Trick or Treat

The Chapelkill Library Press would like to make an offering this Halloween. On October 31st James Cessford’s Cleave will be available here free of charge.

Scabrous brown patches of rust ate into the cheek of the axe like a lupus and small teeth marks had bitten into the blade giving it a serrated edge that twinkled like an old boxer’s smile as she held it aloft in the dusty sunlight and brought it swiftly down upon my head, cleaving it in two.

Such is Abe’s all-consuming devotion that he grows happier as she chops him into finer and finer chunks, for with it their love grows ever purer. But eventually, one night, there is nothing left to take.

Cleave is a deliciously dark fairy tale of sacrifice and obsession where death is not always any guarantee of relief. That’s what the blurb claims anyway. Judge for yourself when you’ve finished carving that pumpkin.