From a nearby pond, I heard a very small argument. More of a berating, actually. A tiny voice pierced the peace of the meadow where I lay napping.

“You must fly!” it shrilled. “How else can we be together?”

With a groan, I sat upright, immediately spotting the speaker. A handsome blue and black butterfly perched upon the snout of one vibrant green frog, who had mostly submerged herself beneath the still pond surface. She gazed at the butterfly with sadness in her large golden eyes.

“Well?” the butterfly demanded.

The frog remained silent.

“She is not shaped for flying,” I called out. “Anyone can see her talents lie elsewhere.”

“Don’t be preposterous!” the butterfly said. “We’re so alike already, of course my love shall fly.”

I rested my arms on my knees. “Why does it matter?”

“The flowers here have wilted with the summer suns,” he said. His long antennae wriggled in agitation. “I must migrate or die.”

Of the frog, I asked, “What do you think?”

The frog sank lower into the water. “I cannot fly,” she croaked. “Or leave this pond. But I have a solution.” With that, she dove underwater, leaving the butterfly flapping and sputtering.

Soon she resurfaced with a struggling minnow in her mouth. This she spat onto the pebbly shore. We all watched as the small fish flopped around until it suffocated to death.

“Butterflies can consume flesh,” the frog explained, pleased with herself.

“So they can,” the butterfly said. “Well done, my love!” He swooped in to plant a kiss on the frog’s nose before landing on the fish, where he fell to eating.

The frog placidly snapped another butterfly from the air with her long tongue. It went down with a faint scream while I re-positioned and went back to sleep.

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Beneath the Bluebonnets: Tales of Terror by Texas Women

Read my eco-horror short “Well Being” in this fabulous new anthology, in which a mother follows strange impulses from tainted water to find her daughter.

From Mary Shelley to Tananarive Due and Mariana Enríquez, women have long shaped horror—often without equal recognition. Living closest to the genre’s edge, women know these fears firsthand: lost autonomy, violence, childbirth, survival.

Set in Texas, a land of haunted histories and increasingly restrictive laws, Beneath the Bluebonnets emerges from the raw intersection of terror and endurance. Written by twelve Texas women writers: R. J. Joseph, Lauren Oertel, L.H. Phillips, Kathleen Kent, Madison Estes, Jess Hagemann, Emma E. Murray, Jae Mazer, Iphigenia Strangeworth, Jacklyn Baker, S.G. Baker and edited by Carmen Gray, this collection is urgent, unflinching, and deeply haunting—stories that refuse to look away.