Updates

Our posting schedule is fluid these days, as we're both gearing up for our debuts! We will still post ... it will just be a surprise as to when ...

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Victoria - The Taker

Tonight the harvest moon hangs red, and all know well to lock their doors.

All down the lane you can hear the sounds of people drawing deeper into houses, taking steps and whispers with them. It is like a body in the cold, drawing heat into its center. Lose the limbs and save the heart, or some such.

I hear my mother pacing the kitchen, the steady shuffle of her tread. I hear the front bolt slide. I hear the back door lock. I hear the shutters snap and the windows lower and they are all warnings that it is time.

This is the night when shadows come, down through the chimney, up through the floors.

The harvest moon means one thing and one alone. Out in the dark and through the fields, the Harvesters are coming. The Sower, the Reaper, and the Taker. Three cloaks and three masks the same rust red of the too-low moon, and three hands gripping three tools. The shovel, the scythe, and the basket.

My mother comes to kiss me goodnight. My father looks to the window, and seeing it shut, gives a nod and slips away.

This is the night when the world gives back. The payment for abundance.

Now the lane is hushed. Now the night is still and cold. I sit on the bed and wait and watch and listen, and soon I hear it, the faintest turning of a latch. The shutters on my bedroom window tremor, and unfold. From the dark I hear a tap, tap, tap as of a scythe against a pane of glass.

I swallow, and stand, and cross the room. Eyes tucked behind the rust-red masks gaze at me and I gaze back, before my fingers drift to the window lock. I slide up the glass, and lift my basket from the sill.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Myra McEntire - Sowing

Priscilla

Mama always says, “With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see.”

I’ve been in the fields since I was old enough to lead a plough horse. Dirty work. Rich manure might fertilize crops, but the filth never quite leaves my nails, even in the winter. No amount of soaking in a tub or scrubbing with lye soap helps. On Sundays, I hide my hands in the pockets I beg my mother to sew into all my clothes.

“Vanity,” she says, shaking her head, but putting the pockets in anyway. “Pride goeth before a fall, Priscilla.”

Every day, sowing and reaping, season after season, year after year. Until the day he comes.  

Dark, everywhere. Skin, eyes, hair. Dark, with long legs that devour the ground. I swear it trembles under his feet.

I can feel it the second he meets my eyes across the wide stretch of seed rows. He knows me. Knows the things I think, things so much worse than vanity or pride. Destruction. Burning the fields. Ruining the crops. Ending the monotony. No longer bound to the land, but the master of it, and so much more.

He looks at me as if the foulness under my fingernails is the truest part of me.

And now that he’s here, I don’t have to hide it anymore.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Winners!

Congrats to the winners of our latest two giveaways!

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: Abby Mumford

DEMONGLASS: Jen Lamoureux

Email your mailing addresses to me at myramecntire at gmail!