Unholy Trinity: Glamoury by Deborah Tapper
Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.
Hoodwinked
It’s midnight and the girl in red keeps screaming.
He races to tackle her assailant and finds he’s grabbing handfuls of unkempt fur, solid muscle. Dense clouds part and moonlight pours down as the hideous thing rips free, whirling to confront him. Howling and snapping, yellow eyes blazing hate.
The girl’s laughing.
Peeling off her scarlet dress, her human skin.
He runs, but she’s faster. A leap brings him down and she wrestles him onto his back, claws slicing. Opens his belly with one ferocious swipe, triumphant smile sprouting razor fangs.
“Don’t get greedy, Grandma,” she snarls. “This one’s mine!”
Footloose
He wakes strapped to an operating table.
Specimen jars line the walls and two smiling girls lean over him. He recognises one: the tireless salesgirl who insisted on fetching every pair of shoes his size, who said he had perfect feet.
She doesn’t have feet now. Or legs. And neither does her sister. One glimpse of their snake-like lower halves and he’s struggling, yelling for help.
Nobody comes.
The giggling sisters lay out their saws and scalpels as his frantic eyes skim the room, desperately seeking escape. And he finally sees what’s inside the countless glass jars.
Perfect human feet.
Reclusive
She’s high in an inaccessible tower, singing sweetly as she spins. That beautiful voice is mesmerizing. He spends hopeless hours circling, searching for a way in.
Eventually she lowers a thin silky rope. It’s strangely sticky, but it takes his weight so he climbs up. Squeezes eagerly through the tiny window – into a shadowy room overflowing with tapestries. Attendants hover silently, motionless.
He blinks – and the tapestries turn into thick cobwebs. Countless corpses hang from them, sucked dry.
She scuttles out. Strikes before he can flee.
And once he’s safely bundled in her larder, she starts singing and spinning again.
Deborah Tapper
Deborah Tapper has been published in anthologies, magazines and online. She lives in the middle of nowhere with her understanding partner, drinks too much strong tea and writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
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Sarah Elliott is a writer, spoken word artist, poet and self-published author (Warrior Wisdom Sun 2022, United Under One Sun 2023). She regularly hosts writing hours and monthly flash fiction workshops with the London Writers’ Salon. Her articles, stories, and author interviews can be found on The Horror Tree website and her work has been published in Red Rose Thorns magazine, Writing in Community anthology and Hope is a Group Project.
Sarah is currently writing a tarot-inspired collection of flash fiction, short prose and poetry. She documents her writing journey in her Substack newsletter, A Writer’s Life. Sarah serves as a social media officer for the writing organisation 26 and is a member of The British Fantasy Society.
Based in Nottingham, England, Sarah lives with her cat, Bella. A speculative fiction enthusiast, she enjoys books, films and TV series in the genre.
More from Sarah here: https://linktr.ee/Writingforlight
