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Ash Huang is a writer. Her fiction appears in Apparition Literary Magazine, Orion's Belt and Alien Magazine, and her essays are featured in Catapult, Fast Company, and elsewhere. She won the 2022 Diverse Worlds Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation, and is an alum of the Roots. Wounds. Words. Workshop, the Tin House Winter Workshop, and the Periplus Fellowship.

She/her ยท Huang is pronounced Hwah-ng

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Lately

a night photo of a field and hills

A Proper Vessel, A Perfect House

The animus wants a particular girl, a perfect girl. It has never found her, so it settles for decent girls. It will rattle inside her ill-fitting casing for years, before it wrenches all the pieces of her soul apart.

It has been with their family for generations. A legend claims the animus gave them mystical powers in times of ancient war. Another claims it brought good fortune, fat vases of gold coins amidst the worst drought of the century.

Yet another says there was no reason at all. The spirit just liked the shape of their great-great-great maternal grandmother and decided to try her on.

Apparition Literary Magazine: Issue 25

Image from Unsplash

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