Tom shakes his head. "This lake seems to like devouring little girls."
"It devours everything," I say. I really am feeling courage now. Tom has walked further up the dock, his feet echoing in soft splashes on the planks. "Tom," I say. "I lied to you earlier."
He pauses and looks back at me, puzzled.
"I...It wasn't a girl I knew who died," I begin. "It was Gerald, the boy in the house across from here." Tom's face shifts into a worried mask of understanding, though I am quick to reply to it. "Not a friend like that, just a good friend. My best friend." My voice is catching in my throat. "It's this lake, it's...She was so jealous. She grabbed his ankle and pulled him in when he was fooling around, balancing on the stern of the boat. Gerald was a strong swimmer, but she..."
Annabelle, that was her name. It was the one I had given her, all those years ago. She is staring at me now, through me, her milky white eyes not full of hatred as I had suspected, but consumed with mourning. It makes my speech halt, the stammer in my breath collapse. I look up to see that Tom is further out on the deck, only half listening to me, the tragedy I am telling him fading in the light of understanding. He is sympathetic, but he also aloof from it. He has never lived inside of its terror.
A mist collects on the black lake.
I turn to Annabelle, I want to ask her 'Why?'. Why did she need to destroy the only friend I had in all the universe?
But Annabelle smiles at me, her teeth green with moss, a shrunken mouth that betrays the skull beneath it. She approaches me and takes my hand in hers. It is a slimy grip, algae and small fish inside of her flesh.
I blink back tears. I am still holding her hand when I look out on the deck, searching for Tom.
Tom. And Gerald. And now me. Before the story even began, there was Annabelle. The mist rolls blackly over us all.
Contributors
Angel
Angel is a middle-aged librarian living in Memphis with her husband, kids and cat. She drives past Old Baptist Hospital every day.
Michelle Belanger
Michelle has been writing professionally for more than fifteen years and is best known for her non-fiction works on vampires and the occult. When she is not writing, Michelle models, writes music, and appears as the guest vocalist for Chicago-based URN. The founder of House Kheperu, she resides in Northeast Ohio with two cats and a variable number of Kheprians. More about Michelle and her various ongoing projects can be found at her official site: www.michellebelanger.com.
Sara Bell
Sara Bell is the author of two gay male, romantic suspense novels, both available on the Internet. Her first novel, The Magic in Your Touch, was voted Best Gay Male Story of 2003 by the readers at Literotica.com. In addition to this, Ms. Bell has one professional sale to her credit, a paranormal romantic serial with Keepitcoming.net, as well as a Yahoo group of just over thirteen-hundred members where readers can discuss her stories. Ms. Bell lives with her husband and two daughters in Alabama, where she is hard at work on her third novel.
Steve Berman
Steve Berman may not own a Ouija board but that does not mean he's not familiar with them. Or writing fiction. He has published over fifty short stories and articles, most recently in The Big Book of Erotic Ghost Stories (Venus) and The Faery Reel (Viking Press). His story collection, Trysts, contains more queer and weird work. He has been nominated four times for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. He currently lives in New Jersey.
Erastes
Erastes lives in London and freely admits he spends too much time on his PC. When he can be dragged, kicking and screaming persuaded away from it he likes classical music, noisy clubs, walks by the Thames and cheese. Not necessarily in that order. He likes his smut to be like his men, full of life, a little edgy and as literary as possible without being too wordy. He believes in the GDM, tries to base his dubious morality on Heinlein's "Intermissions," and has an iguana called Neville.
Fabiano Fabris
Fab grew up with and is influenced by the classics in art, music, literature.. While living in Italy, Fab discovered computer art, not reworking photographs with a computer, but rather using a three dimensional computer figure to create the entire image with a computer. These models must be posed, given a skin, an expression, lighting added to create a mood.
Fab experimented for several years before finding a style that suited him. Currently, the focus of his work is entirely on the male body which he believes to be a living work of art. http://www.penguinbar.com/
Nicholas Alexander Hayes
Nicholas Alexander Hayes is currently an MFA student in writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His writing has appeared in Suspect Thoughts, Velvet Mafia, Clean Sheets, and Popmatters. When not in class or at the computer he works in the service industry.
M. Jones
Editor and creator of Bloodletters, M. Jones has also been published in Dark Fire Fiction, Darkfiction.org, Bleeding Sky, Waywardbooks.com, Dreampassage.com, MAS-Zine and several other ezines. The author's main website can be found here: http://authormjones.cjb.net . The site also has a number of updates and a weblog tracking new works by M. Jones and updates to Bloodletters.
S.K. Jovovich
Sara lives in the Midwest and has always enjoyed writing. She began to write dark stories as soon as she could hold a pencil, though her very first tale might have been in crayon after watching the Exorcist. Sara endeavors to constantly challenge herself and push the boundaries of her writing. You can write to her at [email protected].
