This is inspired loosely by "Buyer Beware" by yachiru (linked at the end of the piece). I'd really suggest reading it -- it's amazing -- but you shouldn't need grounding in that world to enjoy this.

SatisfactionShe hasn't been dead long. The body is still warm, and the red lipstick she's wearing is still wet, when Jim and I arrive ( Read more... )

SidewaysThe first time I slipped, I was nine ( Read more... )

I grew up knowing what I was. It was an inevitability--when someone gasps and says that they hope you grow up to be smart, when they tell you, faintly, that they think that you are very clever -- when you spend your entire childhood damned with faint praise, how can you not know?

My brother was gorgeous. I remember strangers, telling our parents: ( Read more... )

I have her eyes. They’re the same shape and color -- I can tell from the photographs, even if I’ve never met her. The rest of my face doesn’t look like hers, not quite, but the eyes are the same.

“You’re just like her,” Dr. Morris -- Jim -- swears, up and down. “You are her. A perfect copy ( Read more... )

He was bitten on Tuesday and died on Saturday. We buried the body in the churchyard, in consecrated ground -- the only thing, the priest said, that would counter the effects, and waited for the inevitable ( Read more... )

In all the stories, it's the stepmother that's wicked, not the mother ( Read more... )

You don’t know what pulled you to the Night Market to begin with. A desire to step outside of yourself, maybe, to be someone else for just a night ( Read more... )

The announcement came in mid-June. "THE END OF THE WORLD", blared the papers -- but it wasn't news. Most of us already knew, or had guessed. They were confirming what we already suspected ( Read more... )

We're driving somewhere through Idaho when my phone buzzes gently, telling me I've got a message. I'm in the passenger seat, a friend is driving, and there's another friend in the back of the car. I'm in the middle of a story, talking about that one time, in that one place, when we did that one thing -- something funny that ends with mistaken ( Read more... )

Your father died of cancer, when you were in your thirties ( Read more... )