Here are some new short stories. They are free to read, so let me know what you make of them.

BB Clifford

Inspired by The Hellbound Heart (Clive Barker), this is the origin story for Freya Grey, a character from the Tangled Knot series.
 
 
These are the days of the empty hand, Freya thought. She heard that in a song somewhere and she couldn’t get it out of her head. As it was a new release, it was going to be played on the radio stations until everyone’s ears were bleeding. It would be labeled as the anthem of 1990, this new decade of hope.
 
Hope for what?, Freya hissed. Her life was boring. Nothing ever happened because she was given no freedom. Her Slim Fast Mom restricted her diet as much as she restricted her social life. She was prohibited from befriending anyone but the three mean-mouthed daughters of her mom’s best friends. Mean-mouthed and jealous, all vying for the spot of alpha of the pack.
 
It was always going to be a close competition. They all had the same blond hair and blue eyes, and they were all fearfully respected by the other girls in their grade. And the boys either crushed on them or were gay and wanted to be their best friend. But Freya had found something that might set her apart. It had been left in her mailbox of all places, and really, she should have shown her parents and let them handle it. But it intrigued her. This little box, barely big enough to fill the palm of her hand. It comprised puzzle pieces that slotted neatly into each other, and it was made of heavy, dusky metal. Until just now, when she was starting to sing more of that over-played but intriguing song by George Michael, it had sat in the palm of her hand, heavy and dark and cold. But now, as her singing pelted out to reverberate around the walls of her bedroom, the little box seemed to shudder to life. As it did, the dusky darkness lit up, and on each puzzle piece Freya could see the face of someone who looked like they were struggling to breathe. How strange to feel it pulsating now, this tiny box. With every breath she took, and every breath she let go of, the puzzle box throbbed in unison.
                                
If there was a system to this strange puzzle box, Freya had failed to find it. So intent was this girl on exploring this box that she didn’t hear someone approach her from behind.
“You have the friendship puzzle,” she heard someone say. The voice was high and scratchy, the combination of a mew and a growl.
 
Freya spun around to find someone looming over her. This person, if it was a person and not some creature, must have been well over seven feet tall, making it crook its neck so it could fit beneath the ceiling. Its limbs were so long that its knuckles trailed on the ground, making it seem sad and slow. But there were sudden, sharp movements too, as if it were twitching in and out of consciousness.
 
“I am Terraskin and you must understand the dangers of what is in your hand. What you see before you, inside this puzzle, are the faces of souls who have tried to complete the puzzle that you must now solve.”
As it spoke, Freya flinched because spittle would fly from its strangely grey lips, and the fluid smelled of something rotten. And that face. It was pale, so pale that it looked cold. And inert, like it had been long dead and only awoken by Freya’s actions. There were cracks all over the skin, and had some of her cheek split so deeply that Freya could see the flash of her white bone jaw line? What agony was expressed in that face, but also, strangely, she could see that ecstasy was mixed in there too.
 
“You must make the right choice,” Terraskin continued. “That is all. If you can solve this riddle, you will release unimaginable power from this simple box. But if you make the wrong choice, you will find yourself trapped in that puzzle box, as countless others have.”
 
If Freya had asked, this creature would have explained that it was a Sorocyde, a gatekeeper of sorts, but to where, it would not disclose. Terraskin would also have explained that it was one of three. Freya just hadn’t seen the other three who were lingering in the shadows of her room. She did not see that they were also more than seven feet tall, and their faces also expressed intense agony and ecstasy rolled into one. What distinguished them was the method of torture that they had to endure. Terraskin had a tongue hanging out of a gash in the side of its cheek, and the way it winced every time it talked, it clearly felt every exposed nerve-ending. The second Sorocyde one had a heavy chain running through each eyelid, and it gnashed and gritted its teeth so intensely that white fragments flaked from the corners of its bloody mouth. And the third one rolled and flexed its head so unnaturally that it clearly had a broken neck. Freya could hear a muffled snap of bones breaking beneath its dusky skin.
 
The wounded have the potential to hurt others, so these Sorocydes were carrying implements of torture to inflict on others some of what they had been condemned to endure. They carried and embodied means of piercing or tightening or severing parts of anyone who dared to come close. And I use the word embodied deliberately; these instruments of torture were embedded into their flesh to inflict more torture, but also to give them more power.
 
Freya shook her head and screamed, “Don’t come close!” but the Sorocyde advanced. The girl shook the box in the creature’s face. “You want this?” she screamed, “then you’ll have to let me go.” Already she had backed her way across the room and so she felt the door knock her back. 
 
“What are you doing?” the Terraskin screeched, its eyes widened so much that they pulsated. “Don’t shake it like that, not without intent. Not without purpose.”
The girl shook the puzzle box again.
“You don’t know what you are playing with,” Terraskin screeched again, but the girl was already holding the door handle and she pulled at the door with all her might. It remained inert, sealed shut, no doubt, by a strange force that the Sorocyde possessed.
 
“You summoned us,” the creature spat. “It was your choice and no one else’s. Now you have summoned us, there is no way back from this. We must accompany you to the edge of freedom or the edge of eternal confinement. It all depends on the choice you make. Look carefully at this friendship puzzle because it holds the answers that you seek.”
 
A friendship puzzle? Freya had never heard of such a thing. She had watched her older sister trap herself in friendship puzzles of sorts. Never a puzzle box but a quandary where she was not allowed to be friends with certain girls in her grade, only the alliances kept sliding and slotting in different directions, so Freya’s sister felt trapped. Some days she was so confused that she didn’t want to leave her room. Freya would hear her sister crying to their mother that she didn’t know what to do, and no matter which way she turned, she ended up hurting someone.
 
What a fool, Freya thought. When she had such power, to squander it on tears, regret, and a retreat to the overly safe confines of her bedroom. If power is within my grasp, then I should wield it like a weapon. I should make everyone my subjects because, after all, what purpose is power if it isn’t to be used?
 
Freya pitied her sister for her ignorance. To Freya, it seemed quite simple that there were two truths about a friendship puzzle: The first, that there was always a central piece to that puzzle, an alpha that dictated the voice of the whole group. Whatever was spoken by anyone else must seem like rainfall with its colorless and flavorless banality because a distraction from the words of an alpha would be a grave and foolish mistake. Secondly, the purpose of anyone but the alpha was to appease this central piece. But only for as long as the alpha occupied this position. As soon as there was a recalibration, all other pieces must adjust their positions to fall in line with the new alpha. Sometimes this recalibration was brutal, and the pieces were required to feed the former alpha to the new central piece.
 
Freya’s sister had been foolish not to know all of this about the friendship puzzle. She had failed to identify the alpha, let alone appease her, and now she was in danger of being squeezed out of the puzzle entirely. Meanwhile, Freya had been quick to learn from her sister’s mistakes. She didn’t just identify the central piece, she quickly usurped it and occupied that position for herself.
 
She pressed again and tiny blades shot out from its sides. From this early revelation, Freya knew that this was a weapon that was likely to inflict more harm than just a razor’s edge. She knew it held more potential, and it was simply waiting for the puzzle pieces to be slotted together in the right combination.
 
“Use it wisely. Make the right choice,” Terraskin reminded Freya. But the girl wasn’t listening. She was too busy shaking it and pressing the various parts, and each time she did, she felt the shudder from within the box as if she were pressing the nerve-endings of each soul who was trapped inside this box. This might have horrified her sister but Freya loved it so much that she squealed and giggled. This friendship puzzle promised her great power over all of the girls in her grade, and she wasn’t going to let anyone take it from her.
 
From somewhere far in the distance, a cell phone starts to ring. It isn’t her own because she checked it. The ringing is coming from outside of her bedroom, outside of her house even, and it is now accompanied by the chattering and sneering sound of girls.
 
“Who is that?” she asks. But the Sorocyde does not answer.
“Speak up,” Freya demands, and she points an accusatory finger at the creature. “You said this would give me unimaginable powers. So where are they?”
Again, from far away, a cell phone rings.
“Foolish child,” the creature hissed. “You do not order me around.”
And then the Sorocyde fell silent. And the light bulb in Freya’s bedroom flickered out. And she knew that there was no hope of rekindling.
In the troughs between the chimes of the cellphone, the darkness in the room swallowed Freya whole. It was as if the world she had occupied for thirteen years had ceased to exist.
 
