Hives

Written By: Patrick Joel Quinif

“Oh, babe, you’ve got…” Tom pointed to the spot on her neck. “Is that a scratch? You’ve gotta be careful about that.” He turned his vacant gaze back to his burrito, took a too-big bite, and stared at the television, bits of rice clinging to his greasy beard.

Adriane labored through a heavy sigh. “They’re just hives.” 

Recently, her golden skin had been marred by strange scatterings of red welts of varying intensity. She had beautiful skin, and it irked her to see any imperfections, let alone have others notice them. She looked down at her own burrito, unable to convince herself to eat, and instead rose and crossed the tiny studio apartment to the bathroom. He barely looked up from the TV and took another bite.

She flicked on the light in the dingy bathroom and saw this evening's markings. She’d started noticing the hives a few years back, but couldn’t pinpoint their origin. She’d done so much research, but never seemed any closer to discovering their cause. Usually, they appeared as tiger-striped plateaus streaking across her skin, arising from any points of physical contact. Maybe it had something to do with finger oils? How often do you recognize when your fingers gently graze your neck or absently tug at your earlobe? She never noticed the contact, but the aftermath was always some stranger warning her that she was scratching at herself too hard. She was growing increasingly tired of having to explain herself, especially to her partner of 5 years. Tom was a nice guy. They had been through a lot, plagued by his useless advice about things he didn’t understand.

Her mind was an Etch-a-Sketch. She shook her head. Tom was fine. She looked to the spot he had pointed out and was startled to see what rose from her skin. These weren’t the tell-tale tiger stripes that accompanied a shitty fast food dinner. These were articulated shapes rising from her skin. 

“What the hell?” She whispered to her reflection in the dusty mirror.

“Adriane, language.” Her mother’s voice echoed through her mind. She closed her eyes every time she heard her voice, grasping at her image that felt so far away now. There were plenty of photos of her from over the years, but they never seemed to capture the depth that Ade’s memory clung to. There was so much more there than could be captured in a photograph.

She opened her eyes and tried to focus on the hives, already obscuring into the recesses of her flesh. They weren’t letters, but she felt there was something familiar about the shape of the first one. Knowing contact never helped these things, she traced her finger lightly along the bumpy skin, outlining the weird welt. It felt like faded braille text, bumps rose and looped, started and stopped, dashed and dotted, and twirled along her neck in three distinct shapes. The first started at a point and came down like a crooked wishbone pointing upward. Encased in the wishbone, easily distinguishable, an uppercase I. Adriane grabbed a tube of lipstick and a tissue from the countertop. She traced her neck once more, like a translator by candlelight. She rushed to match what she saw and felt from the first welt onto paper. By the time she was satisfied with her work, the skin had settled back down. The paper displayed an ancient mystery that took her breath away.

Adriane bounded to the couch and crouched in front of Tom with her tissue outstretched.

“Look at this shit.” She said softly.

Tom glanced downward, eyes flicking back and forth from the television to the tissue paper, clearly uninterested.

“What’s it supposed to be?” He mumbled. “You gonna go join the circus or something?”

Adriane narrowed her eyes. How could he not see what she was seeing? Did he even look?

“Tom… That was one of my hives. I traced it.” She said.

“No way.’ He said, taking the paper and examining the symbol more closely. “It was just a scratchy little squiggle. How did you come up with this shit?” 

He didn’t believe her. Again. 

“I’ll get a picture next time. That’s exactly what it looked like. Believe it or not.” She snatched the paper back from him.

“Are you sure you’re not just trying to make life a bit more exciting? Find some kinda… I dunno, adventure? In your day-to-day routine? Look, kid…” He reached for her hand, but she didn’t budge. “I know things have been a bit… boring lately, but it’s just because we’re finally locked in a routine. Isn’t that what we talked about wanting? Are you already sick of the routine and rushing for some new crazy shit? Wasn’t that mess with your Mom enough?” He said.

Enough of this. She started up to leave the room and realized they weren’t in the old house, the one with the two bedrooms, one of which they used as an art studio for her projects, and one for sleeping. The place where she had a smidge of privacy. The place where she helped her Mom. The place they could no longer afford. She went back to the bathroom and slammed the door.

