Author
Cassandra Khaw
Masterclass
"Even Jesus had a mother." Mei Yin smiled, expression reptilian. A thin laugh broke across the group. There were twelve women that evening, all Chinese, although the varied tonality of their complexions suggested that some had more complicated ancestries than others--a drip of…
Saudade
They asked me where was home and I told them it was the space between your arms and the longitude of your spine, every vertebra mapped and memorized, more familiar even that the star maps that they'd engraved into the whorls of my brain and the whirl of my pulse. Home, I tell…
The Day They Found The Train
Something had gutted the whale in the night. Yet in the dawn, the leviathan was still strangely beautiful, its muscles jeweled with tiny crabs, a glimmering carpet of life gorging itself on the still-warm flesh. Soon, however, the offal would be eaten, and the sun would bake the…
For The Things We Never Said
She fits the god's heart, blood dripping gold onto shaking fingers, into the compartment she'd sawed into her golem. It spasms and then slackens, turgid ventricles relaxing into stillness. Her breath catches against the roof of her mouth, pinned in place by a dry, chewed-on…
The Price of Small Joys
"Was he worth it?" She puts down the dao; traces the flat of the blade with a callused finger; feels the pitted steel, the runes brocading its surface; breathes out. This is not hers anymore. But its voice knifes through her gut, nonetheless, hot with accusation, the shriek of…
The Man Who Buys Giggles
"Four hundred and five in the Year of Our Tyrant. Fabulous year, yours. Very rare." Gunmetal stare warms to blue. "Very exquisite." Annora blanches. Blushes under the scrutiny, skin boiling. It has been decades since anyone looked at her--desirous, feral, unblinking--this way.…