Chapters

A lounge chair stirred. An arm pulled free at its base and pushed, tipping the chair over onto its backrest. A single bloodshot eye stared out from between the cushions. From there, the chair split apart, more limbs unravelling from where they had been stuffed into concealed compartments, all in the name of presenting as […]

I understood why deers freeze on dark highways. The Aberrant’s hands grew like headlights and the scream was like metal grinding over metal, a clear portent of death and yet I couldn’t move. Ripped from the forest, senses overloaded with something that my instincts were telling me shouldn’t exist. By the time it was upon

Maria spoke from atop the Collector’s head, a mouthpiece for her silent slave, “You have a knack for putting yourself in dangerous situations, Nick. You’re lucky I regained control of this guy, otherwise he’d be lunging for you right now.” I slowly inched towards the car. “How do you keep finding us?” “That’s a secret,”

My heart pounded as I looked at the pieces of the Wolf scattered across the floor. Their expression of shock was permanently etched on their face. The Aberrant moved and I didn’t want to look. But even out of focus, it dominated the space, its presence feeling like a pressure on my eyes and lungs. 

Fleeing the Aberrant, we had ended up in a ballroom. Besides the stage with the instruments sitting in glass boxes, the rest of the room was sparsely furnished, just a few chairs along the walls. The other Wolves were checking the doors to see if any of them were unlocked. One Wolf wearing a mask

It was like a gun went off in a room full of cats. Everyone sprung away with superhuman reflexes and instincts honed from being in proximity to danger, jumping onto the table or rolling out of their chairs, immediately looking for avenues of escape. I was torn out of my seat and dragged to the

Nineteen people sat at the table, all Wolves if the invitation was to be believed. The twentieth seat lay waiting for me.  A massive painting ran the length of one wall, depicting a nighttime forest with all sorts of woodland creatures peering out from the dark, their eyes reflecting light into pale red and white

Through a chain of buses and taxis I had almost made it into the Greater Toronto Area by the day of the masked dinner. It was the early hours of the morning and I still had a ways to go to the address stated on the invitation, but I didn’t want to spend any more

I waited, listening to the creaks of the house. I’d spent enough long nights awake to be familiar with them by now. Sitting still felt like a herculean effort. The shadows danced mockingly in the corner of my room even though there was no moving light source to agitate them. My heart felt like an

The front lawn was cast in silver ice and each blade of grass caught the morning sun a little differently, slicing the light into sparkling fragments that lingered in the sleepy eyes of those who were already awake on this early Sunday morning. A spider’s web at the corner of the porch sought to craft