cephiedvariable:

Hey! I have a story out this month in Apex Magazine! I’m really proud of this one, which I actually had the chance to workshop with my favourite author, Samuel R. Delany, while I was at Clarion. 

If you like my work, please check this out and consider leaving a comment, buying the issue or simply re-blogging this post to support my work. Thanks~ <3

Lazarus & The Amazing Kid Phoenix / Interview With The Author

My skin was still charred when I first woke up. I raised my hands above my head and watched as it bubbled and leaked, as it grew pink — then brown — between the charcoal scabs. By nightfall I was covered in an armor of abscess. I spent six hours popping yellowed sacks of pus to reveal my new skin, baby-soft and unmarked.

“What do you remember?” the Old Man asked me when I could speak. My tongue was still numb from blistering, my eyes hazy and cheeks raw from where the skin had sloughed off in rubbery sheets. I didn’t remember, I tried to say. It wasn’t true — I saw glimpses of it in short, painful bursts. Tiny, knife-shaped headaches that ground through my skull like diamond. I remembered some ugly words and the grate of a lighter being clicked to life over and over again. I remembered tripping over my shoelaces and hearing a song somewhere in the distance, a hard grind of sax and bass. Funk was a false promise of kindness. Will it go ‘round in circles? Billy Preston was asking me. Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?

“I burned,” I told him. “They freaking burned me. I died burning.”

“A lot of things die burning,” Old Man Gasper said. “But not you.”

I know that if you’re following me, you probably know Jennifer for her fannish work, and I reiterate that her original work is jolly bloody good. So glad to see this in Apex.