#fright write

This is called “A Fresh, Shallow Grave.” It is only with a mask that I am truly unmasked. 

This is called “Shadows of the Real Life.” Is this scary? 

This is called “Insides.” What is this, New Jersey? 

I have seen your insides and now I’m smitten! 

       I have rearranged them on the bed but I am not the genius your body is...

       There is something so much like love about the darkness of these nights... 

        It reciprocates what you give it, but it comes back to you in another form... you wake up feeling like you’ve just dreamt your own death... 

        You should listen to me... 

This is “Not Erotic.” If my head is a coffin that means something...

Sorry!...I thought you said “electric,” not “erotic!”

      Whoops! 

      Shush while I henpeck your injuries... 

      On nights like these it’s hard to imagine trying to recreate the feeling of “being alone.” 

       It can’t be done... You can’t simulate “being alone.”

       Everybody, every day, is trying this... 

This is called “Three Grim Tales.” Talking on the phone, to yourself, from the past, telling yourself, Yeah, I know... 

I.  

Let me tell you this story about a little old spell-woman who lives in the woods.

       No...no....a little old spell-woman who is not a little old spell-woman who lives in the woods.

       She’s...she’s......my god! 

       The little old spell-woman is a man! 

       Ahhhhhhhhhh.............................! 

       I’m done telling this story......!  

This is called “How I Haven’t.” What if this isn’t Shane Kowalski? 

How I haven’t lost my mind in this house is beyond me. There is always someone trying the doorknob...I hear the teeth-jumble of key against lock at strange hours.

         Once, an owl flew into an open window, deposited a haired bundle of bones, then swiftly left through the same window it had appeared. Inside the bundle of bones was an even tinier, complexly-composed skeleton. A small man perhaps. An early ancestor perhaps, after the fish. 

          I received a phone call from my mother the other day. But it wasn’t my mother. Hello, darling, she said. I could tell it wasn’t her by the way she didn’t call me “Idiot” or “fuck up.” Yes? I replied. How is everything? she said. Tense and ambiguous, I replied. Ah, she said, I remember those days... they are coming back to me now...

           In the winter I decided to seek friendship online. I received a message back saying everyone had become, overnight, decapitated. Which is why nothing online made sense.

           A dream I had: I was going through multiple rooms. Each was more or less interesting than the last. I had the sense (in the dream) that I was on the verge of finding great riches. A man suddenly appeared in one room. Suddenly as in: I was standing there in an empty room one second and the next second... a man. But also: he wasn’t a man. But also: he wasn’t not not a man. I tried to think of the word for what this was, but then I woke up. 

This is called “Straker.” Evidence doesn’t disprove the mystery. 

The old manservant, Straker, tends the greenhouse. It is unexpected—seeing him out in broad daylight. Though the morning fog that has lingered provides a necessary uncanniness for his task. 

           He has haunted this mansion for decades. He doesn’t even know it. He forgets you’re supposed to see a reflection when you look into a pond or into a very crisp pane of glass. 

           How did he even die? —Do you even care? 

This is called “Stone Blood.” Help yourself, and love overmuch. 

The man with the black and red eyes is around again. He wears his nice suit again. 

       He keeps saying we all look very nice, but says it in such a way that you just have to think he doesn’t mean it. 

       When nighttime comes, you can see him slink out like an animate patch of black fur off the back of a black cat. 

       It’s getting colder and shorter, these days, too. Who could possibly think of this? 

       My jaw will start to tense just thinking of the man coming to the door at night—knocking—smiling—all the while still wearing that crystal vial around his neck with the maroon liquid in it.