Excerpt: Someday The Sun Will Shine

That next night, she is frantic and she does not know why. She and the Imp King are stuffed full with a good meal, the dinner that she had prepared for them, and now he is in her bathroom ( his bathroom, their bathroom now ), shirtless and groaning at the sink. She wants to ask him what is wrong, wants to know why he stands at her sink each night after the meals she cooks and makes harsh, greedy animal noises. But she thinks of Tilly, lost to her now, and she thinks of her mother and father. The pit of her stomach is full of something that churns and sickens her, but it isn't fear and it isn't panic. She ticks through every emotion she knows, and finally, it settles over her, that she is full of nothing - a nothingness so consuming that she has been devoured by it completely. And so, full of emptiness, she has moved into the bedroom, and she does not ask the Imp King why he stands at her sink.

Now she sits, fully clothed, at the foot of her ( his, hers, his, hers, their ) bed. It is hot in the little bedroom, a space heater puttering from side to side and scattering electrical heat. She doesn't think to turn it off. She only watches it as it swings, left to right, and thinks that her grey sweatpants and her thin sweater are much too hot, and when the cheap plug goes and the heater's clicks and whirs die down to silence so do her thoughts.

"I need to fix that plug," she says to nothing.

"What did you say?" The Imp King growls from the bathroom, his voice as rough and as plain as a winding asphalt road. "What did you say, fix what? What are you fixing?"

"Only a plug," she sighs to him, "It's just that the space heater has stopped working. It does it all the time. Didn't you notice? If I put it next to my bed, it works very well. If I put it into the kitchen, it works just as fine. But if I put it where it is, at the other side of the bedroom, it shuts off. I think it overheats. The plug is bad."

The Imp King does not answer. She shifts, uncomfortably, at the foot of her bed.

"I am coming out now," The Imp King finally calls. "I am coming out. Are you ready?" The bathroom door swings open, and in the doorway the Imp King stands, tall and glowering and utterly naked. Each dip of muscle is in shadow, his clawed hands gripping the door frame as if this world were going to slip away from him at any moment. She could not see his face, but his natty, mossy hair was free, curling, twisting, branching out into the air and the darkness above him, and when he smiles slyly at her, his stubby, broken teeth gleamed bright. He looks, to her, for the very first time, like a monster.