It’s been a month since Sally passed away. The house is quiet without her laughter, the pitter-patter of her feet. There is nothing, nothing, nothing—an emptiness filling every room and everyone.

The demon rears on its splayed legs and slaps its naked thighs, leering as it talks shit at you with its long, forked tongue. So listen, and listen good:

Kawawa looked down as soon as she saw the man across the corridor. “It’s just a glitch,” she chanted to herself the advisory from earlier. “Just a glitch.”

“I remember the very first time we made soul cakes, Nan,” I say. Nan dons an apron printed with a charm of miniature bees. Her kitchen is a hive of activity and the heart of the home. Always has been.

I was born with a tree branch on one side instead of an arm. The doctor diagnosed it as a kind of parasitic infection previously known only in plants; I was the first ever human carrier of a plant-parasitic disease.