Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell

by Nathan Ballingrud

Dishes were strewn around the counter space and piled in the sink, where an odor exuded from a stack of plates like an evil intelligence.

Overhead, a heavy layer of stars, like a crust of salt on Heaven’s hull.

Alice Cobb was beautiful, as though she had just stepped out of a sonnet.

“Let us see how much of your blood I have to spill before He decides to make Himself known to me.” In fact he spilled all of it, and God remained absent.