Confessions

‍ The Blue in the Triple Moon: “Blue is the night, and blue my mother, too, blue the water passing through, blue is the river past the fargone lawn, blue is the break that draws her on, blue-made, the whisper in her ear that came from the doll that’s always near.

The Blue Spider: “My mother made me, I never sought to marry him—he sought me, through the salon, a stranger there, and the wealthiest, my mother said, and I was beautiful (my mother said), so I shuffled marriage winks in her borrowed best (my eyes were not mine, I don’t know this hair). He was a series of angles hanging on a mustache, that twitched when he smiled and the furnace of his eyes hungered.”

‍ ‍The Curse of a Name: A son is given the same name as his deceased brother, with the same expectations, his parents expecting the same person, the same life.

‍ ‍The Grove of the Seven Trees: A weekend trip that begins in suspicion unravels with the speaker, and the Grove of the Seven Trees awaits.

‍ ‍Morea: “He first saw me on stage. I was Desdemona, I gave him tears, and he brought me a bouquet and crown. He didn’t like my dress, or my hair down, but by his suggestions felt fuller myself, presenting me round, like a stage, a page I had not read, to fake what’s in him bred.”

‍ ‍The Nix of Venice: “I rocked my chair, the wood squeaking and peered below to see the changing colors churning an oiled sheen, and from the depths her face arose—just alike, alive, with terrible eyes, she saw into me and seemed to smile to sink again below.”

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Legends

‍ ‍The Beast of Change: “It was written that when the Enlightenment and the Church fought for the soul of the King of France, Louis XV, the last to know the throne without the shadow of revolution, when the world was opening, the peasants in the past and reason the future, there was a young nobleman who sought the boundary of experience, and travelled far into the darkness, finding himself where the darkness found him.”

‍ ‍Dawn & Dusk: “There was once two twin brothers, the slightly elder beautiful and cruel, and the slightly younger weak and deformed, that the younger was locked away for shame, and the elder became his keeper.”

Look, The Book, and the Hook: “In New York City, when every tower had a garden top, whose nighttime fests would make the dawning pop electric, the art of fashion was ruled by a book of passion, and she was the queen with a hook.”

‍ ‍The Moon Under the Hill: A haunted son returns to his decrepit family estate, where his family of feral males await the moon to hunt by night, but what’s inside’s the greater fright.

‍ ‍The Raven with Fiery Wings: “In ancient times there was a great forest called Caledonia, and in that forest there was a village that once was by a warlord sacked, and two girls, like sisters, of the truest love, were separated, the raven-haired Elahara by the warlord taken, and the fiery-haired Rivalla, who escaped into the great forest and lived by the ways of the wild, as Elahara lived by the order of the court, each surviving and growing apart.”

‍ ‍Tethatum: “Ere its azure walls were dust, in Babylon, where the spirits dwell, we sing his name by the river, Tethatum, born with the hornlings of a ram, known as our savior and our giver, to rule us and deliver, amidst the shadows of Babylon, where the spirits dwell.”

‍ ‍Warm Meat: Teeth grow in a time of famine, where the only satisfaction might be less than human.

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Fabulations

The Comedy of Mercurio, Kinsman to Verona: Shakespeare had to kill Mercutio for the sake of the plot, but there is a source that sees him manipulating love and hate into reconciliation.

‍ ‍The Fire and the Throne: There are ancient ways to deal with insanity: seclusion or costume drama, and Sarah was very good at making costumes.

‍ ‍The King of Many Colors: In Shakespeare, ghosts are only ever seen by one person—except in Hamlet—but what if that wasn’t a ghost at all?

‍ ‍Merry Sir John: If Sir John Falstaff dies offstage before Henry V, how does he show up post-battle in Henry VI?

‍ ‍The Power of the Piper: “In a time and place before colors were known, when everything was brown and baked in dirt, there was a town girt with a growing reputation for being infested with rats. And as that reputation grew he came, mottled all in yellow and red, with a serpentine scarf that round his waist and head, and from the end hung a pipe tucked into the scarf, like a belt, holding his long coat tight, his eyes like pins, always smiling bright.”

‍ ‍The Trickster Basil Hallward: What if Dorian Gray’s supernatural painting wasn’t supernatural at all?

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Stories

‍ ‍Once Upon a Halloween: “There is a village that dreams in the Delectable Mountains where it is Halloween all year round, costumes to each season, yes, but when the time itself’s to come, a great bonfire’s constructed in the village square, and the Court of Misrule’s all crowned there, where the pipe, cittern and viol play, and they make the nighttime like the day.”