26 minute read
"The Blood Plague of Prague” by Andrea Kriz
THE BLOOD PLAGUE OF PRAGUE
By Andrea Kriz
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The tank’s been impaledI see as I step up on its hull. Spikes twist above me, their blackness tinged crimson by the dying sun. They pierced clean through the thickest part of the armor— armor I’ve seen stopping artillery shells, rockets—these things. They forest the entire square. Worming over a bicycle here, upending a telegraph pole there. Across the cobblestones, a tram ripped free of its wires teeters on its side. Through its creaking, a slow drip. More of the sludge, half-hardened, flows down its seats and through its doors. “A survivor of the plague,” Doctor Engel explains beneath me. “His body’s reaction—was disturbing to say the least.”
My reflection stares back at me from the nearest spine. Skin nicked by razor, the hooded eyes of a man kept awake a week straight. By orders that came for me just as I’d finished my last assignment in the wastes of the Russian front. A dossier that contained only a few cryptic sentences and a ticket to Prague. The entourage met my train at an outskirts station. Drove me up to a fortified Castle overlooking the city and refused to let me leave my quarters until today. The last time I saw Doctor Engel, I was on the verge of death. I can’t say I’m delighted to meet him again, especially under these circumstances. But beneath its bandages, my right arm twitches of its own accord. It reaches toward the sludge. “Don’t touch it!” Engel says a bit too late. I tear off my glove, hurling it away. The muck eats away the leather like acid. I suddenly notice a total absence of life in the vicinity. It’s summer. But no birds sing in the leafless trees. Only the knot of soldiers assigned to us whisper, shifting their rifles uneasily. “This is all blood?” I ask. “From one survivor?” Engel shakes his head. I peer down the turret and as my eyes adjust to the dimness, make out a splattered pair of goggles, the green-grey shreds of a Wehrmacht uniform. This spike didn’t erupt from beneath the tank—but from within. “These were our soldiers,” Engel says. “And the civilians too.” A case of hemokinesis. I’ve fought those with the power, of course. It’s an ability that often arises in those of degenerate blood. To the extent that the SS dedicated an entire security division to their disposal in the occupied territories. Hence, my presence here. My services have been in high demand since the invasion of Poland, the start of the war, a few years ago. Much to the chagrin of my parents—hunters trained in the old ways who turned up their noses at working with the Nazis—I quickly rose through their ranks. There was no work left for me in the Black Forest after all. Our ancestors had all but purged that region of beasts. Only leaving a few tribes deep in the wood for us new generations to hone our skills on. Those savages usually
shape it into weapons, I learned at an early age. A sword for example, like that of Bruncvik—the famous Blood Knight—of Bohemian legend. Easy enough to dispatch by modern means. But what Engel seemed to be suggesting—control of blood outside one’s own body? By the time we rejoin the others, the sun has dipped below the clouds. The houses we pass, so charming in the daytime, grimace over us like gargoyles now. In the flicker of the occasional streetlamp, I see the walls ripple with red, feathery motions. Posters. Out of curiosity, I stop to read a few. Murder –death. Arson –death. Black market –death. By decree of the ReichProtector, Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich.
“They call him the Hangman of Prague,” our translator whispers. “Is that so?” “Even more so after the assassination attempt.” He’s a mousey man, plucked from the bowels of Petschek Palace—the Gestapo headquarters—not looking particularly grateful for the favor, considering. He keeps staring at my right arm, encrusted with bandages that haven’t been changed in days, flinching every time it twitches, every time I speak. And other than my speaking, there is not a soul, not a sound. “Where is everybody?” I demand. “The curfew is eight, Untersturmfuhrer,” Doctor Engel says evasively. “For the Czechs. What about the Germans? Other patrols?” “Everybody fears the blood plague.” “He’s got all the troops massed up there, around the Castle,” the translator interrupts. “The Hangman. Every night, he closes off all the roads. You’ve been staying there, right, Untersturmfuhrer? Then you’ve seen it. No one’s allowed to enter until dawn.” “Silence!” Engel roars. The translator shrinks. The soldiers stare with a listlessness that suggests they’ve seen this scene play out a number of times before.
