Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories

by GennaRose Nethercott

(Do not engage with staff members without official lapel pins. They are likely a Disgraced staff member. Disgraced staff members spent too much time in the Eternal Staircase and were asked to leave. They keep returning anyway. We don’t know how to get rid of them. They are not helpful.)

Some people think the Eternal Staircase leads down to hell. Officially, this has been neither confirmed nor denied.

All highways lead to the Eternal Staircase if the Eternal Staircase wants you. Come, you who were born with the Eternal Staircase rocking you, a pull so strong it pulsed beside your own small heartbeat. Come into the blue-black light. Come closer. Walk with us. We only offer this invitation out of politeness. In truth, the Eternal Staircase chooses who it swallows. And if called—you will come.

And we also know that being a sixth-grade girl doesn’t mean you can’t have a terrible sort of power. We know all about power.

Son, said the witch, when you were young you moved swiftly and untethered. It pains me to see you so bound. If you want, I can free you from this. And the witch pulled a pair of silver shears from his sack, which he gave to the Thread Boy.

That night, I dream that I am pulling off my fingernails and giving them to you. You toss them into a lake, and as they sink to the bottom you make a wish on each one. For a moment, I am angry; shouldn’t I get to wish on my own nails? But then you turn and I see your face and forget about being angry. I give you the last of my fingernails.

Martian children no longer dream of running away from home, of joining a band of mimes and living in the forest. Instead, they dream of the next life.

War cannot be imagined, for those who have not witnessed it cannot truly fathom it, and for those who have borne witness—it is no longer an imagining. It is a boot print permanently crushed into the heart.

Humans can grow bored of all things, somehow. This is one of our great blessings. They say that art, that beauty, is what allows us to endure times of great horror—but no. It is our bottomless capacity for boredom.

one experiencing war cannot fathom that anyone else in history has ever existed in such a heightened state as this. Though we know, through logic and reason and literary documentation, that we are not, in fact, singular—the heart disagrees. No war could be more sanguinary. More storied. Yes, this is The War. The only war that ever has been or will be—because it is ours. In this way, war is like love.)

Maybe this is the difference between want and yearn: Want can be flipped on and off like a fuse. Want can be indulged in or set aside. Yearn is something else. You can hear it in the shape of the word. It sounds like the noise a person might make while lying on their stomach on the rim of a well, and reaching down into it, toward the dark. The little grunt they might emit as they reached and reached down into the belly of the well but never quite caught whatever it was they were reaching for.

I like the idea of girls with monstrous names.

When game is scarce, Velnips have been known to tear swaths of their own flesh free in order to cover the wounds of their mates or young. Larkspur can relate. We all feel beholden to those we love, even when they can give us nothing in return.

Flying, he decided, was a perfect mirror for heartache: a person is strapped into place with no control of where they’re headed, hurling too quickly through time, half nauseated, never quite sure when this awful, trapped feeling would end.

Aimee, I heard once that everybody dies twice—once when their heart stops, and again when their name is spoken for the last time. But there is another sort of dying in between, a crueler death: when those you love begin to make choices they would never make if you were there. If you were alive. Things that would be thoughtless, brutal even, but in your absence, become benign. Like giving away your clothes. Or removing the flurries of magazine clippings you carefully curated across your bedroom walls.

Here’s a secret about artists: most of them would rather be doing anything else on the planet than making their art. You find this knowledge comforting as you scrub the counters down even though they are already clean.

If you say Bloody Mary into the mirror three times, a woman will appear. She will call you by your name. She will offer you a coupon book. This will seem like a good deal. It is NOT a good deal. Repeat: It is NOT a good deal. Turn away. Don’t consider the two-liter Pepsi discount.

Fact: Ghosts say “Boo” because Abe Lincoln, the first ghost, tried to call out to his killer, Booth, but was stopped short by death.

“Why be a girl,” cooed Mister Pluvio, “when you could be a terror?”