My short story One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile Teeth is featured in Haunt anthology from Dragon Soul Press available on Amazon. Below is an extract from One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile teeth.
One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile Teeth
They say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But you say bollocks to that, don’t you Cheryl? You’ve never had much time for kings. Nor men, for that matter. And seeing? Well, the blind don’t know how lucky they are.
Your problem’s always been the same. You’ve always seen too much. You see it all. The twisted bodies of the sprites that jump from tree branch to tree branch in a storm. The faces in the wind and the shadows at the periphery of the brightest day. You see the darkness and the darkness sees you.
But you managed. For years, you managed. You were nimble, you were tough; you saw it all and you asked no questions. Monkey sees, but Monkey don’t talk. You survived. You thrived. You were the one-eyed queen in the dark.
You cleaned house for the monsters, learning the lesson of every soul that’s ever been weak amid the strong and the mean; when you can’t fight and you can’t run, be useful. And you were. When wicked old Mr. Watkins guilt came for him, you were there, wiping the tiny finger trails off the windowpanes and ignoring the way the condensation ran like tears.
You spritzed and you squirted, you wiped it all away, but the fingers lingered, scraping invisible patterns over the pane as you turned your back.
When the shadows in the room sniffled and pawed at the smudgy walls, when the reek of ammonia and terror clogged your nose, you whipped out the polish until the room smelled like an orange grove in Andalucía. You scrubbed the walls until they shone like ivory. You swept trapped sobs from between the slats of the Venetian blinds and let them drift as dust to the carpet before you got the Dyson out.
When the cupboard doors rattled in the toy maker’s workshop, you kept your head down and never opened the doors. You never looked into the weeping eyes of all those little wind-up boys and girls with their too life-like faces. ‘Cuz you knew what you’d see. But nothing gets the stink of evil out of the air, does it, Cheryl? Nor stops fear from leaking into the floorboards or terror from rising up the walls like black rot.
Though you surely tried, didn’t you?
If you would like to read more of my work you can find my horror-fantasy short story collection The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear on Amazon
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