“The Protector’s a brilliant man,” Engel continued. “I was with him in Berlin. Reichsfuhrer Himmler himself looked to him for advice. He hasn’t been the same since the assassination attempt, that’s all. And now the plague, overrunning the very city the Fuhrer entrusted him to protect. It’s our job to eliminate the problem at its source. The survivor.” His eyes take on an unnerving sheen as he turns to me. “We must fight creatures of the abyss. With the abyss.” I catch sight of one of the city’s innumerable steeples and grind to a halt. My arm arches. A side effect of this limb, this gift the doctor gave me—the ability to sense those with degenerate blood. The soldiers fan out around every exit, grate, sewer in sight, while the largest surges forward. The door splinters before him. With the things one hears about occupied cities these days, I expect the church to have been looted, swarmed with refugees and beggars and the like. But the darkly gilded statues, the pews—everything stands in its place. Only the withered lilies at the foot of the altar hint at its abandonment. I crouch down for a closer look and catch movement out of the corner of my eye.
One of the soldiers shuffles up beside me. A shot rings out.
Only then do I notice my gun, in my hand. The bullet tears through the poor man. In that instant, I see my fate. The shells I carry were developed by Reichsfuhrer Himmler’s occult division with a core of silver and marrow—made to destroy those that ordinary weapons cannot. And that shadow hunched on the balcony above me, beneath the gleaming pipes of the organ, has somehow grasped this. No matter how I struggle, the barrel in my hands tilts slowly, inexorably, until it comes to rest beneath my chin. But not of my own will. My very blood boils in my veins against me. My right arm snaps. The bullet ricochets off an arch. My bones burst through bandage, through skin, twining above me. My pistol clatters to the tile. The shadow leaps. For a moment, I impale her. Her. A woman in a white shift. She stares at me with starved, choking eyes. I hesitate. “What’s wrong? Never killed anything that fought back before…” Long enough for the sludge dripping from her throat to melt through bone. As I shriek, she lands on the carpet, catlike. A salvo of useless shots behind me, and she’s through the door. I fall to my knees. The remaining soldiers stare at me in silence. I can well imagine what they’re struggling to hide. Disgust. Shock. The same expressions twisting my face as I thrust my arm down, assessing the damage. The bones have fused into one, their ends stripped to a point. I manage to force them to a more natural size, stop the bleeding. But my mind balks at willing them back under skin. My hand, along with half my forearm, hangs limply by a flap of flesh. This I’m inexperienced in. Hardening bone to absorb impact I’ve trained; muscle to block shrapnel, I’ve mastered. But I do not like to be reminded that I am a monster. Only Engel dares approach me. “That was a woman,” I bark at him. “A girl. You told me the survivor was a man.” “It was a man who escaped from us,” Engel says. “How many are there?” “Untersturmfuhrer, the survival rate is one in a hundred thousand—” I grab his coat with my good hand, slam him against a pillar. “How many of them are there?” I scream. It doesn’t matter, I realize, loosening my grip. I could barely stand against even one. That monster, twisting my blood to her own whims. Much less two. Three. Ten survivors. Unless I attained such power myself… but no. I must fight it. As the rest of my arm sloughs off, leaving only bone, I feel a bit of silver beating against my heart and it tells me: I must not give in. I must not become. I must remember. The hunter’s mantra my father taught me. What separates me from them. Them from me. I raise my left hand, clasp it against my chest instead. I am not a beast, I mouth. I do not kill for joy. I do not kill for lust… Engel staggers but regains his composure, setting his glasses back on his nose and rising.
“What’s the matter?” Engel asks. “You can regrow it, you know. Every ability the original owner of that arm possessed. They should’ve passed on to you.” “I told you back then.”
grasping at the man who stood beside me, white-coated as an angel. “Even if they wear the skin of children. No human can have all that power.” “Indeed. But why not use it to your advantage?”
“I won’t.” “Even so,” Engel says. He takes a syringe out of his satchel. “We must return to the Castle at dawn. With results. The Protector sent you out here to finish a job.” “And you?” I snarl. A jab in the back of my neck. My body shudders, dulls. But I can no longer feel the bones beneath twisting, scraping to get out, at least. I take the bandage Engel holds out to me and wrap it slowly, painfully, around my stump. “To make sure you do yours.”
