I am currently submitting short stories. I will update this page if and when submissions are accepted and become available to read.
Read a snippet:
[CW: blood, animal/wildlife death]
We gave up Sigrid when she was 14 months old. She had just started talking, although I’d had the feeling she’d understood us for months already. Her first word was snø, which was her favorite thing to watch and her favorite thing to play in. We had to keep a close eye on her because she was prone to sprinting outside shoeless and even shirtless to lay in the snow, roll around, and throw handfuls into the air over her head.
We didn’t give her up because we didn’t love her. By the heavens, did we love her. We gave her up because we were afraid.
One night, I read to her. It was one of her favorites, a picture book about a young child, lost in the woods, who outsmarts the vile wolf which lurks in the shadows. She was listening intently, not looking at me but watching the snow outside drift down, unhurried. We finished the story and I closed the book softly. “Time for bed, my darling.” And she was. Skatten min. My darling.
Teeth brushed, pappa kissed good night, snow still falling, we opened the door to her bedroom. There, curled upon the bed like a pet, was a wolf.
No, not a wolf. The wolf.
“Snø!” Sigrid trilled, reaching out a hand. The wolf lunged, and all that followed was blood and screaming.
I yanked her from the room, barely managing to snap the door shut between us and the creature. “Magnus!” He burst into the hallway and his eyes widened at the sight of blood. He took her and compressed the fresh wound on her hand.
I ran to the locked closet and grabbed my rifle. Again I opened the door, but this time I was ready. Magnus was on the phone with the hospital when I fired. The wolf lay in a heap on the floor. Blood mixed together and pooled.
During Sigrid’s recovery, we strove to go back to normal. But we were too afraid, of her and for her. The first time we’d seen her power, a butterfly had appeared, and we had exclaimed at the blessing. Our daughter! Skatten min, who could pull beautiful things from a page with her vibrant imagination.
Now, we saw it was more than that, and we couldn’t keep her safe.