The Knight and the Butcherbird

by Alix E. Harrow

I stood among them like a tumor at a birthday party: silent, uninvited. Likely fatal.

they say demons are spirits freed from hell by the fifth trumpet, along with cancer and microplastics, which slink into people’s souls and change them into monsters.

she must have loved me, after all. As I loved May, as Sir John loved his wife, as God loved the world: with blood on our hands.

Sir John said, “Fuck you, my love,” and did not move.