The New Flesh

When I was ten I liked reading by the fireplace until everyone else had gone to bed.

Then I’d switch the lights off and run up the stairs.

I’d climb them fast (two or three at a time), imagining cold clammy hands groping at my back.

Now I’m a hundred and six—or would have been if I hadn’t died twenty-three years ago.

I still like to read by the fireplace. It does nothing to keep my hands warm, but it does wonders for my heart—especially when the new kid flicks the lights off and dashes for the stairs.

"Cold Hands, Warm Heart"
Copyright: © 2010 Eugene Gramelis
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Eugene Gramelis is a barrister and dark fiction writer from Sydney, Australia where he lives with his beautiful wife and two gorgeous daughters. His fiction has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in publications such as MicroHorror, Crime and Suspense Magazine, Flashes in the Dark, The Daily Tourniquet, Midnight Echo, Afterburn SF and The New Flesh. Please feel free to visit Eugene's official webpage: http://gramelis.blogspot.com