Author
Amanda C. Davis
All the Way Down
The water isn't clear until you're all the way down, but by then it's too late. You sink slowly, seeing murk. A gross brown mist, a fog, refracting what's left of the sunlight with thick particles of filth. Tastes good though. Rich salt. You drink it in and soon you are sinking…
Young Bones
The worst of it was, after long eons, I forgot my offense. I would creep through forests and hide in caves, moaning through my hideous lips and teeth, "Why?" I hunched in bogs sifting my gems of memory in search of the pitted stone of sin that might justify the pain. So few…
The Winter Princess
Once there was a princess born on the coldest day of the year, so that as she drew her first breath, the midwife exclaimed, "Truly, this girl will never feel the cold." And as she grew they saw this was true. The winter princess was known to go riding in weather that made the…
High Enough
One floor below the penthouse, the elevator slid open. Ben, pressed against the mirrored wall like he wanted to climb it, mashed the button marked "P" before my husband got his shaking hands and drew him away. "Come on, buddy. Time to get out." "The penthouse is higher," said…
The Gate, My Beloved; My Story, Its Key
There is nothing here, in the bright bronze center of the desert--nothing but the great walled city with gates shut tight, and at the base of them, clutching them for comfort, me. I have come so far that I forget where I started. The city begs for stories, in words I can only…
Remembrance In Stone
Fire sings of pain: the tingling victories and the scorching failure. When Badra calls on fire, her skin lights up in sympathetic memory. When she gets her scars too close to the flame, they prick the way they did the first time they were burned. The scars recall the wound. Fire…
Shimmer
Bethany Chow is shimmering in the cafeteria like the disco ball they borrow from the seventies for every stupid school dance. Her hair is shifting through a dozen shades of black and brown, a dozen patterns of highlights and lowlights, and her eyes are changing shape so fast she…
Dolly at the End of the World
"Never open the box," said Pappy, and since Pappy had been dead twenty years and no one ever came along to tell her otherwise, Dolly never did. She stood on the porch in her grandmother's dress, scowling at the sky. The clouds to the west had parted to show a gash of sunset…
In Memoriam
There were four men in the tintype studio, but only one was dead. The dead man sat strapped into a wooden chair where the photographer had abandoned him to fuss over a plate of chemicals. The other two living souls, who had carried in the dead man for his portrait, occupied a…
The Instructions
Say you've got a problem. Might be big, might be small. Almost always to do with money. Maybe you can't afford to feed your kid. Maybe you can't make the rent. Maybe you've thought about all the different ways to get yourself out of this hole, and they've gotten bigger and…
The Instructions
Say you've got a problem. Might be big, might be small. Almost always to do with money. Maybe you can't afford to feed your kid. Maybe you can't make the rent. Maybe you've thought about all the different ways to get yourself out of this hole, and they've gotten bigger and…