She overheard Tom’s muffled mumbling through the door, rolled her eyes, and turned on the whirring exhaust fan. Anything to drown out whatever dismissive nonsense he was babbling. He never took her issues seriously, even when they were literally cancerous. He never even considered that anything bothering her could be much more than a nuisance. He was there for her on the little things occasionally, but always seemed distant when it really mattered. Any and every worry she felt for herself was just a trick of the light, or could be solved if she would just “drink some water.” Like he was some witch doctor with all of the ancient remedies. What the fuck did he know?

Her eyes vibrated in frustration, and she pulled out her phone. She took a blurry picture of her lipstick logo, feeling like some kind of shitty graphic designer for an even shittier band. She flumped on the toilet. While a steady stream of urine splashed against the ceramic, she searched. She plugged the picture into a reverse image search and scrolled through the results. She kept it up until her legs grew numb and the needling sting of sleep tingled the bottoms of her feet. There it was. The exact shape, deep red on the tissue, was carved into the groove of some cave in the Aegean Sea. Her head swam. What could this mean? She thought of her family, centuries of kin stemming from the very point of origin of the symbol she currently gazed upon. She bookmarked the page containing the cipher and felt like a kid with a cereal box decoder ring. 

She tried to rise from her ceramic seat, but her legs wobbled, and her feet became cast iron; the pain of nails sticking through her skin prickled at her, and she collapsed into the wall-mounted toilet paper roll. She steadied herself and heard Tom calling on the other side of the door.

“What the hell was that? You okay in there?” He knocked on the door.

“I’m fine. Legs fell asleep.” She called.

“Don’t sit for so long then.” His voice quieted on each word as he stepped away from the door. She didn’t want to have to sit here researching, but where else could she go? The constant interruption of some bullhead trying to convince her that nothing was going on while ancient hieroglyphics reared their ugly heads on her neck. She’d have to look more into this later. She finished her business and flushed. She saw the lipstick logo lying on the bathroom vanity and absently tossed it down the swirling drain.

Several weeks passed. Tom got a promotion to assistant something at the auto shop, and Adriane continued to receive her standard welts, none of which matched any on the cipher, which she checked every time. She was happy for Tom, but couldn’t drum up excitement for yet another tether strapping them in place. She felt like they kept walking the same path, day in, day out, without a single turn down a corridor that might actually lead them somewhere. Tom never even questioned. How was it that she was constantly asking the next question, trying to challenge herself and figure out how to escape this maze, and he was just so content wherever they were, whatever was happening? Or in most cases, not happening.

Finally, one Sunday morning, she saw another. Tom was complaining about work, which devolved into a manifesto on the problems with the world at large. It was always the world’s problems, never his own. Adriane felt her face flush and absently dragged her fingertips along her neck. There they were. She rose midsentence, hearing Tom’s disapproving grumbling at her back as she picked up her pace to the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Adriane flicked on the light and pulled up her phone’s camera. The same symbol she had noted before marred the center of her throat, followed by two uniquely identifiable new symbols. She stretched her neck out and flashed a picture. Jackpot. She flicked the faucet on cold and held a washcloth underneath it. As she pressed it to her throat, she felt something strange. Beneath the damp cold, the heat of the hives pulsed through the soaking fibers. She could see steam rising and could feel a slight twitch beneath the towel. 

‘Oh my god…” She muttered, lifting the towel from her throat.

The symbols had shifted. Two new symbols appeared, but didn’t seem to match any on the cipher she studied. By no means had she memorized every symbol and its meaning, but she would definitely recall if they looked even remotely similar. She reached for her phone again and flashed one more photo. She would have a lot of work to do and knew she couldn’t get anything done if Tom kept jabbering about his mountainous molehills. She opened the bathroom door.

“I’m going to the library. Need anything?” Adriane said as she grabbed her jacket and her keys.

“Going… what? Library? Why?” He said, shifting forward in his seat.

“Yes, the library. I’ve got some important research to do.”

“‘Important research,’ huh? Alright then, Nancy Drew, bring me back a Hardy B…”

She slammed the door on her way out. She felt a twinge of guilt, cutting him off, but the way he spat the word ‘research’ smacked of that vicious little blonde boy from Harry Potter.

The warmth of the morning sun soothed her shoulders, igniting a soft, smoldering smile on her face. Sometimes, all it took to fill her back up was just stepping out of that dingy apartment. The distance was nice. The breeze guided her the few blocks to the library. A few small trees dotted the sidewalk, and a smiling couple with a stroller nodded as they passed. She noted a motorcycle out front, a small black cafe rider with polished chrome accents. Someone clearly loved this thing. She remembered Tom’s first bike, that massive green monstrosity. It was gaudy and sorely unkempt, prone to breaking down. It pays to take care of the things you love.

