I drop the bag, and the not-elephant tumbles out onto the ground. The air rushes out of my lungs; everything turns to a blur. I cover my eyes to hold in the tears, but they won’t stay inside. I can’t make them stay.
The not-elephant still holds a trace of Johnny’s smell, his real scent, not the stink of his illness. I cradle it to my chest, rocking back and forth while all the hurt he left behind spills out.
There isn’t enough paper in the world to make it go away.
About the Author
Damien Angelica Walters’ short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume One, The Best of Electric Velocipede, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Lightspeed, Apex, Streets of Shadows, What Fates Impose, and Glitter & Mayhem. Paper Tigers, a novel, will be released in late 2015 from Dark House Press.
Writing as Damien Walters Grintalis, Damien’s short fiction appeared in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside, Daily Science Fiction, and others, and Ink, a novel, was released in December 2012 by Samhain Horror.
She’s also a freelance editor, and until the magazine’s closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. You can find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or online at: damienangelicawalters.com.
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Table of Contents
PART I: HERE
Sing Me Your Scars
All the Pieces We Leave Behind
Girl, With Coin
Paskutinis Iliuzija (The Last Illusion)
Glass Boxes and Clockwork Gods
Sugar, Sin, and Nonsuch Henry
PART II: AND THE NOW
Running Empty in a Land of Decay
Scarred
The Taste of Tears in a Raindrop
Always, They Whisper
Dysphonia in D Minor
Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us?
Immolation: A Love Story
PART III: AND AWAY
Melancholia in Bloom
Iron and Wood, Nail and Bone
And All the World Says Hush
They Make of You a Monster
Paper Thin Roses of Maybe
Grey in the Gauge of His Storm
Like Origami in Water
Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Voices Book 3) Page 19
