Writer, Editor

Welcome to hell. The dumpster fire is over there, near my frontal cortex. Make yourself at home.

[isbergillustration]

Please Don't Leave Me Alone Up Here

I'm so cold

[zaramillerauthor]

constantly oscillating between hating what I write and 'bro this is so gooooood i'm soooo talenteeeed'

[zaramillerauthor]

not to be dramatic .... .... but I'd kill for a functioning McFlurry machine right now.

[zaramillerauthor]

my first published story in a while ....

hello! I've been steadily writing for the past five years, but I haven't published a fiction story over 3 years. don't ask me why, ask the editors who gatekeep with takes like "vampires are out of fashion."

luckily, i found a collaborator Ellie Jay who gathered a group of talented authors and put together an anthology collection.

this is an excerpt from my contribution "Terms of Forever":

There’s a needle in my arm already. They must have done it while I slept. I don’t remember falling asleep, only the feeling of being tilted out of my mind.

The entire human condition, drained drop by drop through a shining tube, stored like fine wine in crystal tanks in the upper sanctum. I can’t believe I once longed for this life. To be rid of my humanity, to be rid of myself.

You learn many things in this life, but the hardest truth of all is to accept that you’re just as susceptible to propaganda as anyone else. You tell yourself - not me. I can tell right from wrong.

Well, the vampires thrive on the in-between. The morally grey, the ‘suffering is obsolete.’

After 21, the mind begins to rot, riddled with regret, decay, the dissonance of too much time and too little peace. So, they convert us at 21.

I remember the sound a body makes when it splashes against the concrete pavement. I remember the girl with the scar beneath her left eye who died cradling a book they told us never existed.

I remember her.

My Scarlett. She enters like a blade dressed as a saint. White robes, regulation gloves, face half-shaded beneath a surgical veil. Her eyes are impossibly still. As if they’ve never cried. As if they don’t remember how.

But I remember them.

Ten years ago, when I was supposed to undergo the Change but didn’t. Thanks to her and her tears. She took something from me. Something I’ve never been able to name, and left everything else intact, which somehow made it worse.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I say, my voice like rust cracking open.

Her expression doesn’t change. Stillness is the god of vampires. But the air thickens nonetheless, reacting to her presence.

“You called my name,” she whispers.

“I called for the version of you that loved me,” I say. “She doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she says.

I blink.

Either the drugs are lying, or she is.

Her gloved hand touches the restraint at my right wrist. A flicker of movement. The strap hisses and snaps open.

“Run, little lamb. Run.”

My legs feel like they belong to someone else. The scent of antiseptic clings to her gloves, and for a moment, it’s not this altar I’m strapped to but her.