We cross a bridge, looming with sculptures—I turn every few steps, seemingly catching one moving out of the corner of my eye—we knock on doors that no one answers and kick them in. A variation of the same scene greets us every time. A meal rotting on the table, a radio left to static. Strange stains sunken into the floorboards. And always through the windows, behind us as we descend and set out again, far up on the hill, the spires of the Castle fading into the dusk. “The plague got out of hand,” Engel admits, “and due to our carelessness, spread through the city. But the extermination of these survivors will end it.”
We’re standing in a silence that’s become familiar to us over these hours. In front of yet another building that seems utterly abandoned, despite the flags flying from its balcony. My eyes rest on the statue set into the alcove. A king in a flowing cape—or a lifeless suit of armor. Impossible to tell with its helmet welded firmly shut. The figure, along with the entire corner, is plastered with more of that reddish sludge. The same cakes the automobiles skewed on the curb behind us, the gutter at our feet.
“Is that all you want to tell me?” I ask. The dying light reflecting off his glasses masks his eyes. I’m reminded of the first time I met the doctor. In that camp that stank of death and excrement and more besides. Two of the prisoners he’d been experimenting on had manifested—powers—and overwhelmed the guards. That’s when I’d been summoned. No sooner had I stepped toward them than a blossom of bone encased me. Those girls had remarkable regeneration abilities. But, at the cost of my arm, I managed to fire the decisive shot. The other twin stared at me with dead eyes. She grew her fingers. And ran herself through. I woke in Engel’s clinic with her strange limb grafted to my gaping wound. He did it save my life, Engel explained. But I don’t trust him. I think he did it to me to see what would happen, the bastard. “We initially developed the plague in Lidice,” Engel says. “A small village about a dozen miles from here with some tenuous connection to the resistance. That was right after the assassination attempt, you see. The plague worked stupendously. Of course, the Protector did not believe me. He sent such a battalion of men to shoot, to dig, to bulldoze that place down. But by the time they arrived, nothing of those villagers remained. And nothing would grow from the soil they had bled into ever again. The Protector was quite taken by that detail too.” “That battalion,” I interrupt. “Were any of them infected?”
“Of course not. You know the blood doctrine. You know such sickness cannot spread to us. In fact, when the plague reached Prague proper, I myself strode among the patients as they lay dying—without any protective gear—just to prove that point.” “Do not believe him,” the translator whispers as we begin to walk again. “After all. If the plague didn’t affect you, could you use that arm?” “What do you mean?” “Tell me. When you were up in the Castle. Did you see the Protector?” That too had been something like a fairy tale. I’d heard the rumors, of course, that he’d grown increasingly paranoid after the assassination attempt, checking under tables for explosives before sitting down and the like. But the perimeter in the royal gardens, blocking everyone but a few from exiting or entering, couldn’t help but bring to mind a forest of thorns. Even the soldiers sat tight-lipped in their sentry boxes behind their sandbags as we passed. Inside the Castle itself, servants made themselves scarce. Only the noise of some infernal dog echoed incessantly at all hours of the night through every hall. The Protector’s, I assumed. I’d been only too glad to leave that morning to focus on my assignment at last. “The Hangman, we call him,” the translator says, laughing softly. “The Blond Beast. We’ve got a new name for him now. He doesn’t show himself to the world anymore, you see. Oh, he’s still lucid. But after the doctor brought him back from the brink of death, after the assassination attempt, he began to transform, they say. Yes, at dusk, like the rest of this city… he becomes…” “Shut up.” “The Mad Beast.” For once, this arm and I move of the same will. New fingers emerge from my bandages in one smooth movement, formed entirely bone. I only mean to scare him. That’s what I tell myself. But I want to test it. Want to feel his throat crushed in my hand, his every breath struggling against me. I know, I tell the silver pendant, the memory of my sister’s fingers, warm around my neck, that I’m sinning, that I cannot kill one who is not a beast, that this is exactly where my father said this work with the SS would lead—but in the rising moonlight, I feel a smile trickling across my face. In this city devoid of all beings, devoid of anything but sickness, I can afford to sin. Just to see that look in his eyes. Just this once.