And then, light.
 
It came from them: from the trio of Sorocydes who now, with their shuffling and groaning, had cornered Freya.
 
They stood before her and said nothing. Freya saw nothing of joy, or even humanity, in their faces: only desperation, and an appetite that made her bowels ache.
 
“What are your wishes?” Terraskin enquired.
Freya should have said something, anything, but she stood there before them, wishing that she could slip between the gaps in the floorboards.
“I asked you a question,” the creature added.
It was time for one of the others, the one with a heavy chain running through each eyelid, to speak.
“She asked you where you have been.”
“I heard you,” Freya replied, “I just don’t know what to say.”
“You summoned us. We are to fulfil your wishes. But choose wisely,” the third Sorocyde added. Only now Freya noticed that this creature had part of its hair, scalp, and skull missing. Freya didn’t want to see it but she could see the creature’s brain fluids glistening as it trickled down its face. “So what are we going to do?” the creature continued.
“I don’t know,” Freya replied.
“No,” Terraskin hissed, “I don’t suppose you do.”
 
Outside, somewhere near, the world would soon be going to sleep. It was a world that believed that there was no such horror that stalked Freya’s bedroom. All across the East Coast, parents were putting their children to bed with false reassurances that there was no such thing as a monster that could stalk them until it was hungry and tear them from their bed.
 
The walls of Freya’s bedroom started to tremble. The girl had heard of earthquakes in northern New Jersey but they were rare. And she never expected one that would make the walls shake so much that cracks would appear. From behind the cracks, Freya could see the glow of something. Was there a fire in the void of her walls?
 
“Too late,” Terraskin murmured. “No point in trying to quell your rising fear. The friendship puzzle has been activated and cannot be undone. You asked for power,” the creature continued. “This is power. You will have power for eternity, although it won’t be in the form you expected. You have one last chance to turn back from this. Do you really want this power?”
 
“Of course,” Freya snapped. Any remnants of fear had been washed away by the more common feelings of impatience and irritation. Why did people not just do what they were told? she thought. Why so much talking and questioning without much in the way of action?
 
“Very well,” the creature replied.
 
At first, there was silence, but then Freya could hear the creaking of doors and windows, and maybe the floor joists and supporting walls too. She knew that her world was being turned inside out, and she was being invited into the panic-filled darkness from which this trio had stepped. She smelled the bitterness of their critical thoughts; it pricked her conscience so acutely that she was certain she would bleed.
 
They urged her to step further into their world, and there was just a crack open where Freya thought she might go, where she might actually obey their silent instruction, and in rushed everything to overwhelm her. She heard so much in the creaking of the house and the rushing water through the pipes. She saw endless cracks and joins of wood and flesh and bones, and so she shut her eyes tightly. But that only made things worse. Now she could smell it too, a thousand different ways, and she tasted every inch of her mouth and the residue that was between her teeth. All of this and more; it swarmed through her mind, flooding her so that the old version of herself was swept away and drowned. And she was emerging, baptized, reborn as something new. Someone they had created.
 
She tried to open her eyes. They stayed firmly shut, stuck by something. Pus, perhaps, or glue, or even a needle and thread.
 
“What is happening to me?” she screamed, but she knew the Sorocydes would not reply. The greater distress she showed, the greater pleasure they would derive. She could always hear them cawing and cooing with delight as Freya’s heart pounded in her chest.
 
“You knew this would happen,” they said in unison. “You knew there would be no going back once you joined us.”
 
“Why won’t you help me?” Freya tried to scream but the only noise she made was a scratchy squeal.
 
“You did not want our help,” she heard one of them say. “You acted like you were apart from us. So now you can stay there, on your own, slipping in and out of the darkness like shifting waves set to drown you.”
 
“Please.”
 
“There’s no going back. You knew that.”
 
She thought of hooks and chains binding her to the souls that were trapped inside this friendship puzzle. She thought of how this strange box could lock together or break apart, and she had no control over it. She thought of parts of her body breaking apart, and leaving puzzle-shaped holes in her where pain would take its place.
 
Freya’s voice kept going, with pleas and sobs, rippling over and over like beating wings of a bird to ripple through the air. And then it stopped. All of it. All the sounds and sights and smells. All of the pain. She was left to doubt her own existence, but she could still feel her heartbeat, so she was still here, in this space.
 
She looked to the Sorocydes, hoping for some kind of mercy, but, in unison, they raised a finger to their dry and tattered lips.
 
“Silence? That is what you want from me? Silence? Or what?” Freya screamed. “You can’t do much worse.”
 
And that made them smile. Quickly, too quickly to really comprehend, she saw each Sorocyde perched on top of a pile of rotting human heads. They smiled at their friend, and the collision of kindness and death appalled her. Freya was certain that these were the heads of friends that preceded her. These were the ones who had been trapped with the promise of kindness, only for them to be torn apart and fed to this trio of malice.
 
Freya had been lied to. There was no pleasure in the air, no hope of kindness. She had made a mistake to accept this puzzle box. A very terrible mistake.
 
One of the Sorocydes stepped down from its pile of heads and smiled at its friend. “Now you have seen it all, it is time to go a little further. Now we can finally begin.”
 
Then a force pushed Freya against the wall, and she realized it was each Sorocyde pushing her hard so that the cracks widened. The combination of each creature’s effort resulted in Freya slipping through the gaps in the wall to the heat of the glowing light within. And there she saw and felt it all. She felt each sinew of her muscle tighten and she heard each beat of her heart, and the slosh of the blood in her veins. The gurgles of her stomach, digesting this morning’s breakfast, became a torrent and gush to her ears, and the fetid stale milk smell on her breath covered her face in a noxious cloud.
 
She tried to struggle but of course she shouldn’t have done that because every movement brought on an avalanche of more pain. She could feel the hardness of her bones, and to such a degree that she feared they might snap. In fact she heard a cracking beneath her skin, and her legs buckled, and this collapse brought more agony. Her nails were growing, and her hair, and she was acutely aware of each strand and each fingertip. The hair and nails were piercing through her skin, breaking apart each atom, and as soon as she was aware of that, she became hysterical because there was now too much awareness, of every atom throughout her body. It was all being crushed or split and there was no escape.
 
She tried to scream but the crumbling wall filled her mouth with its chalky residue. And she could smell the dust and the layers of paint from the layers of years. And she was then acutely aware, and could taste, the metal of the pipework that ran beneath the floorboards. She felt the cool of the water rushing through those pipes, pulsating against the walls of her arteries as if it were clear blood coming to purify her.
 
“No such luck,” she heard someone (or something) scream. She assumed it to be one of the Sorocydes, and it added, “You wanted this.” It repeated this over and over again as it got louder and louder. She begged it to stop, if not with words, because her mouth was full of masonry, but with her thoughts that she was certain they could read.
 
And the smell of her skin, how it sickened her. She seemed to regurgitate every meal and every drink she had consumed, and then she knew where this was going, because of the backwards motion of her memories, and she clawed at the walls as if that would stop this. But it didn’t. And she crashed headlong into her mother’s breast and her mother’s milk, and how foul it tasted, and how much there was. But it still kept pumping and filling her throat so she could not breathe, but this didn’t seem to matter as much as the foul smells and tastes that continued to assault her.
 
And then she was deep in the crevice of her mother’s body, splitting her open as she returned to where she came from. All manner of bodily fluids and other matter splattered around her face, and then she was inside, deep inside her mother, and unable to see or breathe, but she could hear her voice, and the voice of her father.
 
The Sorocydes squeeze into the wall void. Even though there is not enough room, they do not seem to care. They can, after all, bend Freya into whatever shape they wish.
 
They watch her terror and agony, and they croon, they purr, they quicken with excitement.
 
“Have you seen what we are capable of?” one of the Sorocydes asks her.
 
She tries to answer but still her mouth is too full to make a sound. She regrets ever playing with that friendship puzzle. She wishes she could just throw it far from here. But it is embedded into her hand.
 
“Good,” another Sorocyde says. “You have opened the portal, and now you can watch as we continue our work.”

Inspired by The Daemon Lover by Shirley Jackson. Cutout is an origin story for Jill Sinclair, a character from Malevolent Fairy, the final part of the Tangled Knot trilogy.
 
