Sublime

Darkness flooded into the stranger’s eyes like ink, his irises kindling into circles of burning red. That horrifying gaze locked onto Enkai.

The man made a terrible choking sound, the air around him jerking as though itself in pain as he tried and failed to draw breath. Mamoru turned away from the sight, as he shed the blood from his katana and slid it back into its sheath.

Knives. Knives in favorite movies, Polanski’s Knife in the Water, a fable about violence and infidelity. Knives in favorite books. Philip Pullman’s “subtle knife” that can cut openings between worlds and allow the bearer to traverse multiple realities. And of course the butcher’s knife with which the protagonist of Kafka’s The Trial is killed on th

I shaved long, flat strips from the bones of her legs. Plaiting sinew and tendon, I stretched muscle into interwoven pages and bound them with flax. I made the bow of these, setting the fibres and grains of her tissue in opposition, the raw arc congealing, twisting, and shrinking into its proportion of purpose. I removed her unused womb and placed

The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious Death would drink his blood, and grow young again.