 The library had recently been renovated and was now mostly glass, a lovely little greenhouse, a garden of wisdom. The rows of shelves were strategically placed to guide the visitor’s eyes to the next stack in the twisting maze. She always loved visiting the library. As a child, she was convinced she would be an explorer. Those weekend book excursions were her only chance to chart her course, and she did so with gusto. Of all the adventures she had planned, none came to fruition but for one spur-of-the-moment road trip to Florida, where she met Tom and drove him back when he was having trouble with that damned bike. At the time, it felt like ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ and they fell in love over the long hours of conversation on the road back to Ohio, their final destination. They thought it was meant to be; what were the odds that he needed to return to the exact town she was heading toward, and they had never so much as heard of each other before? Small world.

As the glass doors shut behind her, all the twittering and chittering of birds and bugs was cut off, replaced by the low hum of conditioned air. A librarian at the desk looked up with a smile and nodded at her, her face denoting that help is ready when needed. There was only one other visitor today, a young man with a healthy head of wavy brown hair, cut short on the sides but left to grow wild up top. He had a stylized beard speckled with notes of blonde, brown, red, black, white… There was something incredibly striking about the man. He wore reading glasses, poring over several open books, and was taking extensive notes with an industrial-looking pen. Adriane noted the leather jacket draped over the back of his chair and realized this must be the biker. Her face flushed. She reached subtly to her neck and felt the familiar symbols surfacing. She lowered her head and made her way to the computers. As she bustled toward the monitors, she didn’t recognize the man’s eyes firmly locked onto her backside. 

She plopped into a swivel chair and jiggled the mouse around. In these moments, she wished she had enough money trickling in to squirrel away for a laptop, but so it goes. Her fingers hovered over the keys, twitching. She didn’t know where to begin. She pulled up the familiar website containing her codex and opened her phone to the picture that showed the rest of the sequence of the first flare-up. As her eyes flitted back and forth between the two images, searching for the connective syllables, she realized even if she could translate these symbols into sounds, she didn’t speak the language. Wouldn’t they just make some strange ancient sound? Isn’t that just the way, your body trying to communicate with you, and you only hear, or read in this case, gobbledigook. She shook her head, and her ponytail bobbed like a pendulum.

“You know, witch hazel oughta do the trick.” The motorcycle man said, standing over her shoulder. She made a little yip and jumped in her seat, hands instinctively reaching to cover the blasted rashes.

“Sorry to startle you!” He said, both hands up. Guilty as charged. 

“I’m fine, it’s just… Not very gentlemanly to look over a lady's shoulder.” She said.

“Who said I’m a gentleman?” He gave a cool smile that disarmed her immediately.

“Well, it’s personal.” She said, resuming her scroll. She’d had enough of men treating her however they wanted.

“Of course, I understand. I apologize.” He started to walk back to his seat. “I’ve just… been through it myself. Developed an allergy to my cat and have had to learn to live with it since. Not like I can just get rid of the love of my life, ya know?” He said, taking off his glasses and sliding them into the neck of his button-up. She saw his throat beneath the plaid pattern. She felt the heat beneath her own neck rise again.

“Well, thanks for the tip.” She said, swiveling back to the screen.

“The name’s Theo. If you need anyone to talk to, I’ll just be right over there. I’m working on my thesis, so I’ll likely be here for the next few months should you require more interruptions or invasions into your personal bubble.” He said, lightly smacking his forehead and swiveling on his heel towards the big table with all of his books. Eyes on the computer screen, she chuckled. Still got it.

Adriane tried to continue her work, but kept finding herself checking on her new friend out of the corner of her eye. This guy’s writing a thesis, and he’s expressing interest in me? The girl whom Tom ‘jokes’ is always “in between” jobs. She was always employed, but she hadn’t seemed to develop a career. She just knows her worth and won’t stay locked in unless necessary. Life is too short to sell your soul away to the lowest bidder. She finally found the phonetic translations for the symbols on her list and steeled herself in the search, her attention back to the task at hand. She saw the last piece of the puzzle fall into place and spelled out the translation of her hieroglyphic hives. 

WE. ARE. YOU.