 
She had not slept well; from past ten last night, when Mary left her house, until gone six in the morning, when Jill at last allowed herself to get up and prepare for her final day as a tenth grader, she had tossed and turned, remembering Mary’s words. Jill spent almost an hour trying to perfect her look with the conditioner in her hair that Mary had told her to use, and the moisturizing lotion that, Mary said, had just the right kind of tint. She didn’t feel inclined to shower, she was that depleted in energy, and she longed to slip into some grey sweatpants and stay home in her bed. But Mary had urged her to try for just one more day. ‘Then you will have the summer,’ Mary told her, ‘and then you can think more on what I said. Maybe there are people who are better suited to you, who don’t care as much about their appearance or other people’s opinion of them.’ She probably thought that she was being kind, but Jill knew that she wasn’t kind, any more than she was speaking from her own heart. Long ago, Mary had carved out a space where her heart had been and, taking care to stay within the lines, Mary had filled that space with a shade of what others expected to see. Mary had been trained to defer to others because she had been raised by stern and domineering parents, so in kindergarten, when Mary met an equally stern and domineering girl, she knew her place. She was designed to form a link in the chain of others who would slowly cut out parts of themselves to perfectly replicate the image of one particular girl. The image of Suzy Grey.
 
Jill’s parents never helped with all that. They were constantly asking her what she thought, what she felt, and what she wanted to do, so all the while she was looking inwards for answers to these strange questions, all the other girls in her grade were looking outwards, and eventually in one direction only: To the example set by Suzy Grey. ‘You’re obsessed with her,’ Jill’s brother said, after she asked her parents yet another question about the girl. Jill claimed that she was trying to make sense of the girl, like working at an incredibly tricky formula; she figured that when she finally discovered the answer, it would feel so exhilarating and she would be able to sleep peacefully once more, before Suzy Grey ever featured in her mind. ‘I just want to know why she doesn’t look at me, why she holds me at such a distance when I try to lean in so close. Didn’t you tell me to meet people with a bit of eye contact?’ Jill asked her parents. It all seemed so unjust, that Jill would be the one to get into trouble for too much eye contact when she was always told to maintain eye contact and Suzy Grey, who gave her no eye contact, was adored by every student and teacher at her school. ‘It’s a balance,’ her parents would say, but they would use that phrase for everything, and she had never reached the exhilaration of decoding that particular formula.
 
The message Mary brought to Jill last night, the request that Jill find some other girls to sit with at lunch time, was not Mary’s words but Suzy Grey’s. That was the part that kept Jill from sleeping last night, because she would have accepted words from Suzy Grey, and she would have honored her wishes if she had communicated these to Jill herself. But it was Mary who was in Jill’s bedroom until late last night, and after almost an hour of light-toned conversation, Jill still didn’t know what Mary really desired. As she heard Suzy’s words and watched Mary’s mouth move, she asked herself what was she to do? ‘Tell the truth,’ her parents had always told her, so why was it that she was supposed to lie in response to a lie? It was a lie when Mary said, ‘It was good to see you,’ after Mary walked out of Jill’s door, and it was a lie when Jill replied, ‘It was good to see you, too,’ but she knew enough by now, at sixteen, to play it out this way.
 
Wild eyes. Last night Mary reminded her that she had eyes that scared people, that stared too intensely, especially when she appeared confused. ‘Maybe you’re trying to concentrate,’ Mary said with a smile, ‘so I can understand that you might not notice it, but it creeps us out, and people are starting to talk.’
 
‘Wild eyes,’ Jill had snapped back. ‘You used that phrase just now. Was that your words or Suzy’s?’ She knew this was not going to get her anywhere because it was far too risky for Mary to speak the truth. Mary froze, lips parted and left eye closed as she seemed to be trying to turn things around in her mind. ‘I’m not sure I follow,’ she finally said, which made her sound like she was much older than sixteen because it was something Jill had heard their mothers say. She wanted to ask this messenger whether this turn of phrase was also a hand-me-down, only this time from the mothers instead of their friend Suzy Grey, but she’d already confused Mary enough. Far better to let her catch up, if she was even capable of this.
 
‘It isn’t just your stare,’ Mary continued, and then she told Jill how her clothes were a problem, and the way she said such strange things. ‘You’re combative, adversarial, and everyone is tired of it.’
 
Jill sank back into the pillows on her bed. She’d stopped listening because she knew it was a waste of energy to try and deliberate with her. Wild eyes, she thought, like a wild animal, and she was tempted to snap her teeth and growl at Mary so she would leave, so Jill could rest because she knew that the last day of tenth grade was tomorrow, so she needed to sleep. She carried on chattering her teeth inside her mouth, but Mary didn’t seem to notice.
 
Still weary this morning, Jill ran her hand over the outfits that hung in her wardrobe. For every item that she thought she might like, she could hear Mary’s dry laughter and derision, dismissing them because, no doubt, Mary anticipated Suzy’s disapproval. Everyone in their group, all six sixteen-year-old girls, kept a close eye on Suzy’s ever-evolving taste in fashion; they were careful to never over-dress and shame her, but equally careful not to under-dress in comparison and bring Suzy’s group into disrepute. Jill realized too late that the girls were doing this, because no one really spelled it out, no one communicated explicitly about how they should dress, so for too long, Jill was dressing in grey sweatpants or navy-blue sweatpants or maybe, occasionally, a pair of shorts and t-shirt. By the time Jill realized that they were whispering about her clothes, they had probably made their decision to cut her from the group.
 
Surprising herself, and ready to surprise Mary, Suzy, and the rest of them, she opted for a lightweight lilac dress with a V-neck. Her Mom had chosen it for her last weekend, when they argued about her graduation, and her Mom tried to convince her that it was a special occasion to remember, when all Jill wanted to do was forget. Now, with the dress clinging tightly to her edges, she realized that she was regressing and returning to only know of her parents and brother. All these years of trying to keep up, trying to decode their sidewards glances and silly jokes, and Jill had nothing to show for it. The worst of it was that she wanted nothing of it in the first place, and these attempts were all for her parents, so they could produce a cardboard cutout of their desires to have friends and walk with a particular group. These attempts, Jill realized, made her no better than the cardboard cutout Mary Kane.
 
She would not accept that she had failed herself, so she fought it hard, so hard that her head felt like it was going to split in two. A headache on the last day of tenth grade, she hissed, as if things could not get any worse. She searched her bedside drawer for painkillers that she had taken from her parents’ bathroom cabinet and never bothered to return them. There were tweezers, too, and razors for the hair on her legs, her father’s earplugs, and his eye mask to help with sleep. How many times had he told her to return things after use, adding that there is a rightful place for everything, as Mary had explained, that Jill’s rightful place was not in Suzy’s group of six, soon to be five, girls. She winced when she thought of the cut again, surprised how deep it had gone, and all before she had tried to find some other place, rightful or just temporary, amongst the library nerds or the social activists or the goths or the gays.
 
Looking at the clock, she realized it was long past the time when Mary and Suzy and the rest of the girls would ring on her doorbell. No more walking to school together. They had made that decision already, and Jill felt foolish not to realize sooner that Suzy’s words of last night, delivered by Mary, would be followed up with swift action. This time she felt no pain. The cut had severed all nerve-endings, so she felt herself floating freely, levitating over her final day as she snatched her schoolbag from the closet in the hallway and pulled at her front door, remembering, too late, as the door slammed shut behind her, that it was expected of her to embrace her parents, and even ruffle her brother’s hair, instead of leaving the house unannounced. They had worked on this for years, all these little expectations, and yet she kept forgetting them, or even when the fleeting realization passed her mind, she didn’t slow her pace, let alone turn around and correct her misdeeds.
 
Outside, the light was too bright, transforming everything into a garish glare, like a painting by a half-hearted third grader, slapping any old colors onto the paper just to get the task finished, so she could play with the others instead. If someone had been here, she might have told them that the day looked surreal, and this was proof that nothing really exists, that we are all caught in a prism, our own imagination, and Mary would say that this was precisely the sort of thing that had caused Jill to be cut from Suzy’s group. Then she caught her reflection in the window of the house belonging to an elderly lady, someone Jill had never really talked to even though they lived on the same street. In this reflection, she saw how wide her eyes were staring, as she tried to take in more of her surroundings and make sense of this strange life that felt so alien.
 
