Peach Tree Grove

      A hand against the sheet and the glow of a lamp on the dresser. There were sparkles on her skin. She remembered realizing it with an absent kind of wonder, but being fully absorbed in it anyway, turning her hand this way and that to catch the shimmer of the minuscule flecks of mineral that hinted at themselves on her palm.      The door opened.      "Hi Mom!"     "It's time for bed sweetie."     She obediently wriggled herself under the covers and waited with wide eyes for her mother to come and turn out the lights. As soon as her adult came close enough she stuck out her hands and waved them in her mother's face.      "Mommy look, my hands are sparkly!"      Her mother squinted, smiling. "What do you mean honey?"     "They're sparkly!" She didn't know any other way to say it.      Her mother laughed and squeezed the tiny hands in hers before kissing her daughter...

      He burst out of the water with a gasp, liquid dribbling from his mouth as he coughed and struggled to stay afloat. His hands hit stone and he sucked in cool, life-giving air with all his might as he dragged himself out of the water and onto the damp, smooth stone of her inner cave. He pulled himself to his feet and touched his stinging, deeply aching side gingerly. His tongue slid across his upper lip and he tasted blood in the saltwater. So that blow to the face had done something.      In front of him sat a low table under the same kind of wooden gateway that lead to the Japanese Shinto temples above, old and unpainted. A bottle of sake and little cups sat on top of it, along with a clean and dry human skull. A myriad of shimmeringly embroidered and patterned cushions were spread out behind  it, and the tilted wheels of tattered paper parasols were scattered around the scene. The rest of the cave was cold, bare, and wet.      He ...

  Rex could feel the death in the dirt.  It wasn’t cemetery death, cemetery death was neat and ordered. Bones that belonged to the same bodies were buried together in chosen plots, in their own special places, arranged the same way they’d been arranged in life.  The bones here weren’t like that, they hadn't been cared for. They 'd been jumbled up and mixed together and then rattled carelessly down into the ground like trash. And it wasn't just the bones here. He had always been able to feel the bones, to feel the last ruins of living bodies under the soil. He'd always been able to feel that. The blood was new. And dark.  There was anger in the blood, wrongness, a rage that made it cling. And it bubbled . He could feel it coming up from the earth, screaming through his veins, boiling through his blood and into his brain in a raging, roiling blackness roaring injustice- He gasped as his knees hit the dirt.  He breathed in in deep, heaving gulps and pushed himself ...