Violence was first introduced to his life when he was walking back to his home one winter afternoon. He was either coming back from work or a walk around the neighborhood, he couldn’t say for sure. On his way back, he noticed frantic movement in one of the frosted windows that lined the apartment complex he was walking by. He stopped for a moment and squinted, trying to see the moving shapes with more clarity.

While it wasn’t clear what they were doing, after careful observation, he decided that the moving shapes were human-shaped. They came into and out of view frequently; they moved quickly, with a vague hint of coordination. The way they ebbed and swayed reminded him of a dance. He would at most see three distinct figures at once; they gestured and articulated to each other in explosive movements.

In a flash, one of the figures raised its arm and brought it down on something with tremendous force. In concert with the movement of the arm, a thick, milky white liquid burst onto the window pane. The frost around where the liquid sprayed immediately melted. The figure kept repeating the same motion, and the other two figures gradually froze in place. More liquid splattered each time. It took him some time, but he finally realized what was happening. He was witnessing something, or someone, being bludgeoned to death.

To his mild surprise, he didn’t run or notify anybody. He simply stood there, in a trance, and watched on as his reality was infiltrated.

The window was slick and heavy with the liquid once the figure completed their task. The stains, now gelid from the cold, were making it even harder to see into the apartment. From the little he could make out, he noticed the figure, abnormally tall, now loosely looking in his direction.

While their eyes didn’t necessarily meet, the glance was enough to wake him up. With a jolt running down his spine, he resumed his walk back home. He was taking quick, floaty steps. Almost jogging. 

He was not scared, nor panicked, not really. He was unsure. The thought that what he saw was not the entirety of the things happening to him was beginning to fester within him. 

Why did he have to be the one to witness it? The truth is that whether it was him or someone entirely unrelated didn’t matter in the slightest. The cosmos had simply placed him there. That’s how things worked, or rather, had worked.

He didn’t look back to check if he was followed even once. He turned the corner to his street and approached the apartment complex he lived in. Gripped the metal handle of the front door that was cold enough to burn him and pushed.

The stairwell and entrance were well lit, mailboxes overflowing with mail. He slowed down, the comfort of familiarity had soothed his nerves. The wrongness, however, proved stubborn. He made his way up to his floor through the stairs. The closer he got to his floor, the heavier and more fetid it got. It smelled like the rotting kelp deposited on basalt stones during low tide. The smell conjured up memories of the black-sand beaches of the town he was born in. Salty, mineral, with a hint of ammonia.

The source of the smell was unmissable. As soon as he reached his floor, he came across the freshly slaughtered corpse of an immense cow. It was lying on the floor in a sitting pose, its legs folded towards its torso. There was a very thin arc of blood along its thick neck where the cut was made. If it wasn’t for the congealed blood pooled around the head, one could think the cow simply sleeping. 

He noted the absence of the scent of iron. 

Her immense body choked the narrow landing, so large in fact that it was blocking the door to his apartment. It was physically impossible for a beast of this size to have been dragged here. Maybe she had always been here, only visible now. 

The silhouette of the tawny cow against the drab grey of the concrete was jarring. It was as if the inner wrong that was steadily growing within him was now projected onto the world. In the simplest manner of speaking, the scene was false. Something essentially grim and fatal.

Before, he might have been baffled. Unfortunately, this was not the case. With a nauseating click, the nonsense before him started making sense. In a way he couldn’t put into words, he knew why the cow was here, exactly before his door. He had to climb over it.

He approached the cow from the side. Placed his hands on her hide and lifted himself up. She was still warm, as warm as she would have been when she was alive. He lifted his legs over the back of the cow and vaulted over her. He was now standing in the cramped space between the cow and his door. 

He put his keys in. He could feel the whole door vibrate through the grip he had on his keys. The vibration was accompanied by a low hum. He unlocked his door and took one last breath before meeting his destiny. He knew very well what awaited him.

As soon as he entered his unlit apartment, a strong wind pushed against his whole body, his entire essence. Even as he struggled to keep his eyes open, he could see the outlines of the trio cloaked in shadow. They had come to collect what was once given freely, as a gift.

There are horror novels that want to scare you, and then there are horror novels that want to crawl under your skin and stay there. Needlemouth is firmly the second kind. Three cousins spend the summer in their late grandmother's house, where ordinary days slowly give way to something deeply surreal after one of them begins waking with strange objects in her mouth. When the girls encounter Needlemouth, a starving demon caught somewhere between a hungry ghost and a vampire, they're pulled into a nightmare that blends folklore, family history, and female rage into something that's equal parts grotesque and mesmerizing. K-Ming Chang doesn't write straightforward horror; she writes fever dreams that somehow feel emotionally true even when reality itself is falling apart.

