AmethystGreye

No maid would come; no footman, or royal retainer would rap on her door, asking after her needs, or pleading with her to make haste, lest she missed the beginning of some event on her schedule; she knew, because none of them would be willing to do so without a command from on high, and no one there cared enough—at best, and to all appearances—about her to issue such a decree. Instead, NAME, NAME, NAME, NAME was left on her own to dress herself. She fingered a splinter of hair the color of coppers forgotten and left to the dust, the color of cherry wood riddled with rot. “Like a frog’s sunburned underbelly,” she s

Chapter One: The stench slams into Jules and me with all the subtlety of a semi; an olfactory mosh pit of nicotine, stale beer, and layers of dried on sweat triggering our gag reflexes, and possibly curls the leaves off the tree against whose roots we sit. Murphy, Staunton’s Official Drunk, saunters close with uncharacteristic confidence a full minute later. Murphy’s the kind of guy who means well but seems naturally resistant to a functional existence. Once, when our middle school collected aluminum cans to help kick off of our new recycling initiative, Murph brought in enough tin cans to pave the way to hell if his good intenti