Writes
A queer Southern Gothic wedding with a bruise, a trellis, and way too many secrets. Last time I told you there was a manuscript gathering dust in the attic. This was once its prologue. Now it’s just the first open door. Welcome to Haint Party. It is messy, queer, a little magical, and definitely fueled by wedding chaos. Think of… Continue reading Haint Party: Prologue
The Collective The third floor opened around them like a held breath, wide and soft and strange in its gentleness. This wasn’t the rest of the warehouse, no peeling paint, no rusted piping groaning in the walls. It was warmth and filtered light, old wood and quiet corners. A space carved out for retreat, for rest. Grace blinked at it,… Continue reading Chapter 9: Where the Steam Clings
The Collective The room settled into a taut hush, like the whole place was holding its breath. Even the old coffee pot gave up with a final sputtering sigh, its last drip hitting the burner like a heartbeat too late. Grace stood by the counter, mug in hand. She lifted it to her lips, but paused, her nostrils flared faintly,… Continue reading Chapter 8: When the Body Remembers First
The Collective Oakley’s voice faded from the phone, tinny and final. Grace crossed her arms, mouth set in a line that could cut glass. She didn’t argue. She wanted to. God, she wanted to. She had objections lined up in mental bullet points. Beginning with her total lack of medical training and ending with the part where she was about… Continue reading Chapter 6 : Driving The Rougarou
The Collective Grace turned off the ignition and the hum of the engine died, swallowed by the dense hush of Salt Row. Gravel crunched under her boots as she stepped out. The warehouse loomed, massive and rust creased. Its corrugated walls are the color of old blood and wet bone. Above, the faded sign blinked in the dark like a… Continue reading Chapter 7: Almost Renovated
The Collective The bedroom door locked with a click that could have doubled as punctuation. “Detective Knight, my ass,” Grace muttered, too loud to be accidental. “Storming in here like some self-righteous banshee in a discount trench coat.” She yanked Nicola’s leather jacket from her shoulders and let it collapse to the floor like it had insulted her integrity. “Accusing… Continue reading Chapter 5: The Last Knight
The Collective The kitchen smelled wrong. Not rot, not yet. But something sharper. Disinfectant, maybe. Citrus and bleach layered over something coppery and faintly sweet. Like the air had been scrubbed too hard to hide what wouldn’t wash away. Nicola stepped inside, bootprints joining the muddy constellation already tracked across the tile. She noted the evidence markers. One perched near… Continue reading Chapter 4: Memory in the Walls
The Collective The road bent like a question mark through cane fields and waterlogged earth, and Nicola let the silence settle heavy across her shoulders. She kept the windows down. The Honda’s engine hummed low, a background drone beneath the rasp of tires on broken asphalt and the insect chorus sawing at the dusk. Her fingers drummed once against the… Continue reading Chapter 3: To Grandmother’s House
The Collective Salt Row had always been more ghost town than neighborhood. A stretch of old shrimping warehouses slouched along the bayou, rusting into the landscape, their broken windows staring blankly at the water. Most had been picked clean for copper and left to rot. Nicola and her wife Morgan had been the only ones foolish or hopeful enough to… Continue reading Chapter 2: Ghosts in the Floorboards