Suddenly she was frightened. There was no one around, no other students making the short walk from her road, over the bridge, along the riverbank, and to the high school. This made her fearful that Mary, when she had delivered the message last night, had somehow tampered with her cell phone, adjusting the clock to another time zone, perhaps, so she had overslept, and everyone was already at school. If she arrived late, when they were already in class, Jill would have to navigate the sea of shoes on outstretched feet, some deliberately wanting to see her fall, and she would feel each pair of eyes staring at her, incredulous that she could arrive late on the very last day of tenth grade.
 
After a minute or two she climbed the steps to the school entrance and pulled at the metal handle. Countless times she had done this without any thought of it not opening, but this time it was locked, and the sudden pull of the metal handle jerked her shoulder out of place. She flinched at the thought of someone popping it back into the socket, and how much pain she would have to endure, but she was distracted from that fear by the sudden flash of a shadow from behind the glass window on the door.
 
‘Can you let me in?’ she called, and quickly dismissed any thoughts of stranger danger, and the endless warnings from her parents over the years, because anyone who was at this school was unlikely to be a stranger. She peered through the window, appalled by the thick layer of dust that had been left this close to graduation day, and she saw an unshaven man in a tattered shirt and jeans. She didn’t recognize him, so she assumed he must be someone’s parent, and she found it strange because most adults who visited the school did not turn up looking so scruffy. 
 
‘Yes?’ he called through the glass with a scowl, as if a teenage girl was the last thing he expected to see at the door to this school building. ‘What do you want?’
 
She noticed that the man was alone in the hallway, so she was certain that classes had already begun. ‘Can you ask a teacher to let me in?’ she asked, only, instead of nodding and walking over to the front office, he shook his head.
 
The man was silent for a moment and then he said, ‘Not a good idea, not unless you’re really sure. You sure you want to do this?’ It was such a strange thing to say that she scoffed a laugh that she instantly regretted, fearing that he might think her to be rude. Her parents had always impressed on her how important it was to remain polite to adults, even if you disagreed with them or found them strange. She could never reconcile this with their equal instruction to steer well clear of strange men, so she never knew how she was supposed to act if she encountered one.
 
With sudden courage she said, ‘I’m trying to get to class. Can you go and get someone to open up, or find a way to do it yourself? It’s probably just a latch on the inside of the door or something.’ She thought of lockdowns and drills, and she hoped he didn’t think that she was trying to storm the building, backpack ladened with weapons and vengeance. Then she thought that Suzy and Mary might have plotted all this, setting her up for some kind of swotting where she would be shot by the police, and they would finally cleanse their group, and their school, of one more inconvenience.
 
‘If you’re sure,’ he said with a shrug, and then he shuffled over to the door. Now closer, she could see that his eyes were sad more than threatening, and he seemed younger than before, not much older than her own father. She thought of all the ways her father had tried and failed to keep a hold of his temper, and all the ways he’d tried and failed to understand her. ‘Cut from a different cloth,’ she once heard him say to her mother, and there was a whine to his voice, like a petulant artist who is disappointed with their own creation.
 
From the other side of the school door, Jill could hear a grind and thud of a bolt sliding across a chamber and then hitting the other side, followed by a scratch and squeal of a key turning in a lock, and then the door swung open. The air was mottled with dust motes that danced in a beam of light that stretched only a small way from the window in the door, only to fade out after a few feet of the corridor.
 
‘Follow me,’ he said as he started to walk down the corridor.
 
‘Wait up,’ she called after him as she hesitated, hoping that someone else would join them in this dusky corridor. He didn’t wait for her, even hastened his pace a little, so she reluctantly started to follow. Each room she passed, each that should be stirring with bored students and a frustrated teacher, was empty. ‘Where is everyone?’
 
‘Haven’t a clue,’ he said with a shrug of his shoulders as he continued to walk.
 
What could she do? She had her cell phone, and she glanced at it with the thought that she could call the police. You go to them for a missing person, so why not tell them about a whole school building’s worth of missing people. She’s watched the crime documentaries where people are abducted from malls or even the street where they are kicking a soccer ball. She’s heard of the strange people who record themselves, and others, doing odd things to these people who are spirited away. But she could easily be made to look like a fool for this, and she can imagine how Suzy and Mary would snigger when they found out how she overreacted in this way. ‘Yes, I know,’ she would say to them, ‘I know it was foolish to call the police, but I thought that someone had abducted the students and staff at my school.’ She imagines how the girls would laugh at her some more when her eyes widened with fear, and they would call her wild again, like a lost deer or caged animal. The more she walked through these scenes, the further the man walked her down the empty corridor, and the more ridiculous she felt for even thinking of calling the police. 
 
‘You sad or something?’ the man asked her. She was never permitted to use such a direct manner, always punished if she didn’t wrap it up with a smile or a giggle that a man would have been punished for.
 
It was Jill’s turn to shrug in reply.
 
‘I suppose I should ask you what’s up, just so I don’t seem unkind or anything like that.’ He hadn’t stopped walking, and he hadn’t turned to look at her.
 
‘I suppose you can,’ she replied, ‘if you like.’
 
‘Okay, then. So, what’s up?’
 
‘My friends ditched me. At least, I thought they were my friends. One of them said that they were all talking about me, and that they all decided that I didn’t fit in with their group, only, I know it was really just one of them who wanted me cut out.’
 
‘And who’s that?’
 
‘Suzy Grey. She hates me. She wants me to go find some other group, only it’s the last day of school and most people will be away over the summer.’
 
‘So?’ he asked, sounding a little impatient. She wondered if he was next going to tell her to just get to the point already.
 
‘So I’ll be alone,’ she replied.
 
‘Is that so bad?’
 
‘My parents and brother say it is.’
 
‘And what do you say?’
 
Again, she shrugs her shoulders in reply.
 
‘What’s this Suzy got against you, anyway?’ he asked. ‘You seem okay.’
 
‘Mary said that Suzy doesn’t like the way I stare at people, that it creeps them out. Like a death stare or something, and Mary says the girls laughed when Suzy said, behind my back, that she wanted to run her hands over my face to shut my eyes, you know, like they do in movies when someone dies and their eyes are still open. I guess that would be kinda funny to some people, and I guess I do look strange. I certainly don’t look like her, I mean, she’s really pretty, and she dresses so well, and all her friends have started to dress like her and cut their hair the same length as Suzy’s.’
 
‘Sounds like she wants a cardboard cutout,’ the man added. ‘She wants a replica of herself. Maybe she’s intimidated by you, because you won’t follow her lead.’

‘Maybe.’
 
‘But cheer up, you’re graduating soon. Soon enough, you won’t have to worry about her.’
 
‘She organized a graduation party,’ Jill mutters into the darkness of the hallway. ‘And she didn’t invite me. She invited every one of the girls in our group, but she cut me out.’
 
‘That must have hurt,’ the man whispered. ‘So, what did you do when you found out?’
 
They both fell silent, and then Jill realized that both of them knew what the answer was.
 
‘I don’t want to talk about this anymore,’ she finally said.
 
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ he replied. ‘I heard you, and I know how deep the cut went.’
 
She flinched.
 
‘Don’t look like that,’ he said. Finally, he had stopped walking, and he was staring at her. ‘You shouldn’t look like that, so sad and all. That cut can’t hurt if you never felt it in the first place, never wanted any of it. So you miss a graduation party. Who cares!’
 
Jill wanted to believe the man. She wanted to believe that they were plotting her humiliation, where they set her up with some jock and made her the homecoming queen, only to pour a bucket of pig’s blood over her head. But her parents’ words were gnawing at her, pressing on her the importance of this graduation.
 
‘Here,’ the man said as he gestured to the darkness. ‘We’ve reached the end of the tunnel.’
 
She didn’t panic when she heard him use tunnel instead of hallway. She knew where they were going.
 
‘Will it hurt?’ she asked him, but he didn’t reply. ‘Will anyone miss me?’ she added, desperate now to get some kind of answer.
 
‘I miss you,’ he said with the first smile she had seen on him. ‘I miss you so much.’
 
By now she knew that Suzy and Mary and the other girls weren’t hiding in the shadows, they weren’t stifling their giggles, and they weren’t ready with some trick. She wondered if they were sorry, and she wondered if Suzy would let them have their own feelings about all of this. Probably not, she thought, and then she stepped into the darkness.

