by Emma Osborne.

“The Box Wife” was first published in Shock Totem: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted issue 9, edited by K. Allen Wood.

Emma Osborne is a fiction writer and poet from Melbourne, Australia. Her short stories can be found in Aurealis, Bastion Science Fiction and Shock Totem. Her poetry has been featured in Star*Line and has appeared in Apex Magazine. Emma comes from a long line of dance floor starters and was once engaged in a bear hug so epic that both parties fell over. She can be found on Twitter as @redscribe and her website is A Practical Crown

Your narrator – Eve Upton – is huddled in the darkness of the cupboard…she appears to be scratching words into the floor… what does that say? “nolite the bastardes carborundorum”.

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If you run your hands over me you’ll be pulling splinters from your palms for days.

I am in a room bare and dark.