Cassandra Khaw

no one to say do not touch and be careful, this was old before the word for such things existed.

Long as you promise you don’t spook the ghosts

A long year spent making acquaintances with the demons inside you, each new day a fresh covenant. It does things to you. More specifically, it undoes things inside you

Media’s all about the gospel of the lone wolf, but the truth is we’re all just sheep

“Why do you think there are so many stories of ghosts trying to get people to kill themselves? Because they miss having someone there, someone warm. It doesn’t matter how many corpses are lying in the soil with them. It’s not the same. The dead miss the sun. It’s dark down there.”

One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones.
All for one girl as she waited and waited.
Alone in the dirt and the dark.

A little bit of magic.
Even if it was hungry.
Even if it was a house with rotting bones and a heart made out of a dead girl’s ghost, I’d give it everything it wanted just for scraps. Some unabridged attention, some love

All the lights were on, and all the ghosts were home too

And they have my teeth, my deepwater hair, like the lures of the anglerfish spun into thick coils. Nothing sticks to those radiant strands, no amount of gore or mud. Which is fortunate, given how messily my offspring eat.

“Of course. I forgot. You can’t speak. My apologies.”

I look back. The plague doctor flutters a hand, voice strange behind their mask. Today, they are dressed most austerely: plain black robes; a broad-brimmed hat; the half-skull of a vulture, carefully bleached, unornamented save for a single hieroglyph embossing its brow. Alone of my husband’s people, what few remain after the apocalypse of my children’s hunger, the plague doctor is not afraid. Has not ever been afraid.