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Tea and the Weight of Spirits by Janna Miller
Katsu’s airy house was roughly sealed against the night winds. Bundles of cedar needles were pushed into wall cracks and layers of rice mats strewn along a raised wooden floor. The breezes sought crannies and loose shingles anyway, as the valley whistled with restless spirits looking for a place to…
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Secrets in the Poison by Kat Devitt
Mabel waited in the corridor crumpled on the floor, as crumpled as the taffeta of her wedding dress. She pressed her back against the wall for certainty, wanting to merge with the wood. Rivulets streamed down her cheeks onto her netted veil. She stared ahead at the wallpaper’s print, fixated…
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A Peculiar Count in Time, Part 2 by M.K. Beutymhill
Click here to read Part 1. Rochester, New York, United StatesApril, 1885Isabella Cooper-Oakley, age 31 I had suspected, upon finally meeting Giovanini, that I would have left feeling somehow disappointed, but the more we interacted, the more he made peculiar allusions, the more his dark eyes twinkled at John and…
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A Peculiar Count in Time, Part 1 by M.K. Beutymhill
“He is the man who knows everything, and never dies.” -Voltaire Lahore, India May, 1869Isabella Cooper, age 15 I first learned of the mysterious Count of St. Germain, while neglecting my Latin studies in favor of eavesdropping. I stopped fanning myself with my straw bonnet, attention piqued, and glanced around the…
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Crow Barn by DC Diamondopolous
The rope pulled at Calypso’s waist. She staggered then stumbled as she clawed her way up the hill with Phoebe tied below. They had been searching for Alawisha, their younger sister, since her disappearance the day before. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue were ignored as panic pushed them to the edge…
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Every Scar Has a Story by Laure Van Rensburg
The first time she ran into her old-self she was home for the weekend. The day had started with a burning smell. Standing outside the station, Abby was finishing a cigarette when she smelt her mistake. Her training kicked in. She dropped the stub, shaking her fingers before sucking the…
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To Waste a Whole Heart in One Kiss by Carys Crossen
She waited for him. After the dust had drifted down to lie undisturbed, after Arthur had been borne to Avalon and Excalibur flung into the Lake, when Camelot’s glory had begun to fade and the city diminished into a Saxon vassal state, Guinevere waited for Lancelot. He would return for…
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Mineral Bouquet by Lindz McLeod
All hail the true one, as the true one hails us. May the society be pleased to receive the enclosed selection of notes from one Dr Smiley, ‘ae Greate Lovere Of Winnes’, as presented from her diaries. As we all know, diary-keeping was, in the early years of the Ascendance.…
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The Wayfarer by V.C. McCabe
The fence had been there ever since Billy could remember. Ugly, gnarled brown wood tightly banded together with vicious curls of barb wire like a crown of thorns on top. The fence stood as tall as a full-grown man and ran the length of the boundary between his family’s property…
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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward John Ford by Daniel Ellis
From the trunk of his rented Citroën the coward John Ford drew his Panaflex camera, his beret, and his clapperboard. He would need all of that apparatus here, in the Uffizi, on the trail of Jesse James. Outside, Ford appreciated the Romanesque grandeur of the place, but it was not the…