Chill bumps rippled across her skin. Who the fuck was “We?” Had her body literally found a way to converse with her? When something is wrong deep inside, your body knows. When you can’t pinpoint exactly what that is, well, life finds a way.

Armed with this information, before she could shy away, she plucked a tiny bit further, hoping to translate the last two symbols before she got out of here. The ones that warped beneath her washcloth earlier this morning. This was beyond freaky, but she couldn’t fret about that now. Not until she had gotten to the bottom of this. So she did what anyone would do, and compartmentalized her feelings. She frantically flicked her eyes around, skimming for some similarity. She found the first syllable. THE. Fuck. The what? She kept going, sweating now, her whole face was overheating, and a cold sweat began to trickle from her hairline, dripping tiny beads down her cheeks. The droplets tickled as they slowly rolled down. There it was–the last syllable. 

Oh.

The. Oh.

Theo.

Adriane’s head swam. She jumped up from her seat, sending the swivel chair twisting across the low-pile library carpet. She rushed to the restroom. The librarian rose from her central desk and followed her. She glanced in Theo’s direction, shaking her head in disapproval. He looked up, confused. This had nothing to do with him. Right?

In the ladies' room, Adriane rushed into a booth and locked the door behind her. She dropped to her knees in front of the porcelain, mercifully cleaned moments before, and began heaving. Between retching sounds, she heard a cooing, disembodied voice attempting to soothe her from the other side of the door. She identified the voice as the woman at the front desk, but the vibrations shifted and warped without visual confirmation of who was speaking. What started off sounding like a comforting woman began to sound like a teenager panicking, which in turn began to shift to the warlike chant of a murderous soldier. The dam finally broke as all she had attempted to eat that morning came spilling out into the bowl. She felt an immediate relief. She wiped at her lips with her sleeve and took in a ragged breath. The voice had stopped jibbering and had cycled back to its starting point, again just a woman worrying over six syllables. “Honey, are you alright?”

“I’m okay… Something about the screen just made me nauseous, is all.” Adriane stammered, swinging the stall door open. She met the woman’s eyes, clearly unconvinced.
“I know it’s none of my business, but… are you…”
“I’m not pregnant, no. I’m fine, really.”

She sighed deeply and capped off the conversation with “You rinse off, I’ll get you a bottle of water.” 

“I appreciate your concern,” Adriane replied as she flicked on the faucet. She cupped her hands, held them under the running water, and splashed it on her face. The cold water shook her out of her spiral. She knew what she needed to do, but just wanted to understand why and how. How could a body communicate with its own mind outside of conscious thought? She had no delusions of how the body operated and had never once personified her limbs or body parts as separate from herself. She knew that the body works in tandem, her brain acting as the director, controlling processes without thought and keeping everything moving smoothly. However, the fact that a written form of communication was sprouting from her skin made her feel like this was beyond the mystery of the body. This had moved into a mystery of the spirit. Something deep within her was manifesting through some kind of… pre-cognitive transmission. Was it some form of past life peeking through? Had her own unconscious mind found a way to dig through generations of lost thought and somehow emerged with a dead written language? Unless… Her heart thumped in her chest. Were her ancestors the source of the communique? Her face grew hot, and she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her neck skin twitched, and she stretched it out once again. She saw two symbols sitting there, and following her deep dive into the cipher, she knew exactly what they meant. 

“YES.”

Adriane came out of the bathroom pretending nothing had happened. The librarian rushed to her side with a bottle of water outstretched. She took it and thanked her for all of her help. She slid the swivel chair back into place, took a swig of the water, grabbed her phone, and crossed the room to Theo’s table. He fingered a stopping point in the book before him, laid his pencil down, and looked up at her with a smile. She reached out for his pencil and jotted her number on the top corner of one of his papers. His smile beamed, and as he looked up at her before she left, she saw the familiar look of worry twitch across his face; his eyes peering at her neck. Before he could say a word, Adriane left the library. 

Before she could even make it home, she received a message from Theo. The text flashed on the screen, “Nice to meet you, but I still don’t know your name.” She replied with one word, “Adriane,” and saved his contact as ‘Library.’ Tom wouldn’t be too keen on her sharing her number with a ‘stranger’, no matter how helpful he may be. She figured this would be the simplest way to avoid any potential problems at home. She felt another twist of guilt. Tom was many things, but he was far from unfaithful. Besides, if his body contorted into the name of the stranger he’d just met, perhaps he’d be more inclined to communicate with them too. Nothing was as it seemed anymore, and Adriane felt the sweat begin to trickle from her pores again. Her head grew light and her vision blurred. On the corner of Bledsoe and Rose Street, 2 blocks from her house, she fell into darkness. 

