1. This quill, the first item I can pick up using some memory of hands. 2. Hands: two with four fingers and a thumb on each. My fingertips aching when I wrote and wrote until past dawn, as they ache now when writing, despite how my body must be rotting away. 3. Rotting bodies. What […]
Seven Things You Have Helped Me to Remember, by A.L. Blacklyn Keep Reading »
Let Her Paint an Inch Thick Anonymous asks, What aspect of human death do you feel is most overlooked, ignored, or glossed over in fiction? Death occurs in fiction nearly as often as it does in reality (though as a reader of mystery/thrillers, SFF, and horror, my perspective may be somewhat skewed). I can’t think
Ask A Necromander, by Amanda Downum Keep Reading »
My lover is full of holes. I unwrap their bandages and apply fresh unguents and try not to mark the disease’s progress. I cover them again with gauze and blankets, and when I finish, they fall asleep. Their body is laced with tubes—colorful, dead, makeshift limbs that maintain their grasp on the world. Restless, I
Invisible Motels, by Katherine Packert Burke Keep Reading »
three came to me lately, for the threading:she for her mother, he for his son, anotherfor her husband—all newly bereaved,all walking barefoot on bleeding solesto be closer to their ghosts. (ghosts, you know, walksole-to-sole with their livingmoving in their melting formsthrough the underground.) i’m not what they expect; i don’t havetrinkets, not of brass or
The Sole-Stitcher, by C. S. E. Cooney Keep Reading »
Loren Rhoads, an author, editor, and essayist with an essay about cemetery postcards in issue #6 of The Deadlands, has a new book out titled This Morbid Life. She was gracious enough to sit down with psychopomp and Deadlander David Gilmore and reveal some of the macabre details of the book. For readers unfamiliar with
The Morbid Life: An Interview with Loren Rhoads Keep Reading »
I used to publish a zine called Morbid Curiosity. One of the pleasures of working on it was finding images to accompany the confessional essays that filled each issue. I liked to use vintage advertisements, especially menacing insurance or medical illustrations. In the process of illustrating one issue, I came across an announcement for the
Cemetery Postcards, by Loren Rhoads Keep Reading »
when her heart beat, I was home, and nothingneeded changing. the clouds retched sunlightthrough the halls; she threw the blinds and howled. all along the cul-de-sac, the painted bright homessmiled; our house grew greyer, grander by thehour. the plumbing dripped red mornings, ductsgasped afternoons: the tissue shreds of words she’dthought of saying. the walls were
Rows of Houses, by Leah Bobet Keep Reading »
I was seventeen when I got my first ghost. It goes without saying it was night. I was driving down the state on Highway 59, the two-lane one that’s narrow and desolate and mostly straight and’s had some shoulder work done recently. But back then it hadn’t had, not yet; back then, it was narrower
All the Open Highways, by Alexis Gunderson Keep Reading »
A little wormwood in the cakes, a pinchOf brick dust in the tea, the candles burnAnd senses yearn, the planchette hovers, inchBy inch. Each letter is a word to earn. Meaning’s hidden, dead are bidden, the clothUpon the table puckers. Sounds of mothsFlicker patter. Bejeweled fingers grip soCold. Graveyard mold and earthy scents that slow
Séance Rispetto, by Juleigh Howard-Hobson Keep Reading »