slasHim – Part Two

June 15, 2015May 2, 2015 / Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

By Edle Winnie

She felt trapped. They sat at a beautiful table in an elegant dining room but she could feel the invisible bars around them. The supper was some fancy stuff but she could not taste it. Her boyfriend Morman the giraffe was a talkative animal and he and his mother kept the conversation light and constant. Oblivious. She sawed at everything with her table knife. Daddy scarface sat silent, smiling politely and staring at her. She glared back and sawed her potatoes into even smaller pebbles.

The rest of the evening was spent in banal conversation. As they were leaving Norman’s father managed to catch her alone, a strong hand on her thin arm.

“What are you going to do?” He hissed.

“What are you going to do?” She hissed back and twisted his grip away. Continue reading →

slasHIM – Part One

May 18, 2015May 2, 2015 / Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

By Edele Winnie

She could not pinpoint the beginning of it. As a child she had been obsessed with knives. A cute little girl with a shining blade in her hand. Her parents, predictably, had scolded and slapped and shaken and hidden the knives until she learned to pretend that she was not interested in them. She was only nine when her mother found the first scars on her arms. That had been a freak out. She’d been hauled away to see doctors and therapists and she told them whatever she thought they wanted to hear. Now, as a woman in her twenties, she realized that those therapists had just nodded and collected their hourly fees. No one can care forever. No one can understand everyone. What if you were born not caring or not understandable?

She liked blades because they were powerful. They shined. They were hard, yet they could easily slip into a stuffed animal, or an armchair or a thigh. They could transcend barriers. They could take life. And sometimes when life was taken, it could give life. She didn’t believe in vampires but she knew that humans had always killed and eaten. And that was how she thought of herself. Huntress. Continue reading →

Cheater, Cheater

February 23, 2015February 23, 2015 / Christian Laforet / 2 Comments

By Jessica Gouin

Brent and Elle couldn’t have asked for a more perfect night. Every element was planned and went off without a hitch. It was rare to have more than an hour or so alone together and even rarer when nothing went wrong. That should have been their first inkling that that particular evening would be the worst night of their lives.

“Oh god. Oh god, Sophia! What have we done?” Elle whispered frantically to Brent as they stared down to the bottom of the basement floor from the kitchen doorway.

Brent’s chest expanded and retracted rapidly. He wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. His entire body was numb, except for the pounding in his chest.

“Shit! It was an accident. I didn’t mean it.” He said more to himself than to Elle.

“You shouldn’t have pulled her away from me that hard.”

Eyebrows raised at her accusation he said slowly. “She was going to kill you. I freaked out. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t mean to do any of this.” Continue reading →