My Darling Dreadful Thing

by Johanna van Veen

Spirits like her are not drawn to the happy and carefree; they want salt, be it blood or be it tears.

In the dark, her eyes sometimes flash green like that of a cat or fox. At other times, she doesn’t have eyes at all, just skin growing over the place where her empty sockets should be.

The ones she liked best were a kind of cheap red lollipop that splintered and sharpened the more you sucked on it, cutting the gums and tongue. I suppose that was why she liked them so much: she relished the taste of the cheap sugar mixed with the tang of blood.