long-term leniency toward Kancho

Pearce Shea asked

“This is a barter economy. What do they trade here? ten horror stories in twenty words or less (or something like 20 words). what happens when you stare in the same place for hours without blinking?”

THREE THINGS Pearce? You get one hour regardless.

What do they trade here?

Murders, and songs about the murders.

Mosaics of babyteeth.

Hollow eggs, painted in the faces of friends with blood from your enemy’s wounds.

Disfigured Imperial busts by the tonne.

Ghostminer scrip from forgotten mass battles.

Bottles of brains.

The hair of lost children.

Tattooed eyes.

Infectious bites.

Coins cut out of executed men.

Gold acquired by three successive crimes.

Skulls of savants and mysterious beings.

Fragments of dull fictions recorded in gold knots by blind witches on ribbons taken from a corpses hair.

Ten horror stories in 20 words. I misread and did them in ten words each.

Pins behind your lovers ears release her face when pulled.

Tweezering freak hair, you feel it spiralled round every organ.

Underage girls bloodied clothes in your gym bag, no memory.

Glimpse your face on television every time you walk in.

You dampen internet signal, stop phones calling, effect deepens, widens.

Your name screamed from inside trunks of passing cars.

Successive mailed broken dolls predict future wounds. Untraceable.

Friends die when you sleep. Unstoppable. Your dreams do it.

True words in tabloid stories bleed when you read them.

Your anger crashes cars, planes, in radial waves around you.

What happens when you stare in the same place for hours without blinking?

Hour 1 – Shadows animate and beg you to stop.

2 – All fires within 10 leagues moan your name.

3 – Stone thins and hollows.

4 – Printed words form segmented insect forms and scurry away.

5 – You age d100 years.

6 – Time slows to a crawl.

7 – Solids become liquid, liquids gas, gas self-annihilates in screaming spectres.

8 – Quantum tunnelling reveals anti-self on other side.

9 – Nearby space fills with invisible watching gods.

10 – Time and space decay under your gaze releasing catastrophic zero-point energy.

11 – Space between living and dead, good and evil, meaning and void disappears.

11.5 – Loki, god of mischief Kancho’s you, resulting in blink. No-one ever reaches hour 12.