This week for Short Tuesday I left Nightmare Magazine aside and returned to Tor.com once again to read “These Deathless Bones” by Cassandra Khaw. You can read the short story here…

This short story details the relationship between a witch queen and her maniacal young stepson. The piece has evocative, beautiful writing and definitely inspires a sense of dread.

Bones pour from every crack in the walls and windows. Lengths of rodent ulna. A blanket of hedgehog spines, undulating down the tapestries. Vertebrae, joined even in death, slithering like snakes. The molars from his first kill, the fragments of its skull. Everywhere, bones, clacking their way across the curlicued tiles.

It has a definite sense that this is the start of a larger work of fantasy fiction, where we are being introduced to crucial characters—this sentiment is echoed by many of the commenters on the story, who wonder if there will be a forthcoming piece featuring more of the main character. I don’t exactly count that as a good thing, though, since the story feels incomplete. Plot events happen, but not in any sort of way that comes together into a cohesive, satisfying story—we’re just left as readers wondering if there’s more. Can you count something as a short story if all we are given is set up, an event, and some back story? The whole thing is more like a scene than an actual story.

So while I did enjoy the writing here, I ultimately felt that this story wasn’t very successful.

A small aside—if you haven’t seen the book trailer for Specter yet, check it out! Specter debuts July 7th, and the paperback and ebook are available for preorder at all major retailers and from Hidden Bower Press.