She woke to strangers fussing over her, fanning her face and trying to find a way to identify her. As she stirred, so did they, one person getting up and on with their day, while others asked if she was alright. Asking if she needed water. She remembered the bottle from the library and slowly sat up to take a drink. She assured everyone she was okay, and two people offered to help her to her feet. As she arose, she saw a sulking figure approaching and felt something was wrong. The figure’s head was far too large, but the hair was clearly an approximation of Tom’s mess of dark, bedraggled hair. 

Protruding from his black tangle were two thick horns. That couldn’t be right. She tilted her head in confusion but reached out for him regardless. She felt a tug in his direction and realized she was being pulled, dragged with outstretched arms back to their apartment. Her face went slack. She looked around at the faces in the small crowd, but no one seemed to see what she did. He spoke to her, but her brain couldn’t wrap itself around his sounds. His aggressive tone spoke louder than his words ever could. She could see something lying on the street before them as they passed. A thin streak of red, marking their direction like a thread. They made it up the darkened steps and into their shared studio space, trailing the string the whole way up.

“You can’t even go to the library without some kind of fit? What the hell happened? Why’d you even go? Research what?” His words were coming too fast for him to catch them. They blurred past her semi-conscious mind.

“Yes. Health research.” She replied calmly and finished the last of the water bottle.

“What, like WebMD shit? Clearly, that didn’t help if you’re fainting in the fucking street, Adriane.”

“It’s past that point, Tom. You clearly don’t understand, but something is happening to me that defies explanation. These hives aren’t just niggling itches. They could be a sign of something much more… malicious, but what’s really freaking me out… Look.” She took out the photo of the symbols on her neck. “Do you see how that is clearly a symbol?”

He looked over the photo, then up to Adriane’s eyes. 

“Anything can look like anything if we want to believe it does. Look, I worry about you, I really do. I want to get us to a point where you can go and see someone about these things, and we’re so close… I got this promotion, and within the next few weeks, maybe let's schedule you an appointment with a psychologist.”

She shook her head. 

“How are you not seeing this. Thomas. Look.” She pulled up a picture of the cipher, then swiped back to her neck, then back to the cipher. Her eyes were wide, and she looked into Tom, begging him to understand.

Tom blinked. His eyes flickered at the succession of images, finally beginning to see. Her phone buzzed. A text notification popped up at the top of the screen. His eyes flicked up quickly and read, “I can’t stop thinking about you…” The contact was saved as Library. It all clicked into place. Adriane pulled back. 

“Tom, it’s not…” She blurted.

He hung his head. He didn’t say a word. The shadow that loomed over him on the street was back; she saw the darkness cast slowly over him. It filled the whole space. The only glinting light came from the corners of his eyes. His quick exhale sounded like a bull in the ring, ready to charge. 

“Tom. The symbols were telling me to talk to this guy. They spelled out his name for God’s sake! I didn’t even really talk to him, I just gave him my number because…” Her stream of words was cut abruptly by a dam of fingers clenching her throat. Never before had he raised a hand to her, never before had their arguments ever climbed past general frustrations. That was one of Adriane’s complaints; nothing ever seemed to happen. No passion, no intensity, just kind of barely being present around each other while at home, and then off they went into the real world. Here it was, all at once. More intensity than she ever dreamed of. Her eyes bulged as she fought for air. She couldn’t believe that a single errant message could send her partner of over five years into a bloodthirsty frenzy. He was closing her throat. She felt her face growing hot. Her throat burned now. The cold sweat seeped out from her again. She felt that familiar prickle on her skin that accompanied her epidermal transmissions, and her skin crawled under his strained grip. His fingers recoiled at the movement of her skin, and he grunted in disgust. Adriane kicked at him, sending him staggering backward. She heard a thrumming deep in the recesses of her eardrums and tried to catch her breath.