BB Clifford
 
Author of Tangled Knot, Rainbow Warrior, and Malevolent Fairy

A short story inspired by The Juniper Tree, a Brothers Grimm Fairytale.
 
 
How dull the thud, like an apple, against the walls of my dreams. It wakes me, and I look for something that might have rolled onto my head that had been resting on the pillow, and I feel about the darkness for the black fur of my cats. Little fools, playing games with me by rolling a tennis ball, a trick they have performed before, when hungry or bored or both. But nothing. No fur nor rolling ball to tap against my head and wake me from this strange dream of an apple tree that is old, so old, that it could be some two thousand years or more. Its branches reach so far into my nights that it reminds me of things that tickle at my conscience, stirring up memories that I would rather forget.
 
Now awake, I pace about my bedroom, and I see cats in each dark corner, and even though they flatten into mere shadows as I approach, I let myself believe that they are creatures of the night who have been sent to keep me from sleep so I don’t slip back to a time when I was once a man who lived with a beautiful wife, and who loved her as much as she loved me. I don’t want to remember a time when I struggled to share her sorrow for having no children, constantly trying to push aside my contentment for the warmth that we shared so I could also wish for a future that was shaped differently, with more than just the two of us.
 
Another shadow, and this one looks cruel, the edges hardened with malice as it reminds me of the sharpness of that apple tree where my wife stood as she peeled some apples, and how she cut her finger, and the blood fell onto the snow. She sighed as she stood bleeding before that tree, and she wished for a child as red as blood and as white as snow. As she spoke, her heart must have grown light within her because she raced back to the house and told me how glad and comforted she felt. ‘It will happen,’ she insisted, ‘I just know it. We just need to relax and stop willing it, and then we will be granted this one wish.’


We waited all winter, and into the spring, and the earth turned green and white with blossom. Once again my wife stood under the apple tree, only this time something made her leap for joy as she seemed overcome with happiness, and then she fell to her knees with a soft thud. All around her, the fruit was round and firm, and from the ground she pointed at it, insisting that this was a sign of our wish that would finally come true. Someone or something started to cry, and a number of the swollen fruit cascaded around her, and we welcomed the dull thud of the fruit falling to the ground.
 
A month passed, and then another, and my wife was growing and swelling like the ripened fruit, and we were full of joy and distracted from anything else that could trouble our life. ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ she would tell me as we made the short drive to and from the doctor for checkups and discussions about birth and parenting a child as white as snow and as red as blood.
 
When I looked at my wife during one of those drives, it pierced my heart to think that she might suffer in childbirth, and I resented this unborn child of snow and blood. This evil thought took possession of me more and more, and made me behave unkindly during our visits to the doctor. Each time I drove, it was there, thudding about my mind, as if an apple were rolling about in the back of the car; this newcomer, this imminent arrival, seemed to threaten nothing but suffering, and without an end.
 
During one of the drives home from the doctor, my wife turned to me and said, ‘Give me an apple, this baby is making me so hungry.’ ‘Not now,’ I snapped, for fear of distraction from the road, but also resentment that this unborn child was already dominating our world. The bag of apples was behind my seat, so I was better placed to reach for them, but I knew it was dangerous when the traffic was so frenetic. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ my wife sighed as she struggled to reach behind my seat, ‘but the clip won’t open. Did you fasten it with an iron lock or something?’ she added with a laugh.
 
I think of that time now, as I pace about my darkened room, and I surmise that an evil spirit entered our car, for something made her cry out before I swerved, and I heard her scream ‘No!’ but all I could think about was whether she had reached that shiny apple in time. She must have been bending far behind my seat when the framework of our car crashed through her sweet body and severed her neck. I was hunched over a steering wheel and, overwhelmed, I thought about taking a handkerchief and setting her head again on her shoulders, and bounding it with the handkerchief so that nothing could be seen, and placing her on the passenger seat so that we could wait for help.
 
Soon after this, help arrived in the form of a woman who gasped, and then cried, and then screamed into her cell phone for paramedics. ‘Why does she look so pale?’ I asked the woman, ‘she looks so frightening.’ The woman did not answer, so I asked my wife, ‘Why do you look so pale?’ and she didn’t answer, of course she didn’t, but I did not realize at the time. So I touched her shoulder, very gently, and her head rolled off. I was so terrified at this that I scrambled about in my seat, despite the metalwork holding me fast. I felt tearing and moisture that I realize now was my own blood. I was cut up, ready to be made into a pudding or put into a pot, but still, I could not sit there and watch this and wait for the rest of my life.
 
I was taken to the hospital, and they promised me that my wife would follow, but I never saw her arrive. ‘Where is she?’ I kept asking without getting any reply until they wheeled me to a quiet room and told me that she was laid out beneath a sheet. They waited for me to ask more, and I knew what they were expecting to hear, but I was still possessed by an evil that viewed this unborn child of snow and blood as a threat that promised nothing but suffering.
 
They told me I could bury my wife and unborn child, and I thought of the apple tree and how their remains might feed it and sustain new life. No sooner had I done this, then all my sadness seemed to leave me, and I wept no more. And then the apple tree began to move, and the branches waved backwards and forwards, and a mist came round the tree, and in the midst of it there was a burning as of fire, and out of the fire there flew a beautiful bird, that rose high into the air, singing magnificently, and when it could no more be seen, the apple tree stood there as before.
 
At night, I tried to sleep but all I could hear, but not see, that bird and its song:
 
‘My husband killed his little child,
My husband killed his wife.
I wonder if he grieves for us,
Or if he prefers this other life
Underneath the apple tree
Too-wit, too-wit, what a beautiful bird am I!’
 
Neighbors visited and expressed their shock and dismay, but I knew their wide eyes showed a fear for their own welfare rather than any concerns about me. Each neighbor who visited paused when they heard the bird song, and they remarked how beautiful the sound was, but they did not hear the words that spoke of my guilt, the same words that I can hear now, this night, as I pace about my darkened bedroom. The distress and unease, how it makes my teeth chatter, and how it sets my veins on fire, it makes me want to tear up my bedsheets in search of some corner of peace.
 
I pull back my curtains and I see it there, that singing bird, sitting on the apple tree.
 
‘My husband killed his little child,
My husband killed his wife.
I wonder if he grieves for us,
Or if he prefers this other life
Underneath the apple tree
Too-wit, too-wit, what a beautiful bird am I!’
 
I shut my eyes and my ears, but there was a roaring sound in my ears like that of a violent storm, and in my eyes a burning and flashing like lightning. I felt in such trouble that I fell to the floor, and my head was throbbing, burning like flames of fire. ‘I need it to stop,’ I cried, ‘I must have peace if I am to sleep!’ and I clawed my way up from the ground and flung open the window, and thud the windows went against the brickwork of my house.
 
‘Quiet!’ I screamed at the bird but of course it would not stop singing from the apple tree:
 
‘My husband killed his little child,
My husband killed his wife.
I wonder if he grieves for us,
Or if he prefers this other life
Underneath the apple tree
Too-wit, too-wit, what a beautiful bird am I!’
 
So I threw myself from the window, down onto my head, and I thought I might be crushed to death. A neighbor heard the sound and ran out, but they only saw mist and flame and fire rising from the spot, and when these had passed, there I stood, and I took my wife by the hand, and she cradled our child as red as blood and as white as snow; and we all three rejoiced for we were together again.
 
BB Clifford

Inspired by The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Cosplay is an origin story for Cynthia Peters, a character from Malevolent Fairy, the final part of the Tangled Knot trilogy.
 
​
I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the television-lit bedroom in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the cotton sheets and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great timbre of the gossip from each character who bore me through my life so far, away from childhood and teenage years, through my twenties, and into the unguessable territory of my thirties.
 
And I remember I tenderly imagined how, at this very moment, my favorite character, a grandmother stuck at the dead-end of a neighborly street, would be moving slowly about a plotline that had been recycled countless times, and she might pause before the camera and think of all the people, including myself, who were turning their back on these daytime soap operas. She might feel threatened by all the half-joyous, half-sorrowful emotions of someone like myself, a woman who has decided to explore a life beyond these shows, to leave the television set behind, and walk down their stairs and out the front door.
 
