Jakub inherited everything from his father. His dark eyes and stubby fingers. The little house in Stare Mesto, with the front room that his father had turned into a restaurant. Even the recipes that kept the place popular enough that Jakub could hire another cook and a girl to wait tables.<\/p>\n
He’d inherited the gold-filled fusee pocketwatch that his father had carried throughout Europe while he collected those recipes. And he’d inherited the curse that came with it.<\/p>\n
Every fall, as the chill retreated in a welcome respite to all but him, Jakub hid in his rooms, lips cracked and torn by a thousand arachnid legs, screams muffled by a thousand swollen abdomens, jaws stretched wide to let them pass.<\/p>\n
Babi Leto. Those weeks in September when the days were warmer than the calendar should have allowed. Those weeks when Jakub locked the watch in a steel-strapped trunk, and locked that trunk in the restaurant’s storeroom, and prayed it would help.<\/p>\n
The weeks when spiders crawled out his mouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jakub inherited everything from his father. His dark eyes and stubby fingers. The little house in Stare Mesto, with the front room that his father had turned into a restaurant. Even the recipes that kept the place popular enough that Jakub could hire another cook and a girl to wait tables.<\/p>\n
He’d inherited the gold-filled fusee pocketwatch that his father had carried throughout Europe while he collected those recipes. And he’d inherited the curse that came with it. Continue reading