We’re Sorry. This Number Is No Longer In Service
His thick, inked arm felt like a fleshy cage, trapping her in the bed. In earlier days, it would not have occurred to her to wonder, but age had made her more civil: how long would she have to lie there before it was polite to scramble out of the suffocating warmth of his embrace, […]
Ribbon Tales: Two: The Token
Once upon a time, long ago in a land far away (so keep your feminist panties on) there was a wise and powerful king. As despots go, he wasn’t a bad one. Within the context of his time, he was as benevolent as kings get. He cared for his country and his subjects, took his […]
Death Comes to the Poet
When death came to the old poet, it came not as a pale horse or a scythe-bearing monk. She came on an August afternoon, after the angry sun had nestled behind the ancient fig tree outside his window. No breeze stirred, despite the open doors. The poet sipped ragged breaths from the still and humid […]
A Mortal Fascination for Volcanic Eruptions
Silence cannot do away with the things that language cannot state. G. Bataille, Eroticism Darkened for atmosphere, the museum visitors move in whispering clutches, like clumps of reed in river water, through the artfully constructed maze of ancient destruction. Like all good exhibits, it has a narrative: a before, a during, an after. There is […]
Nathalie’s Tailor
It starts like a low, slow rip of paper, just audible over the hiss of shower water on the slate tiles. A slow exhalation of sharp-edged things that tears her throat on the way up, making a larger hole for the louder sound that follows. Until she’s crouched in the corner of the glass stall, […]
Spectacle: And What Is Not Shown.
No one covers me the way he does. The storm of him rolls over my horizon, dark boiling banks of cloud that blot out the sun. His energy seethes, coils, writhes, and serrated forks of lightning bleach the world to white in singular, blinding flashes. The glint of an eye, the spark of a smile […]
Jouissance Précoce
This story requires a warning if the portrayal of adolescent sexuality offends you. There is no intentional adult participation, but hey, some people are hell bent on believing we are suddenly fully realized sexual beings at the age of 18. I sat up amid the swaddles of bedding in the berth and rolled up the […]
Garden Exiles
I can’t tell you what happened. If I were to detail the event, list its stages, the sensations and the feelings, what I said, what he said… It would be like narrating a car-crash. The moment metal kissed, the sound of the glass shattering, the nanosecond of engine roar, the eon of silence in which […]
For the Sh! Christmas Pleasure Hunt – Princess
To celebrate, we’re hosting our Christmas Pleasure Hunt and Sh! are kicking off their Filthy Friday! Authors playing along are: Janine Ashbless, Justine Elyot, Kay Jaybee, KD Grace, Lexie Bay, Lily Harlem, Lucy Felthouse, Remittance Girl, Sommer Marsden, Tabitha Rayne, Tamsin Flowers, Victoria Blisse That’s quite a line up, no? The aim of the game […]
Fixed in Amber
Malaga, June 21, 1990 The marine bows with stiff formality and releases his armful of red carnations onto the cafe’s stainless steel table. They blanket it, cascading over onto the pavement beneath. “Flores bonitas para una mujer bonita,” he says in broken Spanish. “It’s okay, I speak English.” “Pretty flowers for a pretty girl.” He’s […]