Mike Allen is the editor of the magazine Mythic Delirium and the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies. His horror story “The Button Bin” was a finalist for the Nebula Award and his debut collection of short stories, Unseaming, was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. His other books include the novel The Black Fire Concerto and collection The Spider Tapestries: Seven Strange Stories. His poems and stories have appeared or will appear in places like Weird Tales, Best Horror of the Year Volume One, Cthulhu’s Reign, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Tomorrow’s Cthulhu, Transmissions from Punktown, and The Leaves of a Necronomicon.
prologue: the pattern
You never imagined you’d be in a place like this again.
Mothers. Fathers. Schoolteachers. Children. All...
You know he’s the one who made your beloved niece disappear.
He’s come out of his shop now, fussing with gloves that look expensive...
1.
These gouges where glaciers furrowed toward the sea
were smooth-sloped still, ice-muscled, snowbound;
these waves, a salt-waste...
The loop of her embrace
has no beginning.
Radium poison rings her eyes,
her teeth bright and sharp as prisms.
Her kiss wolfs down...
Welcome Discount
