It was Valencia’s Personal Anthology that introduced me to this site. Her story ‘Trogloxene’ concerns sisters Holly and Max. The narrator’s perspective stays with Holly, as Max is recovering from a recent misadventure where she spent eight days lost in a cave. But something isn’t right:

There was something weird about Max’s face, thought Holly. Something off. Max had always been the pretty one, while adults used words like “unconventional” to describe Holly. But now Max’s eyes, once a crystal green, were dulled and bloodshot. Her shimmering golden hair had lost its sheen and hung limply around her face, which was sharper now, more angular. She twitched at every fork clank, sniffling and shifting in her chair.

Like many of the stories in her collection, ‘Trogloxene’ has an 80s-horror-movie feel that made me feel like a kid staying up past my bedtime watching TV.

First published in her collection Mystery Lights, Tin House, 2024. Read it online at Electric Literature here