Gillian

Jackson and Gillian live from needle to needle in a condemned drug house, buying oblivion from a hooded dealer called the Alchemist. Their love is tangled with hunger, theft, and the need for one more hit.

After a bad night of drugs, a smashed car window, and a fight gone bloody, they run to the one place Jackson still knows how to enter: his grandmother's quiet cottage. By morning, the house is wrecked, Nana is dead in the basement, and Gillian insists the old woman was only something wearing human skin.

Among the stolen jewelry is a silver necklace with a heart-shaped black diamond, the pendant Nana never took off. Gillian keeps it for herself. Jackson wants to believe the blood, the voices, and the shadows are only the dope talking, but the necklace has its own pull.

A dark fairy tale by Kristopher Mallory, first published in the anthology Daylight Dims: Volume Two (2014).