Something that Aunt Kali’s memories didn’t prepare me for was the all encompassing hunger after siring another. Emptiness spread from my belly to my brain, leaving me foggy but determined to find a meal. I dragged Aarti along, the fragrance of blood drawing me to a couple in an alleyway. The hunger heightened my senses, […]
There were no doubts in my mind that Ajit knew I was up to something. We had slept huddled together like cats since Devika and Vivek’s cult moved into our sanctuary, but when I brought Aarti home, I kept close to her, helping her adapt to a life of sleeping all day and remaining awake […]
Aarti, particularity, broke my heart. She was only a couple of years older than I was. Six or seven. That is, when I became. Her biological father had died when she was too young to remember him. Her mother married again, and her little brother died two days out of the womb. Her stepfather blamed […]
Now, I admit, the sight of the holler all prettied up in strings of twinklin’ lights always gets me a bit sentimental. We hope for snow to cover up the sad-looking trees we had to look at all fall… and, I admit, so we can see deer tracks huntin’ season. Well, afore I get too […]
This would be the time the ch ch ch ah ah ah would start playing in a movie. But this is no movie. Just another night at Duke’s Point. Another car with steamed up windows. And in the tape deck…Whitesnake. It always seems to be Whitesnake. Just once I’d like to come upon some teenage […]
An overpowering aroma of pumpkin spice assaulted Teddie as she opened her front door. “Every year. Why is it always pumpkin bloody spice? Can it never be cider with cinnamon or something? Every year…” She set her keys on the hook by the door as her phone chimed. A groan left her as she opened […]
We left that same night, creeping out despite the torches surrounding our home. Why they didn’t immediately make it our funeral pyre, I’ll never know. Maybe they wanted to give us a chance to show that we were still human. That was something we were unable to do for them. Our quintet stood watching the […]
According to The Vampire Encyclopedia by Matthew Bunson, a rakhas (or, more formally, rakshasa) is tinkling-bell-clad, blue-throated, blood-stained creature with matted hair and five feet. One of the powerful vampires of India. I can tell you from experience that this is an exaggeration. It’s like playing that game—Chinese Whispers, is it?—where information becomes more muddled […]
“Papa had been a good man,” Ava Bähr whispered to herself. The photos hit her like a punch to the stomach, stealing her air, making her reel. Rays of sunlight illuminated the motes of dust floating in her mother’s attic as memories—beautiful memories—played in front of her: days spent rowing on the lake with her […]
Please tell us a little about yourself. I’m a lifelong Illinoisan, married with two teenage kids. I’ve been a writer my whole life—when I was 6 or 7, I filled a spiral notebook with a “novel” about two twin princesses named Justine and Justinea. There was a talking rabbit and a forbidden magical forest, yadda […]
S.L. Baron 