Tiernan Blanchard

Within two weeks of his moving in mould started to bloom across the slapdash paintwork, green-grey patches and streaks on the walls and ceiling. It’s been five or six months now, and there’s a big patch on the ceiling that looks like a human body, stretched out in death. He’d worry, if he couldn’t hear upstairs thudding around in his big boots. He’s seen the guy once or twice after dark, a white blur of a face inside a hood and above a bulky dark jacket. It’s just him; there are never any guests.

Asher never has guests either.

When Asher can’t sleep for the sirens, the drunk couples arguing, he sometimes thinks about the thudding, the guy upstairs pacing forward and backward for hours.Thinks on how they share a house, technically, but don’t know each other. Asher feels like he doesn’t know anyone at all. He gets drunk with people and they tell each other horrible things but that’s not the same as knowing them.

Tonight he’s tired of thinking, so he goes out. He puts on eyeliner and a binder and a packer, and ends up at a club. There are lots of people there and he can pretend that he knows them and they’re his friends. People touch him by accident in the crowd and it’s not nearly enough but it’s what Asher gets.

“DEAD BODY LOVE NOTES/BLACK LEATHER/THE NAMES OF SNAKES” Poems and flash fiction, GORE ISSUE 2, August 2024

“MYCOPHILIA”, Short Story – Seize The Press Issue 7, April 2023

Terrible Things and Dear”, Short Story, Cloister Fox Issue 2, Oct 2022

“Wolf Shape”, short story, – The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sept/Oct 2022

“For This Divinity”, short story, – Into The Crypts of Rays; A Black Metal Horror Anthology, Castaigne Publishing

“To Build A Garden”, short story, – Xenocultivars: stories of queer growth, Speculatively Queer March 3 2022

“a hungry ghost offers you a recipe”, poem, published in Augur 4.2, December 22nd 2021

“Undercity Spellwork”, short story, published in Unfettered Hexes, October 2021

“The Devil’s Pit” , short story, published in Lore and Disorder, October 20th 2021

“The Lesson”, poem,  Published in Tell Me Who We Were Before Life Made Us, June 2021

“Flowers From The Bone”, short story, published in Vulture Bones in 2018 and then self-published on Vocal and Medium

“Someone Has To,” Short Story, Published by TheToast.net August 2013