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2021 Halloween Microfiction Roundup

It’s a beautiful, sunny day here in Salem MA as I write this. The tourists have gone home. The locals are emerging from their homes bleary eyed and hopeful. Another wheel of the year has turned and brings with it new promise.

This year many of our stories  centered around death. Making peace with it. Saying goodbye. Eking out the very last precious moments with loved ones. If nothing else, the pandemic has taught us the importance of human connection. I do hope you will all take a moment to revisit these stories, or read them for the first time if October was too much of a whirlwind for you.

Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies by A.C. Quill Danse Macabre / Memento Vivere by Bernie Mojzes Desire by DJ Tyrer The Offering by Jennifer Williams A Little Magic In Me by Avery Vanderlyle Eyes Wide Shut by Elvyra Venus The Dark Room by Cecilia Tan

I’m not going to say goodbye this year. I don’t know what the future holds. Things are in flux. Change is afoot. But death is merely transformation. We’ll still be here one way or another. The Circlet Alumni are cooking something up for next year. So long as life doesn’t get in the way you’ll hear from us again.

Until then, thank you. Thank you to everyone who submitted work. Thank you to everyone who read and shared the stories here.

Have a blessed New Year and stay safe.

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Halloween Microfiction: The Dark Room by Cecilia Tan

“The Dark Room” by Cecilia Tan

I hate committees. I hate meetings. Much as I love my fellow committee members, we always get sidetracked into debating if the group should boycott Facebook (if only) or whether the endorphin high from relentless edging can lead to hallucinations (an urban myth—and don’t try Tide Pods either). But I must admit sometimes good ideas come out of collective brainstorming.

The “trick or treat” themed play party, though? It started simply enough with party planning for October. Everyone was already thinking Halloween. I mentioned I’d seen Wolfington Manor was available to rent for private functions again. It had been, what, ten years since there’d been kinky events there? Suzan jumped right on it as the perfect venue – assuming the new management didn’t mind nudity and we didn’t mind the rumors the place was haunted. Billy brought up how when he was in Girl Scouts their troop ran a fundraising haunted house every year, with each room set up with some kind of scare, like sticking your hands through a curtain into a bowl full of eyeballs (peeled grapes, he explained). Which led to us brainstorming tricks or treats for every room…

Which led to me being bound to the medical exam table in the Dark Room. (“Why do I have to be blindfolded if it’ll be pitch dark?” “Because when they first step into the room a little light might leak in.” “And they’ll be blindfolded, too? Why?” “Because it’s more fun that way. All in favor say ‘aye.’”)

It had to be me or Lally in the Dark Room, they said, because we’re the only ones so pansexual we could handle all comers. But Lally has that big collection of electrical toys, so the role of Mad Scientist made much more sense. It all sounded so logical at the time. But lying here with nothing but my breath and my heartbeat in my ears, I’m starting to have second thoughts.

I’m starting to think about Micah. We’d been so drunk on New Relationship Energy the last time we were here—dating only, what, two months at the time? He had a wicked imagination and would’ve absolutely loved this party idea. But he never would’ve let me be Dark Room bait, unless maybe he were the one controlling it. Micah turned possessiveness into my safety net, into a set of rules that ensured that nothing and no one ever penetrated me–or even touched me–without his permission. (“This hole is mine,” he used to say—through gritted teeth as he fucked me, or whispered sweetly to make me blush in the supermarket.)

After he died, I didn’t know how to mourn. I didn’t know how to free myself when he’d never uncollared me. Throwing myself into community organizing was the only thing that made me feel as wanted, as needed, as I had when he was alive.

The meeting minutes do note the vote was unanimous. I put myself here. Hands bound to the corners of the table somewhere above my head, ankles to the stirrups that leave my knees half bent and my ass hanging just over the edge of the table.

The heavy drape rustles and for a moment I hear the whisper of someone in the hallway, not loud enough to make out what they say. The point of the Dark Room is to be almost sensory deprivation, all the way down in the windowless wine cellar, far from the music and screeches of delight as tricks are played and treats are given. (Peeled grapes, Billy swears.)

Whoever it is, they’ve probably been told to feel their way. A cool hand finds my ankle, fingertips sliding up my shin, past my knee, and then slowly, slowly up my inner thigh. A low chuckle, then their fingernails begin to rake, pausing only when they coast into my haphazardly trimmed pubic hair.

They scratch over the landscape of my hip, eventually climbing to the peak of my nipple. I clamp my lips together to keep from crying out as one nail flicks back and forth like a pendulum, catching it on every tick, every tock. My nipples have always been like “on” buttons, but as fingers pinch them taut and then rub it’s like a striker being scraped over a matchhead — two matchheads — igniting desire that quickly spreads through my body.

Whoever they were, they don’t stay long, though, patting me as if to apologize for running back to the well-lit and raucous upstairs. (At midnight there will be bobbing for buttplugs. Wouldn’t want to miss that.)

I’m not alone in the dark for long, though. Again the whisper, and I feel the air move against my now-damp skin. I hear the noise of surprise as cool flesh brushes the side of my leg, then the hands, walking across my bare belly, figuring out which direction I’m oriented, and finding my armpits fully exposed.

The tickling begins before I’ve even had a chance to dread it. How could I have forgotten this is some people’s kink? Laughs tear out of my lungs like bats out of the maw of hell, flung forth by the force of nature, my body shaking and squirming like a desperate sea creature on a dock. Oh god, oh god, oh god I can’t breathe! Except I am breathing, great gawping lungfuls in between the peals…. and then they step back, giggling helplessly themselves, and leave me limp. Tickling had never struck me as sexual before, but I am hot as Hades now, and I don’t even believe in Hell.

It dawns on me that a line must have formed outside. Some who enter the Dark Room feel around until they encounter the gloves and lube on the side table, or the vibrator. Others press their mouths to mine, ignoring my yearning body and concentrating every bit of pleasure and connection into just our lips and tongues and breath. Some enter as twosomes or threesomes, overwhelming me with multitasking. One pair unbinds my hands to unlock two-player mode—two joysticks, no waiting.

One of the two comes with a shout, hot seed spurting between my fingers. His partner growls with need but pulls away from my grip. I hear them kissing, the wet hush of mouth against mouth, and then one asks the other, “So you think it’s okay?”

“There wouldn’t be condoms here if it wasn’t,” says the other. I don’t recognize their voices, but they sound nice enough. “Go on. Here, I’ll help.”

The tell-tale tear of the condom packet, the grunt of arousal as one strokes the other to readiness, the click of the lube bottle cap. I’ve never been fucked by a total stranger before, and butterflies bat against my insides.

He lines himself up between my legs, fingers searching, spreading dew up and down right where my pleasure is most intense, until one digit drives in deep. I moan with need, because it’s not enough, not nearly enough, but then my breath catches as I hear a voice whisper in my ear: “This hole is mine.”

“Ow!” The man between my legs jerks back as if stung and says to his partner, “If you didn’t want me to, you could’ve just said.”

“Me? I didn’t do anything,” comes the reply.

“It felt like an electric shock or something!”

“Jeez. Maybe this one’s a trick instead of a treat. Come on. Let’s not be late for buttplug bobbing.” (Told you.)

They leave and for a few moments I think I am alone in my agony, helpless with need, my freed hands reaching out into the dark just because they can.

I feel familiar fingers interlock with my grip.

“Micah?”

His scoffing tone is so familiar, too. “Don’t act so surprised. The veil between the living and the dead is thinnest at midnight.”

My heart catches in my throat and I can barely breathe.

“I’ve got time to grant one wish. What do you want, love?”

I say what I’m supposed to say, what I can’t help but say, and what is true all at once: “Fuck me, oh god I want you to fuck me.”

My hands clutch at nothing. Something brushes over my pubic stubble. He sounds… sad. “This was your chance to beg for your freedom, you know. My chance to grant it.”

“I don’t want it,” I gasp, voice rough as razorblades. “Freedom is overrated. So is ‘healing.’”

“Masochist.”

“You know it.”

He sighs and it sounds like the wind through a screen door blown open by a blustery October night. “The truth is you’ve always belonged to yourself, love. But I suppose I can live with”—he chuckles— “you giving yourself to the community 364 days a year. But on one night, you’re mine again, hm?”

He enters me, then—wholly, fully—and it’s almost beyond what I can bear.

The committee voted unanimously to hold the Wolfington Manor party every Halloween. See you next year, love. See you next year.

–

Cecilia Tan is the founder of Circlet Press. Her erotic urban fantasy series, The Vanished Chronicles, is forthcoming from Tor Books.

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Halloween Microfiction: Eyes Wide Shut by Elvyra Venus

“Eyes Wide Shut” by Elvyra Venus

The moon was full, the trick-or-treaters finally home in bed, and a few teens lingered on the streets throwing eggs and keying cars. I centered the bowl full of grave dirt, murderer cremains, and my blood on the gravesite and lit the white candle pressed into the muck. Though I’d purchased the $2 candle at the craft store, I had spent hours carving sigils and circles into it, the physical manifestation of my will for this spell to work.

Shivering in the cool autumn air, I shimmied out of my coat, leaving me barefoot in a white slip hugging tight to my curves and knelt facing the headstone. Holding my hands palm up to the sky, cupping the moonlight as it cascaded through the graveyard trees, I intoned the summoning spell.

It was a short verse, one that I had memorized ages ago, and it wasn’t long after the sibilant echoes of my voice had faded that I heard a voice from behind me.

“Hey, girl. We got to stop meeting like this.”

I closed my eyes, breathing deep, aching to smell the lavender and sage that had wreathed my girlfriend in life. It had faded decades ago, but the perfume of fresh-turned dirt she now wore was almost as comforting.

My response was always the same: “Yeah, well, ‘fraid I got myself cursed again.”

Her arms wound around me from behind, but I knew better than to look back at her. The moment I did, she’d be gone, the candle extinguished. Instead, I hugged her arms to me, snug against my breast, and snuggled into the crook of her elbow.

I could hear the laughter in her voice when she replied, remembering the smile that quirked the corners of her mouth when she was trying not to giggle. “You are the clumsiest damn witch I know.”

“Well, you see, there was a damsel in distress,” I started.

“Mmhm, sure there was. Was she pretty?”

The feeling of her breath in my hair was distracting, but I knew what she wanted to hear. “Not as pretty as you, but a red head.”

A soft snort brushed past my ear as she nuzzled it. “Ah, your weakness. Go on.”

I leaned my head against her shoulder, creating the scene as I went. “She was being threatened by an ogre of a warlock.”

She laughed, and I bounced gently on her shoulder. “Those beastly warlocks, always causing problems for respectable witches.”

“When he cast the curse at her, I didn’t even think, just leapt between the two of them, and wham! Cursed. Again.” I sighed and wiggled against her to get more comfortable.

“I’m sure you took it like a champ.” She gently kissed my shoulders, up my neck, leaving a slight dampness that caused me to shiver despite the warmth of her arms. “And what does this curse do?”

