I have started a substack. https://lauranettles.substack.com/
I've decided to share the post I made for it today here as well. Here we go!!!
A Chill Is In The Air...
How hoarifying.
The air is frigid here in Ontario Canada. Snow has touched down and salt litters the sidewalks. The season for winter horror is upon us. To commemorate such an auspicious occasion, I have decided to write a flash piece.
***
Hoarfrost Daughter
By Laura Nettles
Temperatures plummet, moisture heavy in the thick air. Hoarfrost coats the trees, bare branches armed with frozen daggers poised for attack. Prophetic conditions for the night of my birth. I will need to be like the hoarfrost if I am to survive.
“It’s a girl,” the midwife whispers to my mother. “What do you want me to do?”
“Give her here,” Mother demands, shaking arms outstretched.
The tent flap opens, cold air sucking out the heat and smell of afterbirth contained in the dwelling of furs. The man’s expression is enough to halt the midwife. She turns to my father, offering me to his cruel intentions.
“You promised me a son.” His voice is more frigid than the weather. “Not this abomination.”
He turns, taking me with him. The last image I see of Mother is her sweat slicked horrified expression, fiery hair a tangled halo around her. Her screams of protest ring in my new ears, echoing deep in my mind.
Cold seeps into my flexible bones as I’m burred in a snow drift, wet powder is packed over my face cutting off the oxygen I have only just begun to breathe. I’m swallowed by darkness once again, but this time not of a comforting womb of heat, water and blood. I’m in a womb of ice and transformation.
My stiffening joints sooth and shift. Teeth sharpen with the bite of winter. Limbs elongate, gaining the strength of my hatred towards my father. Skin hardens and gains the texture of frost.
By the light of the moon, I emerge from my second birth. Father’s blood will be my third.
***
The first story I ever had published was about Jack Frost in Shiver: A Chilling Horror Anthology. Good times. It’s been almost two years since then and I’ve learned a lot. Feels nice to return to the winter setting of my publication birth.
Might expand on this story later, we shall see.
May your fiction be spooky and your life joyous,
Laura Nettles