The Monster of Elendhaven

by Jennifer Giesbrecht

One day he slipped on a patch of ice. His ankle turned in the wrong direction and plunged him off a roof like a crow with a clipped wing. The ground swallowed him up, and the crunch of his neck against rock reverberated through every joint in his spine. It shuddered through his limbs and popped out the tips of his fingers and toes, a tiny earthquake that made ruin of his bones. He lay absolutely still for ten minutes, and then he stood up and wrenched his skull back into place. “Well,” he said aloud. “That was fucked up.”

The sea battered the cliff like a rabid animal, frothing salt spittle around dark stone teeth.

Johann had to clutch a hand to his throat to keep the flash of affection that rocked through him caged in his esophagus where it belonged. Oh, Florian was a pretty little thing. Too pretty, too aware of the length of his eyelashes and the feminine tilt of his jawline. No one would expect that boyish half smile, that nervous wringing of the wrist, to conceal a monster. Monster, Monster, Monster, Johann said to himself, the first half a kiss, the second a hiss.

Thin ice isn’t a problem for the sea; it’s a problem for the blind idiot who steps out on it. The fool who breaks it gets sucked under; the ice, it mends.