Author Jay Sturner

Tonight we sense him, hidden in the sunken shadows of the bedroom: a ghoul moving silent, forcing quiet the other monsters. Chunks of enamel, grooved by nightly gnawing, fatten his belly. And our own teeth tighten in the jaw, fight the urge to drop and slip away, to escape his gluttonous rage. You see, the foul thing broke from fairy law: took to ripping out the loose teeth of children, a calcareous shit slipped beneath their bloodied pillows in a gesture of defiance; a jab at us proper fairies. And though imprisoned for a time in the amber caves, he broke free—saber arms flapping and chipping with madness. Now we wait within this toy-box, scanning the room for residual energies: the moans of bloody roots, the chattering of crowns, the hissing red of severed nerves . . . . Such things betray his whereabouts. At last we fly and crawl from the moonlit box, eyes narrowed and tongues writhing with an invocation. Oh how swift, how sweet the coming of revenge from its ancient lair!

for W.H. Pugmire Atop great mountains, on high thrones, sit the gods—beards long and glowing with the light of dead stars. Always their dark, playful eyes are hot with mischief. They delight in a belief that the goddesses are impressed by their whimsical creations, amused even. Surely they got a kick out of Homo sapiens , that inferior clay fumbling wildly over the layout of design—such fodder for comedy! Perhaps. But in dull pockets of timelessness, when the bearded ones are idle, the goddesses—because it is their way—have been known to nurture humanity’s fetal spirit, to channel love there, to plant seeds of art and philosophy, to spark ambition, and curiosity. Myriad tasks are assigned to fairies, mystics, and angels; demons too, if they should lead to a truth. Much then becomes enhanced in the spectra of human souls, in the course of man’s future. Sure, the gods are ingenious and powerful in their ways; of that there is no doubt. But lest they forget, they are equaled. Very much eq