The Thorns of My Flesh

A charred manuscript, found in the collapsed ruin of the 519 Westlake Condominium Superplex. An urban infestation of the pallid cat-briar. Effigies of white vines, congregations of transients and deranged visionaries. What epidemic sweeps the city, what madness ferments in its abandoned buildings, and what, pray tell, is the abscess that festers beneath my skin? Published with bonus story "The Briarwood." * A tale of dark contemporary fantasy by Alistair Ainscott. Professionally published writer Alistair Ainscott writes tales of science gone haywire, men gone mad, oddballs gone even odder, twin toddlers run amok, cats doing the things that cats are given to do, and other nefarious goings-on of the mysterious and the unknown. His fiction has appeared in the professional-paying Penumbra magazine of speculative fiction from Musa Publishing, and he has also studied short fiction with Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. If you liked this story, you might also like these other stories by Alistair Ainscott: * The Flies Dropped Dead : A Short Novel * Five Strange Obsessions: A Five Story Collection * The Thriller Writer's Workshop * Trinity of the Sands * The Familial Tremor