“I am not afraid of you, Untersturmfuhrer,” the translator wheezes. “I have seen worse shapes than yours shambling down this city’s streets. I have seen the golems of legend past. I have seen… the future…”
When night falls, the sounds begin. The groans of the buildings we no longer try to enter. The scraping of their rafters, the collapsing of their stones—as if the puddles within them have come to life, gnawing at them from the inside out. More than once we find our way blocked by rubble and are forced to take yet another detour. Past yet more ornate wooden doors, through yet more winding lanes. The further we go, the more they start whispering, our soldiers. They’d rather brave the Protector’s wrath, rather be sent to the Russian front than keep wandering. Anything not to hear. The shrieking, the snarling. The further we go, the more difficult it becomes to blame the sounds on inanimate objects. What am I waiting for? I wonder. Now that we’ve dropped the façade of searching. For unseen eyes, trailing us through the windows, to leap out and strike? Then we should climb up onto a roof, dig a foxhole, camouflage ourselves at a bend in the road—the memory of my
father whispers, the hunting lessons he gave me as a child—and let them come. What leads me on instead? Perhaps it’s that first tank I saw. Left completely unguarded, without a cleanup crew even in sight. This iron taste on my tongue. Perhaps it’s because, like the bandage around my arm I can’t help itching and twisting, I’ve begun to feel something come undone.
As we turn the corner, two sights abruptly meet us. A huge contraption set into the wall. Clockwork moons, orange-gold, the lower one haloed by saints. And beneath them. Furtive movements. I signal and the soldiers raise their rifles, relieved at an order that might accomplish something at last. Ready. Aim. Engel obediently steps back. The creatures, engrossed in—what looks like a lump of clothing—take no notice. Fire. Only the one struck by my bullet falls. The others lunge. With gaping eyes, I see as they come closer, blind. I feel teeth on my throat, saliva dripping onto my face, before slamming my palm into its jaw. I hit it again, hardening my bones. The creature’s neck snaps around. With a shudder it collapses, wormy flesh spilling over my chest.
I hear boots clattering into the distance, noises spewing from a bloody mess a few paces away. Engel couldn’t run as fast as the soldiers, evidently. But I won’t let the doctor die that easily. Because I see now what those things were tearing at. An SS uniform. With the hunter insignia, an eagle feather, on its lapel. Just like mine. I heave the carcass off me. With another shot, scatter the beasts hunched over Engel. A fine use for my last bullet. I hurl the pistol, skidding it across the cobblestones.
“The plague can’t spread to us?” I shriek. “Even the animals have become infected!” I kick at the remains—a dog, swollen to the size of a calf. Its ribs give way like overripe fruit. “No more lies. How many hunters have you brought here to die? What kind of madness is this?” “The Hangman’s,” Engel coughs. “The Blond Beast’s.” Behind his shattered glasses, his remaining eye has begun to reflect the moon, red. “I could say something like… to refuse to obey him would’ve been death…” “Not even he would be insane enough to order something like this.” Engel laughs. “Let me tell you about the Hangman,” Engel says. “He grew to hate this fairy tale town. Having half your face blown off will do that to you. He looked forward to nothing more than burning it all down. But after the assassination attempt, he was on his deathbed. A nasty infection and no penicillin to save him. Luckily, I had just perfected my serum. Purified from dozens of test subjects. Designed to gift others their abilities—to create others like you. It turned out to have regenerative properties as well. But there was not enough left for his wife. And the serum could not bring his sons back to life. It could not bring back his little daughter, led as if by two pied pipers by the would-be assassins away.” He laughs again—attempts to—and gurgles instead. “He ordered wave after wave of reprisals. But not even that could sate his bloodlust. The Fuhrer twisted his arm, forbade him from doing more. We need the Czech factories at full productivity for the war effort, after all. I whispered in his ear: Obergruppenfuhrer, I will create a plague for you. From my serum. It will spread among them like a fine rain. They will dissolve while we stand among them. Not even their corpses will remain. He could not… resist the poetry in my words…”
A serum? My heart thuds into my mouth. “What did you inject me with back there at the church?”
“Just a bit of saline…” “Liar.” I kneel and raise my hand, feel it contort into a blade, sharpen to my will. “It was your plague, wasn’t it? You infected me! You wanted this to happen!” “I really thought you were different. That you could do it. I really thought you could kill all those survivors. With a little help…”
He reaches up. And caresses my face. “I only wanted to see your body pushed to its limit… my dear hunter.” I hear baying in the distance and rise. His hand stays there, grasping. But still, as I leave him for the dogs, I can’t help but hear his words.
