Open Casket
Did she just wink?
Something about her beauty was…off.
The beryl of her eyes?
The barest invitation of a pout?
That wasn’t it.
Nor was it the chatoyancy of her skin.
The hair, perhaps? Ethereal waves that might carry you off without an anchor.
No.
The tilt of the nose, then?
Just a nose…
But, sixteen eyelashes twitch, release themselves and crawl down her cheek.
Ah yes, the spiders; that’s it.
To Everything, Turn, Fail, Fall
Ketaris battled upwards, through the undine horde. Escaping the stony shoals and grizzled shallows once was a miracle; this was her third visit to her birthplace.
Paws, nets and hooks were thrown, she avoided all — she didn’t even eat. The males bumped her flanks, spiraled round her; still she swam. Where once the final obstacle lay, there now squatted a dam.
Sick with rotting spawn she returned to the Pacific.
Failed, extinct, to darkness, all.