Story Sale

Aubrey Beardsley’s Salome

Yesterday I sold a story to new online magazine, The Dark.

Editor Jack Fisher bought “By My Voice I Shall Be Known” (which is part of The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings collection, but you can get a sneak peak via The Dark).

Huzzah!

If I still had a voice, I would cry out.

The fabric is thick and my needle blunt – I should have sharpened it before now – so I put too much weight behind my thrust and forced the point. Not only the quilt, but also my finger is impaled. I do not wail, though I long to, determined not to make the hideous grunt that is the only noise left to me. In my memory, I still hold the sound of my voice, but each time I bellow it lessens, chips away at the timbre so lovingly preserved in recollection. Slowly, carefully, I draw the thread fully through, then pull my injured digit off the silver shaft. A scrap of spare cloth is wrapped around the glistening blue-ruby drop, then the needle itself is assiduously cleaned. I set the bulky bundle of material aside and limp, my legs stiff from hours of sitting, to the basin in the far corner of the tiny room Mother Magnus has given me. Washing the injury, applying a salve, then bandaging the deep wound; I look out the window, not really seeing so much as remembering what is there before me …