“I lied to the Hangman only once, you know. I told him the plague would infect the Jews, the Slavs, but leave our pure, Aryan blood unharmed. But I was wrong! It does not know how to differentiate between us. Only how to spread. Even the Hangman himself, up in his Castle, has become infected. Isn’t that delightful? If the blood leaves this city, it will infect the entire world. To be able to manipulate lymph, bone, muscle, to have such wonderful control over your body. Isn’t that what it truly means to be an Ubermensch?” I stagger into the vast square alone. My steps echo and shrivel—dulled by the black sludge which carpets the ground, creeps like vines up the walls of the surrounding buildings. My arm throbs at my side. A swollen thing it’s become, bristling with bones. Like the veins that pulse along it, trenches furrow the stones beneath my feet. Skirting hissing mud, I limp to the edge of one. It’s overgrown with lumps. A line of guns, I see as the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, upended. Anti-tank rifles. “Ah. So now the SS has recruited beasts to hunt down their own kind?” A voice tolls. Piercing as those Gothic spires, silhouetted against the sky. I clutch my arm as it springs up of its own accord—and meet the eyes of a shadow sitting above me. Among the bronze waves of a sculpture that drowns the center of the square. “I am not like you,” I tell him. The shadow tilts his head. “The hunter blood runs through my veins,” my voice echoes thinly. I remember my heritage. My father. My sister. Our house at the edge of the looming trees. “Though I’ve been infected. The hunter way will save me!”
“When the plague began, my people gathered here by the thousands,” the shadow hisses. “As if their old legends could save them…”
In a flash, I’m a child again. Face to face with a boar in the wood. Armed with nothing but my bare hands. Back then, I looked everywhere for a ditch to crawl in, a tree to leap up. But this time, I lurch forward. Because maybe if I can see it—that glimmer in his eye—maybe I can have a bit more confidence that I can carry this through as myself, as a man. Instead, laughter. “…but nobody did.” He’s clutching something. A bayonet, I see as he raises it abruptly, slashes his throat. The blood readily forms a blade, curving above him, a shaft for him to grasp. And there’s someone else here. I feel her in the shudder that runs through my bones, the wave rippling under my skin—as if an unseen puppet-master stands above me, jerking my strings. I whirl around, even as the corrosion eats away at my boots, my palms, and I tear one of the rifles free from the
sludge. Steel every ligament in my body as I aim it at the ground. And pull the trigger. A spike erupts after me, in the blast, as I hurtle upward. Twists, drying as it grasps my ankle. I tear out of it, slipping, scrabbling down the solidifying wave, and finally drag myself to a standstill. I see. From this height, gasping. The blackness that steeps these roofs, this city—this is the dead. It’s just as Engel said. Not even their bodies remain. Only their plagued blood. A near infinite pool for these survivors to control.
I feel the scythe slice through the wind and duck. Another sweep, and it crumples the pillar beneath me. I raise my rifle—but the damn thing’s jammed. A spike bursts through my shoulder. Another grazes my leg. I leap back, letting the first impale me, catch a foothold on the second. Only to feel it give again. The scythe’s blade crashes against my rifle stock, raised just in time. The roofs rush past. In front of me, that murderous face, teeth bared, inches from mine. He has the same eyes—as the twins I ended in that camp, as the countless ones I had hunted down as a teen. The ones who shaped their own bodies into weapons to protect their children, their villages, their souls. They all have the same eyes. The eyes of an animal on the edge of an abyss, backed up against a wall. As it should be. I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger on a beast who looked human up until the end. It’s that look that separates us. That makes me the hunter, gives me the right to stand on the other side. Eyes that, at this moment, might as well be a reflection of my own.
I’ve got no choice. I will my bones to grow, arcing them toward the gash in my attacker’s neck. Too little, too late. In one flowing motion, he breaks my rifle in two. His scythe catches my shoulder, tears through my tunic. I feel a weight move. More than the searing pain of blade ripping through bone, sinew, muscle. It’s something I’ve kept in my inner pocket, close to my heart, all these years since I’ve left the Black Forest. A glint of silver. Slowly. Hurtling past me. I hit the ground. Feel my spine cave at the impact, hack up blood. Then silence. Every vibration of steps shuddering through me. A dozen figures loom at the rim of the crater I made. They’ve taken on strange shapes in the moonlight. Along with the crescent of the scythe, I see a white dress, spikes of dried blood bent into spider’s legs, others coiled into the facsimile of wings. And the words that whistle between their teeth—they’re no longer human, no. “Will he melt like of the rest of them, you think? Or will he turn?” I move to stand, but my hand slips. On warm liquid that pulses over my skin with every breath. My eyes move down and meet—intestines, worming from my torso. The other half of me I only glimpse darkly, my vision blurring with nausea.
