The Cost of Living
“‘A new old game show,’ the late-night radio DJ said, as Bea checked that the hot dogs on the roller grill hadn’t burst, losing their curdled insides. The internal temperature of the sausages would keep rising until they split down the side and erupted, opening up like a nidorous spider orchid.”
A haunted game show, a missing manager, and an overworked grocery store clerk collide in this story which questions what we must do to survive in this economy. Because even the monsters are not monstrous enough.
Originally published in Marrow Magazine.
Chew
“A friend had told her recently, that they cleaned portable toilets and outhouses with methyl cinnamate based cleaners because it was the only scent that could cover up the stench of composting human faeces. And now, she could taste that too in the mephitis that seemed to consume the city.”
An overwhelmed teacher find that the world in which she lives is not as solid or ordered as she thought. Originally published as part of a Comma Press anthology.
You can buy a copy here.
The Lingual Lure
“The town was as dead as the ocean next to it. All life had been fished away. Jobs on the mainland lured them from where they had been born. People would bite at anything, if it paid. The fish were gone and it killed the town. Death for a town on the coast looked no different than the grey-bloated decay of human flesh in water.”
A tale of a small seaside fishing village on the precipice of extinction. The oceans are empty. At least that’s what they all thought. Originally published as part of a horror workshop anthology with Comma Press.
You can buy a copy here.
Licked Clean
“A she held the lid down, whatever was in there started to bang against the sides and keen - that whine a new hellscape of sound - surreal and echoing.”
A Christmas story, a horror story, and a love story all at once. A divorced university professor with a new chance at love finds herself questioning her own sanity on near the holidays as the pot in her kitchen contains something mythic. Originally published in the British Fantasy Society literary magazine Horizons.
You can purchase a copy here.
The Gardener
“What I want to know is how she stripped the bones before she ground them up.”
Grace has been forgetting for a while now. She can’t even remember what she told the doctors. She finds comfort and memory in a garden. She knows that the secret to a healthy garden is in the fertilizer.
You can get your copy at The Last Girls Club (Issue no. 11, Fall Equinox 2023)
The Partner
“Something significant had happened in the night. There were three of them in the bed. Hazel’s hand wove through someone’s hair. Not Gray’s. Too long. Too soft. And he was at her back. Hazel breathed deeply, wondering whose sleep-warmed skin she touched.”
Originally published as a workshop collection, this tale appears in an uncanny collection. This is a story of a woman, her partner, and their significant other.
“Another tale offers a peculiarly astute scenario in which the reality is painfully, eerily and yet beautifully drawn to peel back a partnership and make it more than a pair,” Amazon Review.
You can buy the collection here.
Come Home
“All of her time-worn and threadbare, small grey flakes of her drifting away as she stood, face to the sea winds, waiting for a fisherman to come home.”
An atmospheric ghost story that takes place in an abandoned seaside town. Truly, a perfect story to wind down the summer, maybe retold over that last campfire of the year. Not even two months later, the story was nominated for the Push Cart Prize.
You can read it on The Selkie