Night Marry

Crouching down in my cell, I wrap my arms tighter around my knees as the hand protrudes from the bars into my 7 by 5 living space. I can just barely lay down flat, slinking away from the ghost is not an option.

The ghost curls his wrath around the bars of my cell, the long ectoplasmic tendrils of his fingers overlapping each other in his large grasp. His face is close, too close. He's pressing his body through the bars and in front of me. But not his body. His face. He's detaching, dissolving. Piece by piece I watch as the ghost disappears into a puddle of mist on the floor, shapes swirling as he soundlessly glides into my space.

My space.

Space transcends time as the ghost begins to solidify. I can't breath. My tongue is too large. It's choking me. I can't breath, I can't, cannot, can't breath. Because the fingers are back, tightening their expansive clutch around my throat. My tongue is too large because it's swelling. My eyes are bulging from the blood cut off. From the pressure, which I can't handle.

Though the ghost has no face I can hear him laughing. I can hear the loose chains of my past clanking around his nonexistent ankles. I can hear the un-oiled hinges of my closet door, creaking as it blows open in the wind.

-Samm

Up Chuck

The girl was sitting on the concrete, her legs jutted out at uncomfortable angles, her arms limp at her sides like an old broken doll. Tears streamed from her eyes and recollected in her open, gaping socket of a mouth. Her dress was torn, ragged, and dirty as was her skin. Stripes on her cheeks shone pink from where her tears had eroded the dirt and chapped her flesh.

Behind her, goblins poured out of the door in hordes, each one armed. As they passed their simultaneous queen and harlot, they kicked her, spit on her, pulled at her already disheveled clothes. The girl failed to notice, her eyes reflecting the haunting absence of spirit, displaying the hollow echo left from where her soul had evacuated the quickly growing cavern of her mind.

The goblins snickered, some delighting in her suffering, others kissing her head as a sign of respect as they passed. None bothered to help her. She alone had led them to the surface. She needed to sit and see the benefits of a naive girl's labor.

Once they chamber was full, they opened the door to the sunlight. Natural light flooded into the dimly lit room, blinding all the goblins foolish enough to keep their eyes open the entire time. The others, the older and wiser ones who remembered the light, thrived under the warmth of the sun.

-Samm

The Not-So-Secret Origins of Not Being a Guy

It began in a test-tube.

The doctor bent low to examine the subject, his pale skin and dark hair reflecting in the opaque glass of the tube in a grotesque fashion. He sucked his lips under his teeth as he grasped the top of the tube. A flash of victory crossed his pinched features as he turned towards the couple before him, the vial held triumphantly in his fingers.

"A girl, as promised," he told them, an expectant look greeting their smiles.

The male reached into the back pocket of his white painter's shorts, unveiling a large amount of cash neatly folded in half. He rapidly peeled away thirty crisp hundred dollar bills. As he slid the remaining money back into his pocket he held out the three-thousand for the doctor.

Salivating, the doctor reached too quickly, the test-tube girl slipping from his fingers and plummeting to the white sterilized floor. The doctor cringed at the hardened looks the couple was offering, his mouth growing dry as the man retracted his money.

"Not to worry," the doctor began quickly, "all those still in the tubes are girls."

The woman smiled and nudged her husband to hand the money once again, a question dancing in her eyes.

The doctor smirked thinly as he scooped up the remaining cells on the floor into a sterilized bottle for cough syrup. "Only the broken ones become boys," he explained.

-Samm