“You’re weak, aren’t you? That’s why you’re in that uniform. You hate it. You don’t want to be helpless anymore. Why do you fight it? All of this power… is within reach.”
She dangles it from her fingers. A thread of shining silver. Such a slight, such a fleeting thing. But it’s mine. Mine. I won’t let them take it from me. Tears start up in my eyes. My body aches,
and my remaining hand curls, squelching on the stained stones. “You see, there is no cure for the plague, good hunter.” I can hear it. I can hear it. Them. Why wasn’t I listening before? Even as some small part of me, deeper and deeper down, screams. I must remember. What separates. I must not let it in.I open every part of myself, my pores, my skin to them. My blood mingles with the plague’s blood and the blood has a voice, singing sweetly to me. A siren song I must make reality. I lift my finger. A movement that dissolves my flesh into pure euphoria. For as my blood, our blood, scatters, sharpened into points, I feel the others pierced, I feel them tear. Feel them scream, and in that scream I feel myself wax and wane. Did I get them all? Or is there still fighting to be done, a war to be won? It matters not. That effort drained every drop in my veins. I’ve got eyes only for the bit of silver, glinting in the moonlight. A locket. I pick it up. It takes minutes, with my gnarled fingers, to wrench it open. Even longer for my burning brain to begin to make out the words engraved within. Dear brother. Dearest little Hansel. Please come home. The spikes above me liquefy and begin to fall. Each drop acid on my skin. Through my clouded eyes, I catch sight of my reflection in a puddle and I start laughing. The sound comes out snarled, warped through a snout and rows of teeth. What a pretty picture book it’d make, this. A forest of horns coiling from my skull, my spine arcing the rest of my body down to meet them. When they find me here, the armies, the golems, the fairy tale kings, they’ll mistake me for one of their monsters. Twisted… in this twisted beast of a city…
Until next time...
Richard Zwicker is an English teacher living in Vermont, USA, with his wife and beagle. His hobbies besides reading and writing include playing the piano, jogging, and fighting the good fight against middle age. Though he lived in Brazil for eight years, he is still a lousy soccer player. His short stories have appeared in “Penumbra,” “Mythic,” “Stupefying Stories,” and other semi-pro markets. Two collections of his stories, Walden Planet and The Reopened Cask, are available on Amazon.
L. P. Melling currently writes from the East of England, UK, after being swept around the country through his education and career. He is a Writers of the Future finalist, and his short fiction has appeared in such places as ARTPOST, ASM, DreamForge, and Thrilling Words. When not writing, he works for a legal charity that advises and supports victims of crime. Contact: https://lpmelling.wordpress.com/
Robert Bagnall lives on the English Riviera, between Dartmoor and the English Channel and is the author of the novel 2084. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines, websites and anthologies since the early 1990s. Contact: meschera.blogspot.co.uk
Aimee Uehara is a student currently working towards her BFA in Animation at Laguna College of Art + Design. She’s a fan of painting cool backgrounds and telling funky stories. Contact: www.aimeeuehara.com or Twitter/Instagram @byonsei
J. Anthony Hartley writes stories that almost invariably wander shamelessly between genres or blur the boundaries between them. Originally Australian, he now resides in Germany by way of the UK. Sometimes he writes poetry, but he's a different person when he does that. Contract: Twitter @janthonyhartle1
R. Z. Held writes speculative fiction, much of it in the apparently disparate subgenres of space opera and weird western. Her Silver series of urban fantasy novels was published under the name Rhiannon Held. She lives in Seattle, where she works as an archaeologist for an environmental compliance firm. At work, she uses her degree mostly for copy-editing technical reports; in writing, she uses it for cultural world-building; in public, she'll probably use it to check the mold seams on the wine bottle at dinner. Contact: http://rhiannonheld.com/ or Twitter @RhiannonHeld
Andrea Kriz writes from Cambridge, MA. Find her other stories in Cossmass Infinities, Nature, and Tales to Terrify. Contact: Twitter @theworldshesaw
