If it please the court, I'd like to offer the following into evidence. "Three Knives" is my first foray in to pure, straight-up, skin-crawling horror, and it's available now in On Spec Magazine. Here's a taste for free:
A padded envelope addressed to my five-year-old daughter Stacy sat outside our door when I brought her home from afterschool. There was no return address and worse, no postage. I waited to open it until after she’d gone to watch cartoons in her room.
The only thing in the package was an old straight razor. I dropped it on the kitchen table and my heart skipped a beat. The grip was soft and pitted from use. The blade was tarnished, and there were specks along its edge that may or may not have been rust.
I knew that razor as well as I knew each scar it had traced on my body. But it couldn’t be the one I remembered. When I was ten years old, I’d thrown that razor in the fire of my burning house. The blade might have survived, but not the wooden handle. I fell into a chair and watched it, as if it might somehow come to life. It took me longer than it should to call the cops.