Are you sure, she might have asked, facing the camera directly in a way that was usually prohibited when acting. Are you sure you want to leave this room of womb-like protection, with the multitude of television channels at your disposal, the trinkets lined up by your bed, and the coffee dispenser always percolating at the edge of satisfying your need for stimulation?
 
‘I’m sure I need more than this,’ I said.
 
And would say no more.
 
She sighed, as if it was with reluctance that I might at last banish the specter of isolation from its habitual place in my meagre bedroom. She should understand my predicament, for my favorite character had known of her own isolation. I learned from the gossip blogs that after she had failed to find a lover, wife or husband, she gladly, defiantly beggared herself for fame and freedom from her own bedroom and graced the stages of Australia before landing this role that she made her own for years, decades, even.
 
Now, this fine day, her gallant spectators are failing to return from other preoccupations, and her agent is getting twitchy about these dwindling viewer numbers, but even this stranglehold of guilt will not keep me here in this bedroom of isolation where I am trapped by the comfort of her overly rehearsed lines.
 
A starburst of lights spattered from my opening door, and I almost retreated, letting my home consume me once more. I thought of the onslaught of attention that would greet me, from passers-by and their silent stares, their inquiring minds and their assessments, evaluations, and categorizations that always concluded with ‘clown’ or ‘misfit’ or ‘oddity.’ My big feet, the garish colors that I wore, and the mysterious noises I made forced me into the category, they claimed, of a clown, an oddity borne of a strange place that existed far beyond the grasp of their imagination, a haunted castle, perhaps, whose walls were made of stone, that legendary habitation in which I had been born. To which, one day, I might bear an heir. My destination, my destiny, because I was not, am not, a clown nor a misfit nor an oddity. I am a woman, still young enough, of pointed breasts and shoulders, and I have shown men, online, how teasingly they might caress me, egregious, insinuating, nudging between my thighs as I shifted restlessly in my bedroom. Their kiss I invited, with tongue and teeth in it, if they choose, and promised that one chosen one might return to my bedroom to lay with me in my bed. For too long it had been theoretical, acting as wooden as the grandmother in the Australian soap opera, and now it was time to use these dating apps and arrange a meeting with one of these men, at the park, no less, so I can play at adulthood, for a change, in real life.
 
Above the syncopated roar of my heartbeat, I could hear my jagged, unsteady breath. I saw protruding like spears the black metal railings of the park, motifs of war some might say, but I found them of comfort, as a boundary for the unfurling. Just so it didn’t get too messy. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I could see amongst the trees, the dark, leonine shape of his head and my nostrils caught a whiff of the opulent male scent of leather and spices. Though he was a big man, he moved as softly as if his shoes had soles of velvet, as if his footfall turned the ground into snow. I imagine he planned to surprise me in my abstracted solitude. I imagine he wanted to pounce, after softly creeping up from behind me. But that perfume of spiced leather would have betrayed him, and I would have been forced to mimic surprise, so that he would not be disappointed.
 
The moon was swollen and bright, so I could see that he was older than I; there were streaks of pure silver in his dark mane. But his strange, heavy, almost waxen face was not lined by experience. Rather, experience seemed to have washed it perfectly smooth, like a stone on a beach whose fissures have been eroded by successive tides. There was a stillness about his face that disturbed me, with the heavy eyelids folded over eyes and the absolute absence of light, and it made him appear as if he were wearing a mask, as if his real face, the face that truly reflected all the life he had led in the world before he met me, before, even, I was born, as though that face lay underneath this mask. Or else, elsewhere. As though he had laid by the face in which he had lived for so long in order to offer my youth a face unsigned by the years.
 
And, elsewhere, I might see him plain. Elsewhere. But, where?
 
In, perhaps, my bedroom to which I longed to bring him, where I could serve him coffee from the dispenser, and show him my trinkets and shows. I could even introduce him to the Australian grandmother, and there might be an awkward transition when he didn’t appreciate her in the way that I did, but eventually, surely, he would come to love her as his own.
 
I found that he was trembling. His breath came thickly. He could not meet my eye and turned his head away, out of pride, out of shyness, and watched a dozen rays of light flash from cars that passed outside the park. Slowly, methodically, teasingly, I unfastened the button and zipper of his trousers and slipped my hand in. Enough! No; more! Off comes some of my clothes, and the blood rushed to my face.
 
I guessed it might be so- -that we should have no formal disrobing, no ritual to remember. Sheltered as my life had been, I knew that things would be clumsy and full of greedy haste. I approached him like he was a familiar treat, with a relentless appetite, but he soon grew weary.
 
He began to shudder, and he told me that he had business to attend to. He leaned in to kiss me goodbye and there was a pungent intensification of the odor of leather. I held onto his shirt collar and forbade him to leave. I knew that I could not tell him about my bedroom, and the bed where I secretly hoped that we might conceive. I stammered foolishly: We’ve not taken dinner yet; and besides, I need you to stay until sunrise, where it will be all the better to see you. When he pulled back, and I did not relent, I wondered if he might choke me here, in the darkness, and drop my body amongst the trees. I thought of fertilizer, and what little I knew about what was in that mixture that fed the trees and bushes with so much nourishment. I wanted him to twine my hair into a rope and lift it off my shoulders so that he could kiss the softened skin beneath my ears; to make me shudder. But he stood there, without action nor words, and I realized we were playacting at this show that is adulthood. My mask had dropped and he didn’t like what he saw, so I was in danger of returning alone to the Australian soap actress, who would know how much I depended on her, so she might put less effort into her lines, and it might lose its allure, and wasn’t it going to anyway, in sharp contrast to the taste and smell of flesh in real life?
 
Then, slowly yet teasingly, as if I were giving a child a great, mysterious treat, I took out a ring of keys from inside my pocket, and I shook them before his wide eyes. Most of the keys were clumsy and archaic, and a flutter of laughter tickled my throat when I thought he might view them as keys for a dungeon. Keys, keys, keys. I told him there might come a day when I could trust him with these keys, although I might keep one from him, and if he asked, I would forbid him from touching it. I imagined how much fun we might have if he asked what one particular key was for. ‘The key to your heart?’ he might ask. ‘Then give it to me!’
 
I would dangle the key tantalizingly above his head, out of reach of his straining fingers, and I would tell him that every woman must have one secret. I would ask him to promise me that he uses all the keys on the ring except that last one, the one I had engraved with a small question mark. When I was inspired to add this engraving, did I foretell this moment when it could tempt a stranger even more, with something mysterious, something forbidden, for what better way to punctuate a moment of mystique?
 
He looked at the keys that dangled before his eyes that were twinkling in the moonlight, and I told him that my entire home could be his, that everywhere could be open to him—except the lock that this single key fits. I told him that all it is is the key to a little room at the furthest reach of my apartment, at the end of a dark hallway full of horrid cobwebs that would get into his hair and frighten him if he ventured there. (I’d seen how he flinched at every leaf that hung from the surrounding branches, and the creepy crawlies that scuttled about our darkened shoes.) 
 
He seemed to grow tired of my little game, so he told me that he had to leave the park, that he had an important business meeting, although what sort of business he might have planned this late into the evening was beyond me. He promised that we could meet again, and he agreed that he would come to my home this time, instead of frolicking in the dirt and shadows with a raw and feral heart. I knew he was lying when he made these promises.
 
I thought of returning to my bedroom to lay in bed alone. I thought of how I would long for him, unable to drift into a slumber. And that disgusted me.
 
I was certain, now, that he had no important business meeting, and he was leaving me for an importunate mistress tucked away in some other park, so I ordered him to walk me home, and to my surprise, he agreed. He probably feared the scandal I might create if he disagreed with me, if I told everyone how he pinned me to the ground and tore at my clothes (I could produce one or two tears, if needed) and, of course, there was enough evidence of his body intermingled with mine.
 
As we walked from the park, the bunch of keys lay in my pocket, and by the time we reached my apartment, the friction of our movement had excited them so that they no longer felt cold to the touch but warm, almost, as my own skin. He eyed me reproachfully as if I’d set a trap as I retrieved the clinking bundle of keys from my pocket. I felt the exhilaration of an explorer as I plunged the key into the lock and turned to let him in, swiftly closing the door behind us as soon as he stepped across the threshold, and sealing us in with the thickening air
 
Lights! We need more lights! he might have cried, if he wasn’t mute with fear. Instead, he felt for the walls of a blackened hallway, stumbling on something or other as he let out a stifled cry of confusion. How strange he must find this dark apartment, and how strange to find that it is he, not me, a mere woman, who is the intimidated one, who is trying to keep a hold of his manners and smile through his fear. I think of distracting him with a trip to my bedroom where I would open it with the question marked key, a place where I could show him a secret drawer containing a file labeled: Personal. Would he think that my heart, pressed flat as a flower, crimson and thin as tissue paper, rests within this file? And would he expect to find in this drawer a postcard with a view of a village graveyard, among mountains, where some black-coated ghoul enthusiastically dug at a grave?
 