“Makes the IRS audit me every year,” I lied.

Her gasp was gratifyingly over-dramatic, causing her chest to press into my back. “How horrible! He must have been truly dastardly.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back into her arms, letting her support my weight, if only for a moment. “There’s only one known cure.”

She whispered against my neck: “True love’s kiss?”

I turned, awkwardly—always so difficult from this angle—and pulled her head to mine, soft lips, sweet breath, eyes closed fast. I never asked if she had to close hers, too, but figured she probably did anyway. They were always closed when we kissed, before—well, before.

She didn’t need to break for air anymore, but I still did and I pulled slightly away, gasping, the taste of dried and fallen leaves seasoning the impression of her lips on mine.

Her voice was quieter, breathless, which was a trick for someone without functioning lungs. “There, that should break it. How do you feel?”

I couldn’t stop the tear that escaped my closed eyes, and I tried to discreetly wipe it away against her arm. “I…I just—”

“Shh.” She touched my mouth with her fingertips. “None of that. How long does the candle burn?”

“I tested three of them. They last several hours.”

She leaned down to me once more, her lips grazing mine. “Just enough time to ensure the curse is well and truly broken.”

“It’s so hard to tell sometimes if a curse breaks.” My breath caught as she trailed kisses down my neck, grazing the top edge of my slip where it bunched between my breasts. I turned, offering full access to my body, laying with one arm draped over my eyes to remind myself not to peek.

“I know a sure-fire way,” she murmured into my cleavage and then her hands were working their way under the hem of my slip, the cool silk slipping easily up my thighs.

I sighed in anticipation. “Fire is right—” and gasped as her thumb skimmed across my vulva, leaving a tingling path in its wake. And then her hands retreated.

“Wait, where are you–is the candle still lit?” I risked a peek from under my arm at the ritual candle, but it was still burning cheerily, casting a warm glow on the graveyard around us. Hastily, I closed my eyes again and then reached out to where I’d last felt her.

“I’m right here.” She guided my hands to her breasts, heavy and smooth, her nipples already puckering in the cold night. I grinned into the dark and tweaked her left nipple gently, eliciting a giggle. I slid my hands up into the curly chaos of her hair and guided her back to my mouth to drink deeply of her before I let her go back to her ministrations.

It was but the work of a few moments before she found herself back at the bottom hem of my slip, pushing it up and out of the way to trail kisses up the inside of my thigh.

“You know, are you sure you want me to break this curse? I mean, it could be useful—” Her laugh was cut off as I thrust my hips forward and up to meet her mouth, her tongue dancing the familiar delicate dance across labia and clit. Her fingers teased along the edges of my vagina, waiting until I was dripping wet and gasping with anticipation before slipping inside to caress the walnut of my G-spot.

She increased the pressure and friction slowly but surely, surging forward and backing off in waves, pushing me closer and closer to a climax without letting me tumble off that edge until I thought I would go crazy, panting and writhing against her hands and mouth, until finally, finally, she let me crest the wave of pleasure and desire, tumbling down the other side of sensation, shudders wracking my body. And again. And again.

When she had wrung the last vestige of pleasure from my body, she crawled up my body to settle against me, her damp fingers curling in my hair, her leg wedged between mine. Kissing her tasted of fresh dirt and body salt, her lips oh so slightly swollen with effort and desire.

“Well, I think I felt the curse leaving your body,” she murmured.

“I was certainly moved, that’s for damn sure.” I exhaled long and slow, willing my heart rate back into the normal range. “But you’re right, I feel much better. Thank you.” I pressed my lips into her hair, pretending that the damp on my face was just perspiration.

“Always.”

We stayed like that for a moment, the cool October air whisking away my sweat, before I opened my eyes and the scent of extinguished candles drifted in the dark above me.

–

Elvyra Venus is an eldritch activist and proponent of healthy love between consenting creatures. She spends her time doing “research” for her writing via cryptid dating apps and enjoying this century’s vast array of consumable media. To learn more about her blossoming erotica career, please visit http://elvyravenus.com/

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Halloween Microfiction: A Little Magic in Me by Avery Vanderlyle

“A Little Magic in Me” by Avery Vanderlyle

“Dude, I always knew we’d end up like this.”

Raavi, boneless and unconscious at my feet, didn’t answer. Our latest portal-cracking job had gone awry. After some complicated moon magic, the door opened onto a cathedral filled with mist where two angry Changelings had been offended at the presence of a filthy human (me) and fired off some kind of magic blast.

Raavi had stepped in front of me to take the hit.

My instincts take over in a crisis, and I’m never sure if they’ll be useful or counter-productive. I threw my arm back to catch the door before it closed, and the magical bracelet on my left wrist flared to life. The door stayed open. I ducked another blast and dragged Raavi back through into his magical hideout. He called it his “fastness” and I teased him constantly about how medieval that sounded. “Hideout” made us sound like superheroes — or famous gangsters.

The magical blast hadn’t left a mark on him, but his pulse was faint and his brown skin had a gray tinge. I could feel the damage through the matching tattoos we’d gotten.

After Raavi had invited me along on his magic portal-opening adventures, he’d realized I needed some protection. The bracelet, a knife, a couple random doohickeys, and tattoos that connected us. Yes, we were the kind of guys who got magical tattoos that allowed us to sense each other’s locations, but never talked about our feelings. And now he was dying… the chivalrous oddball of a wizard that I was continually astonished wanted me around.

The lights flickered and dimmed. This magical place was tied to Raavi’s magic. If he died, I might be trapped here, too. I could only hope my bracelet had enough juice stored to open the door again.

Maybe I should do that now. Get to familiar surroundings, then call Raavi’s housemates and hope they could get here in time to help him.

But every one of those unreliable instincts said to stay by his side.

Raavi had wanted us to get the tattoos so he’d know where I was, and if I was hurt. I hadn’t been sure to what extent they worked both ways. But now I could feel his life force draining away. I didn’t have much time.

Useless mortal. That’s all I was. With Raavi’s help, I’d tried reaching for the uncanny Insight that gave Changelings glimpses into the future. Nothing. I’d tried shaping and calling the energy of Otherness. Nope. Our link was through the tattoo, and I could feel him dying but I didn’t have any way to help.

But I’d helped him before. We’d met when he needed me for a sex magic ritual. My sexual energy had helped fuel his power, and had enabled him to open the door to this hideout for the first time.

Could I use sex now?

I didn’t have his training. No time to set up candles or crystals or pick the right color of salt. I’d have to hope I could stir up enough energy, and use the connection to get it into him.

The pillows from the original ritual were within arms’ reach. That bit of continuity would help – maybe. I grabbed them; their silver threads glinted eerily in the dull light. I settled Raavi’s head on one, and nudged him into an approximation of a comfortable position. I unbuttoned his shirt so I could see his tattoo. It was the Fay rune for “Joining”–something like a Korean Hangul character, but with added spikes and flourishes. The ink was red and glowed–but the glow was fading.

I took my clothes off and knelt on the other pillow. My tattoo matched his…and it was also dimmer.

He’d sucked me off for the ritual and I hadn’t had a chance to reciprocate before the spell took effect. I could imagine it, though, and filled in the details from the many other times we’d fucked.

I loved his cock, thick and just long enough to fit down my throat when I wanted that. His pubic hair was surprisingly soft and smelled like fresh-baked bread. His balls were sensitive, almost ticklish. He’d learned how I liked to have my hair pulled just a little when I was giving head, and to read the tension in my shoulders when I’d had too much deep-throating and needed to pull back.

I was hard now. I imagined my sexual arousal as a spark, an energy that I could pass into him using the connection made by the tattoos. It fell into a void…

I teetered on the edge, like peering down into an abyss. I felt the downdraft, and goosebumps sprouted from my skin. If I wasn’t careful, I could push too much energy into him and drag myself down.

“It would be worth it,” I told him. “If I can’t help you, if I die here, too. I don’t regret a single minute of it.”

The lights went out.

I closed my eyes. I needed a scenario hot enough to drive everything else out of my mind. The time by the river…. The night he fucked me while I looked up at alien stars after we opened a portal to another world. The morning after I’d DJ’d a rave organized by my ex… He came looking for me at dawn as we were closing out the last set. We’d blown each other in the bathroom. I shoved the intensity of those moments, of our lust and our reasserting our connection, through the link between the runes.

I felt a subtle updraft from the void. I shivered. A tiny ember had lit up. It wouldn’t sustain itself for long, though.

He needed more.

Got it. Yes. The time we’d fucked after I’d met his housemate, Trey Lin. Changelings were flawed Fay, exiled to Earth, but many still had that unearthly, fantastic beauty, like Tolkien elves cranked up to 11. Trey Lin had it in spades, while Raavi looked human: a bit round, a bit of a belly, warm kind eyes, strong solid limbs.

Raavi wouldn’t believe I was attracted to him after meeting his fellow Changeling.

“You think I’m into that pretty boy?” I pushed Raavi against the wall, grinding up against him. “He looks like he’d break in a strong wind.”

I kissed him, tongue pushing deep into his mouth. He tasted like the scent of flowers in the abandoned lot behind the trailer park where I grew up. He was just as intoxicating as his delicate friend. I kissed him and rubbed against him until his skin was flushed and his eyes were wild.

“You really–” he stopped with a gasp when my hand squeezed his dick.

“Yes, I really. I want you.” He was nice and hard. His prick pulsed in my grip. “C’mon.”

We didn’t even make it up the stairs. I went first, feeling his hungry gaze on my ass. I stumbled; he reached to steady me. His hands were on my hips. Then pulling my pants down, and I spread my legs and braced my arms and groaned when he nipped at my butt cheek.

Raavi whispered a spell and my whole body relaxed, tingling with pleasure. Magic as foreplay was one of my favorite tricks of his. His hands settled on my hips again and his cock pushed into me.

“Do it. Fuck me,” I growled. He didn’t waste any time in setting up a pounding rhythm, balls slapping me and his dick hitting that sweet spot inside me perfectly with every stroke. He urged me forward till I was sprawled, groaning. Was Trey Lin listening? I hoped he was.

The lights flickered on. The void was filling up.

My dick was wet from pre-come; my grip sliding, taut. The memory kept me going: how he’d filled me, how he’d bitten my shoulder and dug his fingernails into my hips. Raavi swore in an ancient feral language as he fucked me, and I came before I’d reached to touch myself.

“Yeah.” I jerked myself, pushing the pace. Remembering how he’d kept fucking me through a second orgasm, and how we’d stumbled into the shower afterwards to grope each other sleepily, magically, into a third.

“Yes! Fuck!” I came, shuddering, cupping my other hand to catch my come. A fire roared inside me, between us, and I hoped it had worked.

When I opened my eyes a moment later, Raavi was staring at me. And breathing hard.

“Wow. Um.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wiped my hands on my shirt hastily. “Are you okay?”

“I think I am.” His gaze drunk me in. “Jonah, did you just concoct your own sex ritual?”

“You were hurt. And it worked that other time…”

He smiled and reached for me. “Thank you. You may very well have saved my life.”

