Showing results by narrator "Elizabeth Bedlam" in All Categories

"Eve looked out the window. She wondered, why did she continue to come here? All the while her doctor drolled on and on about her goals for the week. Her depression lingered over her entire life, like a swarm of flies. Constantly ticking and buzzing in her ears, crawling over her skin, biting her where she couldn’t reach. She thought once she stopped taking chemical medication and moved on to talk therapy things would improve, so far they remained about the same. She just had more homework assignments"...

A woman comes to terms with the human condition.

After a year and half of marriage Zillah spends her day alone in the once great hall of her lord husband. Her family cut off contact fearing Zillah had cursed them with the pox. The village felt Zillah was as mad as her husband. And maybe she was. Instead of choosing to watch her husband die before her, she chooses to die with him. In an opium haze she infects herself with his affliction and the two live the last of their days in a mad love dream of laudanum, opium, mercury, sex, and disease.

"Cat Scratch Fever": Mia’s new girlfriend Alice, is plagued by an intense feminine itch, a burn...then erupting boils. Alice insists she’ll be fine. The next day she’s not returning Mia’s phone calls, she doesn’t answer the door. Mia finds her in the bathtub and she can’t even take in the ghastly sight. Alice’s limp corpse, the blood, the hack job, the steak knife...Mia doesn’t know what happened. Then she feels an itch...A deep itch that no medication or finger or sex can scratch...Suddenly that shiny pair of scissors has a whole new use.

After spending a life wandering around, confused, anxious, and alone, Terra, a florist, acquires a series of six esoteric self-help discs that are designed to help those struggling to ascend to their higher selves from her sister’s yard sale.

The twin princesses Oda and Honey are as different as night and day. Oda is a child of the dark, obsessed with cruelty and death. Honey is as sweet as her name, filled with goodwill and compassion. It is therefore a remarkably revolting twist of fate when the royal astrologer orders Oda to be married to the mild-mannered King Armand, while Honey is betrothed to King Barbus of Gutgirt, the most brutal man in the world, who tears peasants apart with his bare hands and keeps his murdered brides’ bodies on display in his own bloody chamber.

A novella exploring deceptive appearances.

Doomed romance. Sadness. Isolation. Sudden death. Botched abortion. Loneliness. Unanswered questions. Secret twin sisters. Promiscuous sex. Drug abuse. Hannah had driven downtown last Thursday to have an abortion. The procedure was illegal unless approved by a woman’s doctor. Hannah and Jude had just been careless. Now no one has heard from Hannah in a week.... Her boyfriend, Jude, proceeds to spiral down into a depression of drinking, drug use, and unanswered questions when he learns of her death. He’s not sure if he can or wants to crawl out the other side.

A teenage girl meets Satan in the form of a dog. Mild acts of mayhem ensue.

Betsey is a dominatrix. She just bought a beautiful old fixer-upper Victorian house. The front rooms will be turned into an adult bookstore. The back rooms are perfect for caning men and calling them pathetic little boys. Now, if only the rest of her life were so simple. Betsey had a thing for her friend Lane, a local coffin maker. Lane seemed to have a thing for Betsey. But against his better judgment, he was dating Sarah, a Catholic school teacher who hated Betsey more than anything. Sarah is determined to stop Betsey’s shop from opening. Betsey is not about to let that happen.

The Sisters Fen, Mary and Rose, live alone in their family's old estate, Small Stone. They have a meager income that comes from royalties on their father's films. After three attempts, their father succeeds in killing himself, leaving the girls to fend off the outside world alone. When their house catches on fire after an unfortunate gardening accident, it’s up to the older sister, Mary, to find the money to fix the burnt roof. Mary decides to revive their father’s pornography business.

At 17 Haley is involved in a mule riding accident in the Grand Canyon. While recovering in the hospital she befriends her dying roommate, Ruby Redhook. Ruby is a transvestite punk hooker. Before she was Ruby Redhook she was a man, and a Marine. During her tour of duty her legs were blown off. After that she decided life was too short and embraced whom she was meant to be. When Ruby succumbs to her illness she begins haunting Haley’s legs. Haley has no choice but to obey her possessed limbs. Soon her legs start strutting around, taking her to unseemly parts of town.