Readings by KaZ.
In her own voice.

Micro-horror. What if the photographs don't capture your likeness but trap the piece of you that's trying to leave?

Micro horror: Doppelgänger. I slipped into my usual meditation practice to see myself sitting on a couch with a terrifying grin. My doppelgänger said, “You stayed away just long enough for me to learn how to breathe in your skin.”

It started with a violation of Sarah and Mark's home sanctuary. They would come home from class or work, step into the kitchen, and freeze in terror. The heavy latch-handled door of their 1960s refrigerator would be flung wide open, the motor humming frantically against the room's ambient air.

On the linoleum floor lay a scene of what looked like chaotic malice—eggs, milk cartons, and glass jars of jams that had been violently hurled from the shelves, smashed, and scattered across the room. It wasn't a break-in. Nothing of value was stolen.

It was what appeared to be a tantrum. Worse than the food was the fire. Sarah and Mark would wake up in the dead of night, alerted by a sharp chemical smell drifting into their bedroom.

Stepping into the pitch-black kitchen, they would find the heavy knobs of the vintage gas stove turned completely to on. The blue hissing eyes of the burners throwing an eerie glow against the cabinets, bleeding gas into the apartment while they slept. It was lethal, set by something they feared no longer had a physical form.

They began sleeping with the bedroom window cracked, even in the freezing upstate winter terrified they wouldn't wake up. They did wake up, and the next morning they did something about it all.

Next to my right elbow sat a heavy piece of dark furniture, a vintage sewing machine. It looked like it had been left behind by the house's original 19th century inhabitants. It was a beautiful but strange object.

It resembled one in my great grandmother's home. It featured a small wooden door on the front that when opened, revealed the iron gears inside. Perched on the arm of the couch right next to the sewing machine was Milo, the orange tabby house cat.

He was sitting passively staring at the machine. I was loudly shouting a conversation over the music to someone sitting across from me when, out of the corner of my eye, the little wooden door slowly creaked open. I glanced, shaking my head.

I rationalized immediately that it was a centuries-old machine. The hinges were probably stripped or the latch was loose and I had had a lot of beer. Milo started purring loudly, his eyes locked on the machine.

He didn't seem to be fazed in the least. A moment later, Patricia, one of the roommates, breezed past. Without pausing, she reached out and casually swung the door shut.

A few minutes later, it drifted open again. Okay, you're just drunk, I told myself. You don't even know what you saw.

Again, as Patricia passed by heading for the kitchen, she nonchalantly closed the door. Then, right before my eyes, the door swung open a third time, slowly and deliberately. Patricia, who had handled it so deftly the first two times, stopped dead in her tracks.

She marched up to the machine, looked directly into the dark hollow of the gears and sighed. “Jenny, we’re having a party.” Her annoyed tone was more like that of an older sister.

You need to cut it out. You're going to scare people. Slam!

The heavy wooden door wrenched shut on its own. Milo reached out a lazy paw and tapped the wood. I looked around to see if anyone else heard it or noticed it.

No one had. The music was too loud and everyone was too busy having a good time. I sat there, my mouth dry, wondering if I'd crossed the line from buzzed to hallucinating.

My mind flashed back to the bizarre, unexplained occurrences I'd heard of in this sleepy little village. I had had unexplained experiences myself in my nearby apartment. I knew the signs.

I looked up at Patricia, my eyes most likely the size of saucers. She looked down at me, completely unbothered as if she were giving me a weather report. We've got a ghost.

She wants to be part of the action. There've been other things happening mostly at night. So we did some digging into the town archives.

Turns out a woman lived here in the late 1800s. She was a pottery teacher, never married, and lived here alone until her fifties. Her name was Jenny.

Her pottery is actually still downstairs. Wanna see it?