I slid into his arms and felt the tie between us, solid and strong.

“I guess I have a little magic in me after all.”

–

Avery Vanderlyle is a Boston-based writer of sci fi, fantasy, erotica and romance — sometimes all at once. Her stories for Circlet Press include “Deflowered,” which was selected for inclusion in Superlative Speculative Erotica: The Best of Circlet Press 2012-2017. Raavi and Jonah first met in “Passage, Performance, Passion” in Circlet Press’ Like a Spell 2: Fire. Their adventures continued in “If Not for the Rat” in the charity anthology His Magical Pet, edited by Rachel Brown. Avery lives with her spouse and five cats. She is on twitter at averyvanderlyle and blogs infrequently at https://averyvanderlyle.wordpress.com/

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Halloween Microfiction: The Offering by Jennifer Williams

“The Offering” by Jennifer Williams

“Fuck,” I whisper.

His magic sings across my skin as my eager cunt pushes on empty air. My body is pulled taut, bound in iron round my neck, wrists, and ankles. Not that I need it. I’m exactly where I want to be. The room is dark and I imagine it is cool. I can see the shadow of damp stone walls surrounding us and I smell the must of neglect and decay.

He stands before me, tall and lithe and stern as always. His long dark hair is parted to one side and his eyes almost glow in the faint light. The light. Oh, that light. The manifestation of his power. I see it swirling all around him, an extension of who he is. It glows red against the black of his jacket and makes the white of his collar flash like a warning.

I gasp when I feel his intention slide between my legs, ghosting along my spectral sex. Spectral isn’t the right word though. I exist. Just not in the same realm. No. I am tucked away, saved especially for nights like this. Nights when he needs me, when he needs what we have to fight the monsters of the world. The real monsters, not the kind he thinks he is. He tells himself it isn’t a violation of his vows so long as we don’t actually touch.

A bitter laugh brews deep within me but is quickly squelched as I feel him probe at my entrance. His energy pulses, a phantasmagorical mockery of the tongue that once used to lave me into oblivion. My desire drips like cut fruit, spilling onto the cement floor. It hisses as it crosses the barrier between my world and his. Stark evidence that we could touch, if he let us. But his sanctimonious ass would never allow such a transgression.

Even now I can smell the blood on him. He’s punished himself in advance of this sin. Reparations for what is to come. I reach out my own energy. I can’t touch him the way he can me but I can sense things, smell things, sometimes even taste. And sure enough his back is marred with fresh welts, bloody and pulsing with pain. He calls it Discipline. I call it Kinky.

“Mara,” he scolds, lips tight in concentration. His arms tense and I am enraptured by the expanse of exposed skin from his pushed up sleeves. His muscles flex beneath the straps of his knife sheathe and I moan thinking about how those strong arms used to feel roughhousing me into submission.

He uses this opportunity to enter me and I gasp audibly. The sound echoes around the small room and I sense more than see his eyes slip closed, momentarily drinking the sensation in. But then they open, and he is looking at me with fire, with a hunger that only I can satisfy. His magic flares and he fills me, pushing me to my limits, stretching me more than my mortal form could ever take.

“Fuck”, I whisper again. I am sweating and slick all over and I throw my head back as I relish the feeling of being filled by him. It’s not the same as our true flesh mingling. It’s better and worse and wrapped in the game of this push and pull we play.

“Father,” I whisper. That’s not his name, of course. But it does the trick. My binds tighten and his anger flares across my skin, white hot and sharp like his knives. He begins to fuck me in earnest, his pace unrelenting and I take his punishment gladly. I am keening in the darkness, muscles stretched and back arched.

The magic between us is building, that unique amalgam of energies that got us where we are today. Him in his world, and I, cast into this one. It fills the room, threatening to burst forth. Which, of course, is the point. When we are done he will drink his fill, and replenished, take his leave until the next time he has need of me.

“Aidan.” That’s his true name. I’m not sure if I’ve said it or thought it. All that I am is coiled deep and thrumming between my legs and low in my belly. Nothing else exists. Not the stars in the sky. Not the air that he breathes. Not these four walls that contain us. Only the feel of him, bruising and rough, ushering me to the precipice of a shattering orgasm.

“Yes,” I hear him whisper.

My eyes open, lust—gorged slits in the darkness. His breath is coming hard and fast as he watches me with his own hooded eyes. His skin is slick and sweat—beaded and I long to taste him. His eyes slip closed and my gaze lowers to his belt. Sometimes I miss that most of all. The way he would wrap it around my neck as he took me from behind.

“Stop.” I hear him dimly, like the faint cry of an animal in the nighttime you aren’t sure is real.

My attention is locked on the shadow of his cock straining against his tight leather pants. Those are new. I long to run my tongue along that bulge, to taste the earthiness of the leather and to feel its softness against my skin. I remember the taste of him in my mouth, and the way he would twitch when my teeth grazed him…

“Stop!”

All at once his magic is on me, fiercer than I’ve ever felt it before. I am struck blind by both his anger and his lust. He is everywhere and nowhere. His phantom mouth upon my own, his teeth biting possession into my skin, his fingers clawing at my hips as he angles me just so. He fucks me to the precipice of my orgasm, exerting control once again.

I am trembling and senseless when he gives the command.

“Now.” His voice is low and strained but still, I hear the whisper that follows. Some long unused language only he knows and I am undone with those words. My orgasm erupts and I scream as it quakes the room. I am only dimly aware of the light that fills the space. My light. My life force that he takes into himself and uses to fight a war no one knows about. A gift I would gladly give in the flesh, but one he will not allow.

After, I am crying. Because it isn’t enough. Because I want all of him. Not this charade that we play. I want to run my hands through his hair while I sit in his lap. I want to feel him slip inside of me on a lazy Sunday morning when sleep still grips my slowly waking form. I want to kiss the palms of his hands and make an offering of myself to him, a prayer bound in the promise of love and flesh.

“You know we can’t.” I feel his pity wash over me and I resent him for it. I don’t want his pity. I want him to get over his fucking self and release me from this prison so that we can be together.

He turns to go, takes a step, but then looks back over his shoulder.

“I’m… sorry.” he says. He can’t even bring himself to look directly at me. Instead his gaze falls to the floor a few feet away from my prone body. I give him the finger anyway, too spent to say anything yet.

Already the connection is dissipating. His world begins to flicker as he ascends the steps that lead him away from me. As the edges of the room blur I am hit with one final sensation. The scent of cool, crisp autumn air as it rushes round his newly revitalized form, slapping him with renewed purpose.

He will hunt tonight. And it will be good. And that is why we do this.

–

Jennifer Williams is an author and editor in New England. Her work has appeared in various anthologies as well as online. She is an active member of the New England Horror Writers and does editorial work for Circlet Press. This is her first piece of fiction published with Circlet Press. You can find her on Twitter at JenWritesStuff or on Instagram at jenwritesstuff

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Halloween Microfiction: Desire by DJ Tyrer

“Desire” by DJ Tyrer

She beckons in the mist to follow her down steps into the darkness below.

It smells musty, like earth after the rain. Not horrible.

She’s no more than shadow, but I hear movement within the vault, her dress hitting the floor.

Offers a hand with thin, sharp fingers. I take it.

We kiss. No lips touch mine, just bare teeth, fleshless cheeks.

I don’t care. The urge is too strong. We become one.

Flesh melts away. Flesh grows.

In the furnace of our climax, she is reborn and I feel my consciousness burn away to the clatter of falling bones.

–

DJ Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing, editor of View From Atlantis webzine, and has had flash fiction published in anthologies and magazines around the world, such as Apples, Shadows and Light (Earlyworks Press), and Journals of Horror: Found Fiction (Pleasant Storm Entertainment), issues of Sirens Call, and Tigershark, and on Cease Cows, The Flash Fiction Press, Space Squid, and Trembling With Fear. https://djtyrer.blogspot.co.uk/

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Halloween Microfiction: Danse Macabre / Memento Vivere by Bernie Mojzes

“Danse Macabre / Memento Vivere” by Bernie Mojzes

You’d think we’d be beyond all this by now.

She bites her lip—not hard—and looks away, embarrassed. Tears? Yes. Just barely.

She pushes my hand away, pulls her dress up, covering her breasts. Covering her shame.

Evelyn. I mouth the name, nearly silently, no more than a whisper. Her name. I taste the shapes of the syllables on my dry lips, echoed in stone at her head where she lies. Evelyn. It’s okay. I promise. Kisses, on her forehead, still damp, on her cheek, at the edge of her eye.

Her tear tastes like salt.

“It’s not okay,” she says. “Oh God. “

Evelyn.

“Don’t look at me,” she says. “I’m horrible.”

And I am not? I am older than she is. Too much older? I have learned not to look at my body, shriveled and cracked. Hollowed out. I wish she would not look at me either. Death is not the final indignity.

Close your eyes. Close your eyes.

What is it that drives us, beyond all reason, into each other’s arms? Between each other’s legs? Even now? What strange hunger? What savage, obscene compulsion?

Close your eyes.

When she does, with a soft exhale of useless breath as she lays her head back against the ravaged earth, I kiss her again. Another tear, so precious. So very, very precious. By All Hallow’s Eve next year, her tears will have turned to dust, as mine did. I kiss the tear, feel its residue of life absorb into my lips. I kiss her quivering chin. Her throat. Her breastbone. When I gently pull her dress down again, she shivers. But she does not ask me to stop, and she does not open her eyes.

One by one, I tease the worms, the hungry maggots, from the flesh of her once perfect breasts, crushing them between my fingers. The most intimate of seductions. I smooth the skin of her belly, pale and cold. I draw her dress past her hips and lay it on the ground next to us. There is nothing resident between her legs that might upset her, yet.

I kiss her there, and she gasps.

It’s better now. I mouth the words around my useless, rotten tongue. See?

Evelyn examines her breasts. Only the smallest of holes mark where the worms had twisted and waved. She manages a small smile.

I help her to her feet, help her brush the soil of her grave from her hair. I gesture toward the others, dancing amidst the gravestones under the full moon to the fiddler’s raucous tune.

Shall we dance, Evelyn? Shall we dance, my love?

She draws me close, presses against my body. There is a hunger in her eyes that echoes the throbbing within me. That which survives, beyond life, beyond death, beyond reason. Beyond will. Desire.

It is all we have left.

“Soon,” she says, and she reaches for my hand to guide me. “Soon.”

#

As dawn threatens the horizon, and the fiddler loosens his bow, I bring Evelyn to a place of rich soil, and of shattered, well-worn bones. Well loved. Grasses grow up around the yellowed fragments. A patch of crocuses. A dandelion, gone to seed.

Anne.

I write the name in the dirt with a desiccated finger. There is a stone here, as well, though time has worn the inscription into illegibility.

She helped me from my grave. The breath dry on my lips. So long ago.

