The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

    Participate in a possession live. Not a joke. Only serious inquiries. Must be available in the Portland area between May 12th and May 15th. Email REDACTED for more information. Below the ad, which I’d found on a slip of paper tucked between the napkin holder and the ketchup at the sandwich shop I ate at sometimes, someone had doodled in pencil. Or maybe it was better than just a doodle—I could see clearly what it was, after all. A dragonfly. Three days later I was walking to my car when I heard a woman scream at me from across the parking lot. “Bastard! You fucking bastard!” I turned and looked at her bewildered, my eyes going in every direction as I searched for some other explanation than a stranger yelling at me for no reason. But it was early on a Sunday and the lot was empty except for us. Besides, she was walking toward me fast, her eyes red-rimmed and teeth bared…and strange as it was to think ...

  “Just stand…here we go.” Raphael pointed at a spot in the grass a few feet off the sidewalk. Technically it was probably the yard of the house behind us, but it was a side yard and close enough to the street that I doubted anyone would complain. Still, I wasn’t sure what he was pointing at until I stepped closer and saw something silver glinting among the thick grass. I looked back up at him questioningly. “So I stand there? Do I pick that up?” He nodded. “Yeah, the witness has to be the one to pick it up. It’s one of the rules.” His eyes skittered back and forth between me and the patch of grass, his face lined with tension as he flapped his hand in my direction. “Hurry. Do it if you’re going to do it.” I frowned and bent down, picking up what I now saw was a silver coin, though not a kind I was familiar with. It was smooth on one side, and on the other, there was a large engraved eye surrounded by lines that...

  I first realized something was wrong when I found pictures on my phone that I knew couldn’t be real. It had been awhile since I’d looked back through my gallery app more than a few days, and I only did it this time out of boredom while waiting in line at the drive-thru pharmacy. That sense of comfortable familiarity at scrolling past pictures I was reminded I’d taken—a cool-looking sky, my dog Tenner, the girl I’d been seeing for the past few weeks—was pleasant and distracting. So much so I had to hear a honk behind me before I remembered to edge up ten feet to keep the line moving. But when I went back more than a few of months, things started to change. The pictures were things I didn’t remember. People that weren’t familiar and places I’d never been. What was all this? No one else had ever used my phone to take photos that I remembered, and certainly not long enough to take months’ worth of pictures I’d never seen. As I w...

  Five years ago, my niece Emily was taken. We always say ‘taken’ because she disappeared, and even at eighteen, she was the most responsible person I’ve ever known. The idea of her running off was next to impossible, and given her normally careful nature, a freak accident where she was never found seemed pretty unlikely. That left taking—someone snatching her, carrying her off for some terrible reason. We knew when it would have happened. She had started working at the campus bookstore a month before her freshman year of college, and already she was being trusted with locking up on some weeknights. This particular Wednesday, the front door to the store was never locked. Campus footage showed someone wearing a dark hoodie going into the store just before closing, but never showed them or Emily leave again. Police assumed they both left by the back exit, which wasn’t covered by a camera at the time. Whatever the case, the trail ...