Family Curse_The Crimson House Across Applewood_ Sommelier_And So It Ends
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Family Curse
“Speak now,” said the maker of the mannequin, using the formula the traveling mage had sold her along with the plans. She moved her hands through the complicated motions of the final conjuration.For a moment the wooden mannequin on the kitchen table seemed to prepare itself to utter a sound, moving its head awkwardly on a short neck. It shifted jointed arms and legs like a person stirring in a deep sleep. Then it subsided, just as its maker knew it would.Just as it had the other fifty-two times Dorrekus commanded it to speak. She had counted.“You must have done something wrong,” her friend A...
The Crimson House Across Applewood
Margaret Adams lived in the green townhouse on Applewood Lane in Clovis, California for what was her entire life. Sunlight would curiously peek through the oak trees in the young morning to wake her old heavy head that rested on the same cotton pillow her late grandmother tethered together in her youth. Her view of the distant Sierras was muddled with autumn’s oncoming fog, as November bled in the dwindling burn of an autumn bonfire from the night before. But outside her home was the new house labeled “in construction” across the street. After six months of being empty and renovated, it was ...
Sommelier
I pull the wine through my lips and think about what it would be like to be someone’s first taste. It’s a dry one, sharp on the tongue, bitter in the throat. Something made in Argentina, I think. Dry. Sharp. Bitter. It would be an assault to the senses for a first-timer. But for someone who’s older, who’s lived enough, that taste is a welcome massage to a jaded existence. I enjoy another sip, close my eyes, inhale the bouquet of it. Pretend that I know anything about wine. I don’t. It might as well be blood. It looks just like it. Like Luke’s blood.Last year, my brother was murdered. I knew i...
And So It Ends
The smell of stale peanuts and sawdust filtered through the air. Stepping through the barren bar, Hugh glanced over the overturned barstools and bloodstained floors and knew from the dust covering the bar that this was the place. Sitting along a stretch of highway off the California coastline, The Desert Sun overlooked the Pacific Ocean on the way to Santa Barbara. Hugh grimaced as he nursed his wounded leg, frewww.onedoor.ccsh blood dripping down his leg and onto the floorboards. He slung his shotgun onto the bar and began foraging through the contents of the abandoned building. Finding an old bottle of wh...