The wind rustles the grasses, and they yearn toward us. Not Anne any longer. Only desire. Only that maddening need that can never fully be sated, to live, to grow, to love. She is there, in the ground, and in all the things she nourishes. I stroke her dew-soaked leaves gently, run fingers through her soil, and she trembles beneath us, all around us.

Evelyn plucks the dandelion ball and holds it up, facing the impending sun. “She’s beautiful.”

A puff of air through cold, bruised lips, and we watch as she catches in the wind, swirls around us, and flies away.

–

Much to his embarrassment, Bernie Mojzes has outlived Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Janice Joplin and the Red Baron, without even once having been shot down over Morlancourt Ridge. Having failed to achieve a glorious martyrdom, he has instead pinned his paltry prospects to the penning of prose, in the pathetic hope that he shall here find the notoriety that has thus far proven elusive.

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Halloween Microfiction: Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies by A.C. Quill

“Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies” by A. C. Quill

In the autumn of Jenna’s life, the opportunity arose for her to live on another planet.

She protested that she was too old. 

The company said: you could be younger. They offered to pay for her to be totally rejuvenated.

Jenna had never seriously considered rejuvenation. But now she saw that she could put her lifetime of knowledge into a younger body, and grow that knowledge over another lifetime. That was appealing.

The transformation would be carried out onboard the ship, during the journey to her new home. The company promised Jenna she would hardly notice it had happened. 

#

Jenna woke, and tottered down the metal corridor, towards the sound of chatter. The mess hall of the ship was full of strangers, youngsters. They looked like students, faces smooth and guileless. 

A gangly young man greeted her: “Jenna? Is it you?” His voice was higher-pitched, but had the intonations of Professor Harris, the biology specialist. 

These were her old colleagues, to whom she would have to put new faces. One by one, they identified themselves. Most were taller than they had been. Several were thin enough to blow away in a strong wind. Jenna squeezed her arms around herself, relieved she’d kept most of her mass. Everyone looked unfinished.

Elaine, Jenna’ closest friend on the team, had swapped her halo of white hair for dark curls. The geologist with fifty year’s experience now looked like a teenage tomboy. 

Eyes were lingering on Jenna. She turned away, self-conscious. How raw she must look. 

Then she noticed that Professor Harris’ gaze was frankly admiring, which appalled her. 

Jenna began to realize that she was reacting very differently from the others.

#

Jenna retreated to her cabin, to accustom herself to her new-old flesh. 

Curves on her flanks, which she remembered as double or triple dips, were single. It took less time to run a hand over her hips, and was less interesting. Breasts had shifted upwards, no longer hanging comfortably but shoving themselves out. Age spots had vanished from the backs of her hands. What else was missing? A long curve of curly hairs were gone from the insides of her thighs.

Jenna found herself crying. Mourning lost pubic hair? Ridiculous.

She took a first look at her own reflection, her eerie firm face. 

“This is a turn-up for the books,” she said, and the phrase sounded foolishly arch, coming from that plump young mouth. 

She sighed. She had work ahead of her. 

It had always required some work to value her flesh, when others didn’t. Treasuring her fat, cherishing her age. One way to love her flesh, she’d found, was to touch herself enthusiastically. Fortunately, she’d brought a bag of toys (a significant proportion of her weight allowance for the trip).

Everything felt a little out of sync, at first. Some favorite spots now made her wriggle uncomfortably, other angles of approach were almost numb. But was that a physical change, or the shock of it all? 

Thankfully, with a little nudging, her lust woke up, with delights and demands. From that point on, her basic reactions remained: five minutes of fierce delicious vibration, then a nice long pull with a canny curved tool on her G-spot, and everything lit up. Hot iron filings flowed all round her cunt. Thank goodness, the decades of practice hadn’t been wasted.

Afterwards, as she dressed again, she seemed to recognize more of her body: those were still her big feet and strong calves. She emerged, emboldened, to face the other crew members. 

#

The mess-room was like the Marie Celeste. 

Jenna was about to call out her colleagues’ names. Then she heard a moan, from behind cabin doors. Then a giggle, and a rhythmic thumping against a thin mattress. She moved from door to door. Enough cabins were loudly occupied to account for the whole crew.

It seemed that the rest of them had taken very well to their new bodies. 

Such a misjudgment! Entanglements would cause problems, once they reached their destination. Jenna stamped off to the kitchen, to grumble and mix herself some cocoa.

“Hello, old thing.” Again, the voice had familiar cadences, but no resonance to it. It was Elaine, the tomboy geologist, with a wry smile. “How’s the orgy going?”

“For goodness’ sake, what happened?”

Elaine waved a hand. “They all sort of paired off – or trio’d off – and went at it.”

“Were they drunk?”

“Nope. Full of the joys of spring.”

It felt obscene to be talking about sex to someone as young as Elaine looked. “I’m glad I wasn’t around.”

“I rather wish you had been,” Elaine said, mournfully. “Not for sex! I mean, to have someone else to talk to…”

Their former camaraderie seemed to have survived their rejuvenation. Jenna leaned against the cupboards. “You weren’t tempted to join in?”

“Oh, no. Even the last time I looked like this, it wouldn’t have been my cup of tea. Speaking of which: tea?”

“Cocoa?” 

Jenna braced her arms, and pushed herself up to sit on the kitchen counter. She couldn’t have done that, before rejuvenation. A small solace.

Elaine tipped sachets into mugs of hot water. “You’re not smitten with all this?” she asked, carefully.

“I gave up so much. My home!” That gave Jenna a pang, at the thought of her cottage, now an early inheritance for her great-niece. “I thought I could bring everything I needed.” Jenna touched her forehead. “But I didn’t realize how much my body was my home.” 

“We’ll get there eventually,” said Elaine. Jenna wondered if she meant self-acceptance, or old age, and which would come first.

#

There would be another two weeks of travelling, before they reached the new planet. 

Jenna spent the time tormented by an entirely new fetish.

Visible veins. That was the first thing. How sexy were those slightly swollen lines, travelling the back of the hands? And then, strong bony wrists. Lines running from nose to jaw, framing the mouth to make it more succulent. And a face full of creases, a face that truly changed between being at peace or in ecstacy. 

She looked for all these things in films, but most of the cast were terribly young, as well. She found herself looking up the last roles of famous actors, then abandoned that: too morbid.

The fetish spread to things beyond the flesh. Jenna felt excruciating desires for objects she’d left behind: second-hand tweed with rich tones and moth-holes. Yellowing paperbacks. 

She’d owned an antique silk dressing gown, clinging and cool, which had slithered around wonderfully on her bare hips, when pushed by a lover’s hands. Hands with age spots, she thought, squirming in frustration, and visible veins.

Confined to a metal box without seasons, she thought of autumn, often. A misty walk through a great park, under pearl-grey clouded skies. Grandfather stags bellowing their seniority from deep in their massive chests. A heap of dry russet leaves, ideal to wrestle a lover down and pin them between her thighs. 

Great trees. She put her back to the steel wall of her cabin and imagined herself pressed between a silver-haired lover and a strong old oak. Hundreds of years of growth in the trunk behind her. Imagine bracing against it, to meet a lover’s thrust… 

Jenna didn’t turn her libido towards any of her colleagues. Their faces had no history.

The whole ship was so new, but felt perversely lifeless. Its shiny surfaces denied age, and growth, and thus denied life.

#

After a week, Jenna thought of a solution to her cravings. She took herself to the observation nook. It was the smallest space on the ship. Inside was a single porthole. Any window on a ship was an engineering risk, but someone had weighed up its worth for the mental wellbeing of the crew. It was good for them to be able to look out, to see the black velvet skies.

Through the portal glass, Jenna saw stars. Tiny white spatters on the darkness of space. Jenna locked the hatch behind her, lay down on the chilly kickplate deck, and pulled off her clothes.

With no lights inside the observation nook, she couldn’t even see her own body. Then her pupils expanded, greedy for a glimmer of light. Her torso appeared as a haze, a pale patch. 

But that meant that the light from the stars was crossing her belly and her chest. Her nipples tightened, and her breath came faster.

Jenna told herself about the stars. Betelgeuse was 640 light years away. There was a star in Cassiopeia, much further off: 4000 light years distant. Some of the particles of light currently landing on her could come from the Andromeda Galaxy. They could be two and a half million years old. 

Older than books, or silk, or trees. Half as old as planet earth. Old enough to satisfy her. 

Jenna lay blissful on the cold deck, knowing she was being touched by the oldest thing in the universe.

–

A.C. Quill is a queer living in London, who writes both science fiction and erotica with a shoddy grasp of the mechanics.

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Microfiction: I Am the Candle by Eric Del Carlo

Editor’s Note: This story contains suicidal ideation. 

“I Am the Candle” by Eric Del Carlo

I see your tears. And I know your lover has left you. The boy pigmented in autumnal hues? Or the raven-haired, much-tattooed girl? Who was here last? I try to recall if I heard harsh words. I can’t always understand what you and your paramours say to one another, but I often recognize tone, timbre. And know when emotions run high and perilous.

Emotion now, from you. The sorrow. Shiny tracks on your cheeks. I ache because you hurt. I want only your joy. My life is at its most exquisite when I am illuming you in your carnal throes, when you flush with the pumping of blood in your veins, when you tangle and grapple and curse and grunt, lick and grab and fondle and impale.

This bedroom is my universe, and you are the chief inhabitant. I have burned for you. Literally: burned.

And I watch you as you are alone.

So alone…

You should strike a match. You should let my flame soothe you. Stare into me, and I will dance for you. I hopelessly send these thoughts to you, as you sit slumped, dejected, your bed lonely tonight, your– But you move! You palm one eye, then the other, and you take up the match. You scratch it alight and–yes! yes!–you bring it to my waiting wick. You touch me. And I am alive!

You stare into me, just as I hoped. And I dance, yellow tongue of fire licking and cavorting. I put out my flickering light, make your shadow caper on the bedroom wall. I want you to forget your sorrows. See only me. Think only of me…

You turn away. You take a box from under the bed and solemnly open it. I can’t see what you handle inside it. Finally you turn back, face me, and in your hands is some strange sinister device, gleaming blackly, exuding a mechanical malevolence.

It fits neatly in one hand. You slowly lift it. It has a short tube attached to it, and you press this against your temple. You–

I don’t like it! I won’t have it! I do not know what, exactly, you are doing, but I mean to prevent it. I pour my life energy into the flame, and I grow. I rise. I expand. I force arms to appear. They reach out. I flare brighter and bigger still.

Your eyes widen. You flinch. I must not burn you. I pull in my heat. I am fire, yes, but I make my surface only warm, not burning. I am a torso now, nearly full-sized, like you. I continue to dance. I weave my hands before me, twist, gyrate. The freedom is wonderful.

You put down the malignant metal object. Good. But you are still full of grief–and fear, too, over me, over my appearance in your room.

But I commit to my action. I have longed to do this, to break out of my confinement, to touch you. I rise further. I gain a waist, legs, feet. I step out into your world, still holding in my blazing heat, burning nothing in the room. I have control over myself. I can take what shape I like.