A joke. A clownish joke in the worst possible taste when the poor man is practically crawling the walls as he stumbles on something that emits a pungent aroma, and he is probably fearful that he has wandered too far from the straight and narrow, and he is cursing himself for ever messaging a strange woman on a dating app and meeting her in a dark and dirty park. Think of the filth that can be encountered, and to think that he might walk it into his home, and to what or whom? A wife and children who await him, who kiss the same mouth that he ran along the edges, and eventually the depth, of that filth? He made his decision to explore all this and ultimately end up in this long, mysterious hallway, so he probably deems it inevitable to find himself embroiled in some kind of horror story.
 
‘There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer,’ opined my favorite poet; and now this man could see this too, or some such fear, because his wild eyes and terrified grin were rigid under the partial light from my cell phone. Blinded, he must be seeing in his mind’s eye red walls of naked rock surrounding a rack, a wheel, and other such instruments of torture.
 
Absolute darkness. The cell phone light died, and I wondered if he might take this opportunity to run, so I grabbed for his shirt collar again. With the most treacherous, lascivious tenderness, I kissed his eyes, and, mimicking the earlier passionate version of this man from the park, he flung his arms around me, for on his seeming acquiescence depended his salvation.
 
My hand brushed his trousers, and he flinched from this intimate touch, perhaps seeing once more those instruments of torture that he invented from my awkwardness, and I felt there emanate from him a stench of absolute despair, rank and ghastly, and the leather of his scent were reverting to the elements of flayed hide and excrement of which it was composed. The gravity of our presence, combined and ready to merge as one again, exerted a tremendous pressure on the hallway we were standing in, so that the blood pounded in my ears as if we had been precipitated to the bottom of the sea.
 
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘I can smell the blood.’
 
The cell phone light flickered back into life so I could see him again, this time with a hand over his nose, and I figured he wasn’t used to the smell of my body as much as I was. I could be lazy with hygiene, I admit, but he didn’t have to react so dramatically, so I made a joke of the discarded tissues, the ones that looked, in some respects, beautiful with crimson splayed out like a Rorschach test, and I bid him welcome to my bloody chamber. No doubt he presumed that the evidence of the blood showed him he could expect no mercy. Yet, when I raised my head and stared at him, I wondered if he felt a terrified pity for me, for this woman who lived in such a strange manner.
 
The atrocious loneliness of a monster! Restore the fallen mask!
 
I thought of ordering him to ‘Kneel!’ I thought of pressing the key lightly to his forehead, holding it there for a moment, and I wondered if the mark left on him might be a question mark, a heart, or the sign of the beast.
 
I heard him whimper and curse. Was he silently preparing himself for decapitation with a ceremonial sword, or some other form of martyrdom, and would he expect it to take the form of some elaborate ritual of sacrifice before whatever god or gods I might worship? He might even hear, ringing in his head, the trumpets of the angels of death, a fitting tribute to a person who meant something to someone, assuming there was some wife or children kept hidden far away from me. Only the accompanied are deserving of homage.
 
The whizz of that heavy sword; no less terrifying to be imagined than real.
 
But then a frenzied scrabble back down the hallway, and to the door that he used to try and reach the safety of the street. A great battering and pounding, and the unholy silence of the place shattered in an instant. No blade descended, no head rolled, and no man through the door, at the door, or standing right next to me in the first place. Instead, the grandmother, my devoted companion, never missing a beat with her next line or move. You never saw such a wild thing as this Australian soap actress, still playing her heart out as the audience numbers dwindled. And I was still there, in my bedroom, standing so close to the television screen that the fizzle and hiss of static tickled my nose. I must have dropped the remote, stepped on a button and switched to a show about a man in a park, maybe a bloody chamber too. That could be what happened, but then why do I feel different, as if things have been rearranged inside of me, as if something is growing and, one day, it might break free of this mask and flourish, and seek freedom from this bloody chamber.

BB Clifford 
Author of Tangled Knot, Rainbow Warrior, and Malevolent Fairy

None of them knew how long he had been there. I’m sure experts could work it out, from hair or skin samples or something, but these were just three forty-somethings who never had any interest in science. By now, they worked with spreadsheets and on computers and barely knew how those worked, and even when they were students, their parents put pressure on their teachers to push them into good universities. They would admit that this wasn’t really their thing, bodies in wall cavities, but no one else was around to help out.

They all thought the same thing. They all looked around for someone who was low enough on the pay grade to clear this up without their involvement. Someone who might sweat and pant as they carried the body out of here. They would never admit this to each other, but they wanted someone poorer than them to clear up this mess. Someone whose place it is to deal with this sort of thing.

Without any form of help, without someone to blame for a body found in a wall cavity, they looked to each other for someone else to blame. There were three of them; three forty-something with the same short dark hair and the same softened edges that they promised they would firm up in time. One of them owned the house, so the other two, neighbors from either side, silently declared that this was this homeowner’s problem. They must have realized this at the same time because the two men sprang into action, bouncing off each other as if they were trying to perform a badly choreographed dance. The homeowner followed, unsure why they were running so quickly, and fearful that they had seen something that might tear or bite them.

There was only one door to escape through, because it was a basement; usually in basements the only way out is up, although this hadn’t, of course, been the case for the poor person stuck in the wall cavity. All three men pushed and shoved their way, but they did it gently, with an attempt to preserve civility, of course, because their kids were on the same baseball team.
The two neighbors made their escape. They were foolish, they told themselves, for ever accepting a beer from the homeowner. And then, when they spoke of saving on expenses by renovating the homeowner’s basement themselves, they were foolish to take it in turns to use a sledgehammer to smash at that wall. They found a body in the wall cavity, and that was bad enough, but they could have ended up with the entire house collapsing around them.

They were happy to leave the homeowner behind so he could figure out what he needed to do about the mess. And maybe that’s exactly what the homeowner was thinking when he paused at the basement door, glancing back one last time. If only he had left without looking back. If only he had called the police straight away, so they could take away the body and start their investigation without him ever seeing that deathly leer. Because that’s what it was. The body was smiling or grimacing at the homeowner, and it had not been when they first found it.

Those teeth. How could they shine so brightly if they had been hidden inside this wall cavity of dirt and dust?

That smile. Because that’s what it is. He has decided that it is too wide to be a grimace, it is definitely a smile. A smile is an invitation, a welcome to someone, and for some reason, this person has chosen him. It has chosen his house, and so he realizes that he has something that other people in Rotherwell do not. He knows that this isn’t the usual thing that the other dads brag about as they watch their sons play baseball. Usually it is the latest custom-colored Jeep, and then it was the latest Tesla until things got all political with that, and the quick-witted switched to a Rivian. No one talks about a body in a wall cavity, no matter how welcoming that smile.

Finally, someone poorer than him steps into the basement; someone who might clear up this damned mess. The homeowner doesn’t usually curse, but he has been transfixed by this smile for too long, and he has work to get on with (spreadsheets and computers he barely understands). It is a police officer, and he wonders what is happening, and the homeowner switches into homeowner mode, lacing each sentence with the unspoken [premise] that he can afford a million-dollar house in this neighborhood and the police officer can’t. Ergo, the police officer should roll up his sleeves and cart this corpse away, and the homeowner shouldn’t.

After the half-hearted investigation, after the clear up, he has to clear things up with his wife. She wants to move. She never wants to set foot in a house that had a body in a wall cavity, even if it was in the furthest reaches of the basement. But he won’t hear of it. They could never afford another house in this area, not since the house prices skyrocketed. They will just have to put this in their past and move on. Didn’t they do that when he found out about her fitness instructor? Didn’t they do that when he realized, too late into an unplanned pregnancy, that she had a dependence on opioids? He doesn’t like to hold this over her, but he does, and her head hangs low in shame as they move on from the debate about this house.

