The Hounding

by Xenobe Purvis

The girls, the infernal heat, a fresh-dead body.

Everyone knew that marriage was like laundering—it made the unclean clean.

Girls—normal human girls—people could contend with; they were weak and small. And dogs too could be trained. But girls who became dogs, or who let the world believe they were dogs, were either powerful or mad: both monstrous possibilities.