Vanessa Gonzales
Bio
"Writing is the painting of the voice." - Voltaire
When I'm not writing, I take photos. You can see them here.
Stories (11)
Filter by community
A Trick of the Light
There’s a hole in the wall that no one else can see. It’s five or so feet off the ground, right in the middle of one of the wreaths of faded pink roses on the hallway wallpaper, and small enough that you could fit your finger in it. If you were foolish, that is, which Lou isn’t. She hasn’t lived this many years to go poking into a hole when she doesn’t know what’s on the other side. There could be rats, or razor blades, or something even worse.
By Vanessa Gonzales10 months ago in Fiction
The Next Big Thing
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. For ages after the turn of the millennium, the preferred pets were purse dogs, all fluff and eyes, yapping and snapping at people in the line at Starbucks. Hairless cats were en vogue for a bit, with yellow goblin stares and fuzzy sweaters to keep their naked skin warm. They could have fit in a purse too, but you know what cats are like.
By Vanessa Gonzales4 years ago in Fiction
The Best Gifts
I. Toby heard the creature before he ever saw it. He heard it late at night, rustling and shuffling and thumping under the floorboards in his room, too soft to make out clearly and too persistent to ignore. It stopped when he switched on the light, so he told himself that it was just his imagination running away with him (one of his mother's favorite phrases) and went back to sleep, after first making sure all the tasty bits of himself were covered by the blanket.
By Vanessa Gonzales4 years ago in Horror
Price of Admission
The traveling circus rolled into town like thunder on a sticky-hot summer night. Lydia and I were right there to meet it, all fizzy inside with excitement. We hadn't had a circus come in at least twenty years—maybe thirty. I guess word gets around on the entertainment circuit.
By Vanessa Gonzales4 years ago in Horror
Tea with the Moirai
It looks like the sort of shop you’d expect to see hidden away on a back street, tucked into a corner. The sort of shop that in a story, someone might visit on a wet afternoon, only to find the next day that it had vanished as if it had never been there.
By Vanessa Gonzales4 years ago in Fiction
Pirum
They said I blighted the pear tree. Well, I did. I meant to blight the whole damned orchard, not that it would have made much difference if I’d succeeded. The fruit those trees produce is as small and sour and mean as the nuns who grow it, and I wouldn’t give a pin for the perry it gets turned into.
By Vanessa Gonzales4 years ago in Fiction
Nobody Knows
A boy once drowned in the pond at the center of the Burning Woods. It happened years ago, before the fires. The trees in the woods still had leaves then, and the pond was almost full, though the leaves were already browning and crisping and the water was retreating, inch by inch and day by day. The last of it went when I was a teenager, but by then I already knew the story of the drowned boy and the boats.
By Vanessa Gonzales4 years ago in Fiction