I give myself a face, a pretty one. I extrude breasts. I award myself a cleft between my legs. My “skin” feels. I register the rug beneath my bare soles. You have moved further away, on the floor, now pressed back against your bed. Awe fills your face. The fear dwindles.

Still I dance for you, now free of any restrictions. My body is like that of the tattooed girl. I shimmy and whirl. I turn to display my ripe buttocks. I run my flaming hands over the swells of my breasts. My nipples engorge, and pleasure streams all through me.

I want you. Do you want me?

I offer my hands. You hesitate. I brush fingertips on your cheek to show I will not burn you. Then I help you stand. We stand so close. I feel you tremble.

We kiss. You are unsure but only for an instant or two, before our mouths smear hungrily together. I taste your tongue.

Your clothes are in the way. I tug them off you. You assist. We tumble onto the bed. No more hesitations. My hands rove you. I feel the lovely swelling of your member. So many times I’ve watched you use this. Now it’s my turn.

We touch and kiss and fondle and grope and play. Your fingers ply my groove, and I gasp. I writhe against you. I am on my back, and you mount me. You penetrate, and it is glorious. I answer your thrusts, moving as the girl would. Your tempo increases. My joy gathers. Now I know what the girl’s paroxysms mean. A climax, like I experience now. At the same time your spunk erupts inside me.

We lay for a time. Then you stir again. With an easy effort I reconfigure myself. The breasts vanish. Muscles harden and grow. My furrow becomes an erect member like yours. You touch me there, still rapturous. I feel the new pleasure.

I want you. You move helpfully into position. I hurry in behind. I set myself to your entrance, and I penetrate. You cry out in pleasure. I stroke into you. With each thrust I feel your sorrow recede.

I move inside you until you erupt again. I do the same, leaving a heat-less deposit inside you. Limply, you doze. I have helped. I have known my own ecstacies as well.

Before returning to my home, I take the black apparatus in my hands and let the full force of my heat melt its works. You will not harm yourself.

I snuff myself, letting smoke trail to the ceiling. One day my wax will be gone. Yours will too, so to speak. Before that, we will know this joy again.

–

Eric Del Carlo’s erotic fiction first appeared with Circlet Press in the 1990s. Since, he has had multiple appearances in Circlet anthologies. His mainstream sf has been published in Clarkesworld, Analog, Asimov’s and other venues.

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It’s Alive! Call For Submissions: Halloween Microfictions

On November 1st of last year I made a very heartfelt post surmising that the Circlet Press Halloween Microfictions had met their end. We were in the thick of the pandemic and Circlet Press had been bought out by Riverdale Avenue Books. Our understanding, at that time, was that we would eventually lose control of the website and no longer have posting access. Bye, bye, microfictions.

Life has a funny way of doing what it wants to do though. Due to circumstances out of everyone’s control we’re still here and still have posting access. So why not make the best of it?

In that spirit, I am reviving the Halloween microfictions. And since this is a bit of a resurrection I’d like to stick with that theme. Rebirth, renewal, resurrection. Pick your flavor. Or if you want to go more in the horror direction you could pick the rising/raising/reanimation of the dead. Whatever floats your boat.

Just remember the following:

Stories must contain erotic elements. Consent must be EXPLICIT. Nothing under the age of consent. No bestiality. No fan fiction.

Please familiarize yourself with our work before submitting. We prefer character driven stories. No porn without plot.

While all are welcome to submit work we STRONGLY encourage marginalized writers to submit. And, of course, we welcome (and love!) stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

Word count limit is 1,500. No reprints. Multiple submissions are okay. Please send as a Word doc or RTF (or in the body of the email) and follow standard manuscript formatting guidelines. Look up William Shunn if you aren’t familiar with manuscript formatting.

The deadline is October 6th. Payment will be $5 for stories under 1,000 words and $10 for stories 1,000 words to 1,500 words. Author retains all rights. Please include a short bio with your submission. Send submissions to [email protected]

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Microfiction: The Way You Look Tonight by Sonni de Soto

“The Way You Look Tonight” by Sonni de Soto

Your sightless eyes, covered in the blindfold you always tie tightly over them, are cast downward. “Are you sure about this?”

I touch your shoulder, letting my hand slide down your arm, feeling the tension in your bronze and copper scale-covered skin. “I’m sure.” Hating the sight of my striking medusa so unsure, I lift your chin. You are too beautiful, too powerful, too majestic to ever lower your gaze to anyone.

This world has taught you to fear your own power. To tamp it down, to hide it away, for humanity’s protection. At the expense of your own. They tried to tame you. They convinced you that you should want to be normal when you are, as you are, magnificent.

Few know this better than me. As a titan, a natural force, I’m a living embodiment of the earth. I can shake and shape the world around me with a thought. I can melt into mud or make myself a mountain.

My people were once worshipped as gods, commanding the earth, winds, and waters. Now we scrape for survival in a polluted world that can’t seem to care less about us.

So, yeah, I understand better than most what the world has done to you.

I reach out my hand and let the snakes slithering atop your head weave their way along my fingers and wrist. I smile and let them pull me closer to you. I cup your scalp, as they tangle about me, nuzzling my elbow. My fingers nudge the blindfold’s knot, making you jerk.

I wish you could see yourself the way I do. The way I want to. I lean in to press my lips against yours. “We don’t have to, if you’re not ready.”

But I want to. We’ve been together for months now. Have touched and been touched in ways I’ve never with anyone else. But, in all that time, I’ve yet to look you in the eye. I don’t even know what color they are.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

I touch your lip, where your sharp fang worries the soft yet resilient skin. “We’ve tested it.”

“On your foot.” You sit up, inadvertently forcing me to move with you. You tug at your hair, forcing the snakes to let me go. I pull back my hand, missing the tight embrace. “And, even then, it took you an hour to change back.”

My foot flexes reflexively, still remembering how it’d tingled into and out of stinging numbness. It’d been such a strange sensation. I bring my hand close to touch your cloth-covered temple gently. “But I came back.”

The transformation isn’t exactly the same. It’s different magicks mixing in ways they aren’t meant to. But your apotropaic magic, made to ward away dangers, can’t keep me out. Because you have nothing to fear with me. Because, I like to think, I’m perfect for this. For you. That I was made for you. Living earth.

You look away. “I’m afraid.”

I touch your cheek. “Of what?”

Sightlessly, you turn to me. “That, when I finally look at you, all I’ll see is fear.”

I smile and touch your lips. “I’m not afraid of you.”

You lean back out of my reach. “Not yet.”

I reach for you again, this time my touch sure and possessive. “Not ever.”

You purse your lips together before nodding. “Okay.”

But you still seem unsure. So I shift our bodies so our lips meet. You’d once told me that I taste how earth should, rich, dark, and full of possibilities. Your kiss is wild, like a secret, all risk and thrill, that few will ever have the courage to know.

You break the kiss to press the bridge of your nose against my lips, my breath hot and damp against the cloth there. Your hands reach up to untie the knot. I watch, knowing few others have seen this. Fewer still have survived. My breath catches as the fabric’s ends flutter down, still held in place between your eyes and my lips.

“Be sure.” The words are a whisper, a plea.

I nod. I am.

But, when you lean back, letting the blindfold fall to the bed beneath us, your eyes are still shut. I touch your temple, for the first time feeling the smooth, delicate skin there.

Pressing both hands at my shoulders, you push me down, so I’m lying beneath you. You twist, sitting up, to straddle my thighs. Facing away from me, you stroke my legs.

Then I feel it.

The slight tingle as the feeling in my toes fade. It creeps up the bridge of my feet. By the time it reaches my ankles, I can feel sharp pain, like countless needles, begin to stab. Instinctively, I try to wiggle my toes awake, but I can’t.

Even when I transform myself, I can move. Whatever I make myself into—sand, soil, stone—I am still myself. A titan. A god. The Earth made man. I’ve been granite before; it’s a useful thing to turn my body into, the epitome of strength.

But I don’t feel strong now.

Instead, I feel the weight of your gaze grip my flesh. It changes it. Makes it yours. If I’m honest, it terrifies me. And exhilarates me. In ways I don’t think I fully understand, but want to.

I sit up a bit, resting on my elbows, so I can watch you. Your hands stroke my calves, my knees, my thighs. It’s strange; I can see your hands move over my body but I don’t feel them until they are about halfway up my thighs.

It shouldn’t shock me. I’m used to seeing my body in granite’s dappled brown. I’m used to the heavy, hard feel of it. I like the way it slows my movements, making every shift and step I take feel weighty. Important.

But it’s different—difficult—to watch white marble consume my body. Slight grey veins streak over my legs, making me look fragile. Cracked. As if one wrong move or shove could shatter me. And there is nothing I can do.

You turn to face me, your eyes closed again. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved. I need a minute, a moment where I’m still me, so I can figure it out.

Then your hand and your tongue stroke my cock and all thought escapes me. No worries, no fears, just your touch and the heat it evokes. My flesh hardens but it has nothing to do with rocks or magics or anything but you. Your mouth on me makes me moan and writhe, or at least the parts of me that can.

The need to bend my knees and flex my feet radiates through my whole body. I try to lift my hips, but my legs’ leverage is gone. I want to push myself deeper into you, but I can’t. I can’t do much but lie here and let you lead.

I reach down to stroke your hair, the snakes wriggling up to meet my hand. But the second I press my fingers to your scalp in a silent plea for more, you grab my wrist and sit up.

I groan at your giggle, the mirthful sound almost mean in my mind. You kiss my hand before turning around to face me, straddling my body again.

Your gaze narrows as you lower your body onto mine. My pained groan melts into a more sensual sound as I feel your warm, wet sex slide over mine. Right before that numbness grips my dick.

I grunt. The sight of you riding my now marble body is maddening. It’s hot to watch, but it’s as if it’s happening to someone else. It shouldn’t but a twisted sense of betrayal swirls with my desire. I am a starving man with his face pressed against the window of the feast.

I look up at you. Your head is thrown back and your breasts are thrust out. Your hand grabs at my stone body as your hips undulate over—onto—me. Your snakes riot around your head, swaying with each other in an almost violent dance.

“You are stunning.”

The words escape my mouth. I hear their sound before I realize I’ve said them. I couldn’t help it. You are.

But I should have.

Surprised, your eyes open and meet mine.

Brown. Your eyes are wide, thickly lashed, and brown, deep and dark as the richest earth, and the sight of your desire as it grows there fills me. Overwhelms me.

I gasp as I feel marble seize my gut and my brain. About to pass out, I can feel oblivion blur my thoughts. My chest aches as stone pushes my breath from my lungs.

I see, rather than feel, you pause. My last sight is your eyes—beautiful and brown—widening with worry. I want to comfort you, but I can’t as darkness takes me.

When finally my eyes blink open again, my body feels raw, new, as you hold me, stroking feeling—life—back into my limbs. You smile at me with relief, your blindfold back on. “You came back.”

I stare at you as if seeing you clearly for the first time. “Always.”

