The Twisted Ones

by T. Kingfisher

Bongo got a cheeseburger, which made him think that he was in heaven. (It seems very unlikely that my vet will ever read this, but just in case, this was highly unusual and I do not actually feed him scraps from the table on a regular basis.)

The underside of the porch roof was painted pale blue. “Haint blue,” they call it. The theory is that if a ghost comes up to the door, it’ll look up and see the blue ceiling and think it’s the sky, and drift up into it. I don’t know how that’s supposed to work. But I’ve also heard that it’s supposed to fool wasps the same way, so maybe wasps and ghosts are getting muddled up there. You don’t want either nesting in the porch, anyhow.

It wasn’t from outside me. It was just the unpleasant little voice that pops up in the middle of the night to remind you about the stupid thing you did in high school, or to whisper that maybe there’s a monster under the bed.

Cotgrave had seen changelings in Wales? Well, I’d never been, but it seemed like the sort of place you’d get them. Perhaps Welsh fairies stole children and confiscated their vowels.

“Shit, what am I, the monster whisperer?”