Cover

breakable things

advance praise for “breakable things”

“Horrifying and beautiful!”

—   Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Road of Bones, and Ararat

“A delicious bowl of razor blades. With coiled prose and whetted instinct, Khaw’s stories put a finger on the dark pulse of being human.”

—   Rich Larson, author of Ymir and Tomorrow Factory

“Khaw takes the familiar and gives it a vicious cutting edge. Breakable Things is haunting, and in the best way, sneaky. It gets inside you, and when you least expect it, it strikes, leaving you bloodied on the floor unsure if you're laughing or crying.”

—   Nghi Vo, author of The Chosen and the Beautiful

“Some writers are simply indispensable if you want to understand your cultural moment. Cassandra Khaw is three of them: (1) a master storyteller who (2) finds multiple angles into the deepest recesses of your psyche to (3) leave you not just stricken, but strangely relieved, strangely edified. Breakable Things is a match-strike in the darkness that makes you understand the value of darkness. Enjoyed best under the covers!”

—   Carlos Hernandez, Award-winning author of the Sal and Gabi series

also by cassandra khaw

Hammers on Bone

Nothing but BlackenedTeeth

The All-Consuming World

Dedication

For Angela Slatter

don’t turn on the lights

Stories are mongrels. It don’t matter whether they were lightning-cut into stone or whispered over the crackle of a dying flame, no story in the world has pedigree. They’ve all been told and retold so many times that not God himself could tell you which one came first. Yes, every story in creation.

Including this one.

Especially this one.

You might have heard it before. There was a girl once. Her name was Sally. It could have been any other name, really. But let’s go with Sally. It’s solid. Round-hipped and stout, the kind of Midwestern name that can walk for hours and don’t mind it much when the sun burns its skin red.

Anyway.

Sally was, maybe, about eighteen or nineteen, some freshman in a local college. And like every teenager, she sometimes got behind on her school work.

So one night, she took all her books and went down to her dormitory’s basement, telling herself she’d study till the dawn brindled the sky in gold and claret.

Halfway through, she realized she’d forgotten a book. And back up she went, feet making no sound at all on the old carpet. (Was it thick? Yes. Lush like nothing else. It had to be, or what happened next would make no sense.) Silent, she padded along until she reached her room and opened the door.

Click.

It was black inside. No lights at all. The curtains were drawn. You couldn’t see the glow of the distant town. But that was okay. Sally knew the room like the map of her palms. Slowly, she felt her way along the walls to her bed. Slowly, she realized—