E.A. Petricone's short story, We, the Girls Who Did Not Make It [Nightmare Magazine], had me gripped from the first sentence to the last. The ghosts of those murdered by a serial-killing duo linger…
We are not where we are buried. We are where they kept us. We float now, and see the low building in the woods from above, the long plates of rusted metal, the desiccated grass bundling against the sides like a pyre, the orb spider poised over a corroded edge. But when we were alive, we only knew the inside of the basement, where we had all the usual things girls have when they are being held and killed.
Every feeling is sharp. The emotional landscape of remembered lives. The unspeakable resentment at a new captive's ingenuity. The desperate burning hope when it seems she might truly have a chance to escape. The story climbs out of its well to challenge the reader, too, and how such tales are told to us.