Rob Knight
Writer, editor, animal lover and avid reader of erotic fiction, Rob was pleased to be asked to work with Torquere Press again, especially on the Monsters and Myths Anthologies, which once again gave him a chance to explore the strange and visceral, that animal magnetism. Rob enjoys travel, pets, bad B movies, and men kissing.
Tammy-Lee
Tammy Lee has been creating m/m comics and illustrations since 1999. She is a member of UmbrellaStudios.com. You can find her individual works at LaLeeLoo.com.
Sean Michael
Often referred to as "Space Cowboy" and "Gangsta of Love" while still striving for the moniker of "Maurice," Sean Michael spends his days surfing, smutting, organizing his immense gourd collection and fantasizing about one day retiring on a small secluded island peopled entirely by horseshoe crabs. A long-time writer of complicated haiku, currently Sean is attempting to learn the advanced arts of plate spinning and soap carving sex toys. Barring any of that? He'll stick with writing his stories, thanks, and rubbing pretty bodies together to see if they spark
T. J. Pennington
T. J. Pennington currently inhabits an ultra-conservative suburb in New England. He would desperately like to escape to someplace where night life does not terminate at nine at night--particularly since he is, in fact, a night owl. Pennington savours fast music, spicy food and good books, in reverse order. He believes in magic, mathematics and mystery, and prefers his men and his erotica to be passionate, intense, witty and imaginative.
AM Riley
AM is a film editor and amateur poet. AM began writing short stories and erotica via fanfiction a couple of years ago and loves to play with the moral ambiguity of demons and vampires, and the rules of the culture to which AM belongs.
Jean Roberta
Jean Roberta teaches English at a Canadian prairie university, has a side-interest in history, and writes in several genres. She has erotic stories in "Best Lesbian Erotica 2005" and "Best Women's Erotica 2005." Her review/editorial column, "In My Jeans," is on the website "Blue Food" (www.bluefood.cc).
Cindy Rosenthal
Cindy lives in Massachusetts with one tall roommate, one large cat, and a lot of books. She believes music soothes the savage beast but she tends to have the TV on in the other room to listen to while she writes. "The Black Violin" is her second story for Torquere Press.
Lawrence Schimel
Lawrence Schimel (b. 1971, New York) is a full-time author and anthologist,
who's published over 60 books, including THE DRAG QUEEN OF ELFLAND, HIS TONGUE, SWITCH HITTERS, KOSHER MEAT, and VACATION IN IBIZA, among others. His PoMoSEXUALS: CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT GENDER AND SEXUALITY (with Carol Queen) won a Lambda Literary Award and his titles have also been finalists for the Firecracker Alternative Book Award, Small Press Book Award, and Spectrum Award. His work has been widely anthologized. His writings have been published abroad in numerous translations, including Basque, Croatian, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Russian, and Swedish. He currently lives in Madrid, Spain.
James Souter
James Souter has been writing short stories for almost 20 years, and has been writing gay erotica for the last ten. James also writes non-fiction, and spends a great deal of time with crafty things such as knitting, cooking, and occasionally in such things as working jobs out in the real world.
Julia Talbot
Julia Talbot resides in the Southwest of the United States with her dog, several houseplants, and has not quit her day job. She has a penchant for blank books, gay porn, and big, ugly hats. She can most often be found in coffee shops and restaurants, scribbling in her notebook and entertaining other diners with her mutterings. Julia cut her reading and writing teeth on purple-prosed romance novels, and as a result decided that boys were much more interesting with boys. Intense study of her subject and as much firsthand research as possible figure heavily in her writing adventures.
BA Tortuga
B. A. Tortuga enjoys indulging in the shallow side of life, with hobbies that include collecting margarita recipes, hot tub dips, and ogling hot guys at the beach. A connoisseur of the perverse and esoteric, BA's days are spent among dusty tomes of ancient knowledge, or, conversely, surfing porn sites in the name of research. Mixing the natural born southern propensity for sarcasm and the environmental western straight-shooting sensibility, BA manages to produce mainstream fiction, literary erotica, and fine works of pure, unadulterated smut. BA's latest projects include ongoing work on a novel set in the old west.
Atta Vazzy
Atta Vazzy is trapped in a world of faeries and fantasies, or Austin, Texas, whichever seems most real at the time. Her artwork can be found in the jarheads novels, Mysterious Ways, and her website: http://www.glasscatstudios.com
Angela Weaver
Angela Weaver graduated with an MFA in playwriting from the University of California, San Diego and is currently employed as a fine and performing arts librarian.
Owen Wolfe
A lover of beauty, of colors, of fantasy, of felines, of vampires, of things that go bump in the night, of wolves, of dreams, of the written word, especially those that contain wonderfully steamy sexuality. Owen is two people inhabiting one mind. Who are in love with love in all its forms.
KT Zheng
KT Zheng has written and illustrated many comics under the pen name of Pluto, but has maintained an interest in writing fiction as well. After much hemming and hawing, Zheng decided to leap without looking and has at last, taken the few first steps towards dreams of getting published.
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