Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

She gave herself to the lens as if she knew she wouldn’t last, and so entrusted it with a disproportionate share of her being.

The moon came up, and since it was filtered by dust it took a color between red and pink, like the tissue of a lung or some other tender organ stretched postmortem before a candle.

I think they took my soul outta me and I’m goin to hell no matter what I do. So I might as well kill em.”

wound itself. They had never seen a hand try to grow back from a stump before. They showed him the little fingers, like an infant’s fingers with their tiny nails, sprouting from her wrist. An X-ray revealed fine hand-bones knitting at the end of the radius. She pushed her IV needles out, too. The punctures kept closing up.

Men who want revenge have no dignity. They have already died and sold everything.