This house. It was never about the corpse in the wall cavity. It was the house that smiled at him. The roof beams, the walls, they stretch into the widest smile that welcomes him in. Of course, he would never reject this. Why would he? This house welcomed him in, and he accepted that invitation. And so he settles in, and he brings his wife and children. He tells them that they can no longer leave. It is what the house wants, and it is what he wants. He hopes one day that this will be what they want, but that is less important to him right now. All that is important is the daily trip to the basement, where he sits and stares at that wall cavity that once held an offering of sorts. It has since been boarded up; ugly plywood hammered by someone into the walls. The homeowner hopes that these nails don’t hurt the house any more than the ugly plywood offends his sensibility. Such ugly actions for such a beautiful house.

He tries to make things better by smiling at the house. He smiles as widely as possible, as that corpse once smiled at him. This homeowner wants to show the house that he understands, that he knows what he must do.

He finds a hammer in his garage. He tends to get poorer people to keep his house fixed so he can’t think of a time that he has ever used this implement. A crazed thought flashes before his eyes. He sees blood splattered all over the hammer, and he thinks of what he might have to do if his wife and children try to escape this house. Then he corrects himself. These are what they call intrusive thoughts. He has heard about these, and they are harmless. In fact, they say that having these thoughts makes you diligent because you don’t want these horrible things to happen. He silently congratulates himself for his diligence, and he wonders if any of the other dads on the Rotherwell baseball team can say that they are diligent.

The homeowner returns to the basement with the hammer, and he uses the claw end to lever off the ugly wood. He likes the squeal of each nail as it slides from the wood, and he likes even more the sense of mastery he feels when what he attempts to do actually works. He rarely feels this at work, with all those spreadsheets and computers that tend to go wrong more often than they go right. He has felt the pressure from his boss, and the homeowner knows that he would be fired if his boss didn’t play golf with his father. You go way back with him, the homeowner keeps reminding his boss. Didn’t he know you when you were in middle school? He thinks about how old that relationship is, and he wonders if that is as old as the age of this house. He was never good at math, so he hasn’t a clue, and he doesn’t really care enough to follow the thought that pops into his mind and trails off out of his ear.

He finds himself in the wall cavity. He already had the ugly plywood thrown to the floor of the basement, and now he has squeezed himself in. He just wants to take a look. He is certain that the house has only invited him, and that is an honor, and, more importantly, that is a competitive edge over the other dads in Rotherwell. And isn’t that all that matters, after all? To push ahead of the others, so that you and your kids don’t get left behind or stepped upon. So they don’t end up biowaste to feed someone else’s greed. Because that’s the biggest problem, isn’t it? The greed of others. It is never about your own greed, because that is just appetite. I’m just trying to survive, you would say. I’m just trying to give my kids the best start in life. But it’s hard to keep saying this when you use it to justify so many forms of debauchery. There was that masseur last year, and the year before that. Things that you can push into the voids of your mind, but perhaps, only for so long. It only takes one careless or curious person to burrow through and reach the truth.

He squeezes himself further in, certain he can see a light further along the wall. It could be a room full of jewels, or a script revealing secrets in a code he must decipher. He will probably need help if it is code, and that might be a problem when he doesn’t trust anyone enough to share secrets with. In Rotherwell, in suburbia as a whole, trust is to be mocked. Trust is a liability. You don’t trust anyone with details about the sports your children are trying out for. You don’t share with anyone about their strengths and weaknesses, any more than you would share with them details about the fractures in the state of your marriage. Without trust, he is alone, stuck in the cavity of a wall and trying to shuffle his way towards the light. If he trusted someone enough to accompany him with this, they might have told him that the last thing he should do is go towards the light.

BB Clifford

I just recorded the audiobook version of How Dull The Apple Thuds, a short story inspired by The Juniper Tree (Brothers Grimm).

​Check it out on my new Substack channel.
​

Whether it is The Stepford Wives (Ira Levin), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson), Carrie (Stephen King), or Just Like Home (Sarah Gailey), I cannot read enough suburban horror. As a result, I cannot stop writing about it. It taps into so many issues, including the horrors of pack mentality, that ethereal concept of self-identity, and the pressures of parenting.

What are the greatest suburban horror /thriller novels that you have read? Add your comments below or get in touch!

BB Clifford

Cosplay: The Tale of Cynthia and The Fallen Mask. By BB Clifford.
 
This short story is inspired by The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.
​Cosplay is an origin story for Cynthia Peters, a character from Malevolent Fairy, the final part of the Tangled Knot trilogy. 
 
​BB Clifford

If you are a fan of The Bloody Chamber, you will love Cosplay is a short story by BB Clifford. Here is an extract:

"A starburst of lights spattered from my opening door, and I almost retreated, letting my home consume me once more. I thought of the onslaught of attention that would greet me, from passers-by and their silent stares, their inquiring minds and their assessments, evaluations, and categorizations that always concluded with ‘clown’ or ‘misfit’ or ‘oddity.’"

Read Cosplay here.

Cutout
The Wild Eyes of Jill Sinclair
 
This short story is inspired by The Daemon Lover by Shirley Jackson. Cutout is an origin story for Jill Sinclair, a character from Malevolent Fairy, the final part of the Tangled Knot trilogy.
​
BB Clifford

A glitch in the matrix, a glitch in the algorithm, everyone stuck on repeat. Or maybe in retreat.
“I’m not really here,” Ania muttered again, and then she wasn’t.

Malevolent Fairy is available now.

BB Clifford

"As the shape of misogyny grows, she remains trapped by men and their acts and declarations that this growth inside her must be revered and protected. Ania is sixteen, barely a child herself, but she is still expected to protect this life that is growing inside of her. And if that means she must sacrifice her own life, then so be it.

This is how a horror story grows."

Malevolent Fairy Malevolent Fairyis available now.

BB Clifford

The story isn’t over.
When Eris Gall, that witch of suburbia, perished in the fire, Freya Marwood thought that she was safe. 
But evil never dies.
Are you ready for next release in the Tangled Knot series?

Ready for the latest novel by BB Clifford? 

Sign up for the newsletter to learn more.

Are you a fan of The Juniper Tree? If so, I have a great short story for you. 
 
How Dull the Apple Thuds is available to subscribers of my Patreon account.
​
BB Clifford
Author of Tangled Knot, Rainbow Warrior, and Malevolent Fairy

This has been the summer of suburbophobia. Don't fall for the gloss of the toxic green lawns; there is no greater horror than the violent American suburbs.

Cosplay and Cutout are available now (exclusive to Patreon), and they are origin stories for characters from Malevolent Fairy.

Men Can't Be Witches, Surveillance, and The Savagery of Our Kind are short stories and they are out later this year. 

BB Clifford

Are you a fan of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber? If so, I have a great short story for you. 

Cosplay: The Tale of Cynthia and The Fallen Mask is an origin story for Cynthia Peters, a character from Malevolent Fairy, the final part of the Tangled Knot series.

This is very much a tribute to The Bloody Chamber, and I would love to hear your feedback.

Cosplay is exclusively available on Patreon. Subscribe to gain access to exclusive literary content.

BB Clifford
Author of Tangled Knot, Rainbow Warrior, and Malevolent Fairy

Yet another 5 star review for the audiobook version of Tangled Knot!
I loved narrating this book because I missed Eris and her passion for justice.
Watch this space for the audiobook versions of Rainbow Warrior and Malevolent Fairy, the second and third parts to the Tangled Knot series.

BB Clifford

Thanks to Ginger Nuts Horror for their review of Malevolent Fairy. Here is the review.

​Thanks also to Jump Scares for the shoutout. Here is the listing.

BB Clifford
Author of Malevolent Fairy, Rainbow Warrior, and Tangled Knot

I am excited to reveal the cover for Cutout: The Wild Eyes of Jill Sinclair, a short story that will be available on Patreon soon.
 
Inspired by The Daemon Lover by Shirley Jackson, Cutout is an origin story for Jill Sinclair, a character from Malevolent Fairy, the final part of the Tangled Knot trilogy.

​Sign up today for exclusive thriller and horror content.

BB Clifford

Tangled Knot (the first in the Tangled Knot trilogy) is now available on Audible.
Even better...it is narrated by me, the author!

BB Clifford