Is it really theft if you're taking money from banks?

You don't even have to try that hard. If you're open to parties, you'll quickly meet someone who knows someone who knows someone. Sometimes I felt like my father's country only had two first names and two last names. The old bastard had even outlived my mother.

When a parent dies, you're required to keep certain documents. So I kept them. I made up a few stories and took my father's name. It helped that I looked remarkably like him. After a few months of acting, I acquired my second identity.

Two people need more loans than one in this broken world.

My mother wouldn't have approved.

But she always said:

"Be happy."

Money makes being social even more useful. At those networking events, I could practically taste the criminal energy in the room. Those people only cared about money.

Ironically, all I needed was more money to obtain even more identities. The more you have, the easier it becomes to get new ones. Even if you're standing at a checkout counter flipping through fifteen credit cards, as long as you use one of them, nobody asks questions.

"Par carte de crédit, s'il vous plaît."

"Con carta di credito, per favore."

"क्रेडिट कार्ड से, कृपया।"

There's something special about traveling the world with seventy-nine identities. You just can't afford to be forgetful.

One of those identities was still my father. Out of a sense of revenge, I occasionally used his credit card at local brothels and coffee shops.

"Ik wil graag met creditcard betalen."

Does a life like that become worthless when the handcuffs finally click after fifteen years?

I don't know.

The punishment didn't even interest me. I told them nothing. Not a single word about how I had obtained the identities. They already had enough evidence. I didn't need to make things easier for people who might have the same idea someday.

Those weeks felt like years already.

When they dragged me out of my cell, I finally realized the uproar I had caused in my home country. Journalists from the biggest newspapers had barely managed to find space in the hallway. I'd seen the footage of criminals hiding behind folders. When they escorted me down the corridor, I grinned at the journalists.

None of them looked at me.

They just kept taking pictures.

I was led into the courtroom and shoved onto the defendant's bench. The judge had a double chin larger than his face. That system puppet began reading the charges. It took a while. He read every name and then asked what my real name was.

"What is your name?" I replied.

"I am the honorable Judge Jones, and I won't ask again."

"Honorable? Really? How many personalities did you have in college to sleep with women?"

"Silence! State your name!"

"Je ne veux pas."

Judge Jones glanced at a court clerk.

"What was the name again?"

I couldn't stop laughing. Eventually, some of the journalists started laughing too. I tried to make my laughter sound as psychotic as possible. Someone would probably draw a sketch from it.

Then I caught my breath.

"Judge. I must confess. I'm guilty of murder."

"You're not here for murder. State your name."

"Oh. So murder doesn't matter. In this corrupt country, any tax evader would probably get more years than me. Even though I've committed murder."

"You need to start with your name."

"No big deal. It was only my wife. The one I had a child with."

I kept glancing toward the journalists. A murmur spread through the room. Judge Jones hammered his gavel against the desk like a small child demanding attention.

"What did you do?" he asked when he finally stopped.

I turned my entire body toward the journalists.

"My dear Judge Jones, I am David Graf. And twenty years ago, I slaughtered my wife. My son was upstairs in his bedroom. I told everyone it was an accident. Just like the police did. And people like YOU are the reason I've remained free."

"Mr. Graf, you're on trial for credit card fraud. Why would you incriminate yourself without a lawyer?"

I turned back to the judge.

"Because I want to be locked up. You lying judges don't hear children screaming anymore."

I pointed toward the audience.

"But these people do."

The judge shook his head and the hearing was suspended. They dragged me out of the courtroom. I looked one last time at the faces on the bench.

"Your job is to protect children! You don't do that! Lock me up!"

When they reopened the twenty-year-old murder case of my mother, they finally proved what I had witnessed all those years ago but never wanted to admit.

My father, David Graf, had murdered my mother.

I cried tears of joy when I held the arrest warrant bearing my father's name.

I could afford a life of endless luxury.

“I can tell by her return to short, barely formed sentences that she’s lost interest in me again. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to arrest the interest of even a spider for long.”

🕷️ 🕷️ 🕷️ 🕷️ 🕷️

Absolutely loved this weird horror novella SMALL BITES by Eliane Boey about Hammie, a mother who has lost herself and her appetite rediscovering both with the assistance of the spider who lives in her cupboard. Complex, grounded horror, with incisive, sometimes darkly humorous or quietly devastating observations about motherhood, relationships, career, compromise, identity and self-erasure (“I was determined to… perform enjoyment for the minimum amount of time before leaving”). Glorious descriptions of food that are by turns viscerally real, transcendent and horrifying (and sometimes all three). I was cheering for Hammie all the way, regardless of what her true appetites may consist of.

*I received a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

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