The latest issue of Weird Horror is here, with my story “Cosmic Passage,” about a museum attendant assigned to stand watch over a mysterious painting; the strange sights she she finds in it; and what finds her.
“It felt like entering a void — passing through the burgundy curtains, into the temporary alcove housing the new exhibit’s final painting, “Cosmic Passage.” Like a pocket of night in the ivory marble palace of the museum. But darker than night. The darkest place the Attendant had ever been in her city life.
The Attendant assumed her place in the far corner, where she could observe the visitors who would come and go, or perhaps sit on the single bench before the painting. She blinked rapidly, as if her eyes could bite through the blackness, soft and resistant as skin. Soon, though, they adjusted to the low lighting, which coaxed a dark rectangle from the wall: “Cosmic Passage.”
As her vision adapted, purple-black shapes rose from the black-purple canvas: trunks and fronds, leaves and blossoms, stalks and stalks and stalks. A violet curl, a lavender-gray curve, a berry-shine; a jungle blooming from the indigo night. “
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