Guess what else is out today? Shimmer #17! Which features stories by me, Helena Bell, A.C. Wise, Damien Angelica Walters, Lavie Tidhar, and a whole

mess of other awesome people.

You can read excerpts of each story at the link above. Here’s a bit of mine, “Love in the Time of Vivisection”.

A Setting

Stripped of its skin, muscle is very beautiful.

He brings a mirror and shows mine to me, my powerful, corded thighs and the harder stripes of red and white at my hips and the bars of my stomach. My arms. He has left my breasts untouched; those will be handled with exquisite care when most of the rest of me is done. I am a creature of glistening red. I am a wet ruby, run through with pale flaws. I move—I still can, a little—and I watch my gemstone body pull and flex.

He says he loves every part of me. As he pulls me slowly to pieces, he has an opportunity to acquaint himself with all of those component parts. This is both a gift that I give to him and a demonstration of himself to me, proof of what he says.

The ultimate test of any claim is whether one can hold to it when it is made as literal as possible. As literal as flesh. As bone. As the edge of a knife.