One Bad Night & Other Stories

In “Two Observers of the Slaughter Rites on Gannet Island," an anthropologist and his wife travel to the remote Gannet Island to observe a mysterious yearly ritual. In “My Lithopedia," a woman learns that she had an unborn twin sister, extracted as a stone baby during her late mother’s autopsy and decides to keep it. In “Lady Jawbone," Lilou is trapped inside a nightmarish phosphorous match factory, when a strange new arrival offers her a way out. In “A Necromancer’s Guide to Reconnecting with Your Ex," the ghost of Roxanne's rock-and-roll ex asks her to resurrect him, forcing her to confront what it means to truly let go. In “Red Tide," a woman running from her past finds work at a small-town aquarium, where she encounters the "spectre fish," a carnivorous mer-creature of local lore. In “47 Pineview Way," an anxious mother drops off her son at his first sleepover—but the next morning, the house where she left him has disappeared. In “A Meditation on the Existence of Certain Cutlery (There is No Spoon)," Commander Janna Field is on a covert mission to the lunar south pole—or is she? In “One Bad Night," Steck, an aging, lonely man becomes fixated on a sinister green parrot after it seems to predicts the death of his beloved dog