Between Two Fires

by Christopher Buehlman

“Do you really want to go back up there?” Thomas asked. The man sat down in the grass and looked bewildered. “I don’t know,” he said. “But don’t you see? This is the one thing I can do as well as anyone else. I can’t plow. I can’t build. But I can suffer. God wants suffering now.” The priest opened his mouth to contradict the man, but nothing came out. “Shit,” Thomas said. And then he helped the dwarf back up the ladder and tied him fast to the cross.

How was she to believe man was anything special when he looked so much like any other animal in death? He was just a rained-on, ruined carcass, as if he had never kissed her, as if he had never danced.

Its beauty crushed something inside Delphine and made nectar of it.

he was murdered and betrayed by those he loved, and then made to murder and betray them, then desecrate them, cannibalize them, regurgitate them. Nothing was left out.