Natalie Gray
Bio
Welcome, Travelers! Allow me to introduce you to a compelling world of Magick and Mystery. My stories are not for the faint of heart, but should you deign to read them I hope you will find them entertaining and intriguing to say the least.
Stories (84/0)
Royal Match
Have you ever played a match 3 mobile game? Odds are that if you've ever owned a tablet or smartphone, you have. But, in the very odd chance that you've been living under a rock since 1995 and have never heard of such things, match 3 games are fairly straightforward. They're exactly what they sound like: you have a grid of colorful tiles, which you simply swap to form a chain of three or more of the same tiles in a row. After you make a certain number of matches required to pass a level, you are usually given some kind of reward - coins, gems, etc. - and move on to the next level.
By Natalie Gray27 days ago in Confessions
Plans for 2024
This path I've been on for the last handful of years has not been quick or easy. Up until the Pandemic reared its ugly head, I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. To be honest, I didn't have much of a life at all: I was on the cusp of my thirties while still clinging fast to my twenties, nowhere near ready to let go, and stuck in a job that caused me so much stress and anxiety I wanted to throw up when I woke up every morning. I had lived nearly a third of my life, but I hadn't really “lived", and I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. In a way, the Covid-19 Pandemic was kind of a Godsend for me, because if it hadn't happened, I'd still most likely be in that miserable place physically and emotionally.
By Natalie Gray3 months ago in Confessions
Mom's Recipe Box
It's Christmas time again, to no one's surprise. Along with all the carols, tree-trimming, and visiting relatives that you pretend to like comes a few very important holiday traditions… one of which is – in my case – dusting off Mom's old recipe box.
By Natalie Gray4 months ago in Feast
The Boy in the Looking Glass
"It's closing time, Lolly." The young brunette jumped six inches off her beanbag chair, blinking her large, impetuous green eyes at the older man who'd addressed her. He smiled down warmly over his silver wire eyeglass frames, his crows feet crinkling around his sparkling blue orbs. Lolly's eyes darted around the room in a bit of a daze, soaking in the countless low, oak shelves surrounding her. Her slightly sweaty fingers still gripped the lemon yellow hardcover book in her mitts tightly, as her subconscious mind wasn't yet ready to let go of Nancy, George, and Bess's adventures. From outside, the five low, dismal bongs of the county courthouse's clock next door reminded her of the hour.
By Natalie Gray4 months ago in Criminal
Deafening Silence
Tremors ravage my hands and arms, and my knees bounce up and down like I have springs in my sneakers. Figures in scrubs race back and forth along the corridor, their faces drawn, pale, severe. The smell of bleach is all around me; suffocating, nauseating. A noxious, perfumey scent lies on top of it (gardenias, I think), trying to mask the odor, but it only feeds the pounding ache growing behind my right eye. There's another smell beneath it all - much more potent - that twists my guts up in painful knots. I can't quite place what it is, but it reminds me how much I despise hospitals.
By Natalie Gray6 months ago in Fiction
Chapter Two: The Iron Path
Aidan slowly pushed himself out of the dirt and raised his hands, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a hard swallow. These were the vicious little creatures he’d imagined in his mother’s stories, jabbing their tiny weapons at him. Frankly, he didn’t think brooch pins and toothpicks could mortally wound him. On the other hand, his nose was still smarting where Twig had thumped it earlier. Perhaps these creatures were much stronger than they looked. He already knew their needle-like teeth were well equipped to draw blood, which was enough to leave him quivering like a pup in the snow.
By Natalie Gray7 months ago in Chapters
Chapter One: Unlikely Friends
Aidan sat in the cool, damp grass with the little brass gearbox in hand, tightening the springs with a miniature screwdriver. The warm breath of the summer wind kissed his stubbly cheek but he took little notice of it, absorbed as he was in his tinkering. Tinkering always helped him think, and calmed him when even his mother’s words could not. With each click and whirr of the mechanism, though, Kyden’s words still rang loud and clear in his pointed ears, piercing his heart with the ferocity of a red-hot iron spear: "He's not my son."
By Natalie Gray8 months ago in Chapters
Prologue: The Babe in the Woods
Lavinia’s toes scraped the ground with every slow stride she took. The skin around her tired lavender eyes glowed bright red against her porcelain complexion, looking puffy and lumpy and decidedly out of place on her otherwise flawless visage. She was so certain it would work this time. It should have worked. She’d completed every rite to the letter, followed every detail and done exactly what the Old Texts decreed: she’d fasted at the appropriate times, sacrificed to the appropriate Goddesses – twice – and endured the brutal mating ritual until she thought her body would break. And yet, despite all that hard work, agony, hope, and suffering… here she was in the exact same circumstance as before.
By Natalie Gray8 months ago in Chapters
Hocus Pocus
Spooky season is almost here, and what is it without Winnifred, Mary, and Sarah? The perfect blend of goofy and fun with iconic characters and just enough heart to put a spell on you forever. Gary and Penny Marshall are icing on the cake. But the sequel is absolute garbage.
By Natalie Gray8 months ago in Critique
Y.A. Fiction Isn't Just For Kids
Nothing can quite describe the joy of walking through the Junior's or Young Adult section of a library when you're a kid. Moving up at last from picture books to chapter books is a heck of a milestone: for once you feel grown up, sophisticated, not like the babies sitting in a circle for story time and hand puppets. It's a feeling that can't quite be explained, and once that magic is gone it's almost impossible to recapture it.
By Natalie Gray8 months ago in BookClub
Burnout Is Real
In every creative field, there is a phenomenon. A kind of "hitting a wall", where the creator - that's you and me - feels their creative muse take a hiatus. The wellspring of one's creative juices just runs dry one day, and no amount of drilling, priming, praying or begging can make them flow again. You might feel tired or frustrated, like you want to write but you either can't or everything that comes out of your pen would be perfectly at home in the bottom of a cattle chute. If any of the above describes how you're feeling right now, congratulations: you're suffering from burnout.
By Natalie Gray8 months ago in Writers
Hungry Little Waifs
Welcome back, Weary Traveler. It's been too long since you last settled at my campfire. Have you returned to hear another tale of the twisted and the macabre? I hope so, because I am definitely in the mood to tell one. Settle in and get comfortable, won't you?
By Natalie Gray8 months ago in Horror