Three Parts Dead

“Did you really think it was possible he died of natural causes?”
These are strange days. We have had to widen the definition of the word “natural” six times in the last decade.

A small audience of sailors had gathered. They looked to Ms. Kevarian for her reply, but soon shuddered and looked away. Something about her made the eyes cringe. Maybe it was the way her dark gray suit soaked in the light, maybe it was the way steam from her coffee cup swirled about her like a demon’s wreath of flames. Maybe it was the neon yellow smiley face on the cup’s side.

“I should have thought a swift ship like this could outrun any trouble.”
“Ah, there’s your error. You assume we were running from the trouble, not toward it.”

And buried beneath the detritus of thousands of years of civilization lay that most basic human power of identification: these are my people. Those others, well, those are food.

Her return had been awkward enough for Mother and Father without bringing a torch-wielding mob down upon them. “I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
The corpses, of course, chose that moment to sit up, growl with unearthly voices, and clumsily brandish weapons in their skeletal hands.

That mustache grown a decade and a half ago, which never went out of style because it was never in style.

Of all the screams cataloged in the encyclopedic audio library of the Hidden Schools, Tara’s bore the closest resemblance to the scream of a man whose abdomen was being devoured by a jagged-clawed insect that wore a child’s face.