Harbinie of Death by JJ Litke *SPOILERS AHEAD*

JJ Litke is a writer of many talents, such as wrenching heart-strings, poking the funny-box, and crossing the line between peculiar and profound. Her other talents include misdirection, fiction in general, and making you feel safe and secure and then punching in the face so sneakily you don't even realise you've been punched until five minutes later!

JJ concocts insane scenarios, then makes them real like the morning-after, waking up from a nightmare only to find yourself in sleep paralysis, a demon sitting on your chest, and an ugly person in bed beside you! JJ'll have you thinking about when your own 'harbinie' will come, and what it will portend, and how you'll go about strangling it with an electric, barbed, fence-wire because you're so damned mad you can't see straight or feel pain and you just gotta kill something (a raven for example).

At first I was just minding my own business, reading a story that just happened to be written by a friend of mine - name-drop! - JJ Litke, all humming to myself like "Dooot deee dooot deee dooooooOOOOooooOOO... SAY WHAT!?" and then (after the first paragraph or so) it got super interesting! I had to read several parts several times just to understand them and make sure I understood correctly the gorgeous prose that was flowing through my eyes! (Also I have terrible reading-comprehension!)

Anyway, the next thing I felt was a sense of terror likened unto that of waking up next to the ugly person. I had no reason at first to think such a mind-numbing "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" :O  but then I realised that sneaking-JJ Litke sneakily snuck a serious whopper of a fist onto my chin without my ever noticing until afterwards. Damn her!

"Why!? Why, cruel gods? What kind of joke is this!?" it  was a really well-delivered joke, is what it was!

JJ Litke had me nodding along like a pony after a carrot, agreeing with everything, signing away my soul without reading the contract, not noticing what was up until it was already in the stratosphere. I thought this was a normal story, I thought this was a simple read, I thought I could take it, and come away whole. Instead I was thrown off a cliff of feelz into an ocean of questions left hanging, and overwhelmingly, I wanted MOAR!

JJ Litke links:

http://www.jjlitke.com/

@jenztweets