The Dark Issue 2 by Sarah Singleton & Willow Fagan & E. Catherine Tobler & Amanda E. Forrest

Author:Sarah Singleton & Willow Fagan & E. Catherine Tobler & Amanda E. Forrest
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: horror, magazine, dark fantasy
Publisher: TDM Press
Published: 2013-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Willow Fagan lives in Portland, Oregon, which he likes to imagine as a giant terrarium. His fiction has previously appeared in Spellbound, Fantasy Magazine, PodCastle, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2011 Edition.

Wrought Out From Within Upon the Flesh

E. Catherine Tobler

Cassandra coils within the glass confines of the jar, pale eyes staring at those who roam beyond. They in their suits and day dresses; they who dare to stare at her. She is beautiful, beyond compare. She knows this in a way they do not, but in a way they will come to understand. She arches her neck and mouths part in wonder.

It is not her neck they linger on. Gazes slide down that column of flesh, over the curve of her shoulder and down the length of her arm. Her arm is a golden river, curving at the elbow with a kind of perfection they have never seen, have only imagined. Their eyes come to the narrowing of her wrist and here—here—they draw breath.

This breath is surprised, because they don’t expect what flows from her wrist. Where any lady should have hands, she does not. The curve that should melt into a thumb curves instead into a metal link. There is no seam where flesh becomes metal—these links are living things, but chains even so. They move as she moves, slow and sinuous for their weight bends her shoulders into a crescent; with a rasp rather than a clink.

Eyes widen in consideration. What has become of this woman, they wonder. She knows. She knows how Emery fashioned her. Every cruel word that spilled from his lips is contained within these chains that spill from her wrists. One length joins to the other, her arms a never-ending circle. She shifts only enough to allow the people to see it is the same for her legs, chains all the way down. He has made her this way—beautiful, untouching and untouchable—a thing that cannot move beyond the limits he has placed upon her.

When the crowds go, Emery comes to her jar. He stretches to reach its glass lip, to tip it and her on her side. His hands are warm when he reaches inside to claim her, to bundle her into his arms, and it is a cage she has craved all day. He shudders—she doesn’t know if it is with desire or revulsion or some part of each. You are beautiful, he says once he rests her upon his bed; you are lovely and you are wholly mine.

She wants nothing more but than to be what Emery has made her, this astonishing creature that people gaze upon for hour upon hour. They fingerprint her glass to get a closer look and she wants to mouth the jar in return. Wants to kiss them through the glass the way he kisses her now. Emery’s fingers thread into her hair as he cradles her head; he tongues her mouth open, wet and sweet, and open even more. He breathes into her and life unfurls through the chains of her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.