Originally appeared in my newsletter from August 20th. Some bits might not make sense out of context!
They’re Here For You!
But they’re not like you.
My latest book is another collection of short stories, People Skins, Volume 2, and it looks gorgeous!
The cover is another winner from the people at MiblArt, and it contains 15 of my best new stories.
Here’s some of what you can expect in the weird, unsettling and dangerous worlds of People Skins, Volume 2:
- a woman overcomes her fear of flying, then disappears;
- dreamers rip open a rift between worlds;
- a Greek donkey with a Hitler moustache stalks a lost tourist;
- the thing under the bed won’t return to the Night Sea alone;
- a funeral traps a man in the town he needed to escape;
and more!
This is going on sale very soon, so keep an eye out for more emails from me this week, containing more information and a very special offer for subscribers.
In the meantime, enjoy this week’s flash fiction and my curated roundup of the week’s best links at the bottom of this email!
Flash Fiction: Larger Than Life
My father’s corpse is naked on the rock. Birds fill the cave, preparing to eat, and they scream at me to get out, circling over his flaccid, wrinkled body.
They don’t need to worry. I’m just here to pay my last respects, having arrived too late in the small town to see him at the repose in the funeral parlour.
I wonder what to say, and whether I need to say it out loud, or if it’s enough to think it. That he really has no right to some other culture’s funeral rites.
But the birds don’t seem to care.
I step closer, thinking it might make him look more like I remember, and he leaps off the long rock and digs his fingers into my collarbones.
His hands are cold and damp, and the skin feels like wax, and the birds are making such a racket now that I can’t hear the words he’s whispering in my ear. I smell the sweet rot of his insides through his open lips, and I stagger around, trying to shake him off. The birds dart from one perch to another, settling only long enough to scream at me. Their grey wings are dull shooting stars in the cave’s gloaming.
The extra weight of my father pins me to the ground when I fall. His legs straddle me, and his fingers work their way up my neck and squeeze until I force myself into a sitting position, careful not to tip backwards. From there, I use the guano-spattered rocks to push myself to my feet.
I stagger towards the cave mouth, slipping on blood from when I fell. Thumps and taps goad me on, but it’s not my father. The vultures are launching themselves at us, ripping bits of my father off in their beaks before he escapes them.
I hurry before they can burrow their way through his body and into mine.
It’s bright outside and sunlight pours into the holes of my father’s wounds, weighing us both down.
He keeps whispering in my ear and I keep falling as I run, stagger and crawl away from the cave of birds. My dead father piggybacks a ride on my back.
“I’m flying!” says my father, over and over again. “You’re so small from up here. I’m flying!”
When I finally manage to pluck his fingers out of my neck, I wrap his arms around it instead, crossing his arms so that his fingers bore into his own forearms.
As we reach town, I straighten up, and the sunlight splashes out of his wounds. He’s lighter again, and I carry him with me.
Oh, and…
Read!
This short story by Julianna Baggott over at Nightmare Magazine is my favourite of the recent free to read fiction I’ve come across. Check out Inkmorphia here!
Fear!
Is anything more consistency terrifying than ill-conceived children’s toys? As children, we had a knitted “Miss Piggy”, who was clearly waiting for us to have an incapacitating accident so she could eat us from the toes up.
But even her horror pales in comparison to this “cheeky chappie”.
…erm?
If this isn’t a Waldorf school-trained pumpkin dancing its name, then I don’t know what it is.
But I swear I’m going to learn how to do this, too.
Hang on! Wasn’t there already a People Skins, Volume 2?
Well spotted! You should have received a subscriber-exclusive collection of 5 short stories when you signed up for this email.
If you signed up for my newsletter a while ago, that was the original Volume 2.
For ease of marketing, that’s now People Skins, Volume 0: Hidden Cuts.
It’s the same five stories, but if you want a copy with the updated – and much cooler – title, you can sign up to become a subscriber right here!
Chat soon!
Morgan
