he was going to die. They cautioned him to make preparations. So Jacob called his three sons together and told them that he wouldn’t be living much longer,… Read more The Water of Life