Welcome to the Nightmare Magazine Story podcast.

Enter freely and of your own free will.

I am your humble host, Terence Taylor, one very much at home with The Children of the Night.

In this episode, before our full-length story, we have a poem,

Blood Orange, written by Elam Harris, and narrated by Janina Edwards.

But first, a word from our sponsors. And now, Janina Edwards.

Content warning. Child abuse, sexual Sexual Assault, Violence, Death.

I was reading Genesis, but I kept imagining everything happening where I grew up, in my childhood home.

When I reached the part about Lot and his daughters, I became fixated on them.

I never finished reading Genesis. This poem

came out of that. L.M.H. Summer air clumps and lungs. Iron rust in our throats. I sleep on the floor

with my sister, under our bed, just as Mama

taught us. The heat goes to heaven. Coolness seeps from below. The Father God burns in the

groves. Daddy, with the rest of them, I ran from him there, my sister too. He grabbed my hair,

dragging me into the trees.

I clawed the ground, moldy oranges my only tether. My fingers dig into the tender skin.

When I was little, Daddy brought me here. He handed me one of the sweet fruits, the rind brilliant shining. He slipped his thumb into the navel, ripping the flesh asunder. He gave me a half. My teeth enveloped the flesh,

tearing it from the rind. The blood-orange juice ran down my chin. Now it trickles down my thigh, strong fingers in the

Thou. Mama sits at the table. She clumps in the wet air. My sister breaks a bit of her finger

for the cooking water. I sprinkle her on the greens. Daddy says she looked back. That's why she's salt. My sister and I kiss her on the greens. Daddy says, she looked back, that's why she's salt.

My sister and I kiss her on the cheek.

We slice open our lips on the coarseness of her skin.

...