The front door erupted inward, and standing in the room amidst the struggle was Theo, the motorcycle man, red string dangling in his hand. He wrapped the red thread around both hands and charged at Tom. Positioned behind the hulking shadow, he scooped the string over his head, pulled it tight around his throat, and yanked backwards with all of his weight. The two men tumbled to the ground. Tom’s legs kicked wildly around, trying to find purchase, and Theo tugged back harder. His elbows dug into Tom’s broad shoulders, finding the leverage needed to stop the seemingly massive man. 

Adriane looked down at the scene, two figures writhing around on the floor, struggling for breath, and her vision began to tunnel. The thrumming in her ears shifted to a buzzing whirr. As she lost her vision, all input from her eyes faded into blackness, and she could hear clearly what was causing the buzz. Hundreds of chattering voices in a variety of languages, some that sounded slightly familiar, others that sounded like nothing more than gibberish to her uninformed ears. Nothing could be pinpointed in the tangle of vibrations in her head. She felt her eyes roll back, as if they were searching for the source of the noise themselves. Suddenly, some of the sussurations seemed to coordinate into swooping waves of sound, like a murmuration of birds, swarming in swelling geometrics that begin to take familiar shapes. They were now mimicking English. Thousands of strange tongues attempted simple syllables simultaneously.

“WE… HAVE… TRIED…” 

Her head spun, and she no longer had control of her bodily functions. The whirring whisked her away, and she felt her muscles twitch and contract while she tried to visualize what was speaking to her and why. Could this be some kind of familial collective conscience? Were these some kind of spirits? Why were they here, with her?

“TO… WARN… YOU…”

A thunderclap sounded in her head, and with the blinding flash of lightning, she saw her feet on the edge of a precipice. On the plains below, looking up and all shouting at once were thousands of restless souls. She saw so many faces of death down there, it was hard to comprehend. She struggled to force her mouth to make a sound, but shouted out to the crowd.

“Who are you?! Why me?”

While the collective gathered their thoughts, she heard a constant droning “mmm” emanating from the restless dead.

“YOU’VE… DONE… NOTHING…”

She suddenly realized. Her body, these things, were trying to get her away from here before something like this could happen. It, this collective, had seen the way Theo had looked at her and realized he could be the one to help her out of this hole she had dug herself. Tom wasn’t that bad. Until he was, she saw it now, the way he subjugated her into stillness. The way he talked her down into her hole and never tried to lift her. Just pushed her down, kept her small. With these voices swimming through the air of her unconscious mind, she got to work. Her body shook and jolted, ripping outward into the darkness. She saw the two glinting eyes of the shadow beneath her, and she tore into it. She worked methodically, ripping and rending in a weird dance, weaving what she could upward and downward, hooking wires and cables onto any surface that could hold them. Her hands were wet. Her fingers slipped and slid across the surface of the noodles she pulled. Her vision began to clear as she slowed, feeling her work was almost done. 

She saw Theo, still beneath the carnage. His face was in utter shock. It was drenched in blood. The glint in those eyes faded to nothing, looking fearful beyond compare. The muscles at the edge of his lids twitched. They were Tom’s eyes again. His mouth agape. His throat bulged, the red string wrapped tightly around, still connected to Theo’s wrists. Below this wretched scene was a darkness Adriane could never have fully comprehended. She saw Tom’s insides. His stomach seemed to have been split open by some vicious beast. Thick, wet snakes taught as a tightrope extended from the bloody mess in all directions. She collapsed into the bloody pool on the floor. Tom had been eviscerated. His intestines looped out around the room. He had only stopped breathing when she came to. He had felt every pull, every tug, every twist. She shook with terror at what she had done.

Theo quickly unhooked his hands from the red string, which he looked at in questioning disgust. He gurgled up blood, none of which was his own, coughed it up, and spat it out. He scrambled back from the bloody mess and ran for the door. He looked back once at the blood-soaked girl from the library, on her knees in a web of her boyfriend’s intestines. She was shaking and sobbing. No. Not sobbing. What came from the girl's mouth was an unholy amalgamation of voices her vocal cords had no business contorting to. As if a thousand voices, all at once, started laughing.

Patrick Joel Quinif has been writing, even when he shouldn't have been. Instead of working his family farm in Georgia or taking physics notes at Brooklyn College, he was dreaming up worlds and trying to find ways to bring them across the threshold and into reality. Whether it be through music, paint, pastels, or prose, his goal is the same. He mostly writes genre fiction and music from his house overlooking the hills outside of Nashville, Tennessee, alongside the love of his life and their ever-growing family.