I once visited a home where brambles had grown so high that they drank all the light before it even touched the walls.I’d left my keys out front, in the van full of dry ice and slabs of meat with its slow-growing retinue of flies. When I knocked, the door fell open instantly, like the […]
Please check your skins at the door.Fumbling to undress, exhilaration mixes with fear. A decade you’ve waited to find your ticket to this—an experience like no other. Our promise: to untether your mind, unbend reality. You will not be the same when you leave.Now your transformation begins. Unzip your beiges and browns, handing them in […]
So I’m up on my podium gyrating my bits for the gawpers, when who do I see wriggling his way through the crowd? Mickey the fucking Fish.Now I ain’t seen Mickey for a long spell, not since I used to prowl the docks. Never thought to see a Steader like him this far in, and […]
The dead girl had never been a favorite of ours, and now she wouldn’t leave our yard. I watched black birds wheel like burnt crosses over the fields. The sun fell, dragging the sky down with it until the last light shone on our freakish visitor. Jinny saw her first, through the kitchen door. “Like […]
You do not want your wings. You twist your back toward the mirror, tweeze, pull. Grey stalks at your shoulder blades, slow intimate slide of extraction, the satisfying stretch and snap of your skin as it clings and then surrenders. You do not want these wings. They are—will become—not the luminous white of a snowy […]
Someone must have fucked up at the zoo, Rhodri thinks when he wakes up one morning and sees a flamingo standing on his recycling bin. There’s a flamingo on my bin, he texts his friend Lowri. Bullshitter, she texts back, flamingoes being a sight uncommon in the grey-green winding valleys of South Wales. But before […]
The house of unnumbered stars will be there when you need it, the night cartographer waiting with her pens and silver inks. Do not be ashamed of wanting her to draw you a star map. It’s no surprise that it hurts when the world fails to understand the unfamiliar contours of your human constellation. It […]
In this part of the world, spring paints each roadside bank and woodland patch a shock of brightest indigo, composed at closer look of delicate bluebells in their thousands. One morning, while taking my customary route through town to my office, a man passed by me with a bluebell pinned to his lapel, glancing as […]
CW: Eating disorder/body dysmorphia Mai covered her bedroom walls with mirrors. The reflections reminded her she was still there, someone worth watching. From every corner, glass gleamed down at her like perfect smiles – she couldn’t see the blades gripped between their teeth. Her body had become parts of parts that couldn’t quite connect. Eyes […]
He sent my mother’s ghost to deliver the terms of the bargain. I accepted; there was no choice. When I asked what to expect, she said, Ten good years. The Whipstitch Man had visited me twice, once to take my sister and once to collect my mother. The second time, he caught me tucking my […]