Lauren Everdell
Bio
Writer. Chronic sickie. Part-time gorgon. Probably thinking about cyborgs right now.
Website: https://ubiquitousbooks.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scrawlauren/
bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/scrawlauren.bsky.social
Stories (35)
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Echo
Place my feet in his footprints; whole body fitting within the dusky shield of his shadow like my limp, wimpering heart would fit in the palm of his hand. Walk his line, and, when he talks, whisper back nothing but his own words—Hello? Is someone there—once upon a time, there was a girl.
By Lauren Everdell6 months ago in Poets
Between Victoria and Seven Sisters You Were Perfect. Runner-Up in You Were Never Really Here Challenge. Content Warning.
Five forty-five on a summer Wednesday at Victoria station, and I’m curious if closing my eyes and letting the sweating gyre of heat exhaustion drift me down onto the third rail counts as death by my own hand. Until a burst of diesel air and keening brakes tells me I’m still alive.
By Lauren Everdell7 months ago in Fiction
Spell to Summon a Lost Love. Top Story - January 2025.
Setting up the ritual, she holds fear at bay with her bare hands; focused on their movements, she marks the circle. Placing the rose quartz—big as her restless heart, ragged pink-veined facets thirsty for the light of a fattening barley moon—on the centre sigil. Calling her power to set the fires pirouetting in their bowls of sacred oil at the cardinal points, she draws in her breath and almost brings the fear with it—will he be there, as he promised—until she curls her toes into the moss-bound grass and feels the hum of the words as she passes the incantation over her tongue and between her lips. Words she's waited half a lifetime to speak. Words that can finally call his world back to hers.
By Lauren Everdell12 months ago in Fiction
Look the Sheepdog in the Eye. Runner-Up in Leave the Light On Challenge.
Perhaps the simplest place to keep a secret is in plain sight. If the truth is something no sane man wants to know. So Asta walks easily among the Londoners swirling like day-old confetti through the grey evening light beside the Thames. Eyes glide from her, faces turn aside. Who among the sheep, after all, can look the sheepdog in the eye?
By Lauren Everdellabout a year ago in Fiction
Creature
When it came to talking about it, everything about that night had been molten gold in a way Henry forever struggled to explain. Proud man of science—a medical student—any description of what felt at the time akin to nothing so much as magic evaded the firm grasp of his analytical mind. The light glazing Vivienne’s hair, and the honeyed gleam of her eyes. The malt of beer in the air, and on Vivienne’s breath when she laughed. Arthur, with his golden skin and golden spirit. Even the dull roar of life pouring from the other students cramming the pub, as if Henry could see the spark of primordial fire at the core of each one of them.
By Lauren Everdellabout a year ago in Fiction
Remember. Top Story - September 2024.
Stepping from the shower, swathing your soft folds in the towel warm from the rack, she’s there in the tiny pinkness of feet through the steam, toes wiggling, head bowed over her apple belly and her own yellow towel never wrapped; always hooked cape-like by the hood on the damp head, little bear ears perked and no idea yet what nakedness is, not weighted with the care of it, and when you go before the mirror—in the second before you look—you believe with all the tired songbird in your chest there’ll be no reflection, then laugh at yourself: you never feared being undead, but the first blink shows you smooth, dark brows and unclouded eyes, and the silence becomes everything; the hunting silence like the moment before the killing strike of an owl when something—not you—already knows you will soon die, and it’s not until the second blink shows you colourless hair and deep lines around faded lips that held breath can whistle free between teeth the colour of silver birch bark—happy birthday, Dear—in the bedroom she lays out your history while you shrug into your cardigan; jeans with shredded knees and shit-kicker boots, and that time you wore nothing but dungarees: layers and layers of clothes like the shed leaves of a tree, and on the terrace, there again, she lies in your lifetime of summer suns, straw hat shading her shade of your face, while you walk among wildflowers she planted with slender, clever fingers for these your fading, golden years, and breathe the air, and remember they are the ghosts, not you, not yet.
By Lauren Everdellabout a year ago in Poets
With Love. Top Story - February 2024.
Dear Idiot, This is why people have filing systems. Stuffing me in an unread book was a bad move. Do you even read by the way? Judging by the state of my neighbours I’m thinking not. Pages pristine, covers an inch deep in dust. You’re never going to find me.
By Lauren Everdell2 years ago in Fiction
The Wind. Honorable Mention in Instructions for Disappearing Challenge.
She used to think she hated the wind. The way the sound of it scoured the back of her mind like sand as she tried to dream. Filling her sleep with sighing. Shifting the tide of her blood until it slopped and foamed like sea spume inside her.
By Lauren Everdell2 years ago in Poets
