#cutleaf

Cutleaf Anemone (Anemone multifida)

"That had been the last time he’d seen the inside of Clara’s room. She emptied her wastebasket into the kitchen trash can. Mark sometimes heard techno music through the door, and once, before a waterpark trip, he’d knocked to ask when she’d be ready. She’d shouted her answer through the door. Mark assumed she’d been naked."

Go read my short story "Nanny in the Darkroom" in Cutleaf issue 5.08.

It's about a good ol' boy who is obsessed with an au pair, and with social status. It's about summer in Texas. It's about discomfort with the interiority of other people. It's not horror and it's not a haunted house, but it has a lot of overlap with how I write about haunted houses. It's funny and ominous.