unwelcoming den of strange rooms and locked handles. But most of all, we hated the parlor where the thing dwelt. It was made of sickly earth which must have been formed by stubby, childish fingers in a vain effort to represent some god-creature that had descended from the black oceans above the world many eons ago. We feared that blasphemous glyph gouged into its cranium. Its sinuous limbs emerged like tendrils of smoke from its earthen essence; beneath its sharp and baleful eyes hung hideous appendages like the limbs of a squid or some other dreadful creature, and two dysmorphic things—you could barely call them wings—sprouted like unwanted growths from its ill-made shoulders.
When my grandmother finally shucked off her fleshly burden, all her hated objects, safely encased in crates and boxes, were moved into this house of mine. All were locked tight in the attic, to be forgotten. But that thing, that thing with onyx eyes that yawn like cavern mouths, did not want to be forgotten or lost. My mind began to think and ponder about that corrupted thing; that misshapen cur of bulbous cranium and eyes like wells became lodged stubbornly in my mind. When I stalked through the halls of my house, I sometimes thought I heard whispering or some godless chant drifting on imagined threads of air down from the attic, whose words I could not quite discern nor did I want to. I was repulsed yet strangely drawn–as one is oft drawn to that which he should not know–to the slithering whispers that reached my ears. I never dared to enter into the unlit recesses of my attic for fear of what I was to find, but did often loiter around the way leading up, searching for those ancient chants and whispered dreams.
So here I sit, cold and alone, thoughts swirling like ocean currents around this thing, this work of ancient blasphemy. My eyes linger on the stairs, some dark, primitive part of my mind desiring to climb those steps and ascend into the attic; the other part of my mind, that which loves warmth and fire and flees from dark places, wishes to stay here and huddle by the fire. I sit here in my pensive mood until the light of the fire had all but burned itself out and my pipe lay forgotten in my lap. The first rays of the all-seeing sun were just peeling back the velvet curtain that covered the world when I heard once again that alien stream of words doing a macabre dance through my mind.
I felt my legs begin to move of their own accord.
I DO THE WORK OF THE BONE QUEEN
By John R. Fultz
After I died, I went wandering about the town. Stars littered the sky like diamonds, and the moon was a curved blade. I reveled in the freedom of ghostliness. No longer would a mangled and deformed body imprison me. I floated along the black alleys strewn with trash, past a crowd of rats gnawing a severed hand. One of the beasts looked threateningly at me as I passed by, its eyes gleaming like minute lanterns. I laughed and willed myself higher, rising above the cracked pavement and the black rooftops of condemned buildings. The town snored below me, a neglected, dying organism rotting in its own filth. A heavy rain fell, passing through my ethereal self, and distant thunder rolled across the flat, grey horizon.
Among the slumped roofs and crumbling towers stood the abandoned factory, a shriveled heart that had once pumped lifeblood into the town. When it had finally ceased operations, years after the industrial accident that crippled me, the town began to diminish. Then came the corpse-like rot. I looked out my window every morning at its boarded windows and rusted gates, wishing that it had closed down before it had ruined my body. Where it used to produce intricate copper components and bulky industrial machines, its only products now were dust and decay. What surprised me were the watery lights shining from the factory’s windows.
The light struggled to free itself from the fissured brick walls, seeping
When my grandmother finally shucked off her fleshly burden, all her hated objects, safely encased in crates and boxes, were moved into this house of mine. All were locked tight in the attic, to be forgotten. But that thing, that thing with onyx eyes that yawn like cavern mouths, did not want to be forgotten or lost. My mind began to think and ponder about that corrupted thing; that misshapen cur of bulbous cranium and eyes like wells became lodged stubbornly in my mind. When I stalked through the halls of my house, I sometimes thought I heard whispering or some godless chant drifting on imagined threads of air down from the attic, whose words I could not quite discern nor did I want to. I was repulsed yet strangely drawn–as one is oft drawn to that which he should not know–to the slithering whispers that reached my ears. I never dared to enter into the unlit recesses of my attic for fear of what I was to find, but did often loiter around the way leading up, searching for those ancient chants and whispered dreams.
So here I sit, cold and alone, thoughts swirling like ocean currents around this thing, this work of ancient blasphemy. My eyes linger on the stairs, some dark, primitive part of my mind desiring to climb those steps and ascend into the attic; the other part of my mind, that which loves warmth and fire and flees from dark places, wishes to stay here and huddle by the fire. I sit here in my pensive mood until the light of the fire had all but burned itself out and my pipe lay forgotten in my lap. The first rays of the all-seeing sun were just peeling back the velvet curtain that covered the world when I heard once again that alien stream of words doing a macabre dance through my mind.
I felt my legs begin to move of their own accord.
I DO THE WORK OF THE BONE QUEEN
By John R. Fultz
After I died, I went wandering about the town. Stars littered the sky like diamonds, and the moon was a curved blade. I reveled in the freedom of ghostliness. No longer would a mangled and deformed body imprison me. I floated along the black alleys strewn with trash, past a crowd of rats gnawing a severed hand. One of the beasts looked threateningly at me as I passed by, its eyes gleaming like minute lanterns. I laughed and willed myself higher, rising above the cracked pavement and the black rooftops of condemned buildings. The town snored below me, a neglected, dying organism rotting in its own filth. A heavy rain fell, passing through my ethereal self, and distant thunder rolled across the flat, grey horizon.
Among the slumped roofs and crumbling towers stood the abandoned factory, a shriveled heart that had once pumped lifeblood into the town. When it had finally ceased operations, years after the industrial accident that crippled me, the town began to diminish. Then came the corpse-like rot. I looked out my window every morning at its boarded windows and rusted gates, wishing that it had closed down before it had ruined my body. Where it used to produce intricate copper components and bulky industrial machines, its only products now were dust and decay. What surprised me were the watery lights shining from the factory’s windows.
The light struggled to free itself from the fissured brick walls, seeping
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