Cry Your Way Home

• "Tooth, Tongue, and Claw"
• "Deep Within the Marrow, Hidden in My Smile"
• "On the Other Side of the Door, Everything Changes"
• "This Is the Way I Die"
• "The Hands That Hold, The Lies That Bind"
• "Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant's Tale"
• "The Judas Child"
• "S Is for Soliloquy"
• "The Floating Girls: A Documentary"
• "Take a Walk in the Night, My Love"
• "Falling Under, Through the Dark"
• "The Serial Killer's Astronaut Daughter"
• "Umbilicus"
• "A Lie You Give, And Thus I Take"
• "Little Girl Blue, Come Cry Your Way Home"
• "Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice"
• "In the Spaces Where You Once Lived"

Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Sing Me Your Scars (winner of This is Horror’s Short Story Collection of the Year), Paper Tigers, and Cry Your Way Home. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year's Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda's Song, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. Until the magazine's closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. Find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters.

From: "Tooth, Tongue, and Claw"

Once upon a time there was a monster. This is how they tell you the story starts. This is a lie.

He isn’t cruel, and he didn’t eat her.

She isn’t sure if that’s a kindness or not. She isn’t sure of anything but the locks and the keys and the secret scream hiding in her throat. And the last is suspect; sometimes it tastes like laughter.

But she’s still alive. She tells herself this means something.

He tugs on the tether attached to the chain around her neck. A gentle tug, but it’s enough. His claws click on the stones of the rocky path leading away from the cave, toward the town, a sound like chattering teeth, and although the bottoms of his feet are thick and leathery, she feels every jagged edge, every sharp point, beneath the soles of her satin slippers. He moves lightly for his size; beneath his steps, the ground merely quivers. She takes a few steps until he stops again.

People stand on either side of the path. A few wear smiles, but most carry only relief on their faces, for they all know what she did.

The gazes touch, linger, penetrate. She wants to scream that they have no idea what it’s like—how can they?—but she won’t. Even if she could, they wouldn’t care. All the faces here belong to strangers, but even if they were her people, they would extend neither hand nor choice.

She’s on display so they know she’s still among them. So they know they’re still safe. Does he want them to know he didn’t tear her head from her shoulders, rip her limbs from her torso and toss the pieces aside? He has that right. He’s had that right since the day she was given to him.

They don’t do that anymore, her mother said time and time again, but her eyes said otherwise.

Or does he want to merely assure them that she didn’t succeed, that his power is still nothing to be trifled with, to be challenged? Yes, it’s apparent in the set of his jaw, the carriage of his spine.

She keeps her chin raised, too, so they don’t forget she was strong enough to try.

Lies are like bits of straw. When there’s only one, it would be easy to pick it up, break it in two, bring the pieces out into the light. But then you add a second, and you can’t find a way to dislodge one without the other. A third, a fourth, a fifth, and soon the weight of the pile is impossible. It becomes a maze with no solution. Best to pretend it’s truth, not a tangle of fiction.

"Requiem, for Solo Cello" - Issue 69 of Apex Magazine

"Sing Me Your Scars" - Issue 70 of Apex Magazine

"Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: The Elephant's Tale" - Issue 75 of Apex Magazine