–

Sonni de Soto is a kinkster of color who believes that one of the best parts of a good relationship is discovering how the parts of you that always made you feel different or strange can fall and fit into place with the right person. Please find more of her work at patreon.com/sonnidesoto and follow her at facebook.com/sonnidesotostories

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2020 Halloween Microfiction Roundup (And Goodbye)

And so the wheel has turned. Another year has passed and with it has come great change for many of us. I began my Circlet Press journey in 2008. It was a very dark time in my life and I needed something to hang on to. Cecilia Tan had put out a call for interns and though I was not a college student I applied anyway and she said yes. The lesson here? Don’t self reject.

In the years since, I have developed friendships that I hope last a lifetime. I have learned. I have failed. I have got up again. I’ve had the great honor of reading work from newcomers and pros alike. And the even greater honor of publishing those works.

As you may all know by now, Circlet Press has become an imprint of Riverdale Avenue Books. My future involvement is unknown and this is likely the last of the Circlet Press Halloween Microfictions. I wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to Cecilia Tan for giving me a chance. Thank you to my fellow editors. I miss sitting up in that attic with you, drinking tea and laughing about love tunnels and popped blouses. And thank you to all my authors, the ones I said yes to, and even the ones I said no to. It was a privilege to read your words, to share in your fantasies, and to teach you, and learn from you. Some of you quite literally saved my life, and I wish nothing but the best for all of you in both your writing and in your lives.

Without further ado, here is a roundup of all the 2020 Halloween Microfictions. Do take a moment to treat yourself on this rainy November day, the first day of the next year of our lives. May it bring us all great pleasure and fortune.

Movie Lovers by Kaysee Renee Robichaud

Kindling by Ellis Sandry

On a Wing and a Curse by Eric Del Carlo

A Little Knowledge… by Avery Vanderlyle

Mid-Autumn Incense by September Sui

Never Broken by Morrigan Blackburn

Static by Fallen Kittie

Double Feature by Tom Cardamone

From Beyond the Veil by Jena Burne

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Halloween Microfiction: From Beyond the Veil by Jena Burne

“From Beyond the Veil” by Jena Burne

The fire crackled and popped, filling the small home with the scent of smoke and warmth. Gus stirred the pot that currently simmered over the fire, waiting for the second and only other member of their small coven. They planned the ritual for midnight but their sabbat celebrations always started at sundown. Eli tended to argue that the gods weren’t punctual, so he shouldn’t have to be either. He’d arrive soon enough, though. Eli had never once let Gus down and he wouldn’t start today.

As if summoned, the door opened, swirling leaves around the room as the wind whipped through, following a man with sandy hair and deep brown eyes into the cabin. Eli was a good looking man and had been since Gus first met him when they were on the edge of manhood, joining the coven together. Only three years later, a hard winter of disease and famine took both their families from them. The remaining members of the coven moved back east, needing the security of the town. They tried to convince Eli and Gus to come with them but the two young men were determined to stay and deal with the elements themselves.

They didn’t just deal with them. Gus and Eli thrived, fixing up Eli’s family’s cabin, growing the food they needed, and somewhere along the way, falling in love. Their magic only grew stronger with their love and Gus looked forward to that night’s ritual with the man he adored by his side. Maybe after their Samhain magic, they would work some personal magic at home.

Gus wasn’t the only one feeling like that, it seemed, as Eli ignored Gus’s protests about the mess he was tracking in, far more focused on his lover than the floor. He crossed the room in three steps, stopping only to take Gus’s face in his hands and kiss him. His body grew hotter with heat that had nothing to do with the roiling fireplace. Gus kissed him back, hands working the buttons on the shirt his lover wore.

“Samhain,” he whispered against Eli’s lips, as if there was a chance the other witch might have forgotten the importance of the day.

“The dead can wait. I cannot.” Eli’s simple response made Gus’s blood race and his hands hurried to strip his lover of his clothes, dropping them on the floor. That simple act would draw amusement from Eli later, who often teased Gus about his relentless need to keep their home tidy. Then Gus would make a comment about how he never told Eli where to plant the beans and it would end – as all their silly arguments did – with a kiss and the two of them curled together in their favorite chair, laughing about the ridiculousness of it all.

That wasn’t important right now, though.

Once their clothes were off, the two of them tumbled onto the bed they had covered with thick quilts to fight off the late autumn chill. Right now, the fire kept the room warm enough and their bodies made up the difference. Legs tangled together, Gus rolled his hips, drawing gasps from one another as their lengths rubbed together.

Eli’s hands slid down Gus’s back, gripping his ass to hold him close as they rutted together. They rolled so Eli was under him and he spread his legs, a silent offering of a gift Gus knew he was blessed to receive. Reaching for the oil they kept near the bed, Gus slicked his fingers, pressing two into his lover to prepare him for their coupling.

He slid down Eli’s body to take his lover in his mouth, giving him pleasure with the sting of pain that always came with that initial push.

He worked quickly, bringing Eli to the edge of pleasure before pulling him back. Gus enjoyed the needy sounds he could pull from Eli, enjoyed reducing him to quivering and whimpering before finally pushing into his body. When he did, magic sparked around them in a way they were both growing accustomed to now. They were both strong witches, and when they came together, their magic created something new from their combined energy.

Each time was a little different and Gus took pleasure in seeing what they worked every time. That night, at the end of the witches’ year, all the light in the cabin lowered until long shadows cast on the walls, making their movements all the more pronounced with each of Gus’s thrusts into Eli’s body.

When they found release, Eli first, followed by Gus, all the light they kept in their home went out, leaving the full moon as the only barrier between them and complete darkness.

The light of the candles and fire flared back to life a few moments later as the two of them curled together, breathing heavily, skin slick with sweat as they came down from their shared heights of pleasure. “We still have a few hours until midnight,” Eli whispered, pulling Gus close. “We could have a short nap before…”

“Don’t even argue with me, Elijah Cameron,” Gus laughed, pushing lightly against his lover. “If we take a nap now, we will wake up in the morning and I don’t know about you, but I would prefer our families not make our lives miserable for the coming year.” Samhain was when the veil between the living and the dead was thin like gossamer; a light, almost tangible thing that allowed them to contact all who had gone before. This was the night to make offerings to their families, asking for protection and guidance over the coming year.

They’d never missed a year, but Gus expected their families would not be forgiving if they did. The dead had long memories, and it was best not to challenge them.

“Fine, Augustus,” Eli teased. “What do you suggest?”

“I suggest we eat dinner like we were supposed to when you came home, and then go get the bonfire started so we aren’t out there all night, waiting for the wood to catch.” Not that it would take all that long. A whispered word from either of them would set the wood ablaze. But Gus didn’t back down from an argument, no matter how inconsequential, and he didn’t intend to start now. (Stubborn was the word his parents and later Eli used to describe him best.)

Eli knew him well and simply kissed the back of his shoulder, getting up to retrieve their clothes from where they were dropped. He tossed Gus his clothes and then pulled on his own, under the appreciative gaze of his lover.

They dined on a thick stew of beans and squash from their garden, with roasted apples and a warming tea. A crusty bread finished their meal and both were full and satisfied by the time the moon was full overhead.

Slipping out into the brisk October night, they started the fire in the small clearing behind their home and began the ritual. Both chanted words they’d learned when they were children, magic passed down from one generation to the next. The power of their shared work built until the veil could almost be seen, a shimmer only visible to those with the gift of magic. On the other side, they knew their lost family members stood, watching, loving, and protecting them from any dangers they could.

It wasn’t foolproof magic. There were some things not even magic could prevent. But knowing their loved ones watched over them, feeling their presence on this most blessed of nights? That was enough for them both.

When the ritual was over, they sat next to one another, a blanket wrapped around them both, and ate sweets they’d made over the last few days. They would stay in the woods for the rest of the night, enjoying the warmth of the fire and the presence of the family they both still missed so dearly. When the sun rose on the first of November, it rose on two men in love, surrounded by magic both tangible and innate.

–

Jena Burne has been writing since they knew how to properly hold a pencil.  A chemist by day, and a writer by night, they have filled journal after journal of stories of magical queer romance.  They live in the middle of a desert with their spouse, child, and three cats. 

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Halloween Microfiction: Double Feature by Tom Cardamone

“Double Feature” by Tom Cardamone

The Casket Fantastic Double Feature show is winding down. Every Halloween, until midnight, the local Avondale television station shows two classic horror movies back-to-back. The perennial host: the beleaguered evening news weatherman disguised in clown white and a cloud of talcum powder, dark circles under his eyes. Playing the ghoul, he delivers some truly awful puns between commercial breaks. On the couch Brad groans and nudges Lee with his knee, hoping that the connection will last longer. When they were younger, up in Brad’s tree house, while sharing a Heavy Metal magazine Brad had shoplifted from the 7-11 on Shell Road –the one right before the turn off to the beach, their knees touched the entire time: Lee shirtless and golden brown as always, a silent eternity Brad had forever wanted to recapture.

Now, senior year, they were left to watch the house and manage the trick-or-treaters while his parents were out of town. It had been hours since the last coterie of kids had rang the doorbell -Brad had lurched in his makeshift mummy costume, loosely wrapped around his skinny frame, extenuated ace bandages now sagging at night’s end. Lee gave his best Frankenstein, lumbering to the door, stiff-legged, green body-paint smeared across his thick chest, a borrowed blazer from his dad about to come off the shoulder. Every time Brad sees one of Lee’s wide nipples, he thinks about that afternoon in the tree house, the electricity between them unspent. Would it evaporate when they both left for college after the soon-to-come summer?

Lee yawns, the empty Budweiser bottle between his legs drops onto the shag carpet. Finally old enough to buy beer but still carded each and every time, they had shared a six pack and smoked a joint in the backyard, the sky a neon dark blue blurry with clouds and a nuisance of mosquitoes. Brad intuits that Lee is pretending to be more drunk then he is: legs spread wide, chest exposed: an invitation –but to what? On the giant Magnavox the black and white credits roll. The last film was Bride of Frankenstein. The host cracks several bad jokes in quick succession and suddenly the television is a crackle of electric snow and then goes dark. Usually at midnight they play the national anthem. Brad openly sighs. Another wasted evening of unspent longing and misdirected desire. He stands, thinking to give the television a whack for good measure, and surveys Lee’s jock-ish form: arm across his eyes, bare chest exposed, black hair greasy and matted, full lips parted as if he were about to snore. The television flickers and brightens.

The midnight room fills with light.

Brad blinks and reaches for the remote control. He struggles to turn the television off as Bride of Frankenstein comes to life again. It is the scene where the Bride screams, repelled by the Monster. Except this time she stares at him and he looks back. Brad drops the remote. Lee sits up, the sizzle of static and blinding light envelopes him. The Bride unwinds her bandages, and in unison, as if possessed, so does Brad. When they had put on their costumes earlier, Lee had stood before the bathroom mirror in his white distended briefs while he applied his emerald make-up; the black flash of his underarm hair seemed like a precursor to all that was below –where Brad’s imagination had spent many a night tossing and turning. Now Lee disrobes slowly while the twin creatures glitter on TV. Frankenstein’s Monster reaches for his Bride. More bandages drop as Brad steps into Lee’s arms and feels the heat from his chest, the bulge in the young man’s unbuttoned jeans hard against his thigh. On the television Bride kisses Monster. Brad and Lee kiss, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, hands up and down one another’s ribs, breathing heavy beery breaths of attenuated wonderment.

The television goes dark.

The tiny little white dot of light in the center of the screen collapses in on itself and the spell is broken. Mouths unclasped. Hands on each other’s hips, they knew what came next: Brad had watched his best friend undress for years when they had stayed the night at each other’s houses. Lee took his time after a shower, Black Sabbath trudging on the cassette player in either of their bedrooms –they both listened to the same bands and were constantly trading tapes in the hall: Krokus, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden. He usually paused when putting on a fresh pair of underwear to finish whatever story he was telling, less to exclaim and more to allow Brad time to examine his body, which had developed sooner than the other boys in his class. Brad was fascinated by the black tangle of pubic hair that converged over his friend’s tumescent cock and each time had tried not to stare.

Tonight, Halloween, he let his fingers undo Lee’s jeans to reach in and free his hot erection. Lee knew to stand back and let his friend discover what had previously been just out of reach –hands grasp and pull at his jeans and soon he is naked save white tube socks and a smear of remaining green body paint. The Florida air is unusually humid for October. Brad on his knees, bandages a ‘tatter, his sallow chest panting, filled with fear and longing -knowing that the engorged cock before him belongs in his mouth. Lee deliberately grunts like the Frankenstein Monster and breaks the tension: Brad smiles up at him, they always crack each other up –he sticks out his tongue. With his wide thumb, Lee pushes his thick, sweaty dick between his best friend’s parted lips. Brad buys himself some time by kissing the flanged ridge of Lee’s pulsing cock –wondering if taking it in his mouth would give them both one night of pleasure while ending years of friendship. The hand gripping the back of his head was one of reassurance, not pressure, and he knows that his service will be rewarded with a deeper, naked friendship of discovery and joy. He takes the considerable cock to the root and sucks slowly, to signal that his is a knowing surrender: not one of lust but trust. Brad pulls his underwear down and rubs the pre-come previously coating the head of his cock up and down his shaft while Lee’s eyes roll back in his head. Brad steadies himself on Lee’s boney feet and keeps as much flesh in his mouth as possible, gulping his sex, dazed by the salty effluence easily issuing forth. They both shake with ecstasy. Neither can contain themselves –this force has been building for years. Both explode. Lee’s searing come fills Brad’s mouth as his own pent-up fluid leaks onto the carpet between his red, now-chafed knees. The young men exhale. Brad collapses onto the floor, spent, dazed. Lee pulls off his socks, knowing that they are far from done.

The television blooms back to life. The face of Frankenstein’s Monster fills the flashing ocher screen in its entirety, his mouth open, about to either exclaim a command or express some suppressed craving, but no sound comes forth: he is alive with lightning on a night without end.

–

Bio: Tom Cardamone is the editor of Crashing Cathedrals: Edmund White by the Book, and is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning speculative novella Green Thumb as well as the Lambda-finalist erotic fantasy The Lurid Sea, plus other works of fiction, including two short story collections. You can read more about him and his writings at pumpkinteeth.net

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Halloween Microfiction: Static by Fallen Kittie

“Static” by Fallen Kittie

Something steals into Vera. 

Her ship has passed its prime. The sails are tattered. Rust chafes at every crook and crevice.

Each day, Vera rides the eye of the wind. The sea is the only thing that keeps her together. She casts traps, reels in the bounty at bay. Life is its own trap, she figures. People from the cape know that life is particularly unforgiving for those who are unable to pare out a living at the docks. Far away, Vera discerns what flares afield. Lights which belong to cape cods and vacationers whose lamps and lanterns are only the merest of which dispossess the locals. There is no apple in the eyes of the cottagers, just a compote that lingers in their periphery.

Every deed is at odds with Vera. Overboard, her heart sinks, always deeper than before.

The isle mists upon a wide, open expanse of saltwater. It brims with shoal that veil rocks beneath which form a sharp, jagged outcrop amidst thickets of game and Sargassum. Which makes for a harsh, yet oddly beautiful seascape—although it’s far from the latter at night when the fog descends.

The prospect of sailing in the dark was grim to say the least, but several of her traps had come undone and coasted astray. The tide only eases up by night and she can’t afford not to reel them in. The vessel has always served as her means to live and her sanctum therein.

But there’s something.

She eyes a citrine glow that kindles in the distance. 

The sun has long since sank. 

The moon hides behind the clouds. 

And, the nearest lighthouse is miles off.

What is it? 

The light starts to flicker along the incline of a sharp escarpment. It takes shape once it starts to mist, curling in the brine as flaxen tendrils.

Vera’s eyes dart side to side, searching for something—anything—to explain the luminous onset, but finds nothing as she nears the mustard overcast. The scent of brine flares her nostrils.

Some gulps later, a static pulse emerges from the deck. She recovers the source: an ungainly device whose face is mottled with pallid numerals and a meter that invariably ticks. Her palms clamp its steeled palpitations.

The Geiger counter, she thinks. It detects radiation. She shakes the gauge as if to attest its purpose; not as a tool, but as a signifier of traversal. Its body comes alive as the needle within its face barrels to one direction. Its voice is radiant.

Or rather, irradiant.

The mist is heavy like the throb that pierces her grasp. Vera’s heart pumps in unison, as if eager to break free of her chest; but she knows there’s no escape. 

There never was. 

As Vera recovers the traps, she recovers her senses. Garish high beams engulf the deck. The light is kindled with pale fumes. They strike Vera in a flash. They ignite her veins which were once unseen. It is a light beyond light; a light that unravels whatever is sown from its emanations. Miasma curdles every breath she takes. Her skin begins to peel. Nerves simmer, then erupt. She lifts her eyes, but all she feels is her solar plexus.

The detector continues to crackles in her grasp. Each click carves her skin to the bone until she is eclipsed by neon green. Her temples throb. The rabid clicks of the detector persist. Its face blackens. From its glass emerges a reflection: a molten visage crowned by an intangible mass of curls. It is no secret that a wealth of pollutants reside within the ocean, from historical dumps and remnants of natural disasters. Seafarers hear of, but seldom believe in, the phosphorescent immortals borne from radioactive waste.

The cove is nearer now. Indiscernible shards of light take shape, recognizable as the luminous algae bloom of plankton. A mint glow seeps from the promontories which claw out of the inlet. Except the glow does not wane under the prow of her boat. As she wades further, the glow flares until it embodies a figure. Howls knell in its wake.

Everything inside her moves when a voice emerges: “Vera.”

The voice belongs to a statuesque form. Timeless ambiguity emerges from its cool curvatures. Saltwater and sinuous, daring her to look, rousing her desire as it holds her gaze. Each breath caves in its cheeks. 

“It’s late to be this far from shore, Captain.”

Vera shudders. “What…Who are you…?”

A crown of jade tresses bequeaths a long fringe. Luminous muscularity whose bones swelter. Neon burrows away their ligaments. Its scent is teethed by fumes. It has eyes like currants. They wash over her.

“Clark.”

Its answer inclines her to stare after the dive site that teems with eel and octopi some metres away: Clark’s Rock.

“I’ve seen you around, Vera,” Clark says. “I know you seldom see pleasure in your life—and I knew it would only be a matter of time before you came my way.”

“Your way?”

“The rock is where I can take form.”

Vera swallows hard. “What do you want?”

“What do you think?”

“You’re…glowing,” she reels.

“I can make you glow too,” Clark offers. “Let me.”

Clark sees her, but doesn’t know her. But Clark knows enough: how long her ship has sailed, how it sputters along the lone tide and gathers a draft that whistles in her ears; how the mainsail occludes the very sky she searches for reprieve; how she struggles to indulge the charade of niceties, loathing the screams of others when she can barely pacify her own.

All she knows is this life. 

She wants to know more. 

Vera still clutches the detector. Everything melts away in a matter of clicks. She finds his eyes wonderfully dark.

Clark nears until they are edged together. With a hard nod, she assents to the advance. Creamy pearls bead, then varnish the head of its sex. The tips of her breasts harden. They climb over one another, to wrest against or upon, to parallel pleasures. Torrid peaks and caverns give way to resolute tongues. Their eyes lock even as it begins to stroke within. 

Shadows enfold Vera in the fading moonlight. She strokes whatever she can reach. Licks and fingers stray into each outstretched orifice. Clark anoints each one. 

Until her flesh no longer peels. 

Clark recovers the detector, hastens its pulse. Vera could care less. She reaches for Clark who engulfs her in a firm but subtle grasp. Clark steers her through shoals until they plummet to depths beyond measure, where the rocks give way to inky fissures which spew darkness. Vera realizes she has no need for breath despite being submerged. All she needs is pleasure, she resolves, as Clark ushers her through boundless caverns. Only after this realization does Clark enter her. Bulbous cirri twist within her. They are resolute, determined to relish every inch of her. They pair to her lips, breasts, sex, and backside. Then, they probe and pulse until a kaleidoscope erupts behind her eyelids. The enormity of Clark purges her inhibitions with hard, steady thrusts and the dragnet of light that subsumes her.

“Look at me, Vera.”

Vera blinks to discover that like Clark, she dims and brightens.

Clark swims around her, circling as if he edges her very life. “Oh, captain, my captain.”

With this affirmation, Vera bares electric green canines and lurid molars. Her flesh bursts through a lattice of peridot petechiae. Sweeter still is the revelation that she belongs not to, but in the sea. Clark proves this. The reassurance of Clark’s form, the vow of pleasure, the collusion of their forms washing away the shit lay of the land.

–

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Halloween Microfiction: Never Broken by Morrigan Blackburn

“Never Broken” by Morrigan Blackburn

The crispness in the air was finally here. I had been waiting all summer, no, the entire year for it. Now the breath of cold and indescribable smell that indicates fall had arrived right before Halloween. As I walk through the forest, a relaxed feeling flows from the trees around me. Some are still damaged, charred ruins from those long ago blazes, others restored, and new ones growing. Although humans have changed, moved on from the dark times, the land still cowers during the summer months. It remembers the threat of fire seasons that forever altered the landscape.

With the change of the season, the entire state seemed to take a collective sigh of relief. With Halloween, with Samhain, we remember the death and destruction but with that also comes the new ways it brought us to. The thin line between the past and the present is so thin this time of year, especially in the woods where part of it still bears the scars. Touching the charcoaled stump, my hand pulls chunks of the cold, aged ash away. I rub my fingers down my face, ashen tears against warm skin. Life and death, the cycle always remains.

“I knew you’d be here.” A voice rumbles through the quiet from behind me.

I don’t have to look to know who it was. I would know Nik’s voice, his presence, anywhere. Though I am still surprised by how silent he can be. He is a much bulkier man than I yet he moves like he weighs nothing. A feather on the wind.

“Not surprising.” I say, keeping my back to him. “My leave was planned, my itinerary left with the office just in case, and I come here every year. You did not need to do much sleuthing to figure it out.”

“I meant here, in this exact spot. Not at the cabin.” He’s closer, breath against my neck. “You love this place because it is both where time seems to end and begin. Forever trapped between the worlds of then and now.”

Well that, that was a surprising revelation.

“I thought the Governor was a bit too preoccupied to notice my absence.” I say with sarcasm, I know it irritates him when I call him by his title instead of his name. “Did you leave the motorcade at the cabin?”

“I left my team back in town. Far away from you, from us.” He whispers. “If you want me to stay, that is.”

Turning around, he is exactly how I imagined his face would be. That stupid smirk, which I begrudgingly found endearing. Most people did, one of the many reasons the public loved him so much. Even though he appears to be arrogant, cocky, I could see that his eyes tell a different story. Those impossibly black eyes, framed by even darker lashes, were open and vulnerable. Nik wanted me to forgive him, to let him back in.

“Kol, you think I don’t notice you but I do.” He says. “I notice it all. I see if you are there, if you are not. What you like, what you don’t. You are the first and last thing on my mind every day.”

“I’m not really mad at you, you know.” I say. “I just needed some time away, clear my head. Plus I feel like this is where I need to be at the solstice. Tradition and all that.”

He nods, watching for his fate. It is heady, knowing that this man who so many admire wants my approval.

“Normally I like to be alone but I think it is time that maybe I let someone else in.”

“Yeah?” He says, a real, brilliant smile breaking out over his face.

I can’t help but lean in and kiss him, pressing our lips together sparks a fire that has never quelled since the first time Nik and I touched. What starts as chaste, turns more aggressive. My hands cup his face, keeping him in place as our mouths collide.

“You’re possessed.” Nik says with a laugh, pulling away. “It’s been too long since I’ve touched you like this.”

I can feel my blood racing through my body, fire awakening all the parts that become cold without him. It is like waking from a dream, all that I had been doing were the movements of my subconscious. Now I’m fully aware, controlling my fate.

“If you are to stay,” I say. “We must make an offering to the gods, give life for their deaths.”

“Anything.”

“Take your clothes off and lie down.”

As he complies without complaint or remark, I know it has been too long for him. We deny ourselves, for others. Working for them, making sure they are taken care of, all while we suffer in silence.

I walk around him, dragging a stick over the ground and mumbling the words to conjure the sacred circle. Before I enter myself, I disrobe and he can’t seem to tear his eyes from me.

“Kol.” He rumbles. “You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. A man too gorgeous to be real.”

I can only smile. Me? I’m nothing compared to him. His ebony curls flow around him, blending into the earth, I kneel to touch him. Grabbing handfuls of dirt, ash, even leaves, I anoint his body with the land. Nik looks like a warrior Mother Earth has conjured up, bringing him forth to protect her.

Leaning down, I kiss him again. The air feels hot, charged with power and passion. Magic encircles us, flows through us as our naked bodies finally connect. Our hard cocks brush against each other and that is all the encouragement I need. I want him more than I want to breathe. I want to fuck him, bury myself deep inside him and never leave. Possess him. But first this, here in the woods, surrounded by the spirits and by the gods, our hips meet over and over in mirrored thrusts. There is only enough time for this.

I break the kiss so I can see him. Perfect in this moment. My nostrils fill with the smell of pine, ash, and Nik. My head spins, watching his abs contract, his strong thighs squeeze around my own.

Spitting into my hand, I grasp our cocks, stroking against our movements. He moans, a thunderous sound. I am panting, unable to form words, to tell him I love him, that I cannot live without him, that we should never leave this place, just stay rutting in the forest like wild animals.

Nik says my name, so reverently it sounds like a prayer, a sacred thing. He bites into his lip hard enough to draw blood, I lick at his lips, wanting everything I can get from him. Then he’s tensing up, releasing all over us.

Fire is building in my toes, legs, white heat coiling in my gut. Nik smiles up at me, so bright it blocks out the sun. White heat explodes out of me, blinding me from the force of it.

After laying in the dirt for who knows how long, I get up, releasing the circle. Cool air rushes in, sending goosebumps over my bare skin. We dress in silence, not strained and broken like it has felt recently, but full and comfortable. Like I never need to say another word to him, he would know with only a look or a touch. Our connection renewed, a bond strengthened.

Taking his hand, we walk towards the cabin. The woods feel oddly charged, aware. Maybe the gods are watching through the thin veil, taking in the offerings we have to give them and blessing us in return.

I notice green tendrils peeking out of the blackened stumps. This year will be different, this is the beginning of something new.

–

Ms. Blackburn lives in a quiet suburban neighborhood with her family. In between reading classic literature and comic books, she finds time to subvert the status quo and write smut to make people’s lives a little more fun.

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Halloween Microfiction: Mid-Autumn Incense by September Sui

Editor’s note: This story contains a brief mention of suicide. Nothing graphic, but please read accordingly.

  “Mid-Autumn Incense” by September Sui

Once a month, the contract had stipulated. Once a month, when the moon had waned itself dark, she would kneel and pray in the annex of the ancestral hall set aside for her ghost husband. She had thought it acceptable: tend the altar, bring fresh fruit, burn joss money, all in exchange for living as a daughter-in-law.

Once a month was not enough.

The altar was not large, a waist-high rosewood table, with the prayer tablet surrounded by her offerings: tea and fruit, wine and mooncakes, candles and flowers. In the dim illumination of the altar candles she kept burning all day, she found the box of joss sticks and pulled out eight. The wind whistled in—he whistled in admiration. Eight? Very brave.

She’d burn a hundred if she thought it would bring him back to life. Instead, she had to take her chances with the magic incense that took all month to procure materials for and make: magpie feather shafts in the core, their blood ground into the sandalwood bark that she peeled herself personally. Her mother-in-law indulged her when she said it was for him.

She held the sticks in a bundle and tilted them over the candle flame, as high as possible to burn just the tips, so that they would last longer, and keep him with her.

Hurry. Hurry.

“Tell the candle to burn hotter,” she murmured, though she was just as impatient. She used to burn them one by one, prolonging the time they had together, which had been fine in the early days of their marriage when they were still getting to know each other, talking from twilight to twilight. But the more joss on the altar, the more corporeal he became, the more they understood the secret delight of marriage.

She could already feel hands traversing her belly, lips on her neck just above her collar, faint like a breeze. She dipped the incense a little, making sure they caught fire evenly, and shook them gently to release their magic. Fully corporeal, he moaned as he pressed himself against her back, fingers digging between her legs, guided by the pleats of her skirt.

Why are you always so overdressed when you come to me? he complained.

She laughed. “Your mother.” The matriarch thought her son would appreciate a well-dressed wife at his altar; she’d never guessed how quickly he’d undo and scatter those clothes across the floor, like now—the ties of her ruqun undone, he attacked the ribbons of her zhongyi next. “Are you going to let me go? So I can take these off properly?”

She felt him shake his head against her shoulder as he pulled apart the front of her zhongyi’s blouse, and he paused as he noticed the embroidery stitched across the hem of the neiyi, just above her chest: a line of poetry composed with characters from both their names, his present to her at their last meeting. Then a second line underneath, turning the soft romance into a dirty ditty.

His cock stiffened as he recited them in breathless cricket murmurings.

She grinned. “You like it?”

I love it, he declared, reaching down to lift her skirts, all three layers, and dig his fingers into the wet cleft between her legs.

She gasped, falling forward and catching the edge of the altar. Out the corner of her eye she saw the main ancestral hall, a wall of names and portraits. The annex was separated by only half a wall; the upper half was decorative wooden bars spaced far apart. It didn’t matter when they made love on the floor. “The hall… what if someone sees?”

He huffed in amusement. Like who? The ancestors? They already know I’m fucking my beautiful wife.

“Like your mother—Oh—” She moaned as he pushed in, lifting herself on the balls of her feet just a little to help him slide in straighter.

Yes, he hissed with the rustle of the leaves outside. He pulled out and drove in again, harder, just to hear her groan. Her hands still gripped the altar, quivering with the effort of holding herself up as he leaned forward against her.

She panted in rhythm with him, slow and fast, the heat on her back and between her legs a stark contrast to the cool autumn breeze on her face and his icy hands holding up her skirts. And he adjusted one hand, sliding a cold finger down the front of her slit against the throbbing muscle there, and she almost cried out. They had discovered this early in their explorations, realising the advantages of the magic incense.

She checked the incense, and sucked in her breath as she noticed the lengths left. One hand scrambled under the altar and grabbed a fistful of joss sticks.

Should I sto—

“NO.” Her voice reverberated across the whole hall, making them both pause, breathless as the echoes bounced away gently into the silence of the night. “I mean, please don’t stop.”

His laughter was hidden in the chorus of frogs that decided that moment to sing in the pond just beyond the ancestral hall, but he slowed his gait, gentle as she focused on lighting the fresh incense. The magic intensified, and his hands were suddenly less cold, and his cock suddenly more solid, and he noticed it, because he rammed into her hard.

Her knees buckled with the orgasm ripping through her, and she would have knocked her head on the altar if he hadn’t caught her and sunk down with her to the floor. Sighing, she bent over, pressing her cheek against the floor tiles as he rained nipping kisses on the back of her neck, pulling her thighs to position her knees—at an angle just so, and every stroke hit her along that special spot inside that re-ignited her pleasure, and by the time he finished, she was mewling in a high voice only he ever heard.

She stayed prostrate on the floor, panting, vaguely aware that he stood up, picked something off the altar, and sat back down on the floor. He pulled her over and draped her across his lap.

She was dozing off when she remembered the plan for the evening. “I made mooncakes to eat with you!” She stumbled towards the altar, taking the tray with the cakes and wine cups.

He smiled serenely as she cut the cakes into equal portions and poured the wine. Corporeal now, he could eat and drink, though it was meaningless. He nibbled at the cake, and nodded approvingly though he couldn’t taste it.

They toasted—it was a month of celebrations, after all, which they could not celebrate together. The double-seven, the ghost festival, the anniversary of their wedding… he took her free hand as she drank her wine freely.

She put down her cup, and then laid her head on his lap. She was always melancholy at the end of the night.

He drank his wine, and noticed it had the wrong consistency—he could not taste it, but could sense that something was amiss. This is not wine.

“No,” she whispered.

He said nothing in reply, and stroked her hair as the incense and her heartbeat faded.

She was shining as she threw herself into his arms, now fully with him. They took flight into the autumn wind, kissed in the starlight, made love across the midnight sky.

Neither waxing nor waning moons would ever part them again.

–

September Sui loves flowing water and flouting rules. She spent some years taking off her clothes for cameras in Canadian waters and across Singaporean streets, some work of which can be found at https://september-sui.tumblr.com/ , before moving to a desert and taking off clothes in words.

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