He admires the cat's restful state. One day, he too will be able to rest, and perhaps urine and blood will surround him as well—like a blossoming bird of paradise or maybe just a dandelion. It's something to hope for. Maybe he might pray to the God he doesn't believe exists.

The dead cat raises its head and looks around. It licks at a spot of blood on its left side, then rights itself in the snow. Tiny footprints disrupt the blood flower.

"Are you going to cross or not?" the cat calls out.

- From "Regarding Dead Things on the Side of the Road"

Benjamin X. Wretlind presents fifteen short stories--some bizarre, some horrific, some soft and quiet like scissors through skin. Some of the stories have been published in magazines like The Horror Express, All Hallows, Horror Carousel and the Bare Bones anthology series, while others have never been published before.

When Maggie was six, she hid from desert storms under a sink where Comet and Windex were kept. Now twenty, she welcomes the storms.

Maggie has been abused. She has been torn apart by the sins of others, and constantly feels as if she's living on the verge of a grand epiphany. Then again, she may just be insane. She really doesn't know if the four bodies she dismembered and placed inside a rusted Volkswagen Bus are the only bricks left to her castle in the sky, but she hopes you'll understand if they're not.

Castles is the story of Maggie and how she built her castle, one brick at a time. It's a literary horror novel about love and redemption, belief and revenge and what brings a person to madness. Set in a nameless desert in a nameless town, it is the view into the life of a young woman who wonders: is madness really mad?