SHORT FICTION
“Promises We Made Under A Brick-Dark Sky” in Clarkesworld
I was standing on the dock when the angels fell.
Their blades stilled. Their lights dimmed. Their corpses shattered on streets and shingles and skulls, all the way from the cathedral at the crest of the world to the blackwater at the end of it, where I waited on the dock with my baby.
“Cratered” in Future Science Fiction Digest
The fireplace stuck out from the lunar surface like a middle finger directed at my future. From a distance, it looked just like the fireplace at my house in Pasadena, all limestone and granite, sparkling in the sun. The stone was covered in black ash, as if it had burned, like things could burn here on the fucking Moon.
“The Two-Bullet War” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 2019
The queen lay dying. She had wrapped herself in a nest of wrinkled sheets on the floor of the cathedral, stinking and sweating, her clawlike hands shaking, fluid collecting at the back of her throat. In the loft, a choir howled. They had been singing for hours, and the soloist was hoarse.
“The Blanched Bones, The Tyrant Wind” in Fireside Quarterly, January 1, 2019
The city lives because we die: we, the shivering, bloody few, the girls who climb the diamond stair in the winter to serve ourselves to the dragon.
“The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power” in Uncanny Magazine, 2019
The funeral is nearly over when the dead captain explodes. Roses turn to shrapnel. The cathedral is lost in fire. I am drenched in blood. Bone buries itself in the wall next to my head, my arm, my howling, open mouth. I am standing at the back of the room where a sin-eater’s child belongs, and that is why I live when everyone else dies.
“It Will Bear Watching” at The Museum of Science Fiction, 2019
On the last day of your mother’s life, you take her to the plaza to wait for God’s Voice.
Your mother is eight days old, a saint of skycraft, a bright, productive wonder from the moment she left her eggshell behind. Born to the motherboard team like all the women of your line, she installed sixteen transistors on the Great Undertaking before you even began to breathe.
“The Bodice, The Hem, The Woman, Death” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 27, 2018
A few days before the end of our world, my mother took me to her favorite tailor to be fit for a dress I would never wear.
“Dollhouse” in Escape Pod, August 2018
By the time I stumble off the red-eye from Los Angeles, my butt is numb. Five years ago, I would have been working up to murder.
Now, I feel fucking glorious.
“Even To The Teeth,” in Robot Dinosaurs, July 2018
The way to save yourself, o captain, is simple. You must leave everything—your star-splayed chair on the bridge, your full belly, the soft, silk robes in the first-class chamber where you sleep—and come down to where we are dying.
“An Equal Share of the Bone” in Escape Pod, November 2017
To kill a theriida, you need gunboats and suits, laser cutters and open-mawed cargo bays, brawn and a stout heart, and